August 17, 2021 • 42 mins
In the penultimate episode, "theory" sessions attempt to tease out how Danyé's final hours may have gone done.
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Episode Transcript
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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 or 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 one. Previously and after the uprising, if this happens
to your child, wouldn't you want to get down to
the bottom of this and find out what really happened.
I think that black people in general are suspicious of
that because of the history of lynching in this country.
I definitely understand why the parents would jump to that conclusion.
(00:49):
Do you think Dan would try to arrange to yet
Marcel hurt Dane would do it himself. You know, you
want to come over after? I think, you know, to
take He had a lot on his mind, So you
want to talk me and I a rest ship. Was
he influenced me in positive waves? I learned from older
brother myth too, you know what I'm saying. And he
looked out for me, you know, all right hand man.
(01:11):
But when I went back to look at those they're gone.
I can't say this for certain, but it makes me
wonder is someone still logged into his account somewhere perhaps?
Oh wow, yeah, God, oh God. What you're looking at
(01:40):
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 himything. Danye became an activist in the wake of
(02:05):
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.
(02:31):
As far as who lord Danyae out, we had already
got word that people thought that that's who it was.
And at this point I'm really believe in that they
had something to do with it. Have you or anyone
in your immediate family talked to him? Oh no, no,
(02:53):
now the no one's confronted him about this. Oh no,
m M. Are you in any way afraid of him? Um,
I'm afraid. I'm not afraid. I'm just what with what
I have to do if I'm dead? I can't do
it right. This is from a conversation we had with
Melissa in July, long before we had Danye's phone act
(03:17):
and before the St. Louis County Police destroyed the bed sheet.
She wanted to tell us what she was hearing about
one of her step nephews, who has the nickname Deanie Boy.
She had been told that he was possibly involved in
getting Danye out of the house that night he died,
and she called to tell us that members of her
family believed he may have also been involved in someone
else's death. He said, um, I would serve them some
(03:42):
bad rogues, and I've been twice phone about it. And
so I said what he said, I'm serious. So I
looked at Danyee and Diane was like, do you tripping?
And I said, you know what you can be? Think?
Could you say a real stupid Melissa and Danye basically
(04:06):
told Dennie Boy to leave after saying such a heinous thing.
And then sometime later the woman Deanie Boy allegedly threatened
did in fact wind up dead. We know it's a
lot to track in one big speculation, Sandwich. That's what
this whole episode is going to be. We're taking out
our flashlight and climbing down a lot of rabbit holes here.
(04:27):
So strap in. Maybe we can pull back and go
big picture and see where you all sit at this point.
Are you feeling that it was murder, but possibly not
racially motivated murder? In other words, that it could have
been related to something I don't know, you know, Deanie
or something. Are you thinking it's police specific related? I mean,
(04:50):
I want to get a sense of where you know,
where do you think? What do you think happened? What
I think happened is my son was lower it out
to be murdered, and that's it. Who is That's that's see.
Everybody else wants to make it seem like it's one thing.
My main thing is who the hell kill my son.
(05:12):
I don't care if it was the police. I don't
care if it was President Obama, I don't care. I
need to find out who killed my son. So I'm
not leaning towards anything. What I'm leaning is towards is
someone killed my son and he did not commit suicide.
For more than two years, we have met with Melissa
and her family. We've spoken over the phone, texted, emailed,
(05:33):
and across all of that communication We've heard several bits
and pieces of theories about possible suspects and potential motives
and just strange happenings that we think we should share.
Some of these bits and pieces were things that Melissa
and her family found odd but really had nowhere to
go with. There was a white man in the back
(05:55):
of the church when we got there, just standing there,
not speaking to anybody. Is he the only white guy?
They're the only white guy there. He wasn't the only
white guy. It was activist there, but he stood out there. Yeah,
no one. When he came down. He's the only white
man that I saw him there. When he came down,
he didn't speak to the family. He didn't even go
(06:16):
looking danya He didn't go He didn't walk past Danyae.
He walked over to and remember Christ's table, they had
a Bible on it did exactly like this with his
hands his fingers like he was reading something, but you
could tell he wasn't really reading. And he turned around
and walked out. Didn't see him anymore. What did he
look like? A middle age white guy, not really heavy,
(06:38):
short hair, he had like um, a scruffly like beer
type things. Anything he had on some like light khaki
pants and a regular shirt and no one's ever seen
this before whenever Nope. I had actually asked our older sister,
I'm like, did you see him? And she was like, yeah,
(06:59):
who is he? Was like, I don't know, but he
seems like really weird, like he didn't even look at Danyelle.
I said, okay, well, maybe he's an X like maybe
an ex manager. Maybe he's a teacher. So when you know,
after the funeral and we all got together and started
talking about everything, I asked my niece and nephew like,
did you see the white guy that was in there?
And they was like, yeah, we saw him. He was
(07:19):
staying in the back. And that was like I said, well,
is he like maybe an ex manager, maybe he's he
a teacher. They was like, we don't know who he is.
We've never seen him a day in all. With no
name or photographs of this man, there really isn't anything
to build off of, so it just stands out as
an oddity in their minds. Who was this guy? Why
(07:40):
was he at Danyae's funeral? Was he somehow involved in
Danye's death? Or was he just some weird guy who
likes to walk into stranger's funerals and speaking of mysterious
white people, Melissa and Derek once told us a quick
anecdote about some nameless white boys who were supposedly messing
with don Yae Danyee All said, you know, people can
(08:01):
know where you live, and you need to always have
your protection. And now mine you out there doing what
you do and you're you're getting threats. Made me think
about some things when he talked to my brother, because
he was saying something about some some white boys or
something being after him, and he was trying to enquire
(08:24):
about a gun, so you know, something was definitely gonna heat.
He wouldn't want to worry anyone about issues and maybe
going on with him or let you know the better
type thing. Do you remember anything else about these these
white boys wh my brother was telling me that when
he pulled up and he's talking, he said, hey, you
(08:44):
know what I can get, you know, a gun or something?
White boys you know looking for me and something something
said of fact, they've been they've been messing with me,
he said. He told me he said they called me
a nigga, Ma a nigga, and I knocked them out.
I hit him. Do you remember even a rough that
(09:07):
was like maybe September, September obviously September. So according to Derek,
one day, his brother pulled up to their house and
Danye happened to be outside. Upon seeing Derek's brother, Danyae
asked him if he could help him acquire a new gun,
(09:28):
and the reason he gave for needing one was that
some white boys were trying to get at him. According
to Melissa, Danyae told her that some white boys had
called him the N word and he had knocked one
of them out. Are these all the same white boys?
We don't know. All of this was roughly a month
or two before Danyae died. As with the mystery funeral guests,
(09:50):
there are no real details to build off of, and
maybe these white boys have absolutely nothing to do with
Danyae's death, but it does give us pause. And then
there is this step cousin you heard Melissa talk about
at the beginning of this episode, nicknamed Deanie Boy. Before
Danyane had left early last year, you know him and
(10:10):
Deanie Boy was like they were around each other a lot, right,
So from what I'm hearing, Deanie Boy's father and Deanie
Boy was having dany make runs for them. Okay, you
know what runs me right? Yeah, okay, I'm going to
(10:31):
get You mean that he's like driving drugs, yeah, like
getting getting them for them, you know. So that's why
Dane was supposed to have disappeared, because he didn't want
anything to do that with that anymore. He said, My,
I've done some things you know that you wouldn't be
(10:51):
proud of. And um and I faild like what he said.
I so I pushed like I was sowing drugs and
I was like why. He said, that's why I left
to go away, to get my money together and come
back and start my business. He said, you know, I
tried that once, just to get my money, right as
(11:12):
far as that, and they want me to come back.
