June 11, 2024 • 36 mins
Amir Brandy, co-founder of Real STL News, and his videographer friend Darnell Singleton, undertook their own on-the-ground investigation into Darren Seals’ murder beginning the day he was found. Meeting them at the Ridgeview Apartments where his Jeep was driven and set ablaze, they reveal a lead as to where the actual killing took place. On Gamble Street, in the city of St. Louis, on that same night around the same time, another man matching Darren’s description was shot dead, Shaun Hawkins. But is there actually a connection?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Previously on After the Uprising.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yes, I'm a nineteen forty diamond job and it's a
car on fire in my working life.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Seals was found shot inside a burning car in Riverview
on Diamond Drive.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
I do know that there is a lot of sentiment
in the community that they want justice, they want the truth.
Speaker 5 (00:23):
You know, you still got a life that has a
tab on it from your past endeavors.
Speaker 6 (00:28):
You know what I'm saying. I think he got set
up out of people he was in the fucking music
situation with.
Speaker 7 (00:34):
I ain't never saying brusway.
Speaker 8 (00:36):
It's like he wanted on the smoke.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
I don't think music had anything to do with it
at all, at all, absolutely not.
Speaker 8 (00:43):
That was something that I've never heard.
Speaker 9 (00:45):
He said. A white boy came from out of the wood,
he said, A guy withol loan her in the toony tail,
A white boy.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
That thing.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
You know, a car was got.
Speaker 10 (01:08):
What you're looking for. Is the aftermath of the grand
jury deciding not to indict off The.
Speaker 6 (01:18):
Nine year old Darren Seals was murdered before his killer
set his car on fire.
Speaker 10 (01:24):
Once they put out the flames, they discovered Seal's body
inside with a gunshop.
Speaker 5 (01:31):
You want a gun on me, Am, I am, I
whats your older brothers ferguson BD grab me by my heart,
slam me.
Speaker 8 (01:37):
Out the car.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
He says, you might want you might want to pick
an enemy's better.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
This is after The Uprising season two, the Murder of
Darren seals.
Speaker 6 (02:00):
Yeah, I'm not gonna yeah, I don't want to speculate anything,
like I said. The only thing I can tell you
is we got a call for a car burning up,
and the fire department came and was putting a fire on,
discovered a body, and we turned it over to the county.
And but other than that, that's all I can tell you.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
This is Jeffrey Dominguez at the time, chief of the
Riverview Police Department. Riverview, if you recall, is the small
municipality in Saint Louis County where Darren's burn body and
car were discovered. He is speaking with our producer John Duffy,
who only called to try to schedule an interview with
the original responding officer who had since left the department,
and that we couldn't locate. But then Chief Domingos just
(02:37):
started dishing information right there on the phone.
Speaker 9 (02:40):
You said the body was in the passenger side of
the car, you know, I believe.
Speaker 6 (02:44):
So I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I believe
it was in the passenger side of the vehicle, you know,
because somebody had to drive that car up there. Of
course he didn't because he was already deceased. So I
think you know what happened some am in the city.
They drove the car up here to one of our
apartment complexes with al on fire and the left.
Speaker 9 (03:00):
And did they ever know where it came from, like
where he actually was shot or did you never hear
about it?
Speaker 6 (03:05):
You know, I don't know, Like I said, that's because
I mean, after we discovered it and turned it over
to Crimes against Persons from Saint Louis County, I'm pretty
sure Saint Louis County discovered that the crime actually hit,
it happened in the city, so that the city took
over to investigation. So yeah, there's a lot more to
it than I can even begin.
Speaker 7 (03:23):
To tell you.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Chief Dimingas indicated that the actual killing of Darren happened
somewhere other than the parking lot where his body was found.
This coincides with what the Ridgeview witness explained when he
said he saw Darren's jeep driven into the parking lot,
followed by two other vehicles. Chief Diminga's understanding is that
Darren was actually killed somewhere in Saint Louis City.
Speaker 6 (03:45):
And I mean the fire department could even tell you
better than I can, because they're the ones that put
out the fire and discovered the body. So, like I
said once, once the Sanlois County took over, he probably
need to get to report and talk to like the
city or county. These are going to way more information
than I can tell you.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
At the time of this call, we had our already
gotten a copy of the incident report on Darren's death
from Saint Louis County. What you need to remember is
that Riverview is a very small municipality with a small
police department that isn't equipped to investigate homicides. So when
they found that there was a body in the burning
car on the night of Darren's death, they called in
the Saint Louis County Police who could handle a murder investigation.
(04:21):
What you also need to note is that an incident
report is not the same thing as the final investigative report.
The incident report is very basic and records information such
as what time the nine to one one call was made,
what the address of the incident was, the fact that
there was a car fire, et cetera. It doesn't contain
any investigative information. And the incident report we'd gotten was
(04:42):
missing something else, something it usually would have contained, which
was a list of the responding officers. That section was
suspiciously absent. Why would that be? Like we said in
episode one, our relationship with the Saint Louis County Police
during the making of the first season of this show
was not the best. The information officer at the time,
(05:04):
Sergeant Benjamin Granda, became less and less willing to work
with us as our investigation proceeded. After completing season one,
a lawyer suggested to us that we make a document
request of the department for anything mentioning my name or
producer John Duffy's name. So we did, and we got
back a handful of very interesting internal emails. John called
(05:26):
me when he got the results.
Speaker 11 (05:28):
There's emails in there from the ones where a sunshine
you and I. Branda was making sure nobody talked to us,
including at the crime lab and everything in the warning
he sent out to everybody was like, I don't believe
these guys are on a real fact finding mission, only
to then say our questions are are remarkably specific and
(05:48):
not like usual media questions.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
We're actually asking follow ups they just constantly expect, he said.
She said Journalism Right Information Officer Sergeant Gronda actually sent
a department wide memo informing other officers and staff of
our email addresses and phone numbers with the instructions not
to speak to us. This was sparked by the fact
that we had tried to directly contact the lead detective
(06:11):
in the case we were investigating, Detective Timothy Anderer. We
don't want to spoil season one for people who want
to go back and listen to it, so for now,
just know that, according to the deceased young man's mother,
detective Anderer was very rude to her, and she believed
that was because she was a well known Ferguson movement activist.
She thought this was confirmed by the fact that Detective
(06:34):
Anderer had been caught assaulting black protesters and bragging about
it on his own body game.
Speaker 6 (06:39):
Think your Captor report should have a list of like
even the county guys that show up for like.
Speaker 9 (06:44):
The kinds against.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Though the incident report from Saint Louis County was missing
a list of officers who responded to the scene of
Darren's death, Chief Domingo has told us that Riverview PD
has their own version of the incident report that would
include that information, and we were welcome to come and
collect a copy that after the break.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I remember specifically meeting Amyr Indictment night. We know we've
been seeing each other, but Indictment Night, when they started
shooting the tear gas, me and a mir went and
got up on the top of a building.
Speaker 8 (07:28):
You remember that, Amor.
Speaker 12 (07:30):
We went across the street and got on the top
of a building and he was on the phone like, man,
they're shooting deer gas and I can't believe it.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
This is Darnell Singleton and Amir Brandy. Amir is co
founder of Real STL News and his friend Darnell is
a cinematographer. They recorded the interview with the man who
lived in the Ridgeview apartments who described what he saw
go down the night Darren was killed. We're sitting in
their office getting to know each other and sharing stories
(08:01):
about those chaotic nights. Back in twenty fourteen when the
protest and Ferguson were just kicking off.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I don't remember the exact moment that we met, but
we were out there and you know, it was.
Speaker 8 (08:15):
Just I don't know, I don't know, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
It was just one of those things like where you know,
you go to the protests and you see each other.
What's up, man, what's happening next? I'm going downtown. I'm
going to you know, how did each.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Of you meet? I'd start to get to the Darren Cials.
Speaker 9 (08:33):
I met Darren Sill's on the protests. On the protest protest.
