June 29, 2021 • 45 mins
As the St Louis County medical examiner determines Danyé's death to be suicide, our hosts look deeper into the evidence.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Content warning. This podcast discusses violence, murder, suicide, civil unrest,
aggressive policing, racism, and lynching. If you or anyone you
know is considering suicide, her self harm, or just need
to talk about problems, please call the National Suicide Prevention
Lifeline at one eight hundred two seven three eight two
(00:24):
five five, or text the Crisis text line at seven
four one seven four one. Previously and after the uprising,
I call now one one and all I remember screaming,
is my baby delik right, so you know he's let's
take pictures. All signs right on the bathpoint that this
(00:46):
was a suicide. We know what the fact of the
case are. We know what detectives are investigating and what
they saw. I we get missed. She's the one that
really stuck out was You're not hard to get I
was fooled right behind you. Rally what love? Yeah? Why
the fund are you grabma like an animal? Because they
feel like we don't appreciate law enforcement here. Therefore, it
(01:06):
has in the first effect of certain cops not being
a stality when it comes to straight up and down
police work. I just know that the one detective that
the moment the black guy did not give us his
business card, gave us a card for the airport police.
(01:36):
What you're looking at is the aftermath of the grand
jury deciding not to indict Officer Wilson. A young man
found hanging from a tree in October. His mom believes
someone murdered her son, targeting him. Danye became an activist
(02:02):
in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown
by a white police officer. That's why Melissa mckinnis wants St.
Louis County police to dig deeper to her son's death.
He was not suicidal. This is after the uprising the
death of Donye Dion Jones. New developments about a deadly
(02:30):
discovery in St. Louis County. A young man found hanging
from a tree in October. His mom believes someone murdered
her son, targeting him because she was a Ferguson protester.
Jacob Long is here with the medical examiner's final report.
Jacob Well, Mike and the report we're talking about tonight.
It is fifteen pages long, and the medical examiner's conclusion
is pretty clear. After reviewing the evidence. She says Danye
(02:53):
Jones died of suicide by hanging. When the St. Louis
County Medical Examiner's Office least their final report on Danye's death,
some local media again briefly focused on Dane's story, but
they were mostly uncritical of what they were provided by county.
According to this report from the Medical Examiner, an investigator
found a chair under that tree, and while Jones did
(03:16):
not leave a suicide note, his family says he often
talked about being depressed. Meantime, Jones The family is disputing
the report. His mom told us a few months ago
that her son was targeted and she believes murdered. She
says he did not know how to tie the kind
of knot that was used in the hanging, and she
said he was upbeat and not acting suicidal. The St.
(03:36):
Louis County Police Department, which also ruled this a suicide,
says the investigation remains open until detectives can review the
cause of death. Medical Examiner's Office just the tuans Hi.
I submitted a Sunshine request and I got the paperwork
in the mail the other day, But um I was
(03:57):
wondering if there's any way to get the associated photograph,
a fee that would have gone along with that paperwork um,
which is that it's the Donya Jones case. Oh, um, No,
we don't. We don't really photograph. Is there a legal
way to get them, like a submitted through an attorney? Right,
you'd have to get a sup. To start wrapping our
(04:19):
heads around the facts regarding the manner in which Donye died.
We were going to need to see the reports, both
from the Medical Examiner's Office and the police department. Missouri
has on the books a Sunshine Law, which is like
their version of the Freedom of Information Act. Via this law,
we were able to get a copy of the Medical
Examiner's report pretty soon after it was released. The first
(04:41):
thing to understand about the Medical examiners report is that
it's built of two primary sections. The first is a
scene report written by a medical legal investigator sent out
to the scene of a death by the Medical Examiner's office,
who in this case was a man named Michael Tarticio.
His job is to examine the scene, take the temperature
of the body, speak to the family members, and to
(05:04):
take detailed notes on everything. The pathologist, in this case,
a man named Dr Gersham Norfleet, will examine the body
and ultimately it is he who will draft the second
part of the report. After that, the report is reviewed
and whole and signed off on by the Chief Medical Examiner,
Dr Mary Case. Upon reading the report, Melissa and her
(05:26):
family were immediately put off by what they saw as
various small errors. I'm John, Oh, my name's Gloria. Gloria,
to meet you, right, John, Ray? Okay, Mommy, ms Laura.
I'm a Melissa's mom, grandma, grandma. Okay, very well, well,
(05:50):
nice to meet you. We went to Melissa's house on
a rainy spring day and sat down to talk with
her family to go over the reports so they could
point out to us what they saw as its flaws.
In the living room of their home where Melissa, her
husband Derek, her brother Daniel, her sister Kim, her mother Gloria,
(06:11):
her daughter Militia, and Militia's young son, Messiah. One of
the irregularities in the medical examiners report that jumps out
at Melissa right away concerns Danye's height. They said that
I was so that he was five seven. The medical
example ran says, he's five seven. Do you still have
his driver's license? And what's a dam's drivers was six one?
(06:34):
His dad is six five and my my my side
of families saw my husband is five seven and compared
to my son, my husband actually has to look up.
This claim that Danie was five seven was in the
first section of the report written by the scene investigator.
The second section of the report, written by the pathologist,
(06:56):
states that he was seventy inches tall or five ft ten.
Danye's State i D says that he was six ft even.
The report also claims that Danye weighed about one hundred
and fifty pounds, which Danielle's family says was too light.
His State i D, which was issued earlier in the
year of his death, says he weighed a hundred sixty pounds.
While his weight may have fluctuated, his height could not.
(07:17):
Another error in the scene investigator's report concerns who saw
Danie last. The report says Melissa saw him last. They
also said that I had The last time I saw
him was we walked past each other in the backyard.
That's a flat outline, because that wasn't you. You did
not witness that. According to his family, the last person
in the house to see Danye was his uncle Daniel,
(07:39):
who was sitting at the kitchen table having a snack.
So what was the last point the night before that
you saw it? I saw him leave out the leave
out the door after the night because I was sitting
in the kids. Do you know about what time? That
was about nine o'clock and then he and he left left,
got his car and drove off. Or no he didn't.
(08:01):
He didn't leave in a car. That was the things
as well, his calls down all week, his calls down.
According to Danye's stepfather Derek, he and Donye have been
watching the Boston Celtics game that evening. I leave every
night between that fifteen and that thirty go to work.
So we were down and started watching basketball and my
wound went off for me to get me to go
(08:21):
to work. That's what a man makes you, you know.
Keep me posting on this game, you know what I think?
I believe it was a Boston Celtics games. This is
his team. We asked Derek what don Yae's mood was
like during that time when they were watching the game.
Oh man, we've done the top. We watch the games
and we have brothers ex and when we're watching games
and the game is good, we'd be like, you know,
it's all in his game. You know, and uh, it's
(08:41):
just normal, you know, talking ship and game. He was
a very good move. That's why I was like, you know,
what the hell could have happened between last night and this.
Checking the NBA history, we found that the Boston Celtics
played the Philadelphia seventy Sixers on the night in question,
October sixteen. Boston won the game one oh five to
(09:03):
eighty seven. The game was in Boston and started at
eight pm Eastern time, so seven pm in St. Louis.
We found stories announcing Boston's victory at nine eleven pm,
which pretty much checks out with Derek's timeline. If he
usually left for work around nine fifteen and had an
alarm set to remind him to get ready, perhaps he
actually said goodbye to Danyae in the basement where they
(09:25):
were watching the game ten to fifteen minutes before the
game was over at around nine o'clock. Then not too
long after that, Danye headed upstairs with his backpack and
passed his uncle Daniel in the kitchen as he headed
out of the house through the back door. The report
also states that Derek was the one who discovered Danya
hanging from the tree, when in fact it was Melissa,
(09:47):
as we established in episode one, and though the family
never complained about it, we noticed the report also named
Danye's sister as Mimitia when her name is actually Militia.
She has mentioned because she received a text message from
Danya at nine pm that simply said sorry sis. Militia
(10:07):
replied to this message with I love you. The report
seems to lean into this text as if it's a
final goodbye message. What we first wondered was there wasn't
some other explanation for the text, because Militia didn't respond
to Danyae's I'm sorry with for what like one might
expect if Donya's message had been totally out of the
(10:29):
blue or without context. So we asked Milicia about it.
Can I ask, so, what what's the sword with the
nine thirty text? I'm sorry? I had hang her right
before that message. Were downstairs, took my side downstairs, a
seeding side. He was like, oh, he walks so good
and stuff. We talked for a second and he was
just like this, something was not right, Like he was
(10:53):
texting somebody I don't know, like something I don't know,
Like something was off with him. Are you saying that
text felt like, if not the text, the text I
thought he was just saying sorry, says maybe because he
wasn't really anti acting with me he said anything similar
to Javan No, it's not so, it's not like he
was sending everybody goodbye text no and this, and somebody
(11:16):
probably like, oh, if the sister might say something that,
oh he takes her tonight, she's gonna say something, He's
gonna call the case. So on October six, Danya's last
full day alive, his sister had come over with their
toddler's son. Danyae wasn't super attentive to either of them,
which Melissa then kind of got on Donya about after
the fact, and both of them, Militia and Melissa believed
(11:40):
that his PM apology text was for that inattention, we
should take a minute to focus on a couple of things. First,
we can't gloss over what Militia said, that something wasn't
right about Donya, that something with him felt off. This
is important to keep in the back of our mind
is going forward. Also, that he was distracted texting somebody.
