June 11, 2024 • 53 mins
After two and a half years of investigation, our podcast team is finishing this episode when something unexpected arrives: the 196-page St. Louis County police investigation report into Darren Seals’ murder. Buckle up. If you want to know what the cops knew, here it is. And the questions raised will shock you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Previously when after the uprising, my detective.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Is not available to be indicating sections. We're still actively
pursuing possible other.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Suspects and you know them lose either got Q what
a imprevent for some other situations going life.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
Because that's who they was. We had two managers, two
guys managing us at one time.
Speaker 5 (00:24):
It was a street guy.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
I don't know if I still mentioned his name.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I mean he was in the streets before man he
was dealing with this dude named j Bird. Bird is
locked up. Sills was supposed to be taking care of
some shit for his family. They didn't go as it
was supposed to go, and they lined them up.
Speaker 6 (00:38):
He had the type of attitude if you felt like
he was a little skirit or just maybe a little bit.
Speaker 5 (00:43):
He sees off of it.
Speaker 7 (00:44):
Even if I did want to tell you something, what
I'm saying is that's a dangerous game to play. If
I even wanted to play that like, that's dangerous.
Speaker 8 (01:09):
What you're looking for is the aftermath of the grand
jury deciding not to indict office.
Speaker 9 (01:18):
A 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.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
They discovered Seal's body inside with a gunshop.
Speaker 10 (01:32):
You want a gun on me?
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Am?
Speaker 11 (01:33):
I am?
Speaker 5 (01:33):
I whats your older brother? Spargus? The PD grab me
by my heart, slam.
Speaker 12 (01:37):
Me off the car.
Speaker 10 (01:44):
He says, you might want to you might want.
Speaker 13 (01:45):
To pick your enemies better.
Speaker 10 (01:49):
This is after the Uprising season two, the murder of
Darren Seals.
Speaker 9 (01:59):
So now we have one source of information saying the
co manager of Bottom Boys, jay Bird, ordered it, and
the police believed that there was a prosecutable case around
Kilo being at least one of the participants.
Speaker 14 (02:16):
Before my mother passed away, someone told her this information.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
This is LaToya Seals, Darren's older sister, and she.
Speaker 14 (02:24):
Shared it with me, and she did not want to
believe that it was jay Bird because we grew up
with him. He went to school with him, I went
to school with his sister. I was friends with his
sister and they were like brothers. And she knew other
things that jay Bird had faced when he was a child,
watching his uncle kill his mother, and so many other
(02:47):
things that I could tell you, but my mom did
not want to.
Speaker 15 (02:52):
She just she did not want to believe.
Speaker 14 (02:54):
That it was jay Bird because she just they were
best friends and she never ever thought that it could
be possibly be him.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
The other part of it is in twenty twelve in
O'Fallon he had a gun. There were witnesses that said
that he had a gun. He was still on probation
at this time, so the fact that he had a
gun he could go to jail. Darren had to figure
out what was in his best interest.
Speaker 15 (03:23):
At the time.
Speaker 9 (03:25):
So it's an open question, right if the information is correct,
how jay Bird would have gotten the impression in twenty
sixteen that Darren was informing. And one way to look
at this is that he was not informing, but that
the Feds of the cops were pressuring him. Actually had
the result of Jaybird coming to believe that he was
(03:46):
informing when he wasn't.
Speaker 11 (03:47):
Or of course it's.
Speaker 10 (03:49):
Possible that he did inform, he was informing, that he
informed at once and that that was held over him,
or that that got leaked by No.
Speaker 15 (03:59):
I never informed.
Speaker 13 (04:01):
He was never informing for the Faith or anybody.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
We cut a whole final episode for this season, and
it started with this conversation with LaToya Us telling her
our theory. Darren's brother Byron was there too. We thought
we'd wrap up the season by giving his siblings our
best guess as to how and why their brother was murdered.
But then a few unexpected things happened. First, as you
(04:32):
heard everything we'd come up with, LaToya had already heard
through her mother. Bunnie never said any of this to us,
choosing instead to believe that it was the FBI or
some consortium of law enforcement bureaucrats who killed her son.
The second surprising thing is that we were given the
Saint Louis County Police Department's full investigative report into Darren's murder.
(04:58):
It came in a bundle of doc do we requested
about a side issue, and we're not sure why we
were given this report and whether or not it was
on purpose or by accident. Either way, it fell into
our lapse only weeks before we were set to begin
mixing and mastering all of our episodes, So the two
(05:20):
hundred page report coming into our possession set us to scrambling, Hey.
Speaker 15 (05:25):
Ray, this is Tracy Panna's a Saint Let's County.