So what's from what I'm hearing is when they found
out that Danyae had come back, they had started making
a lot of threats towards Danyae and Danye wouldn't come
out anymore. And do you think he owed them anybody?
(11:33):
I don't. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
Melissa didn't say she thought Deanie Boy actually killed Danyae,
but speculated that maybe he was somehow involved with getting
Danye out of the house. Who would have put him
up to this, She didn't know, but further speculated it
may have had to do with drug charges brought against
(11:55):
him the summer before Danyae's death. We got a hold
of dannie Boys criminal record, and it's pretty long. Since
he was a teenager. He's been getting in trouble for
various thefts and he also was charged with assaulting a
seemingly random person on the street. They need boy got
caught up on some drug charges right before Dane was Hell,
(12:18):
that's what he's on the round floor. And then he
went to Florida, and then and then he came back
and was in town that day. Yep. Then there are
the two things that Melissa has pointed to all along,
right from the beginning, that never got much attention from
the police, and that we would feel remiss if we
(12:38):
didn't talk about now, the strange cars that Melissa and
her family all witnessed parked on the street in front
of their house in the weeks preceding Danya's death, and
the brick Danie was keeping next to the couch where
he slept. First, let's discuss the cars. See The thing
with the cars is most of the mant tina windows
(13:00):
the front it was tenant, but around the car was
completely tinant each and every time, and it was different cars,
and it was one person sitting in the car or
that it looks like like most of the time it's
only one, but one time it was more. And that's
when there were you know, the black SUVs um that
(13:23):
the police drive. So this say, this is our home, okay,
and there's a street if we look to the left
into the right. They were on both ends of aunt
how just parked there, but you could see that there
were people in it. So me and Diane and I
(13:45):
we went out and sit on the porch. This is
one time that this just broke it all away, like
made us like really, you know, kind of scared a
little bit. We went on the porch and we looked.
I said, you see that, She said, yeah, he said
that on both ends watching you can see them looking
this way though. So we played with them, you know,
we're like and we went back in the house and
(14:07):
went back in the house. We went in my bedroom
and opened up the blinds. Those guys got out of there.
The the trucks walked in front of our home, and
it was at least five or six of them and
stood there. Oh, white guys, all white guys. You can
tell that they were cops because they were on like
(14:28):
the same kind of cars, those trucks. We see him.
We still see them now. But um, they just stood
in front of our house, and so it really creeps down. Yea, yeah,
he said, whoa, what's going on? And he bagged back.
I said, look, they can come and knock on this
door if they want to. You know, they don't have
(14:48):
it's nothing in here. He said yeah. I said, let
him just stare. So I'm just sitting there looking at them.
And then they finally walked back, got in their trucks
and pulled off. Melissa told us this story on several occasions.
It clearly made an impact on her. How could it not.
We made Sunshine requests to several local and state law
(15:11):
enforcement agencies to see if anything would come up about
surveillance on Melissa's house, but we weren't given anything back.
We hesitate to suggest that this means some form of
surveillance wasn't happening. We also made a Freedom of Information
Act request to the Department of Homeland security and to
the FBI, but again got nothing back, which we don't
(15:32):
think means much because Foyer requests typically need the threat
of a lawsuit to get any meaningful response. And then,
if you remember back in episode one, we asked County
p D spokesman Sergeant Sean McGuire if police looked into
the statements Melissa made about cars being parked outside of
her home. She claims that in the time leading up
(15:54):
to his death, that there were menacing people who had
been around her home. Was that it all looked at?
Um I believe that was looked at eventually. She did
not report that stuff immediately to detectives because part of
their initial investigation they didn't know anything about that. As
time went, honestly had the public Facebook post and pat
told Facebook and said us that's when obviously detectives were
(16:14):
interested in talking to her about that. But it was
definitely looked into eventually. Based on our read of the
police report on Dane's death, every part of this statement
by Sergeant McGuire appears to be exactly false. Detective Anderer's
report states that, in fact, Melissa did tell police the
morning of Dane's death that strange cars had been outside
(16:35):
of her home, but the report contains no mention of
Anderer or any detective looking into these suspicious vehicles in
any capacity. Then there is the brick that aroused Melissa's
very first suspicions. There was a brick now there, and
that's the reason why I had actually went out to
the backyard because I'm like, why why did he have
(16:56):
his break in his house? What's going on? You know,
he had said about it where he sleeps. That's when
my my intensland, and I'm like, what the hell. Before
Melissa even knew that Donna was dead, she found the
brick he kept next to the couch where he was sleeping.
If you remember from episode one, she had gone downstairs
(17:17):
to look for Donya and saw the brick. She had
no idea why it would be there, and upon carrying
it to the back patio where it came from, she
found Danya hanging in the tree. Since that moment, she
has suspected that the brick was a weapon that Danya
was keeping close, something he could use to defend himself
against an attacker. If that is in fact, why Danyae
(17:41):
was keeping a brick next to him while he slept,
that would seem to suggest a few things. For one,
he is afraid of being attacked, and two he is
afraid of being attacked by someone who can get into
his house. Was he afraid of random intruders or of
somebody specific with the White Boys know where Donne lived
(18:03):
and how to get into his house? Or is that
the domain of perhaps a step cousin. And what about Marcel,
the person who allegedly shot Danyae's best friend Damon and
narrowly missed his brother Javan. When we re listened to
the audio of Melissa reading for us her text message
chain with Donna about those events, it started to seem
(18:24):
pretty evident that Donne was planning some sort of revenge
attack on Marcel, and that this plan was devised in
such a way so that it would not lead back
to him. Remember how Donye told Melissa the streets were
going to handle it. The streets was going to take
care of that. He knows a lot of people, So
(18:47):
I say, knew it was plotting to shoot other people
and already have at one point, do y'all wise up
or do y'all just let him just keep shooting and
sit people? Shake my head? He says he was he
would get taken care of. I said them, when he's
(19:10):
taken care of his people, was going to come after them.
Think so he said, Okay, do not understand what I'm saying.
Not if it's a set of things different. It sounds
like Dna is hinting to his mother in these texts
that he may have been trying to have somebody else
kill Marcel. Now add to this the text he sent
(19:33):
to his friend in Springfield, Magianna and tod Asia. The
text to my Gianna said that an m F was
getting popped and that soon he might have to come
lay up with her for a week. The texts to
Deja named Marcel gave a description of him, had Danye
saying he knew where Marcell lived, and then we're followed
up by Danye sending two photographs, likely containing Marcel's image.
(19:57):
He ended it all by asking if Deja's people could
line it up. Knowing that all of this transpired about
four weeks before Danyae ended up dead, seems so entirely coincidental,
almost unbelievably so. Here he is seemingly plotting a hit
on someone, then that someone is detained but released Immediately after,
(20:20):
Danyelle gets very paranoid or stressed, depending on who you ask.
He doesn't want to go anywhere unless it's to show
a property. He asks Derek's brother for help getting a gun,
ostensibly to protect himself from some maybe real, maybe made
up white boys, and he eventually puts a brick next
to his bed. One possibility is that he wanted to
(20:41):
use it as a weapon if someone tried to attack
him in the night, and honestly, it's hard to think
of a second reason he would keep a brick next
to him while he slept. What's going on here? Did
Marcel find out that DNA was maybe preparing a revenge
attack on him through an intermediary? We really wanted to
know what days I had to say about all of this,
(21:01):
But once we told her that we had opened Danyae's phone,
she would answer a text or a Facebook message here
and there, but every time she scheduled to meet us
in person, she wouldn't show up. On more than one occasion,
we sat waiting for her at a bar or a restaurant,
only for her to never come. We would schedule phone calls,
but when the time came to talk, she wouldn't answer.
(21:25):
We figured we should just like all of our cards
on the table and put the ball in her court.