(12:05):
The second thing to note is the timeline. Derek said
he was watching a basketball game with Danye until about
nine pm, when Derek had to head off to work
at PM. Danye texas sister sorry sis. If this text
represents a final goodbye message to militia, as the county
seems to be interpreting it, that means that by this
(12:27):
time Danye has made his final decision to die by suicide.
This is a bit strange considering what he did next.
He left out with his bag, oh night bag and
that that's not a bag that he nor he had
because he's oh Night. This is Danye's uncle Daniel again. Yeah,
it checked the bag and see what was in the bag,
because that's not something he does it. It was to
(12:50):
two brush the old and stuff like that, like oh
if he was going overnight and you know you're gonna
be over night. Danye is seemingly doing something he doesn't
usually do, going out to stay the night somewhere, and
for this overnight he wanted clean clothes and apparently earlier
in the day he had asked Melissa to do some
laundry for him. He was downstairs, do you want to
(13:11):
study in? And then this one he said, can you
washed my clothes? This is maybe what am or something? No, No,
that that was earlier that they probably around five PM,
like he was in a rush to go so earlier
(13:31):
in the evening. Dania wants his clothes washed, specifically things
like underwear, according to Melissa, and he packed some of
these clean clothes into a backpack with his toothbrush and
deodorant to head off at roughly nine thirty pm. Where
was he going? Who was he planning to see? His
car wasn't running all week, according to his family, so
he would have needed to have been picked up by someone.
(13:53):
Aside from the text to his sister, the medical examiners
report uses three primary things to bolster the idea that
Done died by suicide. These are statements the family supposedly
gave to the on site investigator for the County Medical
Examiner's Office, Michael Tarticio. He writes in his report, prior
to scene departure, I made contact with multiple family members
(14:15):
in the living room of the residents. The timeline of
events was confirmed, an additional history of the decedent was obtained.
It was reported the decedent had stated several times over
the years that he felt depressed, although he was never
clinically diagnosed with depression. We thought it was pertinent to
know who in the family had told this to the
(14:35):
medical investigator, who provided the information that he had been
depressed sometimes but hadn't been diagnosed. No, so none of
the three of you. That's why he saved family members,
because it wasn't he was a family members. See he
(14:56):
asked us, he said, had he been depressed? And we
see no, not usually like we if we're upset about something,
you know, they were upset, but no, he had just
started his business and he was excited about his business.
That's why I didn't make sense. You didn't even say
anything that might lead them to infer like they go, well,
(15:17):
was he ever depressed? And somebody you might say, everyone
gets depressed once and one nothing like that at all.
That's like those questions were depending on what, what, what
how you want to take it. It's it's so general
and open that anybody on the planet that's to have
lived on the earth, Yeah, yeah, I've been depressed. I
was about seventeen years old. But they just put yes,
(15:39):
he was depressed, The report continues. Additionally, the decedent recently
started a real estate business, which did not succeed. Who
among the three of you mentioned his real his real
estate business, and it's not going well. No one come
fromies camp, no one did you guys even anyone even
talk about this business at all. We did what we said,
(16:01):
it was doing well. What's and that's why again, I said,
that's why this makes no sense to me. He was
so excited about his business. So just the other night
you was just write notes. The report goes on, and
he was dealing with rumors of him being a homosexual.
Family stated, all these things were weighing heavily on Jones' mind.
(16:23):
Homosexuality never came up. No, Danyee was trying to find
out who was spreading the rumor about him being gay,
and so Diane asked me. He said, Ma, did you
hear did anybody come you and say any kind of
mess about me being gay? I said no, I said,
and if they had, I would tell you. I would
ask you about it, because I ain't got no problem
with it. He said, well, let me tell you this.
(16:45):
I love my black queens. That was his quote. Well,
I know he's in my house. He asked me, said, Grandma,
have you been hearing anything about me? And I said no,
I haven't hearing anything. What would I hear, you know,
so he was at least aware that it might be Yeah.
So he was trying to find out to find out
who's starting yeah, because one thing about my son is
(17:08):
that he gone chick. He'll chick, you know, especially something
like that, you know. According to the Medical Examiner's report,
the family members present the morning of Danye's death were
the only people the on site investigator, Michael Tarticio, spoke with.
Tarticio's report never quotes any specific family member or associates
(17:31):
them with particular claims. We asked the Medical Examiner's office
for an interview with Tarticio, but they declined. We asked
for his notes, but we're told that the notes were
destroyed when he wrote the final report. Clearly, the things
mentioned have a basis in reality. Danya did have a
new real estate business, and there was a rumor circulating
(17:52):
that he was gay, So someone in that house must
have said something to that effect for Tarticio to be
able to write about it. What is hard to tease
out is the context in which these statements were made
and to what level the issues behind them were actually
affecting Donna psychologically and emotionally. If his family was asked
(18:13):
was Donja ever depressed? And someone gave a half hearted
answer like, well, I guess he was down from time
to time, but who isn't could that get reported? As
the decedent has stated several times over the years that
he felt depressed. What do we have to remember is
that when the family members are being interviewed, they are
in shock, they are having one of the worst days
(18:33):
of their lives, and they are only ever being asked
if they can think of reasons why Donye would want
to die, never if there was any reason he wouldn't.
And maybe this is a nitpick, and perhaps it's reasonable
that investigators don't want to plant seeds of doubt in
the minds of family members in these situations. But wouldn't
people trying to determine a cause of death? I want
(18:56):
to know what good things were going on in Donya's life.
Wouldn't they to know that he was reconnecting with an
ex girlfriend and making plans to go out with her
soon because he was The day before Danye died, he
was texting with his ex girlfriend Loretha. There was also
talk of going out together that weekend. He was seeing
(19:17):
a newer a newer woman right now. She wasn't new
she was his ex, but they were talking about, um,
what he was doing, what they were doing for his
birthday and everything. We're under the impression here like since
he wants his like underwearing his clothes watched, that maybe
he's going on to hand with her, right well, that's
what I thought that, you know, maybe he has somewhere
to go, because from what he had in his overnight
(19:41):
bag was stuff that he would use if he was
going to spend a night somewhere, you know, like somewhere high.
You know. While we were in the room with all
of Danye's family, we wanted to ask about one quick thing.
Back in episode one, Melissa told us over the phone
that the lead detective in the case, Timothy Anderer, had
(20:03):
given her family a business card before he left their
home on the morning of Danya's death, but that it
wasn't his business card. She said it was for the St.
Louis Airport Police. We asked if she still had it,
and she did. She brought it out of a fuller
of paperwork and handed it to us. Sure enough, it
has a large logo for the St. Louis Airport Police
(20:25):
on it and the name Sergeant Leslie F. Williams in
black print. We asked if they called the number on
the card, and if so, what happened? I called him,
I talked to him. He finally called me back, and
when I was running it out time, I say, you know,
we were trying to find out, you know what, what
would we have to do to get the sheet back?
And he was like, you know, she, what are you
(20:47):
talking about? So I did. I knew it was a
bad guy, so I did. I went talking to the
guy of game card. He was this completely you know,
anning of any It is why to tech of Anderer
would even have this business card in his pocket is
a mystery. But combining this incident with what Melissa describes
(21:07):
as as disrespectful boisterous laughter, and now lumping it in
with the various details that the medical examiner's report got wrong,
even if some of them are trivial, like who saw
danye last, who discovered him, or his sister's name, is
it not understandable why Danyae's family would see all of
(21:27):
this inattention to detail, along with the misconstrued context of
their statements, and then presume that if investigators got the
little things wrong. They probably got the conclusion wrong too.
Before leaving, Melissa wanted us to be aware that strange
cars had been parking outside of our house for a
(21:48):
long time, but with increasing frequency leading up to Donye's death.
And sometimes it appeared as though the occupants of these
cars we're police. That's likely said people was sitting outside
of the house. Police came at least five and stood
outside the house, in front of my house and just
looked our just staring at our direction. And that scared us,
(22:12):
you know. And that was that was probably like two
weeks prior, and that that one happened that before. You've
been seeing cars for like a year, but you hadn't
seen guys get out the day that FaceTime with you
and I was like, okay, maybe she tripp in and
you put the phone out the window. No, that was
just one time that somebody was sitting outside. It was
like they started coming around constantly, constantly when people got
(22:36):
out and like walked and they had police on their shirt.