Speaker 9 (05:27):
Please.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
After reading the report, we immediately wanted to get in
touch with the Saint Louis County Police to see if
we could get their detectives to go on record about it.
Knowing this was unlikely, Ray tried right at the outset
to complement the effort we saw reflected in the report,
and so.
Speaker 9 (05:46):
I mentioned I wanted to pitch you because when we
started this investigation, what we learned from a lot of
the black community, in the activist community, is that the
perception was that County PD wasn't gonna and hadn't done
it any investigation into Seals because he was an activist
and he was for police reform and all this stuff.
And we're seeing from the report a one point eighty
(06:08):
not the case. Detective Atoms and all of your team
did some incredible work. We would love it if Detective
Adams would reconsider give us an hour and talk us
through and sort of let him present his findings.
Speaker 15 (06:21):
Yeah, I can reach out to him and ask him
if he wants to sit down and talk.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
To you guys.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Before hanging up, Sergeant Panis wanted to make sure people
understood a few things about the department and how they worked.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
You know, I've been doing this twenty lush years.
Speaker 11 (06:35):
I went to the academy in ninety six.
Speaker 15 (06:37):
I have never seen us walk into a case and go, yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
I don't like this guy who's a douchebag. I'm not
going to push it. Never never, Ever, some of the victims.
Speaker 9 (06:44):
That we deal with are not, you know, necessarily the
best victims.
Speaker 15 (06:48):
So we I've never seen any of our officers act
like that.
Speaker 13 (06:51):
Every single one of them is treated with yet.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Most importance, as if it was our mom, dad, brother, sister.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So Sergeant Panis eventually got back to us and explain
that no, Detective Adams did not want to be interviewed
for the show, so instead of having him walk you
through his report, we'll have to do it ourselves. And
the first thing we want to say about it is
that from day one of this case, Detective Adams was
working leads in sources and compiling a lot of valuable
(07:20):
information about Darren's murder, and what he found can clear
the air on some issues that we've raised throughout the season. First,
remember back in episode one, when people like Lalla and
Boating were saying that there were bullet shells on the
ground at the crime scene.
Speaker 15 (07:38):
Shell bulletshaill is all that stuff will still hit.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
The crimecy well. According to the report, the night of
Darren's murder. Detectives had used metal detectors to scan the
parking lot and they didn't find these bullets or shell casings.
The report also states detectives even examined trash in the
grassy area near the parking lot, noting Cinderello wrappers and
(08:02):
an empty water bottle. Remember when Bonnie said that on
top of the white foam that was left on the
scene by the fire department, that she saw shiny new bullets.
Speaker 15 (08:13):
In all that ash stuff and all that white phone stuff,
there were three shiny bullets. It looked like somebody too,
three brand new bullets and just laid in one of Corona.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
People were all over that crime scene in the morning,
including Kilo and other people possibly involved in the murder.
Anything could have been added to throw off the investigation,
and in the report, Detective Adams writes that he had
a conversation with our friend em and that Emir mentioned
shell ca scenes left on the scene. Detective Adams says
(08:46):
he told a mirror that they'd searched the lot with
metal detectors and when he asked where these shell case
scenes were, Amir said that someone had taken them, so
it wasn't something Detective Adams wasn't concerned with. Another issue
the report puts to rest is the mysterious man who
drove into the parking lot that first morning. Remember Darnell
(09:08):
in a mirror describing a white guy in a truck
that they filmed with a drone.
Speaker 16 (09:13):
We see this white guy pull up in a pickup
truck while the.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Man's got the drone in the air.
Speaker 15 (09:20):
And I turned to a mirror and I said, we
need to record that, get his license plate and everything.
Speaker 11 (09:24):
So a mayor Pools was rolled over the guy's trucks
and records to Singlis County Homicide.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
They actually came to the law office, sat down and
talked to me for a few minutes in reference to
the videotape and the content, and I.
Speaker 11 (09:38):
Gave him a copy of that.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Never heard anything else from them.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
You've seen the drone footage Darnell and a mirror had
given the department. Detective Adams was able to trace the
license plate on that truck and he went to the
owner's house. The man's name was Benjamin and he was
an amateur journalist. When Detective Adams spoke with him, Benjamin
made it clear that he'd been interested in the Ferguson
(10:03):
protests since twenty fourteen, and that he'd only gone to
the sight of Darren's killing out of curiosity. He was
cooperative and said he would be of assistance in any
way he could, should detectives require it. And on the
subject of white guys, we cannot forget our mystery man
seen by the Ridgeview witness, who appeared out of the
(10:24):
woods right before Darren's jeep was set on fire.