Your call. It's been forwarded to an automatic voice message
system at the town. Please record your message, Hidayja. It's
John from the Don podcast. Sorry, we weren't able to
connect with you this morning. We really hope to be
(21:45):
able to speak with you again. I know Ray made
it clear to you that we did open up Dona's
uh Android phone, and there's just a few questions we
have after seeing some texts that he sent to you,
particularly revolving around Marcel and you know, the way Donya
was speaking with you around those events, and you know,
(22:08):
it just looks it can just kind of look strange
for me outside, and we were hoping you could explain
what you guys were talking about, so it makes sense
to us. So, uh, you know, just give us a
text or call and we'll talk about it. Thank you. Eventually,
Deja did get back to us. We made another plan
to meet when we were back in St. Louis on
(22:30):
a weekday. Afternoon, Desia had his meet her at her
place of work, where she hopped into my car and
we spoke for almost two hours. Full disclosure. We did
pay Desia one hundred dollars to give us this interview.
At the outset, we told her how Danya's best friend
Damon had said to us. It wasn't surprised by the
idea that Donia had died by suicide. Ah, And then
(22:52):
I was very surprised, Okay, very very surprised because Danae
never was suicidal. He well probably hurt someone else before
he hurt himself, to be honest, like he wouldn't be on,
Oh I'm goin to kill myself and nobody know about it,
if he was in danger, if there was someone out
(23:15):
to get him and he knew about it. Could you
see him in that situation taking his own life, to
be honest, No, he will go away, he will disappear.
Like I said, man die. Diane was like everything to me. Nah,
I know I knew him too well for him to
even think about suicide. And it was just the case
(23:39):
that I talked to him two days before he passed away.
Like that's what kind of threw me off. Like we
were just on the phone talking about how he was
going to do things with each other and get married,
all types of things, you know, we were just talking,
trying to see where we were going to move forward to.
Dasha told us that she and Danya were working on
(24:01):
getting back together and maybe they were what was important
to us, and this moment was understanding what Danya was
trying to have Dejah line up for him. Regarding Marcel,
there's a person named Marcel. You're familiar with Marcello. Is
Marcel the one who shot at Gavano? Okay? And then
(24:22):
he started texting you right after that, and he there's
a conversation where he's basically saying he's describing Marcel to you,
and then he asks, can your people line it up?
And I need to know what did he mean by that? Basically,
he wanted me to get him in the room with him.
He wanted to I wouldn't say cause a conflict, but
(24:47):
he trying to. He was trying to resolve it. Diana
don't like people doing stuff towards his family. He lived
his family. Yeah, so I wouldn't say he was going
to hurt him or anything, but he just wanted me
to if I could reach out to him and get
damn near each other. Do you know Marcel personally? Desia
made it seem as though she thought Danya only wanted
(25:09):
to get face to face with Marcel, which we didn't
think squared with everything we saw on his phone, So
we shared that information with Desa, telling her about his
texts with Melissa and Magiana. This new information quickly changed
Deja's mind. He probably was cooking up that as you
as you're saying, what he takes the other girl? But
(25:29):
I just didn't know because he don't want meet He
didn't want me to stop him. That sounds like something
that he would try to put together and wouldn't tell
me to be honest, like because he knows how I
am and how is mama would or whatever. We both
say him no, because we don't want to lose you.
Do you think Danye had it in him to kill
somebody to protect a member of his family? Most definitely yeah,
(25:52):
and he wouldn't care about going to jail for it.
Once we had Deja, it made sense to ask her
about some of the other potential threats and his life.
Did you ever tell you a story about any white
boys out to get him? Nay? Why? Dude's only story
that he ever told me a while ago was that
(26:12):
when you know, we first thought of getting into activism
and Protestant things, that it was people prank calling his phone.
Did he say what they were saying? No, they would
just breathe. He say, they just hold the phone, and
he said, I didn't say nothing. This story about people
calling Donya and just breathing into the phone during their
(26:33):
time as activists, it's pretty unsettling. Who could have gotten
Donya's personal cell phone number. We also figured since Asian
knew Donya's step cousin, Deany Boy, we should ask her
what she thought of him. What about that step cousin
of his? Oh lord, so Deanie all right, trouble maker
(26:55):
in one way, I mean, mhmm. People out their intention,
you know what I'm saying. And Diane he ain't really
liked drama and whenever and his step cousin, which is
always something always between them, no not no, ok, yeah no,
(27:15):
the cousin getting into some stuff, you know, and then
Dane trying to come in and be the rescue. That
was really what Diane was. He always just wanted to
risk people. I know that he had done some drug
runs for dany prior to going out west. And then
it's been explained to us that when he came back,
(27:35):
he want anything to do with that. He was just
trying to get legit. Did he mention his step cousin
wanting him to get back into that. He never specifically
told me that he wanted him to get back into that,
So I don't think, but I don't know. You're right, though,
(27:56):
I don't know. Would you think he would have the
capacity to you harm him, harm him? To be honest,
you he probably I could have thought about it, you know,
And I think he thought about it, to be honest.
Do you think, because you know how it is sometimes
(28:18):
when people want something and that person not trying to
do it for them or give it to them, They're
gonna take it. And that was the type of person
he was, you know what I'm saying to me, He
was just more jealous. Jealousy can take a toll and
make you hurt someone. It was pretty shocking to hear
Deja just straight up say that she thought that not
(28:40):
only was Deanie capable of harming DNA, but that she
thinks he probably considered it. But Danielle died by hanging,
which really doesn't strike us as a tactic street level
criminals would use to kill someone not impossible, but that's
kind of out there, but it is interesting in light
of the story of the alleged intentional overdosing, which of
(29:03):
course could not be true at all, but it does
describe someone who wants to set up their crimes to
look like other things. We sent multiple messages to Deny
via Facebook to offer him an opportunity to talk, but
he never responded. While we had Deja in the car,
we figured we should ask her if she could confirm
(29:23):
that Dnya was ever making any money with wholesale real estate.
So did he specifically ever tell you I have sold
something or made money in real estate? Yeah? He told
me he was recently buying properties. Is that the Illinois?
That's all he told me. Like he was like, but
you but like he told you that he had that
he had made money. Yes, yes, he was making money
(29:45):
in it. And he was also like trying to put
other people in it, like I don't know how explain it,
but he was trying to like have a group. It
is very important to us to figure out the full
picture of what Danya's device use looked like. We figured
it was worth asking Deja if she had ever seen
Dania using a tablet. Did you know of him having
(30:09):
any other devices? I had gave him my iPad, but
I don't know what he did with it. Now that
is interesting. Desia saying she gave Danyae an iPad confirms
Melissa and Derek's memories of seeing Danya use a tablet
for a while and then never seeing it again and
not finding it among Danyae's belongings. This was huge because
(30:31):
it means there is a possibility that there is an
Apple device that Danyae had logged into his accounts on
that went into somebody else's possession. This would be even
more relevant after what Deja told us next. And I
feel really bad that I did not see the post
which posted on his page. What post is this? I'm
(30:51):
tired and he waved? Do you have it? Because I haven't.
I have not seen that one, and I don't know.
I killed me. Deja pulled out her phone and opened
Donna's Facebook page, and right there, on October six, is
a meme style post that just has one word tired,
(31:12):
followed by an ellipses in an emoji of a hand waving.
It was posted at eight thirt pm. The post settings
were not public. It must have been only viewable for
specific friends, because like I'm telling you, like, if I
pull up Facebook and look at his profile, I can't.
I don't see that. Even the police looked at his
Facebook page and they would have no, they would have
(31:35):
written that down had they seen that. That's crazy and
he says tired by So who else has seen this?
I don't know. I tried to tell his mom, he's
the fan tailer. Everybody like, that's what he He's layst
post was what does this mean? That what I'm saying,
(31:56):
you know, like, because it could be, it could be
what you think it could be, but not like some
I just does that seem like? Does that seem like him? No?