Darren was like one of the people that used to
stand back and observe. He didn't say much in the field,
if I could use that term.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I met him in the first couple of days of
mirror of the protests, because you know, I had my
camera out there and at nighttime I'd had my light on.
And so maybe the second or third day, Spook was
shot in the head. Protester was shot in the head,
and Darren came over to me and he said, here,
I want you to make sure you get this story
(09:08):
out that Saint Louis County shot this girl in the head,
and they and they hid the bullet.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
The woman of Mirrors talking about who is referred to
by the name Spook is Maya autten White. After one
of the protests in Ferguson, she was shot in the
head by an unknown person.
Speaker 9 (09:29):
I was like, who is Spook.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
You gotta meet Spook, you gotta talk to Spook.
Speaker 8 (09:33):
He was just adamant that, you know, after Belmore.
Speaker 12 (09:36):
Said, oh, well, you know, after five days of protest,
no protesters have been hurt, and.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Darren was living. He was like, all the hell, they haven't.
This girl's in the hospital now, she's been shot in
the head. And I was she was shot in the
like in the front.
Speaker 9 (09:51):
Of the head. Yeah, yeah, I baby remember that.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And somehow the bullet magically disappeared when they removed it
from her from stall and Darren was he was upset
about that because you know, that was a deliberate attempt
to suppress what it happened to him, what I really had.
Speaker 8 (10:10):
Yeah, and that's you know, that's how I've met Darren.
Speaker 9 (10:12):
And he came up to me and he was like,
you got to.
Speaker 8 (10:14):
Get this out.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
During the Ferguson protests, Darren seals had been very critical
of outsiders who he thought were trying to co opt
the movement for their own purposes. Though it may seem
counterintuitive to people not from Saint Louis, especially so many
years later, but in the early chaos that was the
Ferguson Uprising, or what might be better simply referred to as
(10:40):
the movement, Black Lives Matter was not an organic outgrowth
of local activism. In fact, the people behind what was
at the time a small and little known organization, Black
Lives Matter, was made up of outsiders, and Darren was
very outspoken about how he felt about them.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
Black Lives Matters a bunch of computer nerds, Twitter activists, activists.
Speaker 8 (11:08):
They don't do shit to tweet while we ain't.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
While we was in the streets, you know, turn shit up,
you know, protests, they would just shitting back, tweeting Twitter fingers.
Speaker 8 (11:18):
You know.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
So you got a lot of people sending them money,
he turning them into stars. And if you notice, as
it's blowing up, you not hearing about Mike Brown anymore,
not hearing about Darren Wilson anymore. You not ain't hearing
about the uh, you know, the Ferguson Police Department, anymore.
We not hearing about none this corrupt shit. Boy mcculor
and Jay Nickson. You not hearing about nothing this shit
(11:39):
no more. All you're hearing about is Black lives Matter.
Speaker 7 (11:42):
Now.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
They took the energy away from first, but they did
it so intelligently, a lot of people didn't understand what
was going on when it was going on, So they
was helping these motherfuckers not even knowing.
Speaker 8 (11:53):
They still in our shit. They still not shit, They
still not shiting.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
A lot of cats with the jail for us to
be the main topic in the media, a lot of
cats risk They light spoop got shot.
Speaker 8 (12:03):
In the head.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
She could have she could be dead right now, you
know what I mean. A lot of shit happened for
this shit to grow into what it became. There was
an opportunity to really fight back and really make a
change in Ferguson and Missouri as a whole.
Speaker 8 (12:15):
They just clearly got away with murder.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
Now they owned to the next city, then the next city,
then the next city in the next city, being superstars
off our shit we created here while we sitting back
still like now, Kyles ain't stopped killing her since Mike
Brown died, and what Black Lives Matter doing nobody. They
just collecting chicks. I ain't heard of them paying for
(12:38):
those funerals. I ain't hurting them starting no programs for
the you build, no sinners, nothing, you know what I mean.
So we back at square one, back where we started.
No justice, no nothing.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Darren wasn't the only person in Ferguson who felt that
outsiders were trying to co opt the movement for their
own purposes.
Speaker 9 (13:01):
At some point there was a strategic effort and they
pretty much took over the movement. They had a strategy
of sending out signs that said Black Lives Matter. There
was so much worldwide media there that people who were
not able to actually participate they associated the signs that
(13:24):
they were seeing black Lives Matter. And this became a
hustle because people were donating to what the signs that
they'd seen. The people who were sitting at home, they
didn't know that they were giving money to an organization
that had little or nothing to do with the progress
of change. The local activists who were in the meetings
(13:46):
did having the discussions. They were the ones who actually
did the work, but Black Lives Matter got the.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Credit as founders of Black Lives Matter national organization were
lesbian women and asked some of their more high profile
supporters online, like Deray McKesson, were gay. Darren's criticism of
the Black Lives Matter organization was often written off as homophobia.
The antagonism between Darren and Black Lives Matter was even
(14:15):
cited as a possible motivation behind his murder.
Speaker 13 (14:20):
And in the aftermath of this, you've had people throwing
accusations at black lesbians there in Ferguson, trying to blame
them for his death as well. All of this just
back and forth that's going on as people are trying
to figure out what in the world happened.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Before his death. Darren took to the Internet to respond
to the people who claimed that he was homophobic.
Speaker 8 (14:43):
On't going to against him because they gave I don't
agree with.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
The lifestyle of you know, homosexuality, but I don't agree
with a lot of shit people do that. Don't got
I'm not gonna dislike you because you do some shit
I don't like. I'm pretty sure I do shit people
don't like I don't agree with ain't healthy for me
in they eyes, so disagree on lifestyle, but they used
that shit as a shield when they're doing all as bullshit.
I try to come say, oh, he's just homophobic.
Speaker 8 (15:07):
He hated man. He being married to a woman, says
man says for Helva. So I ain't about that.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
But they'll use that to distract people, make them people
think like, oh, don't take what he's saying serious because
he just some homophobic dug nigga.
Speaker 8 (15:20):
He's just you know, angry are.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
In a sense. Darren's suspicions of the national Black Lives
Matter organization were realized in January twenty twenty two, when
an article in New York Magazine titled the Murky Finances
of Black Lives Matter highlighted what many would call mismanagement
of donated funds. Darren had complained in the videos he
(15:44):
made that the big money flowing into Black Lives Matter
hadn't been used to fund any community projects in Ferguson.
According to the article, what is officially known as Black
Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is linked to a complex
web of different nonprofits, for profits, and political action committees,
(16:06):
some of which are operated by high ranking members of BLM.
According to the article, there is a pattern of collecting
donations from the public and then funneling them to the
friends and family of people like BLM co founder Patrise Colors.
Speaker 10 (16:23):
Following the murder of George Floyd in twenty twenty, supporters
donated a staggering ninety million dollars to Black Lives Matter.
The nonprofit has spent most of that money, ending last
year with a nine million dollar deficit. Federal filings from
twenty twenty to twenty twenty two showed just a third
thirty million went to other charitable organizations. Twenty two million
(16:46):
went to expenses. This includes millions paid to board members
and family members of co founder Patrise Colors. For example,
one point six million went to the father of Colors's
child for security services. Another two point one million went
to BLM board member Shaloma Bowers for consulting.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
According to the article, parents of black children killed by
police made public denouncements of the group's behavior, and this
included Tamy or Rice's mother Samaria and Mike Brown Junior's
father Mike Brown Senior.
Speaker 9 (17:20):
One thing I always say about when you are an activist,
a real activist, it doesn't stop. It's sort of like
a sentence. You are concerned until it changes. And these
people who have benefited. Don't seem to cure anymore. You know,
we haven't seen some of them since twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Given all that you said, how do you think Darren
would feel about someone who looks like me putting together
a story around trying to solve this stuff, and how
do you all.
Speaker 14 (17:53):
Feel about it?