Speaker 17 (10:28):
But a white boy came from really good way through
the woods, and I'm thinking he's gonna come try to
find some timokregs. I'm not really paying attention then by
the time I turned away and look back. The whole
cause of flights, like the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Though it took some time for the Ridgeview witness to
finally be willing to speak with Detective Adams, he did
eventually come into the police station and answer questions about
what he saw that night. He said at the time
he thought the white man had set Darren's jeep on fire,
but when drilling down into the details, he explained to
(11:03):
Detective Adams that actually he never saw the white guy
near Darren's jeep, stating that he saw him about thirty
five feet away from it before he also saw him
run back into the woods. During questioning, the Ridgeview witness
also slightly changed his thoughts about the height of the
person he'd seen exiting Darren's jeep with socks on his hands.
Speaker 17 (11:26):
He had some socks on his hand, and he wouldn't
have beg from what I was sending here, like, he's
probably about your side A part of the.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
While speaking with Detective Adams, the witness claims he thought
the man who driven the jeep was five ten. The
Ridgeview witness really didn't want to speak with police, and
only did so because Darren's girlfriend, Naomi coaxed him into it.
Remember how Bonnie thought Naomi was a fed.
Speaker 15 (11:54):
You know, as I kill watch and see how she
act toward you. I see it's unless she worked them
for some money, and I believe it's to this day,
I really sup believe it now.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
According to the report, Naomi was actually very interested in
finding out who killed Darren, and she spoke with police
several times and gathered a lot of information to hand
off to detectives. Nothing we can see in the report
makes her seem like anything but a genuinely concerned girlfriend.
(12:26):
In fact, she told detectives that before she even knew
Darren was dead, she had driven around looking for him
when he didn't come home that night. After going to
meet Keilo the next morning at the crime scene where
a vigil had been set up for Darren, Naomi reported
that all of the Bottom Boys came and Kilo was
drunk and acting aggressive towards everyone. Naomi also gave statements
(12:52):
to detective Adams that add clarity to one more loose end.
We're not sure where the idea came from that Darren's
phone call with Kilo was about a white music video maker,
but according to the report, when Kilo spoke to Darren
on the phone the night he died, they were actually
talking about an upcoming performance. Apparently, Kilo wanted the Bottom
(13:15):
Boys to open for another rap group, but it was
going to cost the money to do so, and Darren
thought this was a bad idea, saying the group should
get paid to perform, not the other way around. The
investigative report into Darren's death was incredibly thorough and shows
a hell of a lot of methodical detective work that
(13:37):
took place over the course of several years, starting immediately
when Darren was first killed. What it also shows is
that there was more than one witness to what happened
that night more after the break.
Speaker 10 (13:59):
Now back to the show. Remember when we first visited
the crime scene with Darnell and Emir back in episode three,
and Emir told us a story he'd heard about someone
who had witnessed Darren's murder, the.
Speaker 13 (14:12):
Guy who lived at that location.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
He told the two guys, y'all can't leave that body
in front of my house.
Speaker 10 (14:20):
As it turns out, the general thrust of this story
is true. According to the police report, there was a
witness who will call Andrea. The night of Darren's killing,
Andre had gone out to a night club with his
friend who will call Stephen. After the club, Andre went
back to his friend Steven's apartment to crash for the night.
Andrea had been sleeping when Stephen woke him up and
(14:42):
told him that someone had just been smoked outside. Andrea
and Stephen went out to the parking lot of the
apartment complex, where a jeep Wrangler with the engine running
and the lights on sat parked. They walked up to
the jeep, careful not to touch it, and looked through
the driver's side window and saw a body. He slumped
over the steering wheel. They returned to the porch of
(15:03):
Stephen's apartment to smoke a cigarette, when about twenty minutes later,
a car pulled up and dropped off a man. The
car left again, and the man approached Andrea and Stephen
and asked them for a cigarette. Andre told police that
he thought this man was trying to find out what
they knew about the jeep. While smoking a cigarette together,
Stephen told the man quote, I know what y'all just did.
(15:26):
You need to get that shit out of here, keep
the police away. The man asked Andrea and Stephen to
help him toe the jeep away, and when they refused,
the man made a phone call. A few minutes later,
another man exited from a nearby apartment. The first man
moved the dead body from the driver's seat to the
back seat of the jeep and then got into the
passenger seat himself. The second man, who'd just come out
(15:49):
of the nearby apartment, got into the driver's seat of
the jeep and began to drive it away, though he
was rusty with operating a stick shift and drove through
the grass. Detectives presented a series of mug shots to Andrea,
and he identified the first man as Kilo. He identified
the second man as Christopher Moore. Christopher Moore lived in
(16:09):
the apartment complex where this incident with Andrea and Stephen happened.
But no, it wasn't on Gamble Street in Saint Louis City.