What is what I'm saying? I feel like somebody did
this to him. Despite this post, Desia was still skeptical
that Danye died by suicide. We figured it was only
(32:19):
fair to tell her about the hangman's new search we
found in Danya's YouTube history. There is a search in
the YouTube history for how to tie a hangman's noose
with a blanket. I never ever heard him talk about
things like that, I promise you, Like, that's what makes
(32:40):
me believe like somebody tried to plot all of these
now listen, like most people who hear this are going
to hear like there's a search in his YouTube history
for this new instruction, and then there's a Facebook post
that's limited to certain people that as tired hand waves,
(33:01):
you know, like goodbye, and the people people who hear
that and go like, oh, he he definitely killed himself,
Like maybe we're at the end of the road. Maybe
these are maybe these are the final proof that everyone
needs that he was in fact just you know, something snapped.
He just it was too everything was too hard, and
maybe he did do that to himself. But nin when
(33:22):
I say you, when me and Dane was together, John,
we went through a lot of stuff. Me and Die
went through homeless, it's together. We went through a lot
of stuff. So that's what I'm saying. We went through
so much and he never wants you know what I'm saying,
Like he had been through so much adversity and that
(33:45):
never came up. How would he want to do bad
to himself when he was doing good? You get what
I'm saying. That's what I don't get. When we were
doing that, Diane was strong, he was so strong. I
was the weak one. Crying and oh my god, what
we're gonna do? He was Bay is gonna be okay,
(34:07):
I'm gonna get the job at FedEx. He got the
job at FedEx. And like I keep telling you, Diary
wasn't doing he wasn't in a bad position. If like,
even when he was in a bad position, he was
still looking for positivity. I don't get like, like I said,
it don't line up with me because we went through
(34:27):
the worst. I just can't put that in my head.
I'm sorry, which is I'm just fair. That's just fair.
That's just not the dying that I knew. You know.
And even when, like I said, when he was in
a bad position or however you want to call it,
he never once thought about hurting himself. He just thought
(34:47):
about making it better. Before parting, we thought it was
appropriate to give Desja a chance to defend herself against
what Melissa and Milicia had said about her. They said
that you set people. Um, that was what they told
me about you. Um, I know they hate me. I
just gonna laughs on it. I don't know from a
(35:10):
canapeg where they're talking about. But to be honest, why
do you think I don't talk to them now. They
are very fake people. To me, I am no type
of faith. For what it's worth, Dejah and Melissa do
not get along. If you hadn't noticed, but both of
these women believe deeply, fervently, passionately, that Danie would never
(35:33):
have harmed himself. We thought it was important to bring
some of this information back to Melissa with Derek buy
her side. We again brought up Marcel and what looked
like the rumblings of a plot by Danie to hurt
or kill Marcel. This time, when we talked about it,
Melissa walked back a little her earlier statement that Danye
(35:53):
would do it himself. I would say this as far
as killed it somebody, planning on it, and going through
with it. Even though Danye didn't tell me every single thing.
He told me a lot, And if Danye was going
to go and kill somebody, I would know, Milicia would
(36:19):
have known. You don't think that he would not tell you,
So he didn't try to stop him because Danye didn't
want to do it. Planning it and doing it two
different things. Sometimes that he probably wants to look a
little tougher than he really was. If that him and
Damon had made some plans to do it, which it's
(36:39):
not even in Damon either. It's really not. They just
not built like that. It ultimately didn't matter because even
if Danya was planning to hurt Marcel, that plan never
came to fruition. And in a follow up conversation with Damon,
he was pretty adamant that Marcel didn't even know any
(37:00):
so the idea that Marcel would have come after him,
he thought, was pretty laughable. Doubly so in light of
the way in which Danye died. Damon re expressed to
us that Danye felt like a burden to his mother.
So we asked her if she thought that was true. Nope,
because we made sure we told him that he was
never a burden on us. I only asked his Damon
told us that he'd expressed that to him at some point.
(37:22):
We always made shoot our kids, and we told him,
I see, you're not a burden all our kids if
they need somewhere to sleep, as long as we got
a roof over our head, you got a roof over you,
he said, He said, if I'm if, if I ever
if you ever feel like you know, I'm a burning said, now,
if you know that you know Danyae. You know better
(37:44):
than that, you know. That's That's what I'm saying. Like
conversations that we had, I've had with Danyae, and we've
had with Danyae. It's always been open. It's always been open.
So if I thought that it was to the point
where he was, it was just too much, especially that night. Yeah,
(38:05):
I would have known. And then this Facebook post. We
felt a bit let down that no one in Danya's
family had ever mentioned it to us. Maybe they thought
if we saw the post, especially at the outset of
this investigative effort, we would quickly close the book on
the possibility that Donya was murdered. Whatever the reason for
not telling us. We asked about the post. When we
(38:28):
look at his Facebook profile, we can only see what's public,
and Aja showed me that he made a post on
the sixteenth that said I'm like I'm tired or tired
and that had a hand wave. Okay, So did you
ever see that or did not make people aware of it? Yeah? Okay? Yeah?
Who who did? Who did see it? Who told you
about it? I think the police? Dude, Milicia dude, Okay,
(38:54):
so she could see it. Yeah, even if he didn't
make that. What is tired me? I don't know what
does tired me? Are? Good night? But again, but again,
also Dane, he would have sent me something. He would
have left me, something said something to neatly. No note, nothing,
(39:19):
no text, no messages or anything. It just makes no sense.
Melissa and her family don't think the tired post on
Dane's Facebook page means much at all, and perhaps they're right.
People do often post on their social media pages that
they're tired. When they wake up the next day and
(39:40):
go about their lives. The post isn't treated as some
cry for help. It only looks like a goodbye when
in fact someone does die. But here we are with
two digital fingerprints, both left at a time when Danya
was sitting next to his stepfather on the couch watching basketball.
Do the timing in the later deletions and usage of
(40:01):
Donye's Google account taken into context with this missing iPad
point to a conspiracy or is that just static noise
that is confusing a clear signal making the notion that
Donye's death is a homicide now a bridge too far,
too irrational to walk across. We have been eating, sleeping,
(40:22):
and breathing Donne Dion Jones for more than two years,
trying to read every text, speak with every friend, and
examine every detail of his life and death that we
could get our hands on. As it stands, we can't
prove anything, and truly we never would be able to
because we aren't a court. We're two guys who gave
a damn and lent our time and resources to Melissa
(40:44):
and her family when they were trying to shed light
on what happened to Donya. We've personally vacillated back and
forth on just what happened to him, questioning the police,
questioning Melissa, questioning ourselves, sometimes falling deep into the caverns
of minutia looking for the subtless clues and leads, a
large portion of which went nowhere. And so we're never
(41:06):
included in this show. At the end of everything, if
we want this investigation to amount to anything, we would
need to bring it to someone with subpoena power, someone
who could separate the signal from the noise, someone who
could crack open the data and Dania's accounts and pin
down once and for all which devices at which locations
made the posts and searches in question. We needed someone
(41:28):
who could command that a real investigation take place, someone
who promised to give all the residents of St. Louis
County a fair shake. That's next time on, After the Uprising.
After the Uprising is directed, produced, investigated, written and reported
by myself, Raino the Sheelski, and John Duffy. John Duffy
(41:50):
was also the editor. Dave Cassidy was producer. Sound engineering
design and mixed by Josh Condon. Executive producers were Matt
McDonough and Tina x Arros for Now This, Brett Kushner
for Grip Eye Media, and Jeff Boove 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. Kristin McVicker and Taya Wilson
(42:12):
were production assistants, and Hailey 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 Yazi.