In episode one, Sergeant McGuire told us that Melissa never
mentioned strange cars to detectives who were investigating Danye's death,
but we wouldn't know if that was true until Detective
Anderer filed his final report. In the meantime, we wanted
(22:58):
to St. Louis County Medical Amateur's offices, positions, and the
details of the case. We had the reporting hand, but
hadn't yet seen any of the photographs they had of
Dana's body. We had been told that we would need
a subpoena to get them, but after emailing their office
the relevant text from Missouri's Sunshine Law, we were able
to convince them to send us the photographs, which would
(23:20):
arrive on a CD. In the meantime, we called Dr
Gersham Norfleet, the pathologist who examined Danye's body, which never
actually had an autopsy done on it. This is something
I always want people to understand that autopsies not like
the all in the y all of all cases. Autopsies
are helpful to kind of like rule out traumatic circumstances
and things like that. But at the same time, investigation
(23:43):
of speaking with family, speaking with the police, anyone else
who's also been to the scene, and I have an
investigator that goes out there as well, would take all
of that information into account when we come up with
our determination for cause of death. We wanted to know
how he would distinguish between a hang death that was
a suicide versus a hanging death that was a murder.
(24:05):
Let's just say, they're so far off the ground where
they couldn't have done that themselves. So you take, you
cut them down, you get the rope, you do d NA.
You realize that none of the DNA from the rope
is the individual who's hanging. There's another profile that's found
on it. Uh, there's no way that the individual could
have gotten into the tree where their positioned to hang themselves.
(24:25):
There's no chair by them, doubt in the dirt or
signs of a struggle. You see multiple footprints. Uh, there's
trauma to the body. You see scratches, you see operations.
So if you see something like that, But if you're
missing all of those things, and you've talked to everybody
and say that, you talk to people initially, and then
you know two weeks later the story changes, well that's
(24:45):
I don't have any control over that. At Melissa's press conference,
she did say that Danya had a bruise on his
face and indentations on his wrists. We asked if Northfleet
saig any such markings. On Danyae's body. They're there's nothing
on the body and my personal opinion that shows any
type of struggle or there's no bruising, regardless of what
(25:07):
anyone else says. Then out of nowhere he offered up
something we hadn't heard yet from anyone. The actual ligature,
the bed sheet um that was you know, used was
was sent down to our lab and they did DNA
on it looking for profiles in the particular significant portions
(25:29):
of the ligature where it's going to be tied to.
The profiles is pretty much predominantly coming back to Donya Jones,
so he has physically touched at this particular area of
where it's tied to the tree that profiles are matching.
This conversation happened on March eighteenth, five months after Donyae's death.
(25:51):
The medical examiners report never mentions DNA in it, not
even once, and it turns out that's because the DNA
swabbing and testing was done by the St. Louis County
Police Department's crime Lab Northfleet. Must have heard about this
testing through the grape vine. At this point in time,
Melissa and the rest of Danielle's family have not been
made aware that any DNA testing of the bedsheet had
(26:14):
been done by anybody. This was partially because the police
department hadn't issued their final report on Danye's death yet.
In January of Sergeant Shawn McGuire told us that it
would likely take a few more weeks to complete that report,
but ultimately the report wouldn't be finalized until July, fully
nine months after Danye's death, and it was the police
(26:35):
report that would mention the DNA And we will come
back to that in a future episode, but for now,
understand that this DNA information was all inside baseball amongst
detectives and some staff at the Medical Examiner's office. So
at the time of this conversation with Northfleet, it was
news to us, But the real kicker was what he
would tell us next. And I take no secondary DNA
(26:57):
at all on the the There is another one, but
I'm not exactly sure. Uh, it's a minor component. I
don't know who we matches too. Is just a male
from what I know. We were kind of astounded to
find out that the County Police had found a second
set of mail DNA on the bedsheet. That DNA was
(27:17):
found hanging from and nobody seemed to think that this
was very important. What work was done on determining the
origins for the second set of DNA on the on
the sheet or that I can't tell you. That's that
has nothing to do with me. So that yes, thats nothing.
That's that's nothing to do with me. You've learned enough
(27:38):
that he knew it was a male. That's just that
it's there's a y half load group on that. I
don't know exactly what testing was done to be able
to determinate, but there I I do know there are
two profiles, but there's a major one and then there's
a minor one and it appears in some unknown mail
and no one knows who that is. But that's to
(27:59):
me it to hear neither there could like to say
it's a it's a bit cheat. Who if the DNA
DNA too So so just let's just say it was
briefly in his house for a period of time that
was laying on something. There's other males that live in
that house. Um, so you could start swabbing everybody from
Tim Buck too to try to figure out what it is,
(28:20):
but I don't know how far that went. Tim Buck two.
How about just swab the other two males in the house,
Danye's uncle Daniel and his stepfather Derek. I mean, that
would be a good place to start, right. We couldn't
help but find this shocking. The police found a second
set of mail DNA on the sheet, and everyone, including
(28:41):
the pathologists, just presumed it was from another male in
the house, without ever attempting to eliminate them by requesting
they give a DNA sample. We also couldn't help but
notice that Melissa's DNA wasn't on the sheet. She was
the one who did the house's laundry, so presumably if
that was her eat and she was the one who
pulled it from the dryer, folded it and placed it
(29:03):
in a closet, that her DNA would have been found
on it. There are other important details here that we
need to stop and focus on. For one, Dr Northfleet
said that Dane's DNA was on the portion of the
bed sheet that was tied around the tree. He has
no way of knowing that because the crime lab would
have no way of knowing where that portion of the
sheet was as the sheet was untied from the tree.
(29:28):
He actually acknowledges this when we asked him about the
knot itself and whether or not it was a sliding
or a fixed knot. I don't know about specifically the
part in the tree because I didn't undo that portion. Um,
so I don't know anything about that um In terms
of that not, you would have to ask whoever untied
off the tree branch. And I'm no, my investigator didn't
(29:48):
do it. That's probably something to saying what was County did,
So you would have to ask them. The truth is
north Fleet's investigator, Michael Tarticio, did take the sheet out
of the tree. He says so in his reports, stating
I was able to untie one end of the bed
sheet and place it in the body bag with the
deceded So the crime lab couldn't possibly have known where
(30:09):
the sheet was tied into the tree to swab for DNA.
And what's worse, the sheet was placed in the body
bag with Danyae's body. The sheet was not treated as
potential evidence and secured in a separate bag, but traveled
to the morgue against Danye's body, possibly contaminating the entirety
of the sheet with Danyae's DNA. So even if the
(30:30):
crime lab did nowhere to swab to find out who
tied the sheet to the tree. Danye's DNA would potentially
have been all over it, and though we wouldn't know
this until the police report finally did get released later
in the year, the section that speaks on this DNA
evidence states that the not area of the sheet was swabbed,
so this must be a reference to the only not left,
(30:53):
which was the lower knot that would have been behind
Danye's head. We tried contacting the crime lab and the
particular technician who did the swabbing of the sheet to
get specifics on how much was swabbed and where you
have reached the St. Louis Colony Police Crime Laboratory Crime Lab.
(31:17):
This is Jeff. You're exactly the person I'm looking for.
My name is John Duffy. I'm a journalist working on
a story and you did some evidence swabs on a
particular piece of evidence from a crime a couple of
years ago, and I just had like a quick question
about methodologies and what is so. The case was a
(31:38):
young man who had was found hanged and it was
eventually found to be a suicide. You know, when I
look through the case report, it just has your name
is the person who swabbed it, and the write up
says swabbed on the not portion. And I just was
trying to get like a technical understanding of was that
swab done on like the not not where the not
(31:59):
was hide or was it the loop around his neck
or was it all event Okay, well, I will discuss
this with my supervisors. Okay, I don't I don't know
what we are at liberating to discuss. So thank you
for your inquiry and we will give your response. And
then we never heard from them again, despite our repeated
(32:20):
attempts to reach out. We at least hope Dr Norfleet
could tell us if the sheet had any damage to it,
as if perhaps Dane had been tied into it and
then lifted off the ground by someone else pulling the
sheet over a rough tree branch. I never I never
really looked at the sheet that hard. What's the tipping
point in this case, It's not so much a tipping point,
(32:41):
it's the it's the totality of everything that's being said.
Initially what we have and then from the investigation from
stain Wis County Police Department, there hasn't been anything that
has come forward to suggest there's something anyone other than
himself did this to himself. But the determination is colored
to some extent by the investigator's interview with the family,
(33:03):
the statements about depression, and the circumstances around the text message.
This all helps form the picture. Opinion, Yes, the opinion,
Yes it does. Norfleet took very seriously the family statements
that has seen investigator delivered to him that morning. He
took seriously Danye's DNA that he thought was on the
portion of the sheet tied into the tree. He took
(33:24):
seriously the idea that Detective Andrewer, whom he likely didn't
know had been sued for using excessive force against black protesters,
had done a thorough job of investigating the circumstances of
Donye's death. And there was one other fact he wanted
to drive home to us, something he thought held a
lot of weight, so much so that he wanted to
(33:45):
read it to us directly from his side investigator's section
of the report. I'm gonna read you the whole paragraph,
but then I'm going to reenterate specifically to us that
as that we had in here. So anyway, Jones was
last seen alive by Melissa false. He's last seen by
his uncle as he walked into the backyard carrying a backpack.