Speaker 9 (17:54):
Darren would probably be I'd have done at grease, But
at the end of the day, I think it, you know,
as long as as the outcome is genuine, I think
that he would be appreciative of it.
Speaker 15 (18:12):
I listened to the series that you produced with Melissa,
who is like a very dear friend of ours, and.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I appreciate the.
Speaker 15 (18:25):
Gentleness and the respect and just like the concern that
you put into what you were doing.
Speaker 8 (18:35):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
She I think it helped heal herself.
Speaker 12 (18:38):
It really helped get her to a different place, because
Melissa was just devastated.
Speaker 7 (18:46):
She was not.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Moving.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Though I wasn't fishing for a compliment, I was happy
to hear that Darnell had listened to season one of
our show and that he trusted the earnestness with which
we approached our work to find the truth no matter
what it reveals. And now as a team we were
going to head to the crime scene.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Shortcut.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
I'm gonna slate this real fast. So we're rolling up
to the crime scene for Darren Seals and we are
about to meet Darnell and a Mere So what's the shortcut.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
There's a little side street. It's scary at freaking hell.
You're gonna have to go slow.
Speaker 8 (19:26):
Though, okak you We're seeing.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Old manufacturing scrap metal, old water towers, old train bridge
brick from probably the forties or earlier.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
It looks like the kind of place you would drop
a body.
Speaker 16 (19:41):
This is scary.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Let me tell you this right here, if you go
down this hill, it's freaking scary at freaking hell. And
there's no way out down there.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
I'm assuming it's over there, right just where the car
was found. It was this parking lot. When we arrived
at the Ridgeview Apartments in Riverview. We walked around taking
in the scene until Darnell and a Mirr showed up.
Speaker 16 (20:05):
What do you know about this neighborhood?
Speaker 12 (20:07):
Just generally, this is a poor black neighborhood. And I
think this is Saint Louis County.
Speaker 16 (20:15):
I'm not sure it is.
Speaker 12 (20:16):
Yeah, this is Saint Louis County. But this would be
considered on the scale of one to ten in Saint
Louis County in terms of the living probably two or three.
You know, you could tell by the way you drove
back here. Most people can't even find it. It's in
such an isolated part of the city, you know, and
(20:39):
it's buttressed up against a forest.
Speaker 8 (20:43):
You know, and you drive down in here and it's
a no man's.
Speaker 12 (20:46):
Land, you know. And the apartments now that we're alive
when Darren Seals were killed, you know, they're abandoned. It's
all boarded up. It's low, very low income living.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
You know, what reason, if any could you imagine Darren
would come to this spot.
Speaker 12 (21:09):
I don't think Darren would come to this spot unless
he knew somebody, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I think Darren was brought here, you know, after he
was killed with Danye.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
They determined it was a suicide, so we could get
the reports. But as long as this remains an open crime,
then they can just continue to withhold those reports because
it's an open investigation. So my question is, did you
guys ever hear how many bullets you know were found
and whether it was from the back of the head
or front or side.
Speaker 12 (21:40):
I never heard anything, never heard a thing and.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
The caliber or anything like that. We got to like
reconstruct what would be in their report ourselves.
Speaker 12 (21:50):
I think we did a better job of finding out
what happened to Darren than.
Speaker 8 (21:53):
The police, did.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
You know.
Speaker 12 (21:57):
It was like we came out here, so all of
this stuff, a mirrors started working. Other people started digging
around and rooting around, and we kind of reconstructed the
whole thing ourselves because we knew they weren't going to
give us any kind of evidence. You know, we knew
they weren't going to give us a good investigation because
of the way that they left.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
So the guy who saw it lived in a twenty
three right, Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 12 (22:20):
He was very scared to talk to the police. The fact,
he told us he wasn't going to talk to the police,
but that he would talk to us.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
And I guess he was.
Speaker 12 (22:30):
About, you know, twenty eight, twenty nine years old, and
he had been threatened, so he was really really afraid
by who, just some guys in the neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
And you know, so did he claim that some guys
went and knocked on all the different neighbors doors and
made that threat or did you ever get a sense
of how he got that well.
Speaker 12 (22:53):
I posted the interview that he did with us online
and he in boxed me and told me, can you please,
you know, take this down there threatening in my life.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Somebody saw someone walk out of bushes, which.
Speaker 9 (23:07):
I think he said that the guy came out of
these bushes.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
Yeah, guy with ponytail, White, guy with ponytail, guy.
Speaker 9 (23:16):
White or Spanish, could be been either or.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
We were standing around talking about the case when Amir
shared some details with us that we hadn't yet heard.
Speaker 9 (23:26):
At the location that he was called to, the kid
explained that there were two people that got in the
car with Darren. He said, one guy in the front seat,
one got in the back. The guy in the back
seat supposedly shot Durren in the back of the head
with a forty five. The guy who lived at that location,
he told the two guys, y'all can't leave that body
(23:48):
in front of my house.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
According to a mirror, he and Darnell had spoken to
a source who told them that on the night he died,
Darren had been summoned to some location and at that location,
two men got into his jeep with him, one in
the front seat and one in the back. According to
their source, the man in the back seat shot Darren
in the head. The source then claims that the owner
(24:12):
of the home there told the killers that they could
not leave the body in front of the house. And
further still, Darnell and Emir think they might know where
that location is.
Speaker 9 (24:23):
Inteligents throughout the city indicated that Darren was killed in
the twenty eight hundred block of Gamble and his body
was transported to this location.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
The twenty eight hundred block of Gamble is in Saint
Louis City. Though we don't know where he got this
specific address, it does at least line up with what
Chief Domingus told us, and Amir had one more clue
he wanted to share.
Speaker 8 (24:47):
You know, homework.
Speaker 9 (24:49):
We found that it was another kid mysteriously killed and
found in the middle of the street in the twenty
even hundred block of Gamble. We could never put Darren
with this other kid, so we assumed during this kid
seeing what happened.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
If this second fact that another person was killed at
the same time in the same place as Darren was true,
then we thought that if we could find this second victim,
we could begin confirming the details given by AMR and
Darnell's anonymous source. Our first attempt to do this, you
heard at the beginning of episode one. We simply drove
(25:25):
to the twenty eight hundred block of Gamble Street in
Saint Louis began knocking on doors asking if anyone remembered
anything about these killings, but no one had anything they
wanted to share with us. After searching through old news reports,
we were able to find that there was a killing
on that night at the address AMIRR had given us.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Breaking over night, one person is dead after shooting in
North Saint Louis. It happened just before one in the
twenty eight hundred block of Gamble Street, Saint Louis, Pelisse,
and in his early twenties, was found shot in the head.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
The victim's name is Sean Hawkins. Not only was his
killing on the same night and at roughly the same
time as Darren's, but as it turns out, Sean Hawkins
looked fairly similar to Darren Zeals. Not identical, of course,
but they both had long dreads, and we wondered if
maybe Shawn's killing was a case of mistaken identity, and
(26:27):
that perhaps he'd been shot by someone who at a
distance in the dark, thought he was Darren Moore after
the break. Now back to the show. In running down
(26:49):
the story about Sean Hawkins, we reached out to the
Saint Louis Metropolitan Police to get a copy of the
incident report in regards to his death, and fortunately for us,
we found that one of the responding officers to that
crime scene was Heather Taylor, the former head of the
Ethical Society of Police more casually known in Saint Louis
(27:12):
as the Black Police Union. As I already had an
existing relationship with Heather, I called her to see if
she could remember anything about Seawn hawkins murder. We could
send you what we did receive from our Sunshine requests,
and if we provided that to you, would you be
able to recall, like anything that you saw.
Speaker 7 (27:34):
Or First of all, I would have to get approval
for any interview. I didn't know this was about an
interview in a radio over whatever's going on with the podcast.
I would have to get permission for interview. I'm no
longer in a position where I'm the president of Ethical
and I can give interviews as I want. On top
of it, I would not ever give an interview based
(27:59):
off of assumptions and theory.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I told Heather I didn't want her to speculate on anything,
but rather just try and recall what she could from
the crime scene that night. And I understand it may
be minimal of what you can offer. But the things
that we're interested is, you know, questions, where was blood found?
