S1E07: Navy Knots

Melissa seeks the bed sheet used in her son's death, intent on finding the origins of additional DNA. The death of George Floyd changes everything -- or maybe nothing at all?

 

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Episode Transcript

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 to seven three or text the crisis text line

(00:27):
at seven one. Previously un after the uprising, she seems
to be under the impression that you might know the
pass code to Danye's phone. I have might be here
when I was running out Why to say, you know,

(00:47):
we were trying to find out you know what, what
do you have to do to get the sheet back?
And he was like sheet, what what are you talking about?
But what was your sense or memory of like what
they seemed to be there for some bullshit? She wants
that sheet I don't know about specifically the part in
the tree um In terms of it not you would
have to ask whoever untied off the tree branch. No,

(01:08):
my investigator didn't do it. When there's an legal mechanism
that someone uses, that is rather overwhelming for someone to say, well,
that sheet didn't come from my house. That's not going
to dissuade me from the fact that that's a suicide.
I believe that our report will be concluded in the
near future. Why is that still open. It's been seven
and a half month. Our detectives are very big. What

(01:40):
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 so
One murdered her son targeting him. Don Ye became an

(02:05):
activist in the wake of the shooting death of Michael
Brown by a white police officer, and 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. Does it

(02:32):
have a four digit or a six digit? She gave
a different one six, So she said try three, six, five, eight, seven,
and then the last number either five or four to close.
It was August of nineteen. The Mike Brown Jr. Memorial
had just wrapped up down the street, and we sat

(02:52):
down with Melissa outside of a coffee shop in Ferguson.
In episode six, Deja gave us several pass codes to
try on his two cell phones, his older iPhone and
his newer Android. It's a try again, so this time
try four as the last ditch of three, six, five,
eight seven, four and trying some time. Okay, what did

(03:19):
you say? Well here so three six, five, eight, seven,
eight seven and did you do five or four last
time to try for this? Oh? It's differ open yet
to try. It was tense trying a code, it not
working the phone, making us wait a minute or so
before we could try again, and in the end none

(03:42):
of the codes Desia had given us worked. Melissa had
never been hopeful. I'm sorry that didn't work. Yeah, if
we if we were to find someone who, for money
could try to crack one of those, do you know
which one he used more often? Was the one found
out there? Okay? Would you be willing to let someone try?

(04:04):
Melissa said it was the Android she found with Donya
when he died, and we would now be tasked with
finding a hacker who could crack it. Before leaving the cafe,
we asked Melissa about the Mike Brown memorial she had
just taken part in, and what it was like to
see so many of her activist friends again. Was this

(04:27):
the first time you'd seen a lot of the activists
you'd worked with for a while. Yeah, what did this idiot?
Mainly just of me kept saying that, you know, they're
proud of me, they're here, they love me. They wanted

(04:51):
me to speak. You did want to. I just didn't
you feel comfortable to while me and Ow, I'm angry
and I was kind of scared if I was gonna
reacted towards certain Yeah, but everybody was pretty supportive for
the most ba to my face, I feel supported. I

(05:16):
just it's hard for me to move forward. It's hard
to even raise my fist, it's hard to eaven. I
don't feel like I'm really part of that after this
community the way that I was before, you know, because

(05:38):
I signed it scared. So my fight is different, you know.
So I'm not there yet to like fight like they're fighting.
And I don't think I'll ever fight like them. I
think that my fight is different now. It took some
time and some research, but we were able to find
a company in Texas that can hack into certain models

(06:00):
of Android phones. This is a deceased person's phone. Correct.
I wish I had a clearer answer for you. A
lot of these phones that have a qual Com chip
set usually give me an option to bypass the pass
code and our software, but I never have luck with them.
It might just be one of those things gotta try

(06:21):
once again, though I'm not too too hopeful on it.
You know, every kind of phone is different as far
as what it produces. You'll get the text messages in
the and hopefully we'b history and all that stuff. Location
data could be a little weird with phones. Location data
was high on our list of things we wanted from
the phone, but remember the phone had no cell service