(34:06):
Melissa did not find this unusual and carried on with
her night as usual. It was later discovered Jones sent Monsia,
that's a sister false the trivial a text message at
approximately thirties that stated I'm sorry. Momsia reportedly replied to
that text message by saying I love you. There was
(34:28):
no further communication after that point with the disease. Dr
Norfleet was interpreting the I'm sorry text Dne sent out
as a goodbye message. It's all speculation, but if someone
texts things like what what does that mean to is
there there should be a concern there that his emotional
state is not normal. He went on to admit that
(34:49):
he didn't actually know the context of that message, but
it was clear what he thought it meant and how
it framed his view of Dane's death and my Misha.
I bet most people in the media, I've never talked
to her, no one's ever questioned her about this this
this dialogue. Ironically, he also pointed out that he hadn't
seen anyone in the media mentioning this text or asking
(35:10):
Militia about it, but we did, and Militia is convinced
that the I'm sorry text had to do with Danye
not giving her much time or attention when she visited
with her son earlier that day. Part of the credibility
granted to the medical examiner system is that it's not
just a site investigator and a pathologist determining a cause
(35:32):
and manner of death, but a third party, the chief
Medical Examiner, must review the case materials and sign off
on them. For St. Louis County, that person is Dr
Mary Case. For us, there was a slight concern that
maybe an entire investigation could go undone because one person's
presumption at the scene of a death would affect the
(35:52):
next person's, which would affect the next person's, which would
sort of render certain checks and balances meaningless. You think
for zooming, when somebody has when there's a legal mechanism
that someone uses and it works, like holding a gun
to your head or putting a rope around your neck,
(36:13):
that that is, you know, rather overwhelming. Now, if there
is evidence to the contrary, certainly that would be further investigated.
But this office has never been presented with any other information.
For someone to say, well, that sheet didn't come from
my house, that's not going to dissuade me from the
(36:33):
fact that that was a suicide. One of the things
that we found interesting was that Dr Case hadn't heard
about the DNA swabs taken from the bed sheet. Were
there swabs or any samples taken in this case, I
don't know, but I would I wouldn't very much doubt
it if I can talk about that real quick. When
they say that she didn't come from their house. We
(36:56):
have found in the course of our investigation that there
was DNA hold off of that sheet, and it was
Donny's DNA and then an unidentified males DNA. But to me,
the one thing that sort of stands out is that
not only does Melissa claim that they just don't have
extra sheets in the house, they just have enough for
the beds, but her DNA is not on that sheet.
(37:17):
They didn't find any unidentified female DNA, and she's the
one who does all the houses laundry. It's pretty hard
to prove the negative. Like I didn't own that, and
they weren't ever told that DNA was tested on it.
It was something that we found out and then that
we told them and never made the medical examiners report.
You weren't even aware of No, we never get, we
never get any of it. But wouldn't you know that
(37:39):
if we don't get, we never gets. That doesn't interact
with our decisions. That's not how we base our decisions.
Let's pause here for a second. This is bizarre. The
Medical Examiner's office is responsible for determining cause in a
manner of death. A second or third set of d
(38:01):
n A on a lethal instrument could in fact be
the evidence they need to move a determination from suicide
to homicide or at least to undetermined. It could be
the evidence they claim they are yet to see, couldn't
it so why such little interest? Dr Norfleet had told
us that, with a lack of trauma to the body,
(38:22):
his determination was made largely around the statements given to
the medical investigator. Of course, Danya's family says they didn't
say the things that are in the report, or at
least didn't say them in the way that they are reported.
So we mentioned this to Dr case. My question would
be about the investigative method to get those statements, because
(38:43):
the family agrees that they talked about those things, but
they don't agree that they stated them in a way
that they were weighing on him to an extent where
it seemed like they were bothering him that much. When
the investigator is speaking with a family members, they you know,
they're kind of asking about the state of mind and
you know what's going on, and so those things were
(39:05):
brought out. Obviously this is not a psychiatric interview, but
those were statements that were made and they're noted. It
doesn't mean that that is the motivation. I guess the
problem for them is that other things that are sort
of positive going on in the person's life don't get noted,
and then when the police refer to this, So like
when the St. Louis County Police make statements about the case,
they refer to the medical examiner's report, so they go, well, yeah,
(39:28):
I mean, if you look at it, he was depressed.
I would say that none of that made this a suicide.
What made this a suicide was there is a man
hanging in his backyard from a tree. Now, if you
have evidence that somebody did that, I will be happy
to change that. Back in episode one, Sergeant Sean McGuire
(39:50):
defended the police department's assessment that Donie died by suicide
by referencing the medical examiner's report and now the pathologist
the chief medical examiners say that they based their work
and the evidence brought to them by the police. I
guess it's just for what seemed to be is that
it can kind of become sort of a self reinforcing
(40:10):
circle where if like police start presuming that there's no
need to look for further evidence and then you're not,
that means you're not getting any further evidence. And I
will say this that do you know how many suicides
do we have a year? I'm sure it's a lot.
We looked it up according to county police data, it's
about sixty we have. We have a lot of them,
(40:32):
and when we have them, there is a certain amount
of investigation, but it is not much more than this.
There's just one more thing. And maybe this is minor,
but it bugged us. Danye's uncle, Daniel, had taken photos
of Danye hanging from the tree because Daniae's pants were
down around his ankles and this seems strange to him.
(40:54):
Dr Case touched on this point when she was reviewing
the report over the phone. With us, and in the
photo apparently the pants were around the ankles. And I
would say that you're hanging up in a tree and
your pants are sagging anyway, they may well fall down
because they're If you don't hold them up, they're going
to fall down. This assumption that Donya's pants were sagging,
that he would ordinarily need to hold them up, it
(41:17):
seems a bit racist. I'm not trying to smear dr case,
but she does seem to be just presuming that because
Donya is black, he SAgs his pants and that this
must be the reason they were found around his ankles.
And I explained that this wasn't the case. She just
sort of moves on, Well, they were actually like elastic
(41:38):
waist pan pants that had a draw string, and they
found it because they appeared to have been rolled at
least like two or three times at the waist, which
is what they found to be strange. See what else
sit here? So what does all this mean? This he
(42:04):
said she said about Danye's life and mental state between
his family and the medical examiner staff. This text message
that might be a final goodbye or might just be
a casual apology for an action already taken. This second
set of male DNA that was found on the bedsheet
danya was hanged with that could be from his uncle
(42:26):
or his stepfather, or from a potential conspirator in a
murder made to look like a suicide. We are reminded
of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, which is the idea that
people only look at pieces of evidence that confirm their hypothesis.
It's based on an old joke about a Texan who
shoots several times at the side of a barn and
(42:48):
then paints a bull's eye around the bullet holes, claims
to be a sharpshooter. Her Melissa and the rest of
Danyae's family only seeing what they want to see. When
the c D full of photographs from the Uckle Examiner's
office showed up, we looked them over again and again. No,
we couldn't see any bruises on Danyae's body, not on
(43:10):
his face or on his wrists. But we also saw
the way the sheet was tied into the tree, and yes,
it did look like a strange, unintuitive Figure eight system.
Was the Medical Examiner's office negligent for having untied it
and tossed it in the body bag alongside Danya's body.
Did this demonstrate that from the get go no one
(43:32):
was taking the possibility of homicide seriously? What about the
county police tasked with investigating the scene and circumstances of
Danya's death? Did they bring all of their resources and
efforts to bear If not, why not? We're not naive.
Of course, these people are busy, they have a lot
(43:52):
of cases and their professionals doctors. But it's hard not
to think that maybe some cases should have a higher
threshold of evidence than others. Maybe when we remember to
apply social and historical context and see that a death
greatly mirrors a racist lynching, we should expect local governments
(44:12):
to look a little harder, to scratch a little deeper,
just in case. Why wouldn't they? That's next time and
After the Uprising. After the Uprising is directed, produced, investigated,
written and reported by myself, Raino the shell Ski and
(44:34):
John Duffy. John Duffy was also the editor. Dave Cassidy
was producer. Sound engineering design and mixed by Josh Condon.
Executive producers were Matt McDonough and Tina x Ros. For
now This, Brett Kushner for Group nine Media, and Jess
Borov was executive in charge of production. Jonathan Hartwig and
Bradley Rayford were consulting producers. Eliza Craig was assistant producer
and did additional reporting. Malory Keenoy was a writer's assistant,
(44:56):
Kristen McVicker and Taya Wilson were production assistants, and Hailey
klez R was a post production assistant. Fact checking by
Alison Humes, theme song and other music by Zachary Walter,
legal by Keith Sclar and Peter Yazy. Special thanks to
Ann Frado, Danny Gonzalez, Barbara Copple, Alex Lester, Bethan Macaluso,
Emily maronof Ruth Vaka, and the Reporter's Committee for Freedom
(45:16):
of the Press. After the Uprising is a production of
Double asterisk I Heart Media and Now This in association
with True Stories. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook.
If you have useful information about the death of Danye
Jones or anything we've covered, please leave a message on
our tip line at three four seven six seven four
seven four zero one.