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 the Uprising is a
(42:33):
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 or 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 one. Previously and after the uprising, if this happens
to your child, wouldn't you want to get down to
the bottom of this and find out what really happened.
I think that black people in general are suspicious of
that because of the history of lynching in this country.
I definitely understand why the parents would jump to that conclusion.
(00:49):
Do you think Dan would try to arrange to yet
Marcel hurt Dane would do it himself. You know, you
want to come over after? I think, you know, to
take He had a lot on his mind, So you
want to talk me and I a rest ship. Was
he influenced me in positive waves? I learned from older
brother myth too, you know what I'm saying. And he
looked out for me, you know, all right hand man.
(01:11):
But when I went back to look at those they're gone.
I can't say this for certain, but it makes me
wonder is someone still logged into his account somewhere perhaps?
Oh wow, yeah, God, oh God. What you're looking at
(01:40):
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 himything. Danye became an activist in the wake of
(02:05):
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.
(02:31):
As far as who lord Danyae out, we had already
got word that people thought that that's who it was.
And at this point I'm really believe in that they
had something to do with it. Have you or anyone
in your immediate family talked to him? Oh no, no,
(02:53):
now the no one's confronted him about this. Oh no,
m M. Are you in any way afraid of him? Um,
I'm afraid. I'm not afraid. I'm just what with what
I have to do if I'm dead? I can't do
it right. This is from a conversation we had with
Melissa in July, long before we had Danye's phone act
(03:17):
and before the St. Louis County Police destroyed the bed sheet.
She wanted to tell us what she was hearing about
one of her step nephews, who has the nickname Deanie Boy.
She had been told that he was possibly involved in
getting Danye out of the house that night he died,
and she called to tell us that members of her
family believed he may have also been involved in someone
else's death. He said, um, I would serve them some
(03:42):
bad rogues, and I've been twice phone about it. And
so I said what he said, I'm serious. So I
looked at Danyee and Diane was like, do you tripping?
And I said, you know what you can be? Think?
Could you say a real stupid Melissa and Danye basically
(04:06):
told Dennie Boy to leave after saying such a heinous thing.
And then sometime later the woman Deanie Boy allegedly threatened
did in fact wind up dead. We know it's a
lot to track in one big speculation, Sandwich. That's what
this whole episode is going to be. We're taking out
our flashlight and climbing down a lot of rabbit holes here.
(04:27):
So strap in. Maybe we can pull back and go
big picture and see where you all sit at this point.
Are you feeling that it was murder, but possibly not
racially motivated murder? In other words, that it could have
been related to something I don't know, you know, Deanie
or something. Are you thinking it's police specific related? I mean,
(04:50):
I want to get a sense of where you know,
where do you think? What do you think happened? What
I think happened is my son was lower it out
to be murdered, and that's it. Who is That's that's see.
Everybody else wants to make it seem like it's one thing.
My main thing is who the hell kill my son.
(05:12):
I don't care if it was the police. I don't
care if it was President Obama, I don't care. I
need to find out who killed my son. So I'm
not leaning towards anything. What I'm leaning is towards is
someone killed my son and he did not commit suicide.
For more than two years, we have met with Melissa
and her family. We've spoken over the phone, texted, emailed,
(05:33):
and across all of that communication We've heard several bits
and pieces of theories about possible suspects and potential motives
and just strange happenings that we think we should share.
Some of these bits and pieces were things that Melissa
and her family found odd but really had nowhere to
go with. There was a white man in the back
(05:55):
of the church when we got there, just standing there,
not speaking to anybody. Is he the only white guy?
They're the only white guy there. He wasn't the only
white guy. It was activist there, but he stood out there. Yeah,
no one. When he came down. He's the only white
man that I saw him there. When he came down,
he didn't speak to the family. He didn't even go
(06:16):
looking danya He didn't go He didn't walk past Danyae.
He walked over to and remember Christ's table, they had
a Bible on it did exactly like this with his
hands his fingers like he was reading something, but you
could tell he wasn't really reading. And he turned around
and walked out. Didn't see him anymore. What did he
look like? A middle age white guy, not really heavy,
(06:38):
short hair, he had like um, a scruffly like beer
type things. Anything he had on some like light khaki
pants and a regular shirt and no one's ever seen
this before whenever Nope. I had actually asked our older sister,
I'm like, did you see him? And she was like, yeah,
(06:59):
who is he? Was like, I don't know, but he
seems like really weird, like he didn't even look at Danyelle.
I said, okay, well, maybe he's an X like maybe
an ex manager. Maybe he's a teacher. So when you know,
after the funeral and we all got together and started
talking about everything, I asked my niece and nephew like,
did you see the white guy that was in there?
And they was like, yeah, we saw him. He was
(07:19):
staying in the back. And that was like I said, well,
is he like maybe an ex manager, maybe he's he
a teacher. They was like, we don't know who he is.
We've never seen him a day in all. With no
name or photographs of this man, there really isn't anything
to build off of, so it just stands out as
an oddity in their minds. Who was this guy? Why
(07:40):
was he at Danyae's funeral? Was he somehow involved in
Danye's death? Or was he just some weird guy who
likes to walk into stranger's funerals and speaking of mysterious
white people, Melissa and Derek once told us a quick
anecdote about some nameless white boys who were supposedly messing
with don Yae Danyee All said, you know, people can
(08:01):
know where you live, and you need to always have
your protection. And now mine you out there doing what
you do and you're you're getting threats. Made me think
about some things when he talked to my brother, because
he was saying something about some some white boys or
something being after him, and he was trying to enquire
(08:24):
about a gun, so you know, something was definitely gonna heat.
He wouldn't want to worry anyone about issues and maybe
going on with him or let you know the better
type thing. Do you remember anything else about these these
white boys wh my brother was telling me that when
he pulled up and he's talking, he said, hey, you
(08:44):
know what I can get, you know, a gun or something?
White boys you know looking for me and something something
said of fact, they've been they've been messing with me,
he said. He told me he said they called me
a nigga, Ma a nigga, and I knocked them out.
I hit him. Do you remember even a rough that
(09:07):
was like maybe September, September obviously September. So according to Derek,
one day, his brother pulled up to their house and
Danye happened to be outside. Upon seeing Derek's brother, Danyae
asked him if he could help him acquire a new gun,
(09:28):
and the reason he gave for needing one was that
some white boys were trying to get at him. According
to Melissa, Danyae told her that some white boys had
called him the N word and he had knocked one
of them out. Are these all the same white boys?
We don't know. All of this was roughly a month
or two before Danyae died. As with the mystery funeral guests,
(09:50):
there are no real details to build off of, and
maybe these white boys have absolutely nothing to do with
Danyae's death, but it does give us pause. And then
there is this step cousin you heard Melissa talk about
at the beginning of this episode, nicknamed Deanie Boy. Before
Danyane had left early last year, you know him and
(10:10):
Deanie Boy was like they were around each other a lot, right,
So from what I'm hearing, Deanie Boy's father and Deanie
Boy was having dany make runs for them. Okay, you
know what runs me right? Yeah, okay, I'm going to
(10:31):
get You mean that he's like driving drugs, yeah, like
getting getting them for them, you know. So that's why
Dane was supposed to have disappeared, because he didn't want
anything to do that with that anymore. He said, My,
I've done some things you know that you wouldn't be
(10:51):
proud of. And um and I faild like what he said.
I so I pushed like I was sowing drugs and
I was like why. He said, that's why I left
to go away, to get my money together and come
back and start my business. He said, you know, I
tried that once, just to get my money, right as
(11:12):
far as that, and they want me to come back.
So what's from what I'm hearing is when they found
out that Danyae had come back, they had started making
a lot of threats towards Danyae and Danye wouldn't come
out anymore. And do you think he owed them anybody?