Was blood found other than the doorstep where Sean Howkins
(28:24):
was found?
Speaker 7 (28:25):
I would say that the police report, if I was
on the scene of the incident, the police report report
documents the facts that we received, the interviews that we received.
Interviews are recorded, crime scenes are videotaped and recorded, They're photographed,
and that's the evidence.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Unfortunately, as Sean Hawkins murder is still an open case,
we were never able to get anything like what Heather
is talking about. We did make two official requests to
interview Heather, but both were ignored. So in trying to
better under stand the context of Sean hawkins murder, we
turned to Facebook and looked up one of Sean Hawkins's
(29:06):
neighbors who was listed in the incident report, Monique Griffin.
She was only willing to talk via Facebook Messenger. Here
are excerpts from a conversation she had with our producer
Mallory Kenoy. Malory is reading her side and an Ai
is reading as Monique.
Speaker 14 (29:27):
We would love to know what was happening before the
incident and how you knew Script.
Speaker 16 (29:31):
Script was Shawn's nickname. I was in bed. It was
eleven twelve ish when the shooting started to happen. He
was a friend that stayed next door.
Speaker 14 (29:40):
Did you get a sense there was an investigation and
follow up by police or any leads on suspects.
Speaker 8 (29:46):
No.
Speaker 16 (29:47):
I moved immediately. I had small children at the time,
and everything I owned was damaged. I didn't want my
kids in that type of environment.
Speaker 14 (29:55):
Have you ever met a man named Darren Seals?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
No?
Speaker 7 (29:59):
I have not.
Speaker 16 (30:00):
Is that the guy who got killed who threw the
tear gas at police?
Speaker 7 (30:04):
No?
Speaker 14 (30:04):
That was Edward Crawford, But Darren was another prominent activist.
Is there anyone else do you think I should talk
to about it who may have more info about why
the shooting occurred.
Speaker 16 (30:13):
No, I don't. It was all unexpected, love. All I
know is we heard shooting and bullets started flying everywhere
all through the apartments and cars got real quiet. In
about five minutes. I opened my door and he was
lying on the porch bleeding from his head and I
immediately called police and got my kids away from the scene.
That's all the details I have to give.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
So all we have to go on are monique statements
in the incident report which gives us these details. For one,
they say the report of the crime came in at
twelve forty eight am. They claim an automatic firearm was
used under a box marked gang related. They wrote the
word no, which makes us wonder how they would even
(30:59):
have known that. After noting the one killed person is
Sean Hawkins. The report then lists a number of individuals
as victims, mostly children, and we presume these are all
people inside the apartment structure who could have been harmed
by the many bullets fired. Now, it's an eighteen minute
(31:20):
drive from the site of Sean Hawkins killing on Gamble
Street to the ridge View Apartments in Riverview where Darren's
body was found, and according to the incident report on
Darren's death, that crime was called in at one eighteen am,
so the timing does work out. But seeing that it
was an automatic weapon used in Shawn Hawkins killing and
(31:42):
his neighbor, Monique described it as a situation in which
bullets were flying everywhere. It doesn't seem to align with
how we presumed Darren would have been killed. For instance,
Darren's jeep was never described as riddled with bullet holes,
So had he been killed in a hail of automatic gunfire,
it couldn't have been while he was in his car,
(32:04):
So his body would have to have been carried from
wherever it was into his car, which then would have
to have been driven from that location to where it
was eventually burned. That seemed like a lot of work
for someone who was otherwise spraying bullets with an automatic firearm.
We needed more information, and we hoped we would get
(32:26):
it from the Riverview Police Department's incident report regarding Darren's murder.
Though it didn't tell us anything more about the possible
Gamble Street connection, it did reveal something that we found important.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Ray.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yes, No, you're going to freak the hell out.
Speaker 11 (32:51):
Uh huh, that's just One of the corresponding officers isof
you're shit in your hands.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah, are you kidding me?
Speaker 4 (33:04):
I'm not kidding you.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I saw that.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
I had to keep a straight face. Wow.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
After finding that, Detective Timothy Anderer was sent by the
Saint Louis County Police to investigate Darren's murder. We wondered
whether the reason the incident report they gave us omitted
the names of all the responding officers was an attempt
to make sure that we didn't know that there was
a connection between Detective Anderer and Darren. Seal's homicide investigation.
We called the Saint Louis County Police to find out
(33:31):
who the current LEA detective on Darren's case was.
Speaker 17 (33:35):
I'll give you his name, but do not reach out
to him directly, or I can tell you you won't
get much out of our office ever again, because we
don't like to make our detectives mad. We don't want to.
We don't want reporters reaching out directly to them because
they're with their case load and everything. But it's Detective
Justin Adams. Adams. Yeah, Detective Adams has this case. So
if he wants us to push any information out on it,
(33:57):
I'm happy to do that, or if he has time
to talk to you guys, but I'll touch base with
him today on it.
Speaker 8 (34:03):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
Finding that Detective Anderer was one of the first investigators
to respond on the night Darren was killed and then
noting everything claimed and documented by people who witnessed that
crime scene the following day, the burned door from Darren's
jeep still lying on its side, the blue latex gloves
worn by police left scattered amongst other debris. We wondered
(34:28):
if one didn't explain the other. We were happy to
hear that the case is not with Anderer but a
detective Adams, who wasn't listed as having responded that first night.
We hoped he wasn't so outwardly disrespectful to black activists
as Anderer had been. With so little information available via
police documents, if we wanted to settle the question of
(34:50):
where Darren was actually shot, we would need to go
straight to the people who had been some of the
last to see Darren alive. And that's next time on
our The Uprising. After The Uprising is a production of
Double Asterisk and iHeart Podcasts in association with True Stories.
(35:11):
Season two was written, reported, and produced by Maria Chappelle, Nadal,
John Duffy, Mallory Keenoi, and Reino Vashwski. Executive producers are
Niki Atore and Lindsay Hoffman. For iHeart Podcasts, John Duffy
and Renovashwski for Double Asterisk, David Cassidy and Ruth Vaka
for True Stories. Directed by John Duffy and Renoviashlsky. Theme
(35:31):
song and score by Zachary Walter. Sound engineering and mixed
by John Autry. Fact checking by Muffin Humes. Marketing by
Alison Canter, Fair Use Legal by Peter Yazzi and Brandon Butler.
Legal by Holly Decan for iHeart Podcasts and Keith Sklarr
for Double Asterisk, Missouri Sunshine Legal by David Roland. Show
logo by iHeart Podcasts using a photo by Attillo Dagostino.
(35:56):
Our interns were Hannah Madura and Rosemary Fiery. Website by
Stephanie Clark. Recorded at David Weber's Airtime Studios in Bloomington, Indiana.
We want to acknowledge additional investigation that became part of
this podcast was conducted by Detective Adams in the Saint
Louis County Police and the FBI, who did not participate
in this podcast, and by a Mere Brandy Mosey Secret
(36:20):
and Darnell Singleton. If you like our work, check out
our other podcasts. You can find us at Double Asteriskmedia
dot com and on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Support us
on Patreon. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a
rating and review on your favorite podcast app. Thank you
to Jamie Dennis, Danny Gonzalez, Jonathan Hartwig, Bethan Macalouso, Matt McDonough,
(36:42):
Melissa McKinnes, Ryan Mears, Tony and Valenovoshlski, and the family
and loved ones of Darren Seals, Bottom Boys and Doa.
Tracks used via fair use, So was the news reporting.
Archival copyright twenty twenty four Double Asteriskkink
Previously on After the Uprising.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yes, I'm a nineteen forty diamond job and it's a
car on fire in my working life.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Seals was found shot inside a burning car in Riverview
on Diamond Drive.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
I do know that there is a lot of sentiment
in the community that they want justice, they want the truth.