(06:44):
at the time Donye died. He only used it where
he could log into WiFi, so Google Maps location data
would only show up when his phone was logged into
a WiFi network. But still this would be something, and
more importantly, we hoped to be able to find some
text message from whoever it was. Donie left to see
the night he died, So Melissa gave us the Android

(07:07):
phone and we shipped it off to Texas. I called
my getting the sheet and she said no. She said,
we're going to destroy the sheets, and I said, why
are you going to destroy the sheets? That's part of
the evidence. We're gonna have a private investigation. She said, well,
that's our policy. We have to destroy anything with bodily

(07:28):
body fluids on it because of a health risk. I said, well,
my son's clothes had black blood splatter on it and
they had mulcans on it, and you gave that to
us with no problem. I said, so we're gonna need
that sheet back. She said, well, I don't control it.
I said, okay, I got you. So I went, had

(07:49):
everybody called. It was like it was an action social
media action I did. I had everybody called my supporters,
and then I had the attorney call that tiny put
a fear in him, there will be a private investigation, debt,
and that she is very important to this investigation. You
guys already ruin the clothes. What's the status right now?

(08:11):
The lawyer and she is it to be. I don't
think that this comment from Melissa and supported by her family,
that she would never get back the bedsheet that Dana
was hanged with was from one of our first meetings
with her back in the spring of As the sheet

(08:33):
was considered evidence in an active case, she could not
retrieve it until the case was officially closed in August,
when we tried unsuccessfully to open Danya's phone with the
pass codes Desia had given us. Detective Andrewer had by
then finally released his case report. We were able to
request a copy, and when it arrived, there were several

(08:54):
details that jumped out at us. For one, just in general,
we were shocked by how little investigating Andrewer had actually done.
According to his report. After leaving Melissa's house the morning
of Donyae's death, Detective Andrewer did the following things. One
he conducted a search of the Computer aided Report Entry
program and the Crisis Intervention Report Program to look for

(09:18):
prior reports documenting any psychological episodes with Donja, and he
found that there were none. Two, he searched the computer
aided Dispatch for calls about suspicious persons by Melissa, of
which there was one on August fourteenth of that year,
when Melissa apparently called into report a man looking into
people's vehicles. Three, he scanned Danna's Facebook page. This was

(09:42):
a newer page and only had posts from March through September,
which didn't reveal much except that Donna was starting to
buy houses for his business, which he called moving on
up properties. This is all he did the day Donya died,
the seventeenth of October. Then on October thirty one, fourteen
days later, at Andrew's request, a different detective went to

(10:06):
the medical Examiner's office and grabbed the bedsheet and delivered
it to the crime lab for DNA analysis. So some
quick things to point out. One, he never spoke to
anyone else who knew Donna, not even his brother Javan.
Back in episode one, County p D spokesman Sergeant Sean

(10:26):
McGuire told us that the final report would reveal what
detectives looked into and who they talked to. Well, they
looked into their internal databases for other hits on Donna
and found none, then talked to no one. And speaking
of talking to no one, page four of the report
contains a little box at the bottom that reads neighborhood canvassed,

(10:47):
and that box is marked with an X. Canvassing a
neighborhood means that officers speak with neighbors and asked them
basic questions like did you see or hear anything unusual
last night. Since there is nothing written anywhere else in
the report about which neighbors at which addresses were spoken to,
we figured we would just knock on Melissa's neighbors doors

(11:08):
and ask for ourselves if police had interviewed them the
morning Don died. All right, my name is Ray. I
just wanted to know if I could either ask you
a question for like five minutes, or maybe set up
a time when I could call you. This is the
first neighbor we spoke with. She wouldn't open the door,
so it's very hard to hear. We cranked the audio

(11:29):
to try and catch her voice, so we apologize for
the sound quality here. Did the police ever ask you
any questions? They never knocked on the door and talked
to anyone in else No. Yeah, she lives alone and
like she said, police never spoke to her. She finally
opened the door a bit and spoke about the night
of Danye's death. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't see nothing.