It was at the Riverview Park Place apartments on Towell Lane,
exactly one point two miles north and west of the
Ridgeview Apartments where Darren's jeep was found burning. It's also
only half a mile from the Rock of Food Mart,
(16:30):
where a witness told Bonnie that they'd seen Darren and
his jeep having an argument.
Speaker 11 (16:34):
Some idee day was arguing in a truck and they
was on Diamond right across from the store, and they
said the he had used it on but he got
real heated, they got re elaped.
Speaker 10 (16:47):
Christopher Moore, the man identified as the driver of Darren's jeep,
went by the name Lil Chris. In the last episode,
we played audio of LP on a jail phone call
with his mother learning about Keelo having been shot in
Castle Point. It was Lil Chris that Kilo had been
with during that shooting. By the time Detective Adams had
this witness testimony about Lil Chris. It was twenty twenty
(17:10):
three and the statute of limitations on tampering with evidence
and abandonment of a corpse had expired. But one thing
we note that never gets a mention in the police
report is that when Andre sees Lil Chris drive with
Kilo in Darren's jeep out of the starting location at
the park Place Apartments, he doesn't report seeing any other cars,
(17:30):
and he also never mentions the driver pulling socks over
his hands. The witness at the Ridgeview Apartments who sees
the jeep pull in seems to describe a different driver.
Not only does the driver he describe have socks on
his hands, but he says he has dreads.
Speaker 17 (17:46):
There was only one dude they got out. He is like, yeah,
he had come thinking about.
Speaker 10 (17:52):
Lil Chris did not have dreads. Also, the Ridgeview witness
said there were two cars following Darren's jeep. So where
in the one point two mile drive from the park
Place Apartments to the Ridgeview Apartments did these cars join
the convoy and was there a driver swap. If so,
who is this second driver? Well, according to the police report,
(18:14):
in the evening of the day Darren was killed, a
man who will call Nick went to visit someone he
knew at the Riverview Park Place apartments. Outside, a group
of men were talking, knowing one of them a guy
he calls Jason. Nick approached the group and joined the conversation.
Jason told the group that the night before he was
there at the apartment complex when Darren and two members
(18:37):
of the Bottom Boys walked out of the unit where
Lil Chris lived. He said that the group was arguing
and that Darren seemed to be in distress. All three
men got into a jeep, and moments later there was
a pop after the gunshot. The two members of the
Bottom Boys got out of the jeep, wiped the door
handles with their sleeves, then went back into the apartment
(18:59):
for a few minutes, beare for coming out again and
driving the jeep away. Police asked Nick if he knew
Jason's real name, and he said he did not, but
he did say that Jason drove a gray Chrysler three
hundred with a modified loud exhaust. This car would seem
to be a perfect candidate for the vehicle the Ridgeview
witness described, so this Jason person may have been that
(19:21):
other driver. When police asked a manager at the Riverview
Apartments if they recognized that Chrysler three hundred, they said yes,
and that it was driven by a dark complexed man
with gold teeth.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Hi we on Facebook live behind a face.
Speaker 10 (19:37):
On May twenty sixteen, Darren went live on Facebook as
the Bottom Boys prepared to shoot the music video for
their song Can't Go. Recording with his phone, Darren walks
around the parking lot introducing the various people who will
be in the music video, and at one point he
puts his arm around a man with short dreads and
gold teeth, who he calls Trey.
Speaker 17 (20:00):
Point.
Speaker 9 (20:00):
We're still alone has a point man We outside the linel.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Cordon Lyne may live snapping, we damn we outside.
Speaker 12 (20:09):
I'm a nigga trained to build last.
Speaker 14 (20:11):
Video, last video.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
We had to get his that this video he found
right actor man we it all man? How do you Warran?
Come highand hey hey hey get at it?
Speaker 3 (20:22):
I try to tail get that deal.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Tell you this man is in the music video seen
in Darren's jeep. We don't know his real name or
if he is in fact Jason. Whoever Jason is He
also told Nick that Darren had made off with five
kilos of cocaine that belonged to someone named Jaybird, so
(20:45):
Jay Bird ordered the hit on Darren from the jail
where he was incarcerated. Because Nick didn't see these events himself,
police couldn't confirm with mugshots which two men walked out
of the apartment and into Darren's jeep with him, but
Nick did say that Jason claimed to recognize them from
their music videos, which he watched frequently. This would imply
(21:09):
that the second person was LP or LR. When we
interviewed them, neither LP or LR said they were with
Darren that night, So it's.
Speaker 7 (21:23):
You know, I know for sure, I wasn't there. I
highly doubt Kila had anything to do with it.
Speaker 9 (21:28):
Were you with Kilo that night?