Speaker 5 (00:23):
You know, you still got a life that has a
tab on it from your past endeavors.
Speaker 6 (00:28):
You know what I'm saying. I think he got set
up out of people he was in the fucking music
situation with.
Speaker 7 (00:34):
I ain't never saying brusway.
Speaker 8 (00:36):
It's like he wanted on the smoke.
Speaker 5 (00:38):
I don't think music had anything to do with it
at all, at all, absolutely not.
Speaker 8 (00:43):
That was something that I've never heard.
Speaker 9 (00:45):
He said. A white boy came from out of the wood,
he said, A guy withol loan her in the toony tail,
A white boy.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
That thing.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
You know, a car was got.
Speaker 10 (01:08):
What you're looking for. Is the aftermath of the grand
jury deciding not to indict off The.
Speaker 6 (01:18):
Nine year old Darren Seals was murdered before his killer
set his car on fire.
Speaker 10 (01:24):
Once they put out the flames, they discovered Seal's body
inside with a gunshop.
Speaker 5 (01:31):
You want a gun on me, Am, I am, I
whats your older brothers ferguson BD grab me by my heart,
slam me.
Speaker 8 (01:37):
Out the car.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
He says, you might want you might want to pick
an enemy's better.
Speaker 4 (01:49):
This is after The Uprising season two, the Murder of
Darren seals.
Speaker 6 (02:00):
Yeah, I'm not gonna yeah, I don't want to speculate anything,
like I said. The only thing I can tell you
is we got a call for a car burning up,
and the fire department came and was putting a fire on,
discovered a body, and we turned it over to the county.
And but other than that, that's all I can tell you.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
This is Jeffrey Dominguez at the time, chief of the
Riverview Police Department. Riverview, if you recall, is the small
municipality in Saint Louis County where Darren's burn body and
car were discovered. He is speaking with our producer John Duffy,
who only called to try to schedule an interview with
the original responding officer who had since left the department,
and that we couldn't locate. But then Chief Domingos just
(02:37):
started dishing information right there on the phone.
Speaker 9 (02:40):
You said the body was in the passenger side of
the car, you know, I believe.
Speaker 6 (02:44):
So I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I believe
it was in the passenger side of the vehicle, you know,
because somebody had to drive that car up there. Of
course he didn't because he was already deceased. So I
think you know what happened some am in the city.
They drove the car up here to one of our
apartment complexes with al on fire and the left.
Speaker 9 (03:00):
And did they ever know where it came from, like
where he actually was shot or did you never hear
about it?
Speaker 6 (03:05):
You know, I don't know, Like I said, that's because
I mean, after we discovered it and turned it over
to Crimes against Persons from Saint Louis County, I'm pretty
sure Saint Louis County discovered that the crime actually hit,
it happened in the city, so that the city took
over to investigation. So yeah, there's a lot more to
it than I can even begin.
Speaker 7 (03:23):
To tell you.
Speaker 4 (03:25):
Chief Dimingas indicated that the actual killing of Darren happened
somewhere other than the parking lot where his body was found.
This coincides with what the Ridgeview witness explained when he
said he saw Darren's jeep driven into the parking lot,
followed by two other vehicles. Chief Diminga's understanding is that
Darren was actually killed somewhere in Saint Louis City.
Speaker 6 (03:45):
And I mean the fire department could even tell you
better than I can, because they're the ones that put
out the fire and discovered the body. So, like I
said once, once the Sanlois County took over, he probably
need to get to report and talk to like the
city or county. These are going to way more information
than I can tell you.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
At the time of this call, we had our already
gotten a copy of the incident report on Darren's death
from Saint Louis County. What you need to remember is
that Riverview is a very small municipality with a small
police department that isn't equipped to investigate homicides. So when
they found that there was a body in the burning
car on the night of Darren's death, they called in
the Saint Louis County Police who could handle a murder investigation.
(04:21):
What you also need to note is that an incident
report is not the same thing as the final investigative report.
The incident report is very basic and records information such
as what time the nine to one one call was made,
what the address of the incident was, the fact that
there was a car fire, et cetera. It doesn't contain
any investigative information. And the incident report we'd gotten was
(04:42):
missing something else, something it usually would have contained, which
was a list of the responding officers. That section was
suspiciously absent. Why would that be? Like we said in
episode one, our relationship with the Saint Louis County Police
during the making of the first season of this show
was not the best. The information officer at the time,
(05:04):
Sergeant Benjamin Granda, became less and less willing to work
with us as our investigation proceeded. After completing season one,
a lawyer suggested to us that we make a document
request of the department for anything mentioning my name or
producer John Duffy's name. So we did, and we got
back a handful of very interesting internal emails. John called
(05:26):
me when he got the results.
Speaker 11 (05:28):
There's emails in there from the ones where a sunshine
you and I. Branda was making sure nobody talked to us,
including at the crime lab and everything in the warning
he sent out to everybody was like, I don't believe
these guys are on a real fact finding mission, only
to then say our questions are are remarkably specific and
(05:48):
not like usual media questions.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
We're actually asking follow ups they just constantly expect, he said.
She said Journalism Right Information Officer Sergeant Gronda actually sent
a department wide memo informing other officers and staff of
our email addresses and phone numbers with the instructions not
to speak to us. This was sparked by the fact
that we had tried to directly contact the lead detective
(06:11):
in the case we were investigating, Detective Timothy Anderer. We
don't want to spoil season one for people who want
to go back and listen to it, so for now,
just know that, according to the deceased young man's mother,
detective Anderer was very rude to her, and she believed
that was because she was a well known Ferguson movement activist.
She thought this was confirmed by the fact that Detective
(06:34):
Anderer had been caught assaulting black protesters and bragging about
it on his own body game.
Speaker 6 (06:39):
Think your Captor report should have a list of like
even the county guys that show up for like.
Speaker 9 (06:44):
The kinds against.
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Though the incident report from Saint Louis County was missing
a list of officers who responded to the scene of
Darren's death, Chief Domingo has told us that Riverview PD
has their own version of the incident report that would
include that information, and we were welcome to come and
collect a copy that after the break.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
I remember specifically meeting Amyr Indictment night. We know we've
been seeing each other, but Indictment Night, when they started
shooting the tear gas, me and a mir went and
got up on the top of a building.
Speaker 8 (07:28):
You remember that, Amor.
Speaker 12 (07:30):
We went across the street and got on the top
of a building and he was on the phone like, man,
they're shooting deer gas and I can't believe it.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
This is Darnell Singleton and Amir Brandy. Amir is co
founder of Real STL News and his friend Darnell is
a cinematographer. They recorded the interview with the man who
lived in the Ridgeview apartments who described what he saw
go down the night Darren was killed. We're sitting in
their office getting to know each other and sharing stories
(08:01):
about those chaotic nights. Back in twenty fourteen when the
protest and Ferguson were just kicking off.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
I don't remember the exact moment that we met, but
we were out there and you know, it was.
Speaker 8 (08:15):
Just I don't know, I don't know, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
It was just one of those things like where you know,
you go to the protests and you see each other.
What's up, man, what's happening next? I'm going downtown. I'm
going to you know, how did each.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Of you meet? I'd start to get to the Darren Cials.
Speaker 9 (08:33):
I met Darren Sill's on the protests. On the protest protest.
Darren was like one of the people that used to
stand back and observe. He didn't say much in the field,
if I could use that term.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
I met him in the first couple of days of
mirror of the protests, because you know, I had my
camera out there and at nighttime I'd had my light on.
And so maybe the second or third day, Spook was
shot in the head. Protester was shot in the head,
and Darren came over to me and he said, here,
I want you to make sure you get this story
(09:08):
out that Saint Louis County shot this girl in the head,
and they and they hid the bullet.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
The woman of Mirrors talking about who is referred to
by the name Spook is Maya autten White. After one
of the protests in Ferguson, she was shot in the
head by an unknown person.