(11:55):
I did hear nothing. I wouldn't have been the police either,
so they still could have knocked and asked. Then we
went to another neighbor's house. Hey, I just didn't know
if I could get like five minutes of your time
to just kind of ask, like what you saw? The
questions like I said, done over here? Yeah, Yeah, he
killed himself and we just want to like run down

(12:16):
all the possibilities. Usually they just painful to that somebody
killed himself. It was no signable struggle, you know, family, sure,
I mean I wanted to know, like do you did
the cops ever come knock on your door? Cops never
asked any questions, uh investigation and and what they determined

(12:43):
was what it is. They didn't they never worked with
the idea that that that that it was some retribution
for her protesting. This neighbor clearly has his opinion, but
he did confirm that the police never interviewed him. We
knocked on two more doors and one of the people
who answered said they didn't live there at the time
of the incident. At the last house we went to,
a teenager answered the door, so we don't want to

(13:05):
use their voice. They told us that to their knowledge,
police never came by and asked anyone in the house
any questions. It looks like the neighborhood was not canvassed,
despite the police report claiming the contrary. And what needs
to be noted here is that the final case report
has sections drafted by different people. Detective Andrew Or has
the longest portion at the end, but the first officer

(13:27):
to arrive on scene the morning Danya died, Officer Chad
lampricked drafted a portion. Then Detective Michael Kamerer from the
crime scene unit also drafted a portion. It's unclear, but
based on where it falls in the report, it appears
that it may have been Lambrick to check the box
stating that the neighborhood had been canvassed. Yeah, and then
they said that they canvased my neighborhood. They spoke with

(13:50):
my neighbors. And when John and Ray asked my neighbors
if they had been spocused too, they have been interviewed,
they all said hello. The way that works, we do
canvases all the time. So in the police report it
was the name, the time, the date, uh the address

(14:12):
upon whatever however the contact was made. All of those
contacts would be listed in the police report. Did they
listen them in the police report as having talked to them?
Since we are looking into the investigative efforts of county detectives,
we felt the need to talk to someone who would
know just how these sorts of investigations should happen. So
we spoke with Captain Carroll Jackson a retired commander from

(14:35):
the University City Police Department. University City is one of
the municipalities in St. Louis County. Captain Jackson was a
police officer for thirty seven years. Melissa was on the
call with us when we spoke to her. No name,
none of that. Now that's not the way it works. No,
you have to put in the police report when you

(14:56):
can't what it means. You don't just canvas the neighborhood.
You say, I went to twelve, no answer, you have
the name, you have no answer? Or I spoke with them,
they they didn't hear anything, they didn't see anything. How
how can you do an investigations and say you can
and say you don't have many informations to who talked

(15:19):
to who? Interestingly, in Detective Cameras section of the report,
he notes that a request was made by the crime
lab to also get ahold of Danyae's pants, the ones
that were found rolled down around his ankles when he died.
Camera notes, however, that by then the pants had already
been sent on to the funeral home, and of course

(15:40):
by then Dinia had been buried and the pants returned
to his mother and any hope of pulling DNA from
them was lost. In episode three, the pathologist Dr Gersham
Norfleet told us that the crime lab swabbed the portion
of the sheet tied to the tree, and we countered
that that wasn't possible because a sheet had been untied

(16:01):
by his own investigator, Michael Tarticio, and then the whole
sheet was placed beside Danye's body in the body bag
as it traveled to the morgue. We wanted a second
opinion on how the ligature should have been handled. When
you are collecting the ligature, how is it collected? So
the ligature, what you wanna do is you want to

(16:23):
cut away from the knots, and you pretty much want
to preserve the knots. This is Christian Torres again. You
heard him in episode four talking about how he uses
Carl Berdan's adjusted glaster equation in his own work as
a medico legal investigator. You have your point of suspension
with the ligature is tied to and if there's a knot,

(16:46):
you cut away from it. And once you cut, you
take a string and tape it from one side and
tape it on the other side to show where you
have made the cut. So you are able to put
much reconstruct the hanging in the autopsy room. We had

(17:06):
been shocked to learn that the ligature in Dana's case
was not bagged or separated from his body in any way,
and asked Christian how he transports a ligature to the morgue.
We will take a bag big enough to fit the
ligature comfortably. Right. We cut the ligature as I mentioned before,
We cut it and then we place it in this bag.