Speaker 10 (21:30):
No.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Aside from Jason claiming it was two Bottom Boys who
killed Darren, the police also had an inside informant. The
report doesn't name this person, only referring to them as
an s OI, which stands for source of information. During
Detective Adam's interview with this source, they revealed that the
(21:52):
Bottom Boys were a rap group turned street game and
that Jay Bird had been their primary leader. Until his
arrest that summer. The source explained that Kelo was the
group's muscle and that he's a known shooter. According to
the source, Jaybird had LP and Kelo killed Darren, and
the reason was that quote Jabird was tying up loose
(22:15):
ends and eliminating anyone who might be a liability. As
Detective Adams was putting the case together, he heard the
name Jaybird from several different sources. So after confirming Jaybird's
real name, Jerry Brown Junior, he went to visit Jaybird
at the prison where he was incarcerated. Jaybird spoke with
(22:38):
Detective Adams voluntarily and told him that he and Darren
had been close friends. J Bird said that Darren wanted
to get back into the dope game, but it was
him who told Darren not to. Jaybird even said that
right before he was arrested, he had lent Darren several
thousand dollars. We have to wonder if, if this loan
(23:00):
actually occurred, was it a standard loan between friends, or
was it actually drugs or drug money to be used
in dealing somehow. If so, it could line up with
next story to the police about Darren taking five kilos
of Jaybert's cocaine that would have been worth around a
quarter of a million dollars. By the way, when Detective
(23:23):
Adams turned the conversation to Darren's death, Jay Bird said
he heard several theories about it, but wouldn't go into detail.
At that point, Jaybird stopped cooperating and ended the interview.
We tried to talk to Jay Bird about all of this.
We left several messages with his attorney, Travis Noble.
Speaker 9 (23:46):
We were looking to see if we couldn't get an
interview with Travis's client, Jerry Brown Junior, or at least
a comment, and we thought it was fair to let
y'all know that there are some allegations pointed towards Jerry
Brown Junior as having ordered the murder of Darren.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
See.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
With each new suspect and each new name, Detective Adams
was creating a list of phone numbers, including Darren's, and
it was getting warrants to track not only the phone
calls made and received by those phones, but to track
their movements, which ultimately culminated in him building a rough
understanding of who in the Bottom Boys was communicating and
(24:25):
where they were moving to and from, leading up to
and right after Darren's death.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
I can't wait to kid you.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
This is a young man named David Anthony and he's
speaking to his sister on a jail cell telephone. David
was in the bottom Boy's wider circle, and we'd actually
first learned about him from Mosey's box of records. He
and Kilo were pulled over together a week after Darren's
murder and there was a pistol and some marijuana in
(24:56):
the car. This phone call is from when police finally
took David in for questioning about Darren's murder in twenty seventeen.
You'll hear him talk about how the police have everybody's
phone numbers.
Speaker 13 (25:09):
They talk about part of the main priority of bottom
boys or bottom boy storm a purple bullish like.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
To talk about the seed come he straight.
Speaker 13 (25:22):
Head, a pup of sea, pieces of material, the muscolk
p low, p money kres everybody like everybody calling up
with my own number, everything like hey all that is
on Peter.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
White pay phone.
Speaker 11 (25:42):
Sh I know what's goose?
Speaker 1 (25:44):
We find it telling that. In describing being arrested to
discuss Darren's murder, David says that the reason he was
brought in was because of Kilo and LP, which lends
support to next story about two bottom boys being the
ones in Darren's g when Darren was shot.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Well, why I came and got me? Yeah, they came
and got me because yot, that's all I got to be.
Speaker 11 (26:09):
They said the name.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
No, they just came and got me off the strength
of them.
Speaker 10 (26:14):
Police also arrested and questioned Mark kwan Lee, the young
man who was allegedly in a shootout with Kilo, the
knight of Darren's vigil.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
I mean you prow your lawyers. I hate to know
stuff because they got me for some shit.
Speaker 13 (26:28):
To ammificate, it's like three They worked in three different
cases with me.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
They worked in a Homo draft book of case. They
worked in a lot of ships. They worked in the
bottom boy set home Meet, they worked ke boyd.
Speaker 13 (26:39):
Chase on meech.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
They're trying to work over they work in a Rock
of six and they putting tellers on me. They trying
to pull back a whole year on me. They trying
to do a rock with me and tell me.
Speaker 13 (26:48):
They've been watching me for a whole fourteen months.
Speaker 10 (26:50):
Who tried that shot by triangulating, who spoke with whom
at what times. Detective Adams, with the assistance of the FBI,
was able to use cell phones to mat Darren being
called to Riverview by Kilo after many members in the gang,
including LP and Markwan, had seemingly hung around together or
at least their phones had been in the same vicinity.