Speaker 9 (09:29):
I was like, who is Spook.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
You gotta meet Spook, you gotta talk to Spook.
Speaker 8 (09:33):
He was just adamant that, you know, after Belmore.
Speaker 12 (09:36):
Said, oh, well, you know, after five days of protest,
no protesters have been hurt, and.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Darren was living. He was like, all the hell, they haven't.
This girl's in the hospital now, she's been shot in
the head. And I was she was shot in the
like in the front.
Speaker 9 (09:51):
Of the head. Yeah, yeah, I baby remember that.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
And somehow the bullet magically disappeared when they removed it
from her from stall and Darren was he was upset
about that because you know, that was a deliberate attempt
to suppress what it happened to him, what I really had.
Speaker 8 (10:10):
Yeah, and that's you know, that's how I've met Darren.
Speaker 9 (10:12):
And he came up to me and he was like,
you got to.
Speaker 8 (10:14):
Get this out.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
During the Ferguson protests, Darren seals had been very critical
of outsiders who he thought were trying to co opt
the movement for their own purposes. Though it may seem
counterintuitive to people not from Saint Louis, especially so many
years later, but in the early chaos that was the
Ferguson Uprising, or what might be better simply referred to as
(10:40):
the movement, Black Lives Matter was not an organic outgrowth
of local activism. In fact, the people behind what was
at the time a small and little known organization, Black
Lives Matter, was made up of outsiders, and Darren was
very outspoken about how he felt about them.
Speaker 5 (11:02):
Black Lives Matters a bunch of computer nerds, Twitter activists, activists.
Speaker 8 (11:08):
They don't do shit to tweet while we ain't.
Speaker 5 (11:10):
While we was in the streets, you know, turn shit up,
you know, protests, they would just shitting back, tweeting Twitter fingers.
Speaker 8 (11:18):
You know.
Speaker 5 (11:19):
So you got a lot of people sending them money,
he turning them into stars. And if you notice, as
it's blowing up, you not hearing about Mike Brown anymore,
not hearing about Darren Wilson anymore. You not ain't hearing
about the uh, you know, the Ferguson Police Department, anymore.
We not hearing about none this corrupt shit. Boy mcculor
and Jay Nickson. You not hearing about nothing this shit
(11:39):
no more. All you're hearing about is Black lives Matter.
Speaker 7 (11:42):
Now.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
They took the energy away from first, but they did
it so intelligently, a lot of people didn't understand what
was going on when it was going on, So they
was helping these motherfuckers not even knowing.
Speaker 8 (11:53):
They still in our shit. They still not shit, They
still not shiting.
Speaker 5 (11:56):
A lot of cats with the jail for us to
be the main topic in the media, a lot of
cats risk They light spoop got shot.
Speaker 8 (12:03):
In the head.
Speaker 5 (12:04):
She could have she could be dead right now, you
know what I mean. A lot of shit happened for
this shit to grow into what it became. There was
an opportunity to really fight back and really make a
change in Ferguson and Missouri as a whole.
Speaker 8 (12:15):
They just clearly got away with murder.
Speaker 5 (12:18):
Now they owned to the next city, then the next city,
then the next city in the next city, being superstars
off our shit we created here while we sitting back
still like now, Kyles ain't stopped killing her since Mike
Brown died, and what Black Lives Matter doing nobody. They
just collecting chicks. I ain't heard of them paying for
(12:38):
those funerals. I ain't hurting them starting no programs for
the you build, no sinners, nothing, you know what I mean.
So we back at square one, back where we started.
No justice, no nothing.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Darren wasn't the only person in Ferguson who felt that
outsiders were trying to co opt the movement for their
own purposes.
Speaker 9 (13:01):
At some point there was a strategic effort and they
pretty much took over the movement. They had a strategy
of sending out signs that said Black Lives Matter. There
was so much worldwide media there that people who were
not able to actually participate they associated the signs that
(13:24):
they were seeing black Lives Matter. And this became a
hustle because people were donating to what the signs that
they'd seen. The people who were sitting at home, they
didn't know that they were giving money to an organization
that had little or nothing to do with the progress
of change. The local activists who were in the meetings
(13:46):
did having the discussions. They were the ones who actually
did the work, but Black Lives Matter got the.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
Credit as founders of Black Lives Matter national organization were
lesbian women and asked some of their more high profile
supporters online, like Deray McKesson, were gay. Darren's criticism of
the Black Lives Matter organization was often written off as homophobia.
The antagonism between Darren and Black Lives Matter was even
(14:15):
cited as a possible motivation behind his murder.
Speaker 13 (14:20):
And in the aftermath of this, you've had people throwing
accusations at black lesbians there in Ferguson, trying to blame
them for his death as well. All of this just
back and forth that's going on as people are trying
to figure out what in the world happened.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
Before his death. Darren took to the Internet to respond
to the people who claimed that he was homophobic.
Speaker 8 (14:43):
On't going to against him because they gave I don't
agree with.
Speaker 5 (14:45):
The lifestyle of you know, homosexuality, but I don't agree
with a lot of shit people do that. Don't got
I'm not gonna dislike you because you do some shit
I don't like. I'm pretty sure I do shit people
don't like I don't agree with ain't healthy for me
in they eyes, so disagree on lifestyle, but they used
that shit as a shield when they're doing all as bullshit.
I try to come say, oh, he's just homophobic.
Speaker 8 (15:07):
He hated man. He being married to a woman, says
man says for Helva. So I ain't about that.
Speaker 5 (15:12):
But they'll use that to distract people, make them people
think like, oh, don't take what he's saying serious because
he just some homophobic dug nigga.
Speaker 8 (15:20):
He's just you know, angry are.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
In a sense. Darren's suspicions of the national Black Lives
Matter organization were realized in January twenty twenty two, when
an article in New York Magazine titled the Murky Finances
of Black Lives Matter highlighted what many would call mismanagement
of donated funds. Darren had complained in the videos he
(15:44):
made that the big money flowing into Black Lives Matter
hadn't been used to fund any community projects in Ferguson.
According to the article, what is officially known as Black
Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is linked to a complex
web of different nonprofits, for profits, and political action committees,
(16:06):
some of which are operated by high ranking members of BLM.
According to the article, there is a pattern of collecting
donations from the public and then funneling them to the
friends and family of people like BLM co founder Patrise Colors.
Speaker 10 (16:23):
Following the murder of George Floyd in twenty twenty, supporters
donated a staggering ninety million dollars to Black Lives Matter.
The nonprofit has spent most of that money, ending last
year with a nine million dollar deficit. Federal filings from
twenty twenty to twenty twenty two showed just a third
thirty million went to other charitable organizations. Twenty two million
(16:46):
went to expenses. This includes millions paid to board members
and family members of co founder Patrise Colors. For example,
one point six million went to the father of Colors's
child for security services. Another two point one million went
to BLM board member Shaloma Bowers for consulting.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
According to the article, parents of black children killed by
police made public denouncements of the group's behavior, and this
included Tamy or Rice's mother Samaria and Mike Brown Junior's
father Mike Brown Senior.
Speaker 9 (17:20):
One thing I always say about when you are an activist,
a real activist, it doesn't stop. It's sort of like
a sentence. You are concerned until it changes. And these
people who have benefited. Don't seem to cure anymore. You know,
we haven't seen some of them since twenty fourteen.
Speaker 4 (17:43):
Given all that you said, how do you think Darren
would feel about someone who looks like me putting together
a story around trying to solve this stuff, and how
do you all.
Speaker 14 (17:53):
Feel about it?
Speaker 9 (17:54):
Darren would probably be I'd have done at grease, But
at the end of the day, I think it, you know,
as long as as the outcome is genuine, I think
that he would be appreciative of it.
Speaker 15 (18:12):
I listened to the series that you produced with Melissa,
who is like a very dear friend of ours, and.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I appreciate the.
Speaker 15 (18:25):
Gentleness and the respect and just like the concern that
you put into what you were doing.