(17:28):
And we usually place it in between the legs of
the sea then or like on the top of the
sea then. So in this case it was with the body,
but not specifically in a way that separated contact. Um okay,
does that to you sound like something that could corrupt
potential like DNA evidence. Yes, I mean it's it's not

(17:54):
the proper way. It is not the proper way. The
police report states that the portion of the sheet that
was swabbed for DNA was the not area. We wanted
to know more specifically what the phrase not area meant.
Did it mean the actual knot or the loop that
would have passed under Danye's jaw. We asked the crime

(18:15):
lamb about this an episode three, but the technician we
spoke to said she couldn't answer our questions without permission
from her supervisor, and then we never heard from her
again despite repeated efforts. This detail about where the sheet
was swabbed was important because of how Danya's uncle Daniel
explained how he and danye stepfather Derek, lowered Danyae's body

(18:37):
to the ground as his legs and lifted them up.
Derek took the part that was on his neck, just
got it off, sh Okay, So then I don't so
I now load them down, Okay. If the DNA swab
was taken on the part of the sheet under Danye's

(18:58):
chin that Derek touched, the d NA found could be his.
But if they swabbed the remaining not where Danna's head was,
there's a good chance that the mystery DNA isn't Derrick's.
Looking at the specifics of what was written in the
report about the results of DNA testing, it has this
to say a mixture of two or more individuals was detected,

(19:19):
including at least two male contributors Freeze two or more.
When we spoke with Dr Norfleet, he told us there
was a second DNA profile. According to the crime Lab
it's at least two individuals. The report then goes on
to state that Donia was the major contributor of DNA

(19:41):
found And then there is this phrase, due to limited
genetic information available and the possibility of missing a lelic data,
the minor component is unsuitable for comparison purposes. We called
the crime lab to get an explanation of what this
phrase means. Hi, I'm calling him a report working on
a story, and I just I have a report from

(20:03):
the crime lab and there's a sentence in it, and
I was just hoping for clarification on what exactly it means. Sure,
what it says, due to the limited genetic information available
and the possibility of missing altic data in parentheses drop out,
the minor component is unsuitable for comparison purposes. Okay, Um, sure.

(20:27):
So that's a generic statement that we use when there's
not enough data from that portion of the mixture to
be able to do an interpretation or comparison. Um. So
it's basically just inconclusive wording. Okay. So, so when they
do the swabs and and they run it and it
turns up that this is the case, does it just

(20:47):
mean it's stalled? Out did they did they swab again?
What happens? Um? Right? So generally, Um, that would be
the end of the line for that particular sample. UM.
As far as being able to do any interpretations on it. Um, Again,
it just depends on the case and the evidence type.
You know, something else can happen with it. Um. That
would just be a specific situation because this came off

(21:09):
a piece of fabric. So if the it would be
up to the detective then or whoever was in charge,
to say, can you try swabbing it again if they
wanted it? Um, It just depends. It could be um,
you know, it could be that it could be the
prosecuting attorney, you know, to be retested. It could be
you know, a defense attorney. Um. It would just depends. Um,

(21:31):
you know. Yeah. But again, whoever gets the report basically
kind of decide if they want something else. Okay, thank
you so much so. According to the crime Lab, when
a DNA sample isn't useful for comparison purposes, new sampling
can be requested. After all, the sheet is still in
possession of the St. Louis County Police. The fact that

(21:52):
this was never done is kind of shocking. Again, consider
the timing. Melissa has made a big splash on social
media saying my son was murdered, and she scheduled a
public press conference. So the day before it, Detective and
Her seemingly says, fine, I'll swab the sheet and the
pants for DNA. Wait, the pants have already been returned. Fine,