(27:12):
The one person missing from the matrix of phone numbers
is Bottom Boys member LR. Based on everything in the
police report, Ricky Smith had no involvement in Darren's killing.
But the case against Keelo really came together with a
collection of surveillance video from the Speedy Gas station on
Broadway and Riverview, which is only one point eight miles
(27:33):
from the Ridgeview apartments. At Speedy Gas, detectives spoke with
the employee who had worked the night of Darren's murder.
This employee said a group of teenagers had been fighting
in the parking lot at about twelve twenty am, and
one of them had a small gas can in his hand.
The Speedy Gas manager gave detectives the security video from
that night, and detectives then played that video for several people,
(27:57):
one of whom was the Ridgeview witness. Can affirm that
the cars in the security video were the same cars
he saw followed Darren's jeep into the parking lot the
night of the murder. Another person detective showed the video
to confirmed that Keilo was one of the people captured
on camera.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
So at ten am on November one of twenty eighteen,
a number of detectives as well as at least one
FBI agent assembled to arrest Kilo at his girlfriend's house.
We can see that they forgot to redact Special Agent
Cunningham's name from the report, and if you recall, he's
the same FBI agent who would be involved in the
(28:36):
arrest of Lamont's Joiner for killing Kilo, as we discussed
in episode seven. But anyway, when they had Kilo back
at the precinct, detectives tried to interview him first, talking
about the Bottom Boys, which Kilo insisted was only a
rap group. When detectives tried to talk about the day
of Darren's murder, Kilo asked for a lawyer. Bactives told
(29:00):
Kilo he was being charged with murder, first degree, armed
criminal action, and tampering with physical evidence. Kilo told detectives
to quote come with it, bro, and said, quote, you've
been trying to get at me At that point, Kilo
was booked into the Justice Center on a twenty four
hour hold. Detective Adams brought his case materials and presented
(29:24):
them to the prosecuting Attorney's office, who would be responsible
for issuing a case, which would then send Kilo before
a judge to determine if he was eligible for bail.
And then somehow absolutely nothing happens with the case. We've
already mentioned in previous episodes that the Saint Louis County
(29:46):
Police brought their case to the prosecutor's office, but until
reading the full investigative report, we hadn't known that Keilo
had been in jail. Of course, we've also explained that
later Kilo wild out of jail, free to commit a
litany of crimes, and that he was murdered himself in
(30:06):
twenty twenty, So how the hell did he get released?
More after the break?
Speaker 10 (30:22):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
Did you have a prosecutor there named kil Gore?
Speaker 9 (30:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Years ago.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
This is our producer John Duffy Again.
Speaker 6 (30:32):
Okay, because I'm looking at a police investigative report and
it's telling me that the prosecuting attorney, Kimberly Kilgore, was
briefed on the facts of this case, and she took
the criminal complaint against Anthony Irvin under advisement pending further investigation.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
And at that time he was in jail.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
He was in the Justice Center. This is November one
of twenty eighteen. But all we conceive is that somehow
he gets out of the Justice Center, he goes on,
we have other criminal records for him, he goes on
to commit other crimes, and then he himself is murdered.
But I'm just wondering how he goes from being in
jail in November of twenty eighteen to being out of
(31:12):
jail and the police had booked him there for homicide.
I just thought there had to be some document that
said warrant refused or something like that that would explain
how he was then let off of his twenty four
hour hold.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
So if we would have issued something, there would have
been a warrant, there would have been a complaint, there
would have been a probable cause, all the normal documents
that we file when we issue a new case. But literally,
there is not one single document that got issued on
this case.
Speaker 16 (31:43):
Nothing.
Speaker 10 (31:44):
If Kila was in jail and no case was issued
by the Prosecutor's office within that first twenty four hour period,
he would simply have been let go. But we didn't
want to speculate about this.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
You know, the alther thing that you might do is
send their Sunshine requests to the jail.
Speaker 6 (32:02):
If I can tell you something crazy, Before I bothered
you with this, I did sunshine them first, figuring there
would have to be some document on releasing him, and
they told me that his records are exempt.
Speaker 10 (32:17):
The Justice Center, where Kilo had been held, refuse to
give us any documents on his release, claiming they were
exempt from state sunshine laws, citing a statute that refers
to cases that have been gnalli prost, which is a
fancy way of saying that the prosecutor chose not to
prosecute the case.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
If the case is nalipross, that means it got dismissed.
That means we said, oh, forget this case, we're gonna
we don't want to prosecute anymore. So, but we didn't.