Speaker 8 (18:35):
You know.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
She I think it helped heal herself.
Speaker 12 (18:38):
It really helped get her to a different place, because
Melissa was just devastated.
Speaker 7 (18:46):
She was not.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Moving.
Speaker 4 (18:51):
Though I wasn't fishing for a compliment, I was happy
to hear that Darnell had listened to season one of
our show and that he trusted the earnestness with which
we approached our work to find the truth no matter
what it reveals. And now as a team we were
going to head to the crime scene.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
Shortcut.
Speaker 4 (19:09):
I'm gonna slate this real fast. So we're rolling up
to the crime scene for Darren Seals and we are
about to meet Darnell and a Mere So what's the shortcut.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
There's a little side street. It's scary at freaking hell.
You're gonna have to go slow.
Speaker 8 (19:26):
Though, okak you We're seeing.
Speaker 1 (19:28):
Old manufacturing scrap metal, old water towers, old train bridge
brick from probably the forties or earlier.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
It looks like the kind of place you would drop
a body.
Speaker 16 (19:41):
This is scary.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Let me tell you this right here, if you go
down this hill, it's freaking scary at freaking hell. And
there's no way out down there.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
I'm assuming it's over there, right just where the car
was found. It was this parking lot. When we arrived
at the Ridgeview Apartments in Riverview. We walked around taking
in the scene until Darnell and a Mirr showed up.
Speaker 16 (20:05):
What do you know about this neighborhood?
Speaker 12 (20:07):
Just generally, this is a poor black neighborhood. And I
think this is Saint Louis County.
Speaker 16 (20:15):
I'm not sure it is.
Speaker 12 (20:16):
Yeah, this is Saint Louis County. But this would be
considered on the scale of one to ten in Saint
Louis County in terms of the living probably two or three.
You know, you could tell by the way you drove
back here. Most people can't even find it. It's in
such an isolated part of the city, you know, and
(20:39):
it's buttressed up against a forest.
Speaker 8 (20:43):
You know, and you drive down in here and it's
a no man's.
Speaker 12 (20:46):
Land, you know. And the apartments now that we're alive
when Darren Seals were killed, you know, they're abandoned. It's
all boarded up. It's low, very low income living.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
You know, what reason, if any could you imagine Darren
would come to this spot.
Speaker 12 (21:09):
I don't think Darren would come to this spot unless
he knew somebody, you know.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
I think Darren was brought here, you know, after he
was killed with Danye.
Speaker 4 (21:19):
They determined it was a suicide, so we could get
the reports. But as long as this remains an open crime,
then they can just continue to withhold those reports because
it's an open investigation. So my question is, did you
guys ever hear how many bullets you know were found
and whether it was from the back of the head
or front or side.
Speaker 12 (21:40):
I never heard anything, never heard a thing and.
Speaker 4 (21:44):
The caliber or anything like that. We got to like
reconstruct what would be in their report ourselves.
Speaker 12 (21:50):
I think we did a better job of finding out
what happened to Darren than.
Speaker 8 (21:53):
The police, did.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
You know.
Speaker 12 (21:57):
It was like we came out here, so all of
this stuff, a mirrors started working. Other people started digging
around and rooting around, and we kind of reconstructed the
whole thing ourselves because we knew they weren't going to
give us any kind of evidence. You know, we knew
they weren't going to give us a good investigation because
of the way that they left.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
So the guy who saw it lived in a twenty
three right, Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 12 (22:20):
He was very scared to talk to the police. The fact,
he told us he wasn't going to talk to the police,
but that he would talk to us.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
And I guess he was.
Speaker 12 (22:30):
About, you know, twenty eight, twenty nine years old, and
he had been threatened, so he was really really afraid
by who, just some guys in the neighborhood.
Speaker 4 (22:44):
And you know, so did he claim that some guys
went and knocked on all the different neighbors doors and
made that threat or did you ever get a sense
of how he got that well.
Speaker 12 (22:53):
I posted the interview that he did with us online
and he in boxed me and told me, can you please,
you know, take this down there threatening in my life.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Somebody saw someone walk out of bushes, which.
Speaker 9 (23:07):
I think he said that the guy came out of
these bushes.
Speaker 4 (23:10):
Yeah, guy with ponytail, White, guy with ponytail, guy.
Speaker 9 (23:16):
White or Spanish, could be been either or.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
We were standing around talking about the case when Amir
shared some details with us that we hadn't yet heard.
Speaker 9 (23:26):
At the location that he was called to, the kid
explained that there were two people that got in the
car with Darren. He said, one guy in the front seat,
one got in the back. The guy in the back
seat supposedly shot Durren in the back of the head
with a forty five. The guy who lived at that location,
he told the two guys, y'all can't leave that body
(23:48):
in front of my house.
Speaker 4 (23:51):
According to a mirror, he and Darnell had spoken to
a source who told them that on the night he died,
Darren had been summoned to some location and at that location,
two men got into his jeep with him, one in
the front seat and one in the back. According to
their source, the man in the back seat shot Darren
in the head. The source then claims that the owner
(24:12):
of the home there told the killers that they could
not leave the body in front of the house. And
further still, Darnell and Emir think they might know where
that location is.
Speaker 9 (24:23):
Inteligents throughout the city indicated that Darren was killed in
the twenty eight hundred block of Gamble and his body
was transported to this location.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
The twenty eight hundred block of Gamble is in Saint
Louis City. Though we don't know where he got this
specific address, it does at least line up with what
Chief Domingus told us, and Amir had one more clue
he wanted to share.
Speaker 8 (24:47):
You know, homework.
Speaker 9 (24:49):
We found that it was another kid mysteriously killed and
found in the middle of the street in the twenty
even hundred block of Gamble. We could never put Darren
with this other kid, so we assumed during this kid
seeing what happened.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
If this second fact that another person was killed at
the same time in the same place as Darren was true,
then we thought that if we could find this second victim,
we could begin confirming the details given by AMR and
Darnell's anonymous source. Our first attempt to do this, you
heard at the beginning of episode one. We simply drove
(25:25):
to the twenty eight hundred block of Gamble Street in
Saint Louis began knocking on doors asking if anyone remembered
anything about these killings, but no one had anything they
wanted to share with us. After searching through old news reports,
we were able to find that there was a killing
on that night at the address AMIRR had given us.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Breaking over night, one person is dead after shooting in
North Saint Louis. It happened just before one in the
twenty eight hundred block of Gamble Street, Saint Louis, Pelisse,
and in his early twenties, was found shot in the head.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
The victim's name is Sean Hawkins. Not only was his
killing on the same night and at roughly the same
time as Darren's, but as it turns out, Sean Hawkins
looked fairly similar to Darren Zeals. Not identical, of course,
but they both had long dreads, and we wondered if
maybe Shawn's killing was a case of mistaken identity, and
(26:27):
that perhaps he'd been shot by someone who at a
distance in the dark, thought he was Darren Moore after
the break. Now back to the show. In running down
(26:49):
the story about Sean Hawkins, we reached out to the
Saint Louis Metropolitan Police to get a copy of the
incident report in regards to his death, and fortunately for us,
we found that one of the responding officers to that
crime scene was Heather Taylor, the former head of the
Ethical Society of Police more casually known in Saint Louis
(27:12):
as the Black Police Union. As I already had an
existing relationship with Heather, I called her to see if
she could remember anything about Seawn hawkins murder. We could
send you what we did receive from our Sunshine requests,
and if we provided that to you, would you be
able to recall, like anything that you saw.
Speaker 7 (27:34):
Or First of all, I would have to get approval
for any interview. I didn't know this was about an
interview in a radio over whatever's going on with the podcast.
I would have to get permission for interview. I'm no
longer in a position where I'm the president of Ethical
and I can give interviews as I want. On top
of it, I would not ever give an interview based
(27:59):
off of assumptions and theory.