Content warning. This podcast discusses violence, murder, suicide, civil unrest,
aggressive policing, racism, and lynching. If you or anyone you
know is considering suicide, her self harm, or just need
to talk about problems, please call the National Suicide Prevention
Lifeline at one eight hundred two seven three eight two
(00:24):
five five, or text the Crisis text line at seven
four one seven four one. Previously and after the uprising,
I call now one one and all I remember screaming,
is my baby delik right, so you know he's let's
take pictures. All signs right on the bathpoint that this
(00:46):
was a suicide. We know what the fact of the
case are. We know what detectives are investigating and what
they saw. I we get missed. She's the one that
really stuck out was You're not hard to get I
was fooled right behind you. Rally what love? Yeah? Why
the fund are you grabma like an animal? Because they
feel like we don't appreciate law enforcement here. Therefore, it
(01:06):
has in the first effect of certain cops not being
a stality when it comes to straight up and down
police work. I just know that the one detective that
the moment the black guy did not give us his
business card, gave us a card for the airport police.
(01:36):
What you're looking at is the aftermath of the grand
jury deciding not to indict Officer Wilson. A young man
found hanging from a tree in October. His mom believes
someone murdered her son, targeting him. Danye became an activist
(02:02):
in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown
by a white police officer. That's why Melissa mckinnis wants St.
Louis County police to dig deeper to her son's death.
He was not suicidal. This is after the uprising the
death of Donye Dion Jones. New developments about a deadly
(02:30):
discovery in St. Louis County. A young man found hanging
from a tree in October. His mom believes someone murdered
her son, targeting him because she was a Ferguson protester.
Jacob Long is here with the medical examiner's final report.
Jacob Well, Mike and the report we're talking about tonight.
It is fifteen pages long, and the medical examiner's conclusion
is pretty clear. After reviewing the evidence. She says Danye
(02:53):
Jones died of suicide by hanging. When the St. Louis
County Medical Examiner's Office least their final report on Danye's death,
some local media again briefly focused on Dane's story, but
they were mostly uncritical of what they were provided by county.
According to this report from the Medical Examiner, an investigator
found a chair under that tree, and while Jones did
(03:16):
not leave a suicide note, his family says he often
talked about being depressed. Meantime, Jones The family is disputing
the report. His mom told us a few months ago
that her son was targeted and she believes murdered. She
says he did not know how to tie the kind
of knot that was used in the hanging, and she
said he was upbeat and not acting suicidal. The St.
(03:36):
Louis County Police Department, which also ruled this a suicide,
says the investigation remains open until detectives can review the
cause of death. Medical Examiner's Office just the tuans Hi.
I submitted a Sunshine request and I got the paperwork
in the mail the other day, But um I was
(03:57):
wondering if there's any way to get the associated photograph,
a fee that would have gone along with that paperwork um,
which is that it's the Donya Jones case. Oh, um, No,
we don't. We don't really photograph. Is there a legal
way to get them, like a submitted through an attorney? Right,
you'd have to get a sup. To start wrapping our
(04:19):
heads around the facts regarding the manner in which Donye died.
We were going to need to see the reports, both
from the Medical Examiner's Office and the police department. Missouri
has on the books a Sunshine Law, which is like
their version of the Freedom of Information Act. Via this law,
we were able to get a copy of the Medical
Examiner's report pretty soon after it was released. The first
(04:41):
thing to understand about the Medical examiners report is that
it's built of two primary sections. The first is a
scene report written by a medical legal investigator sent out
to the scene of a death by the Medical Examiner's office,
who in this case was a man named Michael Tarticio.
His job is to examine the scene, take the temperature
of the body, speak to the family members, and to
(05:04):
take detailed notes on everything. The pathologist, in this case,
a man named Dr Gersham Norfleet, will examine the body
and ultimately it is he who will draft the second
part of the report. After that, the report is reviewed
and whole and signed off on by the Chief Medical Examiner,
Dr Mary Case. Upon reading the report, Melissa and her
(05:26):
family were immediately put off by what they saw as
various small errors. I'm John, Oh, my name's Gloria. Gloria,
to meet you, right, John, Ray? Okay, Mommy, ms Laura.
I'm a Melissa's mom, grandma, grandma. Okay, very well, well,
(05:50):
nice to meet you. We went to Melissa's house on
a rainy spring day and sat down to talk with
her family to go over the reports so they could
point out to us what they saw as its flaws.
In the living room of their home where Melissa, her
husband Derek, her brother Daniel, her sister Kim, her mother Gloria,
(06:11):
her daughter Militia, and Militia's young son, Messiah. One of
the irregularities in the medical examiners report that jumps out
at Melissa right away concerns Danye's height. They said that
I was so that he was five seven. The medical
example ran says, he's five seven. Do you still have
his driver's license? And what's a dam's drivers was six one?
(06:34):
His dad is six five and my my my side
of families saw my husband is five seven and compared
to my son, my husband actually has to look up.
This claim that Danie was five seven was in the
first section of the report written by the scene investigator.
The second section of the report, written by the pathologist,
(06:56):
states that he was seventy inches tall or five ft ten.
Danye's State i D says that he was six ft even.
The report also claims that Danye weighed about one hundred
and fifty pounds, which Danielle's family says was too light.
His State i D, which was issued earlier in the
year of his death, says he weighed a hundred sixty pounds.
While his weight may have fluctuated, his height could not.
(07:17):
Another error in the scene investigator's report concerns who saw
Danie last. The report says Melissa saw him last. They
also said that I had The last time I saw
him was we walked past each other in the backyard.
That's a flat outline, because that wasn't you. You did
not witness that. According to his family, the last person
in the house to see Danye was his uncle Daniel,
(07:39):
who was sitting at the kitchen table having a snack.
So what was the last point the night before that
you saw it? I saw him leave out the leave
out the door after the night because I was sitting
in the kids. Do you know about what time? That
was about nine o'clock and then he and he left left,
got his car and drove off. Or no he didn't.
(08:01):
He didn't leave in a car. That was the things
as well, his calls down all week, his calls down.
According to Danye's stepfather Derek, he and Donye have been
watching the Boston Celtics game that evening. I leave every
night between that fifteen and that thirty go to work.
So we were down and started watching basketball and my
wound went off for me to get me to go
(08:21):
to work. That's what a man makes you, you know.
Keep me posting on this game, you know what I think?
I believe it was a Boston Celtics games. This is
his team. We asked Derek what don Yae's mood was
like during that time when they were watching the game.
Oh man, we've done the top. We watch the games
and we have brothers ex and when we're watching games
and the game is good, we'd be like, you know,
it's all in his game. You know, and uh, it's
(08:41):
just normal, you know, talking ship and game. He was
a very good move. That's why I was like, you know,
what the hell could have happened between last night and this.
Checking the NBA history, we found that the Boston Celtics
played the Philadelphia seventy Sixers on the night in question,
October sixteen. Boston won the game one oh five to
(09:03):
eighty seven. The game was in Boston and started at
eight pm Eastern time, so seven pm in St. Louis.
We found stories announcing Boston's victory at nine eleven pm,
which pretty much checks out with Derek's timeline. If he
usually left for work around nine fifteen and had an
alarm set to remind him to get ready, perhaps he
actually said goodbye to Danyae in the basement where they
(09:25):
were watching the game ten to fifteen minutes before the
game was over at around nine o'clock. Then not too
long after that, Danye headed upstairs with his backpack and
passed his uncle Daniel in the kitchen as he headed
out of the house through the back door. The report
also states that Derek was the one who discovered Danya
hanging from the tree, when in fact it was Melissa,
(09:47):
as we established in episode one, and though the family
never complained about it, we noticed the report also named
Danye's sister as Mimitia when her name is actually Militia.
She has mentioned because she received a text message from
Danya at nine pm that simply said sorry sis. Militia
(10:07):
replied to this message with I love you. The report
seems to lean into this text as if it's a
final goodbye message. What we first wondered was there wasn't
some other explanation for the text, because Militia didn't respond
to Danyae's I'm sorry with for what like one might
expect if Donya's message had been totally out of the
(10:29):
blue or without context. So we asked Milicia about it.
Can I ask, so, what what's the sword with the
nine thirty text? I'm sorry? I had hang her right
before that message. Were downstairs, took my side downstairs, a
seeding side. He was like, oh, he walks so good
and stuff. We talked for a second and he was
just like this, something was not right, Like he was
(10:53):
texting somebody I don't know, like something I don't know,
Like something was off with him. Are you saying that
text felt like, if not the text, the text I
thought he was just saying sorry, says maybe because he
wasn't really anti acting with me he said anything similar
to Javan No, it's not so, it's not like he
was sending everybody goodbye text no and this, and somebody
(11:16):
probably like, oh, if the sister might say something that,
oh he takes her tonight, she's gonna say something, He's
gonna call the case. So on October six, Danya's last
full day alive, his sister had come over with their
toddler's son. Danyae wasn't super attentive to either of them,
which Melissa then kind of got on Donya about after
the fact, and both of them, Militia and Melissa believed
(11:40):
that his PM apology text was for that inattention, we
should take a minute to focus on a couple of things. First,
we can't gloss over what Militia said, that something wasn't
right about Donya, that something with him felt off. This
is important to keep in the back of our mind
is going forward. Also, that he was distracted texting somebody.