You can't nalipros the case. It's never been issued and
this office did not issue any charges on that case.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
After this conversation, we went back to the Justice Center
saying that in fact, no, the case wasn't Nolli prost,
so please give us Kilo's release records. They apologized for
having cited the wrong legal statute and then supplied another
legal statute to prevent us from getting Kilo's records, and
(33:12):
that legal statute also didn't apply. As of this writing,
we still haven't gotten Kilo's release records from the Justice Center,
and they seem intent to continue hiding them from us.
So Sherry from the prosecutor's office gave us instructions on
how to request a search of Attorney Kimberly Kilgore's emails,
(33:36):
and so we did. We requested any of her emails
that contained the names Anthony Irvin, Keilo, Darren Seals, or
Detective Adams from that period of time. But the search
turned up nothing, and nothing ever happened in the case
against those suspected of murdering Kelo a year and a
(33:58):
half later. Both cases involved the FBI at some level,
and both cases had hard to access evidence that was
hidden or obscured or just downright missing. So, taking that
with everything else we knew about Kilo and Darren's murder, this.
Speaker 6 (34:17):
Is gonna be a weird question. It might be really bizarre,
and you can just laugh at me. In the event
that somebody is participating as an informant, either for the
police or for perhaps even the FBI is part of
a task force or something like that, if someone is
acting as an informant and they get released on that,
(34:38):
would that be sort of blacked out information?
Speaker 16 (34:40):
Oh wow?
Speaker 6 (34:42):
So that's good question, because here's the thing. He was
connected to another group of people who were all indicted
and arrested on federal charges of cocaine distribution. There was
a big drug ring that was busted there in Saint
Louis that had connections to the Cartel Mexico, and he
was associated with those individuals. There was an FBI agent
(35:05):
as part of his arrest, and even when he himself
was murdered, when they arrested the people they thought had
murdered him, a task force participated in that arrest.
Speaker 15 (35:14):
So I am wondering, was.
Speaker 6 (35:15):
This guy an informant of some kind who was then
led out to continue his informing And maybe the reason
we can't see documents is because that's being hidden.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Ah, I.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I've never been answerd that. I can tell you. I
don't see anything in my system about this being a
confidential informant. Honestly, I couldn't even tell you how this
office handle's confidential informants, you know. I mean, I'm not
a prosecutor here, so there would be no reason for
me to be involved in that.
Speaker 9 (35:50):
And I'm not on the need to know list.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, that is definitely the way to say it. But
I can see every case associated with him, which is
only this one, and there is no documents on here,
and honestly, I can't even explain that.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Since Sherry didn't understand what was going on with Kilo,
we decided to reach right out to the FBI man
who'd been on site for both Kilo's arrest and for
the arrest of his alleged killer.
Speaker 9 (36:24):
I't, Lewis, I'm trying to reach Owen Cunningham.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
Sure.
Speaker 16 (36:29):
Hello.
Speaker 9 (36:30):
Hey, my name is Raynovischewski. I'm a journalist who does
a podcast with iHeart called After the Uprising, and our
new season is about Darren Seals. At first, I thought
we were accidentally cut off, but when I called back,
I got the sense that Special Agent Cunningham had no
interest in talking to a journalist. Lewis, Hey, apologies, Could
(36:52):
you try Owen Cunningham one more time.
Speaker 15 (36:54):
I don't think he is available right now.
Speaker 9 (36:56):
Okay, how do you know that.
Speaker 15 (37:00):
Not picking up? So we'll let you know if he
can attact you later.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
They never got back to us more after the break.
Speaker 10 (37:19):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
I wanted Bonnie to have closure. Now I want Byron
and his sister to have closure. I want miss Peggy
to have closure knowing at least the person who or
persons that killed their loved one was prosecuted. You know,
even though they may not have lived the best kind
(37:43):
of life, they deserve justice too, And just because they're
black didn't mean that they don't receive justice. And what's
so injurious is when the prosecutor is black themselves and
does not prosecute. That is worse is when a prosecutor
fails to prosecute and lets these violent offenders out into
(38:09):
the streets so that they can kill again and again
and again and again.
Speaker 10 (38:14):
Maria and I are having a long conversation focusing on
the work of the Saint Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell.
Bell was elected as the first black Saint Louis County
prosecutor in twenty eighteen, and if you listen to the
first season of our podcast, you'll remember that we brought
him evidence and next steps we thought could settle the
question of the mysterious hanging death of Donie Jones. You
(38:37):
heard from him in this season as well, briefly back
in episode two, responding to media questions about why Perez Read,
the accused serial killer, had not been successfully prosecuted for
an arsony committed years before his killing spree. As part
of her work producing this podcast, Maria looked through boxes
and boxes of police reports that outlined a variety of
(38:59):
criminal actstions undertaken by a variety of young men over
and over again. In these reports, she would see that
warrants were refused or charges were never leveled against those
accused of assaults, thefts, and even murder. It sent Maria
on a long quest trying to understand why this kept happening.