(11:33):
I don't. I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.
Melissa didn't say she thought Deanie Boy actually killed Danyae,
but speculated that maybe he was somehow involved with getting
Danye out of the house. Who would have put him
up to this, She didn't know, but further speculated it
may have had to do with drug charges brought against
(11:55):
him the summer before Danyae's death. We got a hold
of dannie Boys criminal record, and it's pretty long. Since
he was a teenager. He's been getting in trouble for
various thefts and he also was charged with assaulting a
seemingly random person on the street. They need boy got
caught up on some drug charges right before Dane was Hell,
(12:18):
that's what he's on the round floor. And then he
went to Florida, and then and then he came back
and was in town that day. Yep. Then there are
the two things that Melissa has pointed to all along,
right from the beginning, that never got much attention from
the police, and that we would feel remiss if we
(12:38):
didn't talk about now, the strange cars that Melissa and
her family all witnessed parked on the street in front
of their house in the weeks preceding Danya's death, and
the brick Danie was keeping next to the couch where
he slept. First, let's discuss the cars. See The thing
with the cars is most of the mant tina windows
(13:00):
the front it was tenant, but around the car was
completely tinant each and every time, and it was different cars,
and it was one person sitting in the car or
that it looks like like most of the time it's
only one, but one time it was more. And that's
when there were you know, the black SUVs um that
(13:23):
the police drive. So this say, this is our home, okay,
and there's a street if we look to the left
into the right. They were on both ends of aunt
how just parked there, but you could see that there
were people in it. So me and Diane and I
(13:45):
we went out and sit on the porch. This is
one time that this just broke it all away, like
made us like really, you know, kind of scared a
little bit. We went on the porch and we looked.
I said, you see that, She said, yeah, he said
that on both ends watching you can see them looking
this way though. So we played with them, you know,
we're like and we went back in the house and
(14:07):
went back in the house. We went in my bedroom
and opened up the blinds. Those guys got out of there.
The the trucks walked in front of our home, and
it was at least five or six of them and
stood there. Oh, white guys, all white guys. You can
tell that they were cops because they were on like
(14:28):
the same kind of cars, those trucks. We see him.
We still see them now. But um, they just stood
in front of our house, and so it really creeps down. Yea, yeah,
he said, whoa, what's going on? And he bagged back.
I said, look, they can come and knock on this
door if they want to. You know, they don't have
(14:48):
it's nothing in here. He said yeah. I said, let
him just stare. So I'm just sitting there looking at them.
And then they finally walked back, got in their trucks
and pulled off. Melissa told us this story on several occasions.
It clearly made an impact on her. How could it not.
We made Sunshine requests to several local and state law
(15:11):
enforcement agencies to see if anything would come up about
surveillance on Melissa's house, but we weren't given anything back.
We hesitate to suggest that this means some form of
surveillance wasn't happening. We also made a Freedom of Information
Act request to the Department of Homeland security and to
the FBI, but again got nothing back, which we don't
(15:32):
think means much because Foyer requests typically need the threat
of a lawsuit to get any meaningful response. And then,
if you remember back in episode one, we asked County
p D spokesman Sergeant Sean McGuire if police looked into
the statements Melissa made about cars being parked outside of
her home. She claims that in the time leading up
(15:54):
to his death, that there were menacing people who had
been around her home. Was that it all looked at?
Um I believe that was looked at eventually. She did
not report that stuff immediately to detectives because part of
their initial investigation they didn't know anything about that. As
time went, honestly had the public Facebook post and pat
told Facebook and said us that's when obviously detectives were
(16:14):
interested in talking to her about that. But it was
definitely looked into eventually. Based on our read of the
police report on Dane's death, every part of this statement
by Sergeant McGuire appears to be exactly false. Detective Anderer's
report states that, in fact, Melissa did tell police the
morning of Dane's death that strange cars had been outside
(16:35):
of her home, but the report contains no mention of
Anderer or any detective looking into these suspicious vehicles in
any capacity. Then there is the brick that aroused Melissa's
very first suspicions. There was a brick now there, and
that's the reason why I had actually went out to
the backyard because I'm like, why why did he have
(16:56):
his break in his house? What's going on? You know,
he had said about it where he sleeps. That's when
my my intensland, and I'm like, what the hell. Before
Melissa even knew that Donna was dead, she found the
brick he kept next to the couch where he was sleeping.
If you remember from episode one, she had gone downstairs
(17:17):
to look for Donya and saw the brick. She had
no idea why it would be there, and upon carrying
it to the back patio where it came from, she
found Danya hanging in the tree. Since that moment, she
has suspected that the brick was a weapon that Danya
was keeping close, something he could use to defend himself
against an attacker. If that is in fact, why Danyae
(17:41):
was keeping a brick next to him while he slept,
that would seem to suggest a few things. For one,
he is afraid of being attacked, and two he is
afraid of being attacked by someone who can get into
his house. Was he afraid of random intruders or of
somebody specific with the White Boys know where Donne lived
(18:03):
and how to get into his house? Or is that
the domain of perhaps a step cousin. And what about Marcel,
the person who allegedly shot Danyae's best friend Damon and
narrowly missed his brother Javan. When we re listened to
the audio of Melissa reading for us her text message
chain with Donna about those events, it started to seem
(18:24):
pretty evident that Donne was planning some sort of revenge
attack on Marcel, and that this plan was devised in
such a way so that it would not lead back
to him. Remember how Donye told Melissa the streets were
going to handle it. The streets was going to take
care of that. He knows a lot of people, So
(18:47):
I say, knew it was plotting to shoot other people
and already have at one point, do y'all wise up
or do y'all just let him just keep shooting and
sit people? Shake my head? He says he was he
would get taken care of. I said them, when he's
(19:10):
taken care of his people, was going to come after them.
Think so he said, Okay, do not understand what I'm saying.
Not if it's a set of things different. It sounds
like Dna is hinting to his mother in these texts
that he may have been trying to have somebody else
kill Marcel. Now add to this the text he sent
(19:33):
to his friend in Springfield, Magianna and tod Asia. The
text to my Gianna said that an m F was
getting popped and that soon he might have to come
lay up with her for a week. The texts to
Deja named Marcel gave a description of him, had Danye
saying he knew where Marcell lived, and then we're followed
up by Danye sending two photographs, likely containing Marcel's image.
(19:57):
He ended it all by asking if Deja's people could
line it up. Knowing that all of this transpired about
four weeks before Danyae ended up dead, seems so entirely coincidental,
almost unbelievably so. Here he is seemingly plotting a hit
on someone, then that someone is detained but released Immediately after,
(20:20):
Danyelle gets very paranoid or stressed, depending on who you ask.
He doesn't want to go anywhere unless it's to show
a property. He asks Derek's brother for help getting a gun,
ostensibly to protect himself from some maybe real, maybe made
up white boys, and he eventually puts a brick next
to his bed. One possibility is that he wanted to
(20:41):
use it as a weapon if someone tried to attack
him in the night, and honestly, it's hard to think
of a second reason he would keep a brick next
to him while he slept. What's going on here? Did
Marcel find out that DNA was maybe preparing a revenge
attack on him through an intermediary? We really wanted to
know what days I had to say about all of this,
(21:01):
But once we told her that we had opened Danyae's phone,
she would answer a text or a Facebook message here
and there, but every time she scheduled to meet us
in person, she wouldn't show up. On more than one occasion,
we sat waiting for her at a bar or a restaurant,
only for her to never come. We would schedule phone calls,
but when the time came to talk, she wouldn't answer.
(21:25):
We figured we should just like all of our cards
on the table and put the ball in her court.