(22:16):
just the sheet. Then he seemingly does this to see
if there is any merit to Melissa's claim, and twelve
days after that he gets the results which say to
or more individuals have DNA on the sheet. How does
he respond to that? Based on his report, He doesn't.
He doesn't do anything with it. The report says the

(22:36):
not area of the sheet was swabbed, meaning this mystery
DNA could in theory beyond the rest of the sheet,
and there could possibly be usable samples available if they
swabbed the whole thing. But what happens The sheet stays
locked up in the property department and Melissa is unable
to get it because it cannot be released to her
until Detective and Or closes the case, which he doesn't

(23:00):
do for eight more months until July of twenty nine,
when they came in the house to talk to us.
The words were it's gonna be what it looks like,
it's gonna be a suicide. So that day that they
came to my house, they told us suicide. Yeah, it
could look like that, but that's not good enough. That's

(23:20):
not a conclusion, especially because this kind of thing has
happened in other parts of the country in almost the
same manner, like in California. They would suspectful. At least
they investigated it to the right, you know, and they
they gamed it wasn't suicide, and that should be the conclusion.
They didn't ask us questions. They the question that they asked,

(23:42):
why would he commit suicide? You know, they know that
that was her journal. Did he have any say? No,
did they start They did not set his phone at all. No,
that's says that I'm not doing I'm you know, I'm
just telling you how i rejoined it to me. That

(24:03):
is that's very substandard. We're not the experts, and that
we're the expert investigators, but there's many but things like
that have to have to have conclusive evidence. Quick note,
both Officer lamb pricked and detective Camera reported that they
looked at Danyae's cell phone but couldn't get past the
pass code, so they just moved on. Another little oddity

(24:27):
is the color of the sheet Danyae was hanged with.
Maybe it's not a big deal, but across reports it
is at different times called white, gray, and light green.
When we first met Melissa, one of her key points
was that the sheet didn't come from her house, since
my family just came staying, I had to buy extra.
She's but I know what she's. We always have color.

(24:49):
She's never white. She's never She's under the impression it's white,
probably because of the photo Daniel took of danye hanging,
But that photo was taken with the flash prior to
the sun fully coming up, so Melissa may not have
had an accurate grasp of what color the sheet actually was.
When we look at photographs of it, the color of

(25:12):
the sheet seems to alter with the lighting. In some
shots where it's still tied into the tree, it looks gray,
but it's shaded by the canopy. Under the bright lights
of the morgue, it looks closer to white. The sheet
itself is a fitted bed sheet, and with close examination
of the photographs, you can see that some of the
elastic is frayed and detached. It was sort of a

(25:33):
mccab question, But we wondered why Danye would use a
bed sheet, especially a fitted bed sheet, if in fact
he did die by suicide. It seemed like it would
be difficult to manipulate and tie the way you would want,
I mean, even folding a fitted sheet as a headache.
So we asked Melissa if there was rope available in
the house, was there something more convenient in the house,

(25:57):
like was there peel or an extension? There's an extend exactly,
there's extension corps. Actually there is. There are ropes that
were ropes in the garage because we used them to
tie things up with when we moved things. You know,
there were so many things that appeals in the house.
It's like we wanted right there, right in the garage,

(26:22):
and we have something all around. We have those two.
Could he have quickly gotten a gun because got hold
of a gun from then there is the configuration of
how the sheet was tied into the tree. Both the
medical investigator Michael Tarticio and Detective Anderer describing the reports,

(26:44):
the sheet is tied in a figure eight. If you
remember too. During her press conference about Danye's death, Melissa
referred to the ligature system as a Navy not and
her husband Derek, a former Navy man himself, said he
recognized the figuration from his training. I know what I'm
talking about. I've seen it. I knew exactly what type

(27:07):
of natty woods. You know what I'm saying. I knew,
you know, well, I'm military man, you know you on
certain ships or certain places they're they'll use that particularly
not It's called rebbit. In a rebb it alcohol. That's
what as we call it and what it means. It
don't extend, It just gets tight up with weight. And