(12:05):
The second thing to note is the timeline. Derek said
he was watching a basketball game with Danye until about
nine pm, when Derek had to head off to work
at PM. Danye texas sister sorry sis. If this text
represents a final goodbye message to militia, as the county
seems to be interpreting it, that means that by this
(12:27):
time Danye has made his final decision to die by suicide.
This is a bit strange considering what he did next.
He left out with his bag, oh night bag and
that that's not a bag that he nor he had
because he's oh Night. This is Danye's uncle Daniel again. Yeah,
it checked the bag and see what was in the bag,
because that's not something he does it. It was to
(12:50):
two brush the old and stuff like that, like oh
if he was going overnight and you know you're gonna
be over night. Danye is seemingly doing something he doesn't
usually do, going out to stay the night somewhere, and
for this overnight he wanted clean clothes and apparently earlier
in the day he had asked Melissa to do some
laundry for him. He was downstairs, do you want to
(13:11):
study in? And then this one he said, can you
washed my clothes? This is maybe what am or something? No, No,
that that was earlier that they probably around five PM,
like he was in a rush to go so earlier
(13:31):
in the evening. Dania wants his clothes washed, specifically things
like underwear, according to Melissa, and he packed some of
these clean clothes into a backpack with his toothbrush and
deodorant to head off at roughly nine thirty pm. Where
was he going? Who was he planning to see? His
car wasn't running all week, according to his family, so
he would have needed to have been picked up by someone.
(13:53):
Aside from the text to his sister, the medical examiners
report uses three primary things to bolster the idea that
Done died by suicide. These are statements the family supposedly
gave to the on site investigator for the County Medical
Examiner's Office, Michael Tarticio. He writes in his report, prior
to scene departure, I made contact with multiple family members
(14:15):
in the living room of the residents. The timeline of
events was confirmed, an additional history of the decedent was obtained.
It was reported the decedent had stated several times over
the years that he felt depressed, although he was never
clinically diagnosed with depression. We thought it was pertinent to
know who in the family had told this to the
(14:35):
medical investigator, who provided the information that he had been
depressed sometimes but hadn't been diagnosed. No, so none of
the three of you. That's why he saved family members,
because it wasn't he was a family members. See he
(14:56):
asked us, he said, had he been depressed? And we
see no, not usually like we if we're upset about something,
you know, they were upset, but no, he had just
started his business and he was excited about his business.
That's why I didn't make sense. You didn't even say
anything that might lead them to infer like they go, well,
(15:17):
was he ever depressed? And somebody you might say, everyone
gets depressed once and one nothing like that at all.
That's like those questions were depending on what, what, what
how you want to take it. It's it's so general
and open that anybody on the planet that's to have
lived on the earth, Yeah, yeah, I've been depressed. I
was about seventeen years old. But they just put yes,
(15:39):
he was depressed, The report continues. Additionally, the decedent recently
started a real estate business, which did not succeed. Who
among the three of you mentioned his real his real
estate business, and it's not going well. No one come
fromies camp, no one did you guys even anyone even
talk about this business at all. We did what we said,
(16:01):
it was doing well. What's and that's why again, I said,
that's why this makes no sense to me. He was
so excited about his business. So just the other night
you was just write notes. The report goes on, and
he was dealing with rumors of him being a homosexual.
Family stated, all these things were weighing heavily on Jones' mind.
(16:23):
Homosexuality never came up. No, Danyee was trying to find
out who was spreading the rumor about him being gay,
and so Diane asked me. He said, Ma, did you
hear did anybody come you and say any kind of
mess about me being gay? I said no, I said,
and if they had, I would tell you. I would
ask you about it, because I ain't got no problem
with it. He said, well, let me tell you this.
(16:45):
I love my black queens. That was his quote. Well,
I know he's in my house. He asked me, said, Grandma,
have you been hearing anything about me? And I said no,
I haven't hearing anything. What would I hear, you know,
so he was at least aware that it might be Yeah.
So he was trying to find out to find out
who's starting yeah, because one thing about my son is
(17:08):
that he gone chick. He'll chick, you know, especially something
like that, you know. According to the Medical Examiner's report,
the family members present the morning of Danye's death were
the only people the on site investigator, Michael Tarticio, spoke with.
Tarticio's report never quotes any specific family member or associates
(17:31):
them with particular claims. We asked the Medical Examiner's office
for an interview with Tarticio, but they declined. We asked
for his notes, but we're told that the notes were
destroyed when he wrote the final report. Clearly, the things
mentioned have a basis in reality. Danya did have a
new real estate business, and there was a rumor circulating
(17:52):
that he was gay, So someone in that house must
have said something to that effect for Tarticio to be
able to write about it. What is hard to tease
out is the context in which these statements were made
and to what level the issues behind them were actually
affecting Donna psychologically and emotionally. If his family was asked
(18:13):
was Donja ever depressed? And someone gave a half hearted
answer like, well, I guess he was down from time
to time, but who isn't could that get reported? As
the decedent has stated several times over the years that
he felt depressed. What do we have to remember is
that when the family members are being interviewed, they are
in shock, they are having one of the worst days
(18:33):
of their lives, and they are only ever being asked
if they can think of reasons why Donye would want
to die, never if there was any reason he wouldn't.
And maybe this is a nitpick, and perhaps it's reasonable
that investigators don't want to plant seeds of doubt in
the minds of family members in these situations. But wouldn't
people trying to determine a cause of death? I want
(18:56):
to know what good things were going on in Donya's life.
Wouldn't they to know that he was reconnecting with an
ex girlfriend and making plans to go out with her
soon because he was The day before Danye died, he
was texting with his ex girlfriend Loretha. There was also
talk of going out together that weekend. He was seeing
(19:17):
a newer a newer woman right now. She wasn't new
she was his ex, but they were talking about, um,
what he was doing, what they were doing for his
birthday and everything. We're under the impression here like since
he wants his like underwearing his clothes watched, that maybe
he's going on to hand with her, right well, that's
what I thought that, you know, maybe he has somewhere
to go, because from what he had in his overnight
(19:41):
bag was stuff that he would use if he was
going to spend a night somewhere, you know, like somewhere high.
You know. While we were in the room with all
of Danye's family, we wanted to ask about one quick thing.
Back in episode one, Melissa told us over the phone
that the lead detective in the case, Timothy Anderer, had
(20:03):
given her family a business card before he left their
home on the morning of Danya's death, but that it
wasn't his business card. She said it was for the St.
Louis Airport Police. We asked if she still had it,
and she did. She brought it out of a fuller
of paperwork and handed it to us. Sure enough, it
has a large logo for the St. Louis Airport Police
(20:25):
on it and the name Sergeant Leslie F. Williams in
black print. We asked if they called the number on
the card, and if so, what happened? I called him,
I talked to him. He finally called me back, and
when I was running it out time, I say, you know,
we were trying to find out, you know what, what
would we have to do to get the sheet back?
And he was like, you know, she, what are you
(20:47):
talking about? So I did. I knew it was a
bad guy, so I did. I went talking to the
guy of game card. He was this completely you know,
anning of any It is why to tech of Anderer
would even have this business card in his pocket is
a mystery. But combining this incident with what Melissa describes
(21:07):
as as disrespectful boisterous laughter, and now lumping it in
with the various details that the medical examiner's report got wrong,
even if some of them are trivial, like who saw
danye last, who discovered him, or his sister's name, is
it not understandable why Danyae's family would see all of
(21:27):
this inattention to detail, along with the misconstrued context of
their statements, and then presume that if investigators got the
little things wrong. They probably got the conclusion wrong too.
Before leaving, Melissa wanted us to be aware that strange
cars had been parking outside of our house for a
(21:48):
long time, but with increasing frequency leading up to Donye's death.
And sometimes it appeared as though the occupants of these
cars we're police. That's likely said people was sitting outside
of the house. Police came at least five and stood
outside the house, in front of my house and just
looked our just staring at our direction. And that scared us,
(22:12):
you know. And that was that was probably like two
weeks prior, and that that one happened that before. You've
been seeing cars for like a year, but you hadn't
seen guys get out the day that FaceTime with you
and I was like, okay, maybe she tripp in and
you put the phone out the window. No, that was
just one time that somebody was sitting outside. It was
like they started coming around constantly, constantly when people got
(22:36):
out and like walked and they had police on their shirt.