Your call. It's been forwarded to an automatic voice message
system at the town. Please record your message, Hidayja. It's
John from the Don podcast. Sorry, we weren't able to
connect with you this morning. We really hope to be
(21:45):
able to speak with you again. I know Ray made
it clear to you that we did open up Dona's
uh Android phone, and there's just a few questions we
have after seeing some texts that he sent to you,
particularly revolving around Marcel and you know, the way Donya
was speaking with you around those events, and you know,
(22:08):
it just looks it can just kind of look strange
for me outside, and we were hoping you could explain
what you guys were talking about, so it makes sense
to us. So, uh, you know, just give us a
text or call and we'll talk about it. Thank you. Eventually,
Deja did get back to us. We made another plan
to meet when we were back in St. Louis on
(22:30):
a weekday. Afternoon, Desia had his meet her at her
place of work, where she hopped into my car and
we spoke for almost two hours. Full disclosure. We did
pay Desia one hundred dollars to give us this interview.
At the outset, we told her how Danya's best friend
Damon had said to us. It wasn't surprised by the
idea that Donia had died by suicide. Ah, And then
(22:52):
I was very surprised, Okay, very very surprised because Danae
never was suicidal. He well probably hurt someone else before
he hurt himself, to be honest, like he wouldn't be on,
Oh I'm goin to kill myself and nobody know about it,
if he was in danger, if there was someone out
(23:15):
to get him and he knew about it. Could you
see him in that situation taking his own life, to
be honest, No, he will go away, he will disappear.
Like I said, man die. Diane was like everything to me. Nah,
I know I knew him too well for him to
even think about suicide. And it was just the case
(23:39):
that I talked to him two days before he passed away.
Like that's what kind of threw me off. Like we
were just on the phone talking about how he was
going to do things with each other and get married,
all types of things, you know, we were just talking,
trying to see where we were going to move forward to.
Dasha told us that she and Danya were working on
(24:01):
getting back together and maybe they were what was important
to us, and this moment was understanding what Danya was
trying to have Dejah line up for him. Regarding Marcel,
there's a person named Marcel. You're familiar with Marcello. Is
Marcel the one who shot at Gavano? Okay? And then
(24:22):
he started texting you right after that, and he there's
a conversation where he's basically saying he's describing Marcel to you,
and then he asks, can your people line it up?
And I need to know what did he mean by that? Basically,
he wanted me to get him in the room with him.
He wanted to I wouldn't say cause a conflict, but
(24:47):
he trying to. He was trying to resolve it. Diana
don't like people doing stuff towards his family. He lived
his family. Yeah, so I wouldn't say he was going
to hurt him or anything, but he just wanted me
to if I could reach out to him and get
damn near each other. Do you know Marcel personally? Desia
made it seem as though she thought Danya only wanted
(25:09):
to get face to face with Marcel, which we didn't
think squared with everything we saw on his phone, So
we shared that information with Desa, telling her about his
texts with Melissa and Magiana. This new information quickly changed
Deja's mind. He probably was cooking up that as you
as you're saying, what he takes the other girl? But
(25:29):
I just didn't know because he don't want meet He
didn't want me to stop him. That sounds like something
that he would try to put together and wouldn't tell
me to be honest, like because he knows how I
am and how is mama would or whatever. We both
say him no, because we don't want to lose you.
Do you think Danye had it in him to kill
somebody to protect a member of his family? Most definitely yeah,
(25:52):
and he wouldn't care about going to jail for it.
Once we had Deja, it made sense to ask her
about some of the other potential threats and his life.
Did you ever tell you a story about any white
boys out to get him? Nay? Why? Dude's only story
that he ever told me a while ago was that
(26:12):
when you know, we first thought of getting into activism
and Protestant things, that it was people prank calling his phone.
Did he say what they were saying? No, they would
just breathe. He say, they just hold the phone, and
he said, I didn't say nothing. This story about people
calling Donya and just breathing into the phone during their
(26:33):
time as activists, it's pretty unsettling. Who could have gotten
Donya's personal cell phone number. We also figured since Asian
knew Donya's step cousin, Deany Boy, we should ask her
what she thought of him. What about that step cousin
of his? Oh lord, so Deanie all right, trouble maker
(26:55):
in one way, I mean, mhmm. People out their intention,
you know what I'm saying. And Diane he ain't really
liked drama and whenever and his step cousin, which is
always something always between them, no not no, ok, yeah no,
(27:15):
the cousin getting into some stuff, you know, and then
Dane trying to come in and be the rescue. That
was really what Diane was. He always just wanted to
risk people. I know that he had done some drug
runs for dany prior to going out west. And then
it's been explained to us that when he came back,
(27:35):
he want anything to do with that. He was just
trying to get legit. Did he mention his step cousin
wanting him to get back into that. He never specifically
told me that he wanted him to get back into that,
So I don't think, but I don't know. You're right, though,
(27:56):
I don't know. Would you think he would have the
capacity to you harm him, harm him? To be honest,
you he probably I could have thought about it, you know,
And I think he thought about it, to be honest.
Do you think, because you know how it is sometimes
(28:18):
when people want something and that person not trying to
do it for them or give it to them, They're
gonna take it. And that was the type of person
he was, you know what I'm saying to me, He
was just more jealous. Jealousy can take a toll and
make you hurt someone. It was pretty shocking to hear
Deja just straight up say that she thought that not
(28:40):
only was Deanie capable of harming DNA, but that she
thinks he probably considered it. But Danielle died by hanging,
which really doesn't strike us as a tactic street level
criminals would use to kill someone not impossible, but that's
kind of out there, but it is interesting in light
of the story of the alleged intentional overdosing, which of
(29:03):
course could not be true at all, but it does
describe someone who wants to set up their crimes to
look like other things. We sent multiple messages to Deny
via Facebook to offer him an opportunity to talk, but
he never responded. While we had Deja in the car,
we figured we should ask her if she could confirm
(29:23):
that Dnya was ever making any money with wholesale real estate.
So did he specifically ever tell you I have sold
something or made money in real estate? Yeah? He told
me he was recently buying properties. Is that the Illinois?
That's all he told me. Like he was like, but
you but like he told you that he had that
he had made money. Yes, yes, he was making money
(29:45):
in it. And he was also like trying to put
other people in it, like I don't know how explain it,
but he was trying to like have a group. It
is very important to us to figure out the full
picture of what Danya's device use looked like. We figured
it was worth asking Deja if she had ever seen
Dania using a tablet. Did you know of him having
(30:09):
any other devices? I had gave him my iPad, but
I don't know what he did with it. Now that
is interesting. Desia saying she gave Danyae an iPad confirms
Melissa and Derek's memories of seeing Danya use a tablet
for a while and then never seeing it again and
not finding it among Danyae's belongings. This was huge because
(30:31):
it means there is a possibility that there is an
Apple device that Danyae had logged into his accounts on
that went into somebody else's possession. This would be even
more relevant after what Deja told us next. And I
feel really bad that I did not see the post
which posted on his page. What post is this? I'm
(30:51):
tired and he waved? Do you have it? Because I haven't.
I have not seen that one, and I don't know.
I killed me. Deja pulled out her phone and opened
Donna's Facebook page, and right there, on October six, is
a meme style post that just has one word tired,
(31:12):
followed by an ellipses in an emoji of a hand waving.
It was posted at eight thirt pm. The post settings
were not public. It must have been only viewable for
specific friends, because like I'm telling you, like, if I
pull up Facebook and look at his profile, I can't.
I don't see that. Even the police looked at his
Facebook page and they would have no, they would have
(31:35):
written that down had they seen that. That's crazy and
he says tired by So who else has seen this?
I don't know. I tried to tell his mom, he's
the fan tailer. Everybody like, that's what he He's layst
post was what does this mean? That what I'm saying,
(31:56):
you know, like, because it could be, it could be
what you think it could be, but not like some
I just does that seem like? Does that seem like him? No?