(27:30):
so when I looked up and seen it, I was like,
that's not a regular, not even a makeshift. So I
knew it was a complicated not under where he could
even learned on the first one, because it's to me,
hella time to even try to learn this thing. We
have three photographs of the ligature configuration that we're taking
on the scene. One picture has a tape measure extended
in it showing its height and size, and the other

(27:52):
two pictures are a front and a rear shot of
this sheet tied and hanging in the tree. Here's what
I will personally say, I an experienced tree climber using harnesses,
lines and other rigging. I know many knots and not systems.
When I look at the photographs of the ligature, my
perception is that it's complex and non intuitive. I see

(28:14):
why it's written up as a figure eight system, as
from a particular angle, it does have that appearance. Nothing
from my arborist experience clues me in as to what
it is, But searching through other not systems, I would
say it looks very close to a mooring knot, which
is used to fasten a ship or a boat to
a dock. It isn't exactly the same as a typical

(28:36):
mooring knot usually is fastened on a bite, meaning that
you can pull one end and it will loosen the system.
The configuration used in Donnie's death doesn't have that. Looking
at the photographs, it's hard to trace the exact movements
of the ends of the sheet through the system. So
I called my friend Al and asked if he would
take a look at it for me. Al is an

(28:57):
experienced climber, arborist, and sailor, and he knows more about
rope than anyone else I know. When I looked at.
I was just trying to be like, how would you
possibly how would you not just fall out of it?
You know what I mean? Yeah, I just don't see
how like if you've put your head in there, because
there wasn't it wasn't cinching or anything. I didn't see it,

(29:18):
knot that would do any cinching or under neck. It
was just a loop of sheet that would just be
like rigidly in place, and you would pass out and
just fall out of them. But obviously danya didn't fall
out of it, which to us means that it would
likely have to have been tied very tightly around Danyae's

(29:39):
neck from the outset, as the sheet itself would stretch
as soon as weight was applied to it. This also
seems to imply that it would have to have been
tied behind Danyae's head, meaning if he was doing it
to himself, he would be tying this ligature blind. This
is speculative, but it seems to reason that if he
tied the for his neck in front of him, where

(30:02):
he could see what he was doing, the loop would
have to be loose enough to pass over his whole head,
and if it didn't cinch. Then when he put his
weight into it, he would fall out of it, like
Al suggested. Again, we're speculating here based on a couple
of photographs, but this wouldn't have to be speculative if

(30:22):
the sheet hadn't been untied and tossed into a body bag,
had it been cut away from the branch with scissors,
it would have been easy to re affix the cut
ends and to observe the system the way Christian Torres suggested.
So not only was the possibility of independent DNA swabbing foiled,
so was the possibility of an independent analysis of the configuration.

(30:46):
Here's what we have. A fitted and frayed bedsheet, likely
either white or light gray, that Melissa says didn't come
from her house, tied in a complex fashion that Derek
says he recognizes from his military days, that doesn't look
like it had a sin portion based on the photographs,
that has two or more individuals DNA on it who
are male, and only one of whom is DNA. Melissa

(31:09):
wanted this sheet. She had been trying to get it
back for months, but it was considered evidence until the
case was closed. Right around the time the medical Examiner's
office had released their report on Danyae's death. Melissa's lawyer
called Detective Anderer. There is no audio of that call,
but the email Melissa's attorney sent to her explaining what
had been said read, I spoke with Detective Anderer via telephone.

(31:34):
The bed sheet and reference to Donye's death is still
in custody with their agency. Detective Andrewer was told that
the bed sheet would be needed for possible further examination
and to preserve it. Detective Anderer was cooperative. Now the
case was closed, but Melissa didn't hear anything about the sheet,
so eventually we called the St. Louis County Police Department

(31:56):
to find out how she could get it back. Yeah,
so I was just hoping to grab an update if
there is one, as to whether or not that evidence
can be released. Yes, I spoke with those in the
Division of Criminal Investigation, and the proper steps will be
taken to release that to uh to his mother. Now,
it is very out of the ordinary for any members