In episode one, Sergeant McGuire told us that Melissa never
mentioned strange cars to detectives who were investigating Danye's death,
but we wouldn't know if that was true until Detective
Anderer filed his final report. In the meantime, we wanted
(22:58):
to St. Louis County Medical Amateur's offices, positions, and the
details of the case. We had the reporting hand, but
hadn't yet seen any of the photographs they had of
Dana's body. We had been told that we would need
a subpoena to get them, but after emailing their office
the relevant text from Missouri's Sunshine Law, we were able
to convince them to send us the photographs, which would
(23:20):
arrive on a CD. In the meantime, we called Dr
Gersham Norfleet, the pathologist who examined Danye's body, which never
actually had an autopsy done on it. This is something
I always want people to understand that autopsies not like
the all in the y all of all cases. Autopsies
are helpful to kind of like rule out traumatic circumstances
and things like that. But at the same time, investigation
(23:43):
of speaking with family, speaking with the police, anyone else
who's also been to the scene, and I have an
investigator that goes out there as well, would take all
of that information into account when we come up with
our determination for cause of death. We wanted to know
how he would distinguish between a hang death that was
a suicide versus a hanging death that was a murder.
(24:05):
Let's just say, they're so far off the ground where
they couldn't have done that themselves. So you take, you
cut them down, you get the rope, you do d NA.
You realize that none of the DNA from the rope
is the individual who's hanging. There's another profile that's found
on it. Uh, there's no way that the individual could
have gotten into the tree where their positioned to hang themselves.
(24:25):
There's no chair by them, doubt in the dirt or
signs of a struggle. You see multiple footprints. Uh, there's
trauma to the body. You see scratches, you see operations.
So if you see something like that, But if you're
missing all of those things, and you've talked to everybody
and say that, you talk to people initially, and then
you know two weeks later the story changes, well that's
(24:45):
I don't have any control over that. At Melissa's press conference,
she did say that Danya had a bruise on his
face and indentations on his wrists. We asked if Northfleet
saig any such markings. On Danyae's body. They're there's nothing
on the body and my personal opinion that shows any
type of struggle or there's no bruising, regardless of what
(25:07):
anyone else says. Then out of nowhere he offered up
something we hadn't heard yet from anyone. The actual ligature,
the bed sheet um that was you know, used was
was sent down to our lab and they did DNA
on it looking for profiles in the particular significant portions
(25:29):
of the ligature where it's going to be tied to.
The profiles is pretty much predominantly coming back to Donya Jones,
so he has physically touched at this particular area of
where it's tied to the tree that profiles are matching.
This conversation happened on March eighteenth, five months after Donyae's death.
(25:51):
The medical examiners report never mentions DNA in it, not
even once, and it turns out that's because the DNA
swabbing and testing was done by the St. Louis County
Police Department's crime Lab Northfleet. Must have heard about this
testing through the grape vine. At this point in time,
Melissa and the rest of Danielle's family have not been
made aware that any DNA testing of the bedsheet had
(26:14):
been done by anybody. This was partially because the police
department hadn't issued their final report on Danye's death yet.
In January of Sergeant Shawn McGuire told us that it
would likely take a few more weeks to complete that report,
but ultimately the report wouldn't be finalized until July, fully
nine months after Danye's death, and it was the police
(26:35):
report that would mention the DNA And we will come
back to that in a future episode, but for now,
understand that this DNA information was all inside baseball amongst
detectives and some staff at the Medical Examiner's office. So
at the time of this conversation with Northfleet, it was
news to us, But the real kicker was what he
would tell us next. And I take no secondary DNA
(26:57):
at all on the the There is another one, but
I'm not exactly sure. Uh, it's a minor component. I
don't know who we matches too. Is just a male
from what I know. We were kind of astounded to
find out that the County Police had found a second
set of mail DNA on the bedsheet. That DNA was
(27:17):
found hanging from and nobody seemed to think that this
was very important. What work was done on determining the
origins for the second set of DNA on the on
the sheet or that I can't tell you. That's that
has nothing to do with me. So that yes, thats nothing.
That's that's nothing to do with me. You've learned enough
(27:38):
that he knew it was a male. That's just that
it's there's a y half load group on that. I
don't know exactly what testing was done to be able
to determinate, but there I I do know there are
two profiles, but there's a major one and then there's
a minor one and it appears in some unknown mail
and no one knows who that is. But that's to
(27:59):
me it to hear neither there could like to say
it's a it's a bit cheat. Who if the DNA
DNA too So so just let's just say it was
briefly in his house for a period of time that
was laying on something. There's other males that live in
that house. Um, so you could start swabbing everybody from
Tim Buck too to try to figure out what it is,
(28:20):
but I don't know how far that went. Tim Buck two.
How about just swab the other two males in the house,
Danye's uncle Daniel and his stepfather Derek. I mean, that
would be a good place to start, right. We couldn't
help but find this shocking. The police found a second
set of mail DNA on the sheet, and everyone, including
(28:41):
the pathologists, just presumed it was from another male in
the house, without ever attempting to eliminate them by requesting
they give a DNA sample. We also couldn't help but
notice that Melissa's DNA wasn't on the sheet. She was
the one who did the house's laundry, so presumably if
that was her eat and she was the one who
pulled it from the dryer, folded it and placed it
(29:03):
in a closet, that her DNA would have been found
on it. There are other important details here that we
need to stop and focus on. For one, Dr Northfleet
said that Dane's DNA was on the portion of the
bed sheet that was tied around the tree. He has
no way of knowing that because the crime lab would
have no way of knowing where that portion of the
sheet was as the sheet was untied from the tree.
(29:28):
He actually acknowledges this when we asked him about the
knot itself and whether or not it was a sliding
or a fixed knot. I don't know about specifically the
part in the tree because I didn't undo that portion. Um,
so I don't know anything about that um In terms
of that not, you would have to ask whoever untied
off the tree branch. And I'm no, my investigator didn't
(29:48):
do it. That's probably something to saying what was County did,
So you would have to ask them. The truth is
north Fleet's investigator, Michael Tarticio, did take the sheet out
of the tree. He says so in his reports, stating
I was able to untie one end of the bed
sheet and place it in the body bag with the
deceded So the crime lab couldn't possibly have known where
(30:09):
the sheet was tied into the tree to swab for DNA.
And what's worse, the sheet was placed in the body
bag with Danyae's body. The sheet was not treated as
potential evidence and secured in a separate bag, but traveled
to the morgue against Danye's body, possibly contaminating the entirety
of the sheet with Danyae's DNA. So even if the
(30:30):
crime lab did nowhere to swab to find out who
tied the sheet to the tree. Danye's DNA would potentially
have been all over it, and though we wouldn't know
this until the police report finally did get released later
in the year, the section that speaks on this DNA
evidence states that the not area of the sheet was swabbed,
so this must be a reference to the only not left,
(30:53):
which was the lower knot that would have been behind
Danye's head. We tried contacting the crime lab and the
particular technician who did the swabbing of the sheet to
get specifics on how much was swabbed and where you
have reached the St. Louis Colony Police Crime Laboratory Crime Lab.
(31:17):
This is Jeff. You're exactly the person I'm looking for.
My name is John Duffy. I'm a journalist working on
a story and you did some evidence swabs on a
particular piece of evidence from a crime a couple of
years ago, and I just had like a quick question
about methodologies and what is so. The case was a
(31:38):
young man who had was found hanged and it was
eventually found to be a suicide. You know, when I
look through the case report, it just has your name
is the person who swabbed it, and the write up
says swabbed on the not portion. And I just was
trying to get like a technical understanding of was that
swab done on like the not not where the not
(31:59):
was hide or was it the loop around his neck
or was it all event Okay, well, I will discuss
this with my supervisors. Okay, I don't I don't know
what we are at liberating to discuss. So thank you
for your inquiry and we will give your response. And
then we never heard from them again, despite our repeated
(32:20):
attempts to reach out. We at least hope Dr Norfleet
could tell us if the sheet had any damage to it,
as if perhaps Dane had been tied into it and
then lifted off the ground by someone else pulling the
sheet over a rough tree branch. I never I never
really looked at the sheet that hard. What's the tipping
point in this case, It's not so much a tipping point,
(32:41):
it's the it's the totality of everything that's being said.
Initially what we have and then from the investigation from
stain Wis County Police Department, there hasn't been anything that
has come forward to suggest there's something anyone other than
himself did this to himself. But the determination is colored
to some extent by the investigator's interview with the family,
(33:03):
the statements about depression, and the circumstances around the text message.
This all helps form the picture. Opinion, Yes, the opinion,
Yes it does. Norfleet took very seriously the family statements
that has seen investigator delivered to him that morning. He
took seriously Danye's DNA that he thought was on the
portion of the sheet tied into the tree. He took
(33:24):
seriously the idea that Detective Andrewer, whom he likely didn't
know had been sued for using excessive force against black protesters,
had done a thorough job of investigating the circumstances of
Donye's death. And there was one other fact he wanted
to drive home to us, something he thought held a
lot of weight, so much so that he wanted to
(33:45):
read it to us directly from his side investigator's section
of the report. I'm gonna read you the whole paragraph,
but then I'm going to reenterate specifically to us that
as that we had in here. So anyway, Jones was
last seen alive by Melissa false. He's last seen by
his uncle as he walked into the backyard carrying a backpack.