Speaker 1 (28:01):
I told Heather I didn't want her to speculate on anything,
but rather just try and recall what she could from
the crime scene that night. And I understand it may
be minimal of what you can offer. But the things
that we're interested is, you know, questions, where was blood found?
Was blood found other than the doorstep where Sean Howkins
(28:24):
was found?
Speaker 7 (28:25):
I would say that the police report, if I was
on the scene of the incident, the police report report
documents the facts that we received, the interviews that we received.
Interviews are recorded, crime scenes are videotaped and recorded, They're photographed,
and that's the evidence.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
Unfortunately, as Sean Hawkins murder is still an open case,
we were never able to get anything like what Heather
is talking about. We did make two official requests to
interview Heather, but both were ignored. So in trying to
better under stand the context of Sean hawkins murder, we
turned to Facebook and looked up one of Sean Hawkins's
(29:06):
neighbors who was listed in the incident report, Monique Griffin.
She was only willing to talk via Facebook Messenger. Here
are excerpts from a conversation she had with our producer
Mallory Kenoy. Malory is reading her side and an Ai
is reading as Monique.
Speaker 14 (29:27):
We would love to know what was happening before the
incident and how you knew Script.
Speaker 16 (29:31):
Script was Shawn's nickname. I was in bed. It was
eleven twelve ish when the shooting started to happen. He
was a friend that stayed next door.
Speaker 14 (29:40):
Did you get a sense there was an investigation and
follow up by police or any leads on suspects.
Speaker 8 (29:46):
No.
Speaker 16 (29:47):
I moved immediately. I had small children at the time,
and everything I owned was damaged. I didn't want my
kids in that type of environment.
Speaker 14 (29:55):
Have you ever met a man named Darren Seals?
Speaker 1 (29:58):
No?
Speaker 7 (29:59):
I have not.
Speaker 16 (30:00):
Is that the guy who got killed who threw the
tear gas at police?
Speaker 7 (30:04):
No?
Speaker 14 (30:04):
That was Edward Crawford, But Darren was another prominent activist.
Is there anyone else do you think I should talk
to about it who may have more info about why
the shooting occurred.
Speaker 16 (30:13):
No, I don't. It was all unexpected, love. All I
know is we heard shooting and bullets started flying everywhere
all through the apartments and cars got real quiet. In
about five minutes. I opened my door and he was
lying on the porch bleeding from his head and I
immediately called police and got my kids away from the scene.
That's all the details I have to give.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
So all we have to go on are monique statements
in the incident report which gives us these details. For one,
they say the report of the crime came in at
twelve forty eight am. They claim an automatic firearm was
used under a box marked gang related. They wrote the
word no, which makes us wonder how they would even
(30:59):
have known that. After noting the one killed person is
Sean Hawkins. The report then lists a number of individuals
as victims, mostly children, and we presume these are all
people inside the apartment structure who could have been harmed
by the many bullets fired. Now, it's an eighteen minute
(31:20):
drive from the site of Sean Hawkins killing on Gamble
Street to the ridge View Apartments in Riverview where Darren's
body was found, and according to the incident report on
Darren's death, that crime was called in at one eighteen am,
so the timing does work out. But seeing that it
was an automatic weapon used in Shawn Hawkins killing and
(31:42):
his neighbor, Monique described it as a situation in which
bullets were flying everywhere. It doesn't seem to align with
how we presumed Darren would have been killed. For instance,
Darren's jeep was never described as riddled with bullet holes,
So had he been killed in a hail of automatic gunfire,
it couldn't have been while he was in his car,
(32:04):
So his body would have to have been carried from
wherever it was into his car, which then would have
to have been driven from that location to where it
was eventually burned. That seemed like a lot of work
for someone who was otherwise spraying bullets with an automatic firearm.
We needed more information, and we hoped we would get
(32:26):
it from the Riverview Police Department's incident report regarding Darren's murder.
Though it didn't tell us anything more about the possible
Gamble Street connection, it did reveal something that we found important.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
Ray.
Speaker 1 (32:47):
Yes, No, you're going to freak the hell out.
Speaker 11 (32:51):
Uh huh, that's just One of the corresponding officers isof
you're shit in your hands.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah, are you kidding me?
Speaker 4 (33:04):
I'm not kidding you.
Speaker 3 (33:05):
I saw that.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
I had to keep a straight face. Wow.
Speaker 4 (33:09):
After finding that, Detective Timothy Anderer was sent by the
Saint Louis County Police to investigate Darren's murder. We wondered
whether the reason the incident report they gave us omitted
the names of all the responding officers was an attempt
to make sure that we didn't know that there was
a connection between Detective Anderer and Darren. Seal's homicide investigation.
We called the Saint Louis County Police to find out
(33:31):
who the current LEA detective on Darren's case was.
Speaker 17 (33:35):
I'll give you his name, but do not reach out
to him directly, or I can tell you you won't
get much out of our office ever again, because we
don't like to make our detectives mad. We don't want to.
We don't want reporters reaching out directly to them because
they're with their case load and everything. But it's Detective
Justin Adams. Adams. Yeah, Detective Adams has this case. So
if he wants us to push any information out on it,
(33:57):
I'm happy to do that, or if he has time
to talk to you guys, but I'll touch base with
him today on it.
Speaker 8 (34:03):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (34:06):
Finding that Detective Anderer was one of the first investigators
to respond on the night Darren was killed and then
noting everything claimed and documented by people who witnessed that
crime scene the following day, the burned door from Darren's
jeep still lying on its side, the blue latex gloves
worn by police left scattered amongst other debris. We wondered
(34:28):
if one didn't explain the other. We were happy to
hear that the case is not with Anderer but a
detective Adams, who wasn't listed as having responded that first night.
We hoped he wasn't so outwardly disrespectful to black activists
as Anderer had been. With so little information available via
police documents, if we wanted to settle the question of
(34:50):
where Darren was actually shot, we would need to go
straight to the people who had been some of the
last to see Darren alive. And that's next time on
our The Uprising. After The Uprising is a production of
Double Asterisk and iHeart Podcasts in association with True Stories.
(35:11):
Season two was written, reported, and produced by Maria Chappelle, Nadal,
John Duffy, Mallory Keenoi, and Reino Vashwski. Executive producers are
Niki Atore and Lindsay Hoffman. For iHeart Podcasts, John Duffy
and Renovashwski for Double Asterisk, David Cassidy and Ruth Vaka
for True Stories. Directed by John Duffy and Renoviashlsky. Theme
(35:31):
song and score by Zachary Walter. Sound engineering and mixed
by John Autry. Fact checking by Muffin Humes. Marketing by
Alison Canter, Fair Use Legal by Peter Yazzi and Brandon Butler.
Legal by Holly Decan for iHeart Podcasts and Keith Sklarr
for Double Asterisk, Missouri Sunshine Legal by David Roland. Show
logo by iHeart Podcasts using a photo by Attillo Dagostino.
(35:56):
Our interns were Hannah Madura and Rosemary Fiery. Website by
Stephanie Clark. Recorded at David Weber's Airtime Studios in Bloomington, Indiana.
We want to acknowledge additional investigation that became part of
this podcast was conducted by Detective Adams in the Saint
Louis County Police and the FBI, who did not participate
in this podcast, and by a Mere Brandy Mosey Secret
(36:20):
and Darnell Singleton. If you like our work, check out
our other podcasts. You can find us at Double Asteriskmedia
dot com and on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Support us
on Patreon. If you're enjoying the show, leave us a
rating and review on your favorite podcast app. Thank you
to Jamie Dennis, Danny Gonzalez, Jonathan Hartwig, Bethan Macalouso, Matt McDonough,
(36:42):
Melissa McKinnes, Ryan Mears, Tony and Valenovoshlski, and the family
and loved ones of Darren Seals, Bottom Boys and Doa.
Tracks used via fair use, So was the news reporting.
Archival copyright twenty twenty four Double Asteriskkink
Hosts And Creators
Ray Nowosielski
Maria Chappelle-Nadal
John Duffy
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