(32:18):
of the media to request evidence to be released to them. Well,
I'm not asking for it to be for it to
be released to me. I was just trying to find
out what the steps were so she could do them. Okay, Well,
then I would encourage her to come down to Saint
Louis County Police Headquarters. She will go up to property

(32:39):
control that is located on the second floor of our building,
and I would encourage her to come during business hours
Monday through Friday to do so. Okay, what does she
need to have on her? Does she need just her
I d I believe just the state Missouri idea or
anything with a photo and the name of hers, the
property will be released her. Thank you very much, thank

(33:00):
you all right by Mayor Lyda Krusen says the city
of St. Louis has seven twenty three positive cases of
COVID nineteen and the city and county account for two
thirds of the deaths in the state of Missouri. Over
the course of this show, we haven't talked too much
about Melissa's illnesses for her privacy, but we will say

(33:22):
that she suffers from lupus, so she can't just up
and run out the door any old time. Then COVID
nineteen happened, and with her strained immune system again, Melissa
had to remain sequestered during the spring. And then the
world saw this this bodycam video and separately, this security

(33:43):
video show some of the last few minutes of George
Floyd's life, stopped on suspicion of passing counterfeit money. What
seems a straightforward arrest somehow devolves into this leave excruciating
to watch. It's Floyd now on the ground, begging for

(34:03):
his life, handcuffed, gasping for air. Police officers knee on
his neck while others do nothing. They asked me to
come out yesterday and leave some of the actions and
stuff that they're doing. I let what I'm one of them, know,
like I'm not ready for it, Like you know, I cannot.

(34:26):
I won't not right now. I just won't. I'll speak
out about it. But oh that I'm not going out
there with this virus out there still, Harry, especially with
me having a lucus And what do you make everything
that's happening just kind of continuation of what started six

(34:47):
years ago? Or is this something I think this is
a reminder. I couldn't watch the video, but I saw
the picture that guy knilling on George's neck. He was
posed and like, yeah, he knew they were taking the picture,
he knew they were recording, and it was like a pose, like,
make sure y'all get this. You know what I'm saying, Like,

(35:10):
this is what happened when you act up with us.
You know this is this is what happened. This is
what you get. So yeah, take the picture. So he
was trying to cool the point there. I think that
there's always gonna be this group, this, this group that
will hate us. You know, they want to be able

(35:34):
to continue to look down on a certain group to
make themselves feel better. It's sad, but we have to
continue to live. We have to continue to fight forward.
Um be better than them. That's the only way that
I could see which will prosper, will make it through it.
We have to be better than them. Despite her feelings

(35:58):
on what happened to George Floyd, Melissa was still not
ready to take to the streets again. She took the
need to protect her health very seriously. It wasn't until
mid June when Melissa told us she was finally ready
to go and collect the bedsheet from County p d So,
with her daughter Militia and grandson Messiah by her side.

(36:18):
On June eighteenth, we accompanied them as they went to
retrieve what Melissa considered to be her son's murder weapon.
I have to call him. He because normally if you
want the property, you have a letter in the game,
So I gotta call him to check will deal make
sureys got cleared? Okay, so give me a few minutes.

(36:39):
Melissa is being told by an officer that she needs
to have a letter stating that her evidence is cleared
for pickup. Sergeant Granda never mentioned this, and Melissa says
she never received any letter. What would say and her? Andrew?
And he you to keep your reporting on or anything. Man. Now,

(37:02):
right when I went across the street, they tell me
there this was cleared before coronavirus, and so she had
to wait a long time, but it was clear, let
me get you all, do me a man. She want
to step out. He's got to go all way across
the hall to the detectives off running by him to
make sure that when he's doing his own hand. Due

(37:26):
to concerns about coronavirus, we were asked to step outside,
so we did, and we waited. Okay, Andrew's not upstairs.
He's all today. So you want to call back on
month because we're close tomorrow. Yeah, the Kings officially closed
and like they like without Andrew's being here. They don't

(37:49):
want to release it without his signature on there saying that, yeah,
I'm giving them the right to take it. It's hard
to hear. But Melissa then starts asking the officer if
the sheet is still in the building. No, no, I'm
not saying that that that the amis is probably still
it's still up there, but this is the issue. He's
not here to say, yeah, they could take that's the issue.