What is what I'm saying? I feel like somebody did
this to him. Despite this post, Desia was still skeptical
that Danye died by suicide. We figured it was only
(32:19):
fair to tell her about the hangman's new search we
found in Danya's YouTube history. There is a search in
the YouTube history for how to tie a hangman's noose
with a blanket. I never ever heard him talk about
things like that, I promise you, Like, that's what makes
(32:40):
me believe like somebody tried to plot all of these
now listen, like most people who hear this are going
to hear like there's a search in his YouTube history
for this new instruction, and then there's a Facebook post
that's limited to certain people that as tired hand waves,
(33:01):
you know, like goodbye, and the people people who hear
that and go like, oh, he he definitely killed himself,
Like maybe we're at the end of the road. Maybe
these are maybe these are the final proof that everyone
needs that he was in fact just you know, something snapped.
He just it was too everything was too hard, and
maybe he did do that to himself. But nin when
(33:22):
I say you, when me and Dane was together, John,
we went through a lot of stuff. Me and Die
went through homeless, it's together. We went through a lot
of stuff. So that's what I'm saying. We went through
so much and he never wants you know what I'm saying,
Like he had been through so much adversity and that
(33:45):
never came up. How would he want to do bad
to himself when he was doing good? You get what
I'm saying. That's what I don't get. When we were
doing that, Diane was strong, he was so strong. I
was the weak one. Crying and oh my god, what
we're gonna do? He was Bay is gonna be okay,
(34:07):
I'm gonna get the job at FedEx. He got the
job at FedEx. And like I keep telling you, Diary
wasn't doing he wasn't in a bad position. If like,
even when he was in a bad position, he was
still looking for positivity. I don't get like, like I said,
it don't line up with me because we went through
(34:27):
the worst. I just can't put that in my head.
I'm sorry, which is I'm just fair. That's just fair.
That's just not the dying that I knew. You know.
And even when, like I said, when he was in
a bad position or however you want to call it,
he never once thought about hurting himself. He just thought
(34:47):
about making it better. Before parting, we thought it was
appropriate to give Desja a chance to defend herself against
what Melissa and Milicia had said about her. They said
that you set people. Um, that was what they told
me about you. Um, I know they hate me. I
just gonna laughs on it. I don't know from a
(35:10):
canapeg where they're talking about. But to be honest, why
do you think I don't talk to them now. They
are very fake people. To me, I am no type
of faith. For what it's worth, Dejah and Melissa do
not get along. If you hadn't noticed, but both of
these women believe deeply, fervently, passionately, that Danie would never
(35:33):
have harmed himself. We thought it was important to bring
some of this information back to Melissa with Derek buy
her side. We again brought up Marcel and what looked
like the rumblings of a plot by Danie to hurt
or kill Marcel. This time, when we talked about it,
Melissa walked back a little her earlier statement that Danye
(35:53):
would do it himself. I would say this as far
as killed it somebody, planning on it, and going through
with it. Even though Danye didn't tell me every single thing.
He told me a lot, And if Danye was going
to go and kill somebody, I would know, Milicia would
(36:19):
have known. You don't think that he would not tell you,
So he didn't try to stop him because Danye didn't
want to do it. Planning it and doing it two
different things. Sometimes that he probably wants to look a
little tougher than he really was. If that him and
Damon had made some plans to do it, which it's
(36:39):
not even in Damon either. It's really not. They just
not built like that. It ultimately didn't matter because even
if Danya was planning to hurt Marcel, that plan never
came to fruition. And in a follow up conversation with Damon,
he was pretty adamant that Marcel didn't even know any
(37:00):
so the idea that Marcel would have come after him,
he thought, was pretty laughable. Doubly so in light of
the way in which Danye died. Damon re expressed to
us that Danye felt like a burden to his mother.
So we asked her if she thought that was true. Nope,
because we made sure we told him that he was
never a burden on us. I only asked his Damon
told us that he'd expressed that to him at some point.
(37:22):
We always made shoot our kids, and we told him,
I see, you're not a burden all our kids if
they need somewhere to sleep, as long as we got
a roof over our head, you got a roof over you,
he said, He said, if I'm if, if I ever
if you ever feel like you know, I'm a burning said, now,
if you know that you know Danyae. You know better
(37:44):
than that, you know. That's That's what I'm saying. Like
conversations that we had, I've had with Danyae, and we've
had with Danyae. It's always been open. It's always been open.
So if I thought that it was to the point
where he was, it was just too much, especially that night. Yeah,
(38:05):
I would have known. And then this Facebook post. We
felt a bit let down that no one in Danya's
family had ever mentioned it to us. Maybe they thought
if we saw the post, especially at the outset of
this investigative effort, we would quickly close the book on
the possibility that Donya was murdered. Whatever the reason for
not telling us. We asked about the post. When we
(38:28):
look at his Facebook profile, we can only see what's public,
and Aja showed me that he made a post on
the sixteenth that said I'm like I'm tired or tired
and that had a hand wave. Okay, So did you
ever see that or did not make people aware of it? Yeah? Okay? Yeah?
Who who did? Who did see it? Who told you
about it? I think the police? Dude, Milicia dude, Okay,
(38:54):
so she could see it. Yeah, even if he didn't
make that. What is tired me? I don't know what
does tired me? Are? Good night? But again, but again,
also Dane, he would have sent me something. He would
have left me, something said something to neatly. No note, nothing,
(39:19):
no text, no messages or anything. It just makes no sense.
Melissa and her family don't think the tired post on
Dane's Facebook page means much at all, and perhaps they're right.
People do often post on their social media pages that
they're tired. When they wake up the next day and
(39:40):
go about their lives. The post isn't treated as some
cry for help. It only looks like a goodbye when
in fact someone does die. But here we are with
two digital fingerprints, both left at a time when Danya
was sitting next to his stepfather on the couch watching basketball.
Do the timing in the later deletions and usage of
(40:01):
Donye's Google account taken into context with this missing iPad
point to a conspiracy or is that just static noise
that is confusing a clear signal making the notion that
Donye's death is a homicide now a bridge too far,
too irrational to walk across. We have been eating, sleeping,
(40:22):
and breathing Donne Dion Jones for more than two years,
trying to read every text, speak with every friend, and
examine every detail of his life and death that we
could get our hands on. As it stands, we can't
prove anything, and truly we never would be able to
because we aren't a court. We're two guys who gave
a damn and lent our time and resources to Melissa
(40:44):
and her family when they were trying to shed light
on what happened to Donya. We've personally vacillated back and
forth on just what happened to him, questioning the police,
questioning Melissa, questioning ourselves, sometimes falling deep into the caverns
of minutia looking for the subtless clues and leads, a
large portion of which went nowhere. And so we're never
(41:06):
included in this show. At the end of everything, if
we want this investigation to amount to anything, we would
need to bring it to someone with subpoena power, someone
who could separate the signal from the noise, someone who
could crack open the data and Dania's accounts and pin
down once and for all which devices at which locations
made the posts and searches in question. We needed someone
(41:28):
who could command that a real investigation take place, someone
who promised to give all the residents of St. Louis
County a fair shake. That's next time on, After the Uprising.
After the Uprising is directed, produced, investigated, written and reported
by myself, Raino the Sheelski, and John Duffy. John Duffy
(41:50):
was also the editor. Dave Cassidy was producer. Sound engineering
design and mixed by Josh Condon. Executive producers were Matt
McDonough and Tina x Arros for Now This, Brett Kushner
for Grip Eye Media, and Jeff Boove 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. Kristin McVicker and Taya Wilson
(42:12):
were production assistants, and Hailey 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 Yazi.
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 the Uprising is a
(42:33):
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.
Hosts And Creators
Ray Nowosielski
Maria Chappelle-Nadal
John Duffy
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