(34:06):
Melissa did not find this unusual and carried on with
her night as usual. It was later discovered Jones sent Monsia,
that's a sister false the trivial a text message at
approximately thirties that stated I'm sorry. Momsia reportedly replied to
that text message by saying I love you. There was
(34:28):
no further communication after that point with the disease. Dr
Norfleet was interpreting the I'm sorry text Dne sent out
as a goodbye message. It's all speculation, but if someone
texts things like what what does that mean to is
there there should be a concern there that his emotional
state is not normal. He went on to admit that
(34:49):
he didn't actually know the context of that message, but
it was clear what he thought it meant and how
it framed his view of Dane's death and my Misha.
I bet most people in the media, I've never talked
to her, no one's ever questioned her about this this
this dialogue. Ironically, he also pointed out that he hadn't
seen anyone in the media mentioning this text or asking
(35:10):
Militia about it, but we did, and Militia is convinced
that the I'm sorry text had to do with Danye
not giving her much time or attention when she visited
with her son earlier that day. Part of the credibility
granted to the medical examiner system is that it's not
just a site investigator and a pathologist determining a cause
(35:32):
and manner of death, but a third party, the chief
Medical Examiner, must review the case materials and sign off
on them. For St. Louis County, that person is Dr
Mary Case. For us, there was a slight concern that
maybe an entire investigation could go undone because one person's
presumption at the scene of a death would affect the
(35:52):
next person's, which would affect the next person's, which would
sort of render certain checks and balances meaningless. You think
for zooming, when somebody has when there's a legal mechanism
that someone uses and it works, like holding a gun
to your head or putting a rope around your neck,
(36:13):
that that is, you know, rather overwhelming. Now, if there
is evidence to the contrary, certainly that would be further investigated.
But this office has never been presented with any other information.
For someone to say, well, that sheet didn't come from
my house, that's not going to dissuade me from the
(36:33):
fact that that was a suicide. One of the things
that we found interesting was that Dr Case hadn't heard
about the DNA swabs taken from the bed sheet. Were
there swabs or any samples taken in this case, I
don't know, but I would I wouldn't very much doubt
it if I can talk about that real quick. When
they say that she didn't come from their house. We
(36:56):
have found in the course of our investigation that there
was DNA hold off of that sheet, and it was
Donny's DNA and then an unidentified males DNA. But to me,
the one thing that sort of stands out is that
not only does Melissa claim that they just don't have
extra sheets in the house, they just have enough for
the beds, but her DNA is not on that sheet.
(37:17):
They didn't find any unidentified female DNA, and she's the
one who does all the houses laundry. It's pretty hard
to prove the negative. Like I didn't own that, and
they weren't ever told that DNA was tested on it.
It was something that we found out and then that
we told them and never made the medical examiners report.
You weren't even aware of No, we never get, we
never get any of it. But wouldn't you know that
(37:39):
if we don't get, we never gets. That doesn't interact
with our decisions. That's not how we base our decisions.
Let's pause here for a second. This is bizarre. The
Medical Examiner's office is responsible for determining cause in a
manner of death. A second or third set of d
(38:01):
n A on a lethal instrument could in fact be
the evidence they need to move a determination from suicide
to homicide or at least to undetermined. It could be
the evidence they claim they are yet to see, couldn't
it so why such little interest? Dr Norfleet had told
us that, with a lack of trauma to the body,
(38:22):
his determination was made largely around the statements given to
the medical investigator. Of course, Danya's family says they didn't
say the things that are in the report, or at
least didn't say them in the way that they are reported.
So we mentioned this to Dr case. My question would
be about the investigative method to get those statements, because
(38:43):
the family agrees that they talked about those things, but
they don't agree that they stated them in a way
that they were weighing on him to an extent where
it seemed like they were bothering him that much. When
the investigator is speaking with a family members, they you know,
they're kind of asking about the state of mind and
you know what's going on, and so those things were
(39:05):
brought out. Obviously this is not a psychiatric interview, but
those were statements that were made and they're noted. It
doesn't mean that that is the motivation. I guess the
problem for them is that other things that are sort
of positive going on in the person's life don't get noted,
and then when the police refer to this, So like
when the St. Louis County Police make statements about the case,
they refer to the medical examiner's report, so they go, well, yeah,
(39:28):
I mean, if you look at it, he was depressed.
I would say that none of that made this a suicide.
What made this a suicide was there is a man
hanging in his backyard from a tree. Now, if you
have evidence that somebody did that, I will be happy
to change that. Back in episode one, Sergeant Sean McGuire
(39:50):
defended the police department's assessment that Donie died by suicide
by referencing the medical examiner's report and now the pathologist
the chief medical examiners say that they based their work
and the evidence brought to them by the police. I
guess it's just for what seemed to be is that
it can kind of become sort of a self reinforcing
(40:10):
circle where if like police start presuming that there's no
need to look for further evidence and then you're not,
that means you're not getting any further evidence. And I
will say this that do you know how many suicides
do we have a year? I'm sure it's a lot.
We looked it up according to county police data, it's
about sixty we have. We have a lot of them,
(40:32):
and when we have them, there is a certain amount
of investigation, but it is not much more than this.
There's just one more thing. And maybe this is minor,
but it bugged us. Danye's uncle, Daniel, had taken photos
of Danye hanging from the tree because Daniae's pants were
down around his ankles and this seems strange to him.
(40:54):
Dr Case touched on this point when she was reviewing
the report over the phone. With us, and in the
photo apparently the pants were around the ankles. And I
would say that you're hanging up in a tree and
your pants are sagging anyway, they may well fall down
because they're If you don't hold them up, they're going
to fall down. This assumption that Donya's pants were sagging,
that he would ordinarily need to hold them up, it
(41:17):
seems a bit racist. I'm not trying to smear dr case,
but she does seem to be just presuming that because
Donya is black, he SAgs his pants and that this
must be the reason they were found around his ankles.
And I explained that this wasn't the case. She just
sort of moves on, Well, they were actually like elastic
(41:38):
waist pan pants that had a draw string, and they
found it because they appeared to have been rolled at
least like two or three times at the waist, which
is what they found to be strange. See what else
sit here? So what does all this mean? This he
(42:04):
said she said about Danye's life and mental state between
his family and the medical examiner staff. This text message
that might be a final goodbye or might just be
a casual apology for an action already taken. This second
set of male DNA that was found on the bedsheet
danya was hanged with that could be from his uncle
(42:26):
or his stepfather, or from a potential conspirator in a
murder made to look like a suicide. We are reminded
of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, which is the idea that
people only look at pieces of evidence that confirm their hypothesis.
It's based on an old joke about a Texan who
shoots several times at the side of a barn and
(42:48):
then paints a bull's eye around the bullet holes, claims
to be a sharpshooter. Her Melissa and the rest of
Danyae's family only seeing what they want to see. When
the c D full of photographs from the Uckle Examiner's
office showed up, we looked them over again and again. No,
we couldn't see any bruises on Danyae's body, not on
(43:10):
his face or on his wrists. But we also saw
the way the sheet was tied into the tree, and yes,
it did look like a strange, unintuitive Figure eight system.
Was the Medical Examiner's office negligent for having untied it
and tossed it in the body bag alongside Danya's body.
Did this demonstrate that from the get go no one
(43:32):
was taking the possibility of homicide seriously? What about the
county police tasked with investigating the scene and circumstances of
Danya's death? Did they bring all of their resources and
efforts to bear If not, why not? We're not naive.
Of course, these people are busy, they have a lot
(43:52):
of cases and their professionals doctors. But it's hard not
to think that maybe some cases should have a higher
threshold of evidence than others. Maybe when we remember to
apply social and historical context and see that a death
greatly mirrors a racist lynching, we should expect local governments
(44:12):
to look a little harder, to scratch a little deeper,
just in case. Why wouldn't they? That's next time and
After the Uprising. After the Uprising is directed, produced, investigated,
written and reported by myself, Raino the shell Ski and
(44:34):
John Duffy. John Duffy was also the editor. Dave Cassidy
was producer. Sound engineering design and mixed by Josh Condon.
Executive producers were Matt McDonough and Tina x Ros. For
now This, Brett Kushner for Group nine Media, and Jess
Borov was executive in charge of production. Jonathan Hartwig and
Bradley Rayford were consulting producers. Eliza Craig was assistant producer
and did additional reporting. Malory Keenoy was a writer's assistant,
(44:56):
Kristen McVicker and Taya Wilson were production assistants, and Hailey
klez R was a post production assistant. Fact checking by
Alison Humes, theme song and other music by Zachary Walter,
legal by Keith Sclar and Peter Yazy. Special thanks to
Ann Frado, Danny Gonzalez, Barbara Copple, Alex Lester, Bethan Macaluso,
Emily maronof Ruth Vaka, and the Reporter's Committee for Freedom
(45:16):
of the Press. After the Uprising is a production of
Double asterisk I Heart Media and Now This in association
with True Stories. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook.
If you have useful information about the death of Danye
Jones or anything we've covered, please leave a message on
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Hosts And Creators
Ray Nowosielski
Maria Chappelle-Nadal
John Duffy
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Dateline NBC
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!