(38:14):
So we left. Melissa was told to call Detective Andrewer
on Monday and see what was necessary to get the sheet.
To get clarity on the issue, we called one of
the superior officers at the Division of Criminal Investigation, Mike Buslaki.
He didn't answer, so we left a message. Hi. My
name is Raina A. Shell Ski. I'm an associate of

(38:35):
Melissa McKinney's, the mother of Danie Jones. Melissa had been
told that she could come by any time Monday through
Friday during office hours as long as she had her
idea and could now collect that evidence. But when we
showed up on Thursday, we were told she could only
take it when um Detective Andrew was there to sign off.
I just wonder if he's signed off and she can

(38:56):
now pick it up at any time, or if she
needs to skin all of time to be there when
Andrewer is present to sign off in that moment, If
you could offer some clarity of this, you know, mother,
it's an emotional thing for her to you know, ready
herself to come collect this item, and she needs family
to join her for emotional support. And so I'm sure

(39:19):
you can understand your sensitivity there around her having clarity
so she doesn't come try this several times. Thank you
very much. The next day, Sergeant John Wall from County
p D called Melissa. He was listed in the police
report on Danya's death as being Andrewer's supervisor at the
time of his investigation. Melissa recorded this call as she

(39:40):
was heating up some food in her kitchen. So the
play first of the creator released the property, Uh, filled
up the form and gave it to the apert to
set off a letter. Let's just add and I can
get every other piece of mail except here, and here

(40:02):
in lies the problem. And what I'm calling you, of course,
is a other seats. Uh. The company isn't picked up
with it thirty days. Uh, it's destroyed the older. We
do have a little bit of the sheet, so you

(40:23):
know that hurt detective are told you that the sheet
was tested for Dina. Uh, those swabs we do have
that that's not what we needed. We needed the sheet
that that we said that we would get. And so
now you've guys destroyed a sheet because the letter that

(40:45):
I did not receive. You see how this sounds so crazy?
Oh yes, ma'am. Let me ask you something. Do you
have children? Do you have children? If this happened to

(41:07):
your child, would you want to get down to the
bottom of this and find out what really happened because
you know your your your child. Oh of course. So
when you if you were to continue to hit wall
brick wall brick wall, wouldn't you get a little bit
like Larry, like trying to figure out why? So there's

(41:33):
no sheet unfortunately, thank you, hits the fuck all? Hm
m hm m hmm okay. Melissa's prediction that she would

(41:58):
never get the sheet back had come true. She had
always been skeptical that the County police were taking her
son's death seriously, and now Andrew's unprofessional conduct when on
seeing at her home the morning Danye died, combined with
his social media posts made the destruction of the bedsheets
seem like a hostile act. With no sheet, there could

(42:20):
be no new DNA swabs. The fact that the St.
Louis County Police Department had preserved the swabs they had
done previously was better than nothing. But if the entirety
of the sheet had not been previously swabbed, now it
never would be. There would be no way to examine
the sheet for damage, or to find out what brand
it was and perhaps where it came from. A case

(42:43):
that started with very little evidence now had even less,
But there was still Danye's phone. That's next time on
After the Uprising. After the Uprising is directed, produced, investigated,
written and reported by myself, Raino Vachelski, and John Duffy.

(43:04):
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. Mallory Keenoy was a writer's assistant, Kristen McVicker

(43:27):
and Taya Wilson were production assistants, and Haley Klesmer was
a post production assistant. Fact checking by Alison Humes, theme
song and other music by Zachary Walter, legal by Keith
Sklar and Peter Yazy. Special thanks to Ann Frado, Danny Gonzalez,
Barbara Copple, Alex Lester, Bethan Macaluzo, Emily Maronoff, Ruth Vaka,
and the Reporter's Committee for Freedom of the Press. After

(43:47):
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
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