While she was going municipality to municipality digging up paperwork,
(39:23):
I decided to check in on the status of Perez Read,
that alleged serial killer. So I called the prosecuting attorney's
office and spoke with Sherry Looter. This might seem like
a weird tangent, but bear with us. While speaking with her,
Sherry told me that they only had one open case
against Perez for misdemeanor assault, stemming from an incident in
(39:44):
which he allegedly headbutted a prison guard. Where were his
murder charges?
Speaker 12 (39:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (39:49):
Only other thing I can't figure out is why there
wouldn't have been reference to. September twelve, twenty twenty one,
readshot a man multiple times in Saint Louis County on
Chamber Road. September thirteenth, twenty twenty one murdered Marne Haines allegedly,
also Saint Louis County. September sixteenth, twenty twenty one murdered
(40:11):
Pamela Abercrombie allegedly and also paralyzed someone only referred to
as our h. September nineteen, twenty twenty one allegedly murdered
Carrie Ross and then September twenty sixth, twenty twenty one,
allegedly murdered Lester Robinson. Now I believe a couple of
those are Saint Louis City, but the rest certain occurred
(40:33):
in counties, but they weren't listed, And I was curious why.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I can't tell you because I'm looking in my system
at every case he has in this office. And there
are two, the misdemeanor assault force that is pending and
the arson case. And there are none of those homicides
you mentioned. None of them are in March the stuff,
(41:00):
not as a refusal and not as a charged case,
none of them.
Speaker 10 (41:04):
Now, this is strange, really strange. What is going on
at the prosecutor's office. Where are the assault and murder
charges against Perez Read?
Speaker 16 (41:15):
You have the attorney's office.
Speaker 9 (41:16):
I'm trying to reach Ryan Finland.
Speaker 10 (41:18):
I'll get teach whatever just a moment, Thank you, right.
Speaker 13 (41:22):
Hi, Ryan.
Speaker 9 (41:23):
My name is rayno Vischewski. I'm a journalist and I
was actually just wondering if you might give me an
update on the Perez Read case.
Speaker 10 (41:30):
Thinking that maybe I'd gotten something wrong. I called the
US Attorney's office. After all, if you remember when Perez
was arrested, it was by the FBI. He had traveled
into Kansas, where he committed his final crimes, and he
now had some federal charges pending as well. Homicide is
not something the Feds usually charge, but I figured i'd
(41:50):
ask about it and maybe the picture would come clear.
Speaker 9 (41:53):
Sorry, I won't take much of your time. But I
just spoke with the Saint Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's office
and she doesn't see any case entered or proceeding in
any fashion in county around the four murders in the
same time frame. I'm trying to figure out where those
cases are, like, who's.
Speaker 12 (42:10):
Taking on the sure and he was brought over for
our federal charges first on a complaint, and then he
was indicted, and then as our case was pending, Kansas
City charged him with the murder from that November one date.
Speaker 16 (42:27):
And so we sent them over to Kansas City to.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
Face that charge.
Speaker 9 (42:31):
So you're letting the local cases proceed first, and then federal.
Speaker 16 (42:37):
Correct there's local and arguably more serious cases proceed first.
He's just out in Kansas City on a rit to
face that murder charge, and then he'll come back to
federal custody.
Speaker 10 (42:50):
If what Ryan is telling us is accurate, and we
have no reason to doubt that it is, the federal
government is going to let the local governments with their
more or serious charges against Perez, meaning the assault and
murder charges go first, and when those trials conclude, the
Feds will move forward with their lesser cases. So again,
(43:13):
where are the Saint Louis County charges against Perez for homicide?
And it doesn't end with him.
Speaker 9 (43:19):
Obviously, we have Darren Seal's case in which Kilo was
not prosecuted. In trying to understand these failures to prosecute,
we wondered what might have prevented the prosecuting Attorney's office
from pursuing these cases. And that's when we learn that
Wesley Bell's chief of staff, Sam Alton, has held multiple
simultaneous jobs. Aside from his primary titles.
Speaker 10 (43:41):
For serving as Wesley Bell's chief of staff at the
Prosecutor's Office, mister Alton has paid one hundred and thirty
thousand dollars a year. He is also being paid to
serve in a variety of legal capacities for several different municipalities,
and on top of that, he still works out of
his private practice. According to publicly available rerects, since beginning
(44:01):
his service under Bell in twenty nineteen, Alton appears to
have been paid six hundred and seventy four thousand dollars
by Saint Louis County and he's been able to double
that by moonlighting in these other municipalities. According to the
Saint Louis Post Dispatch. Now, this double triple quadruple dipping
into different public budgets for income doesn't appear to be illegal,
(44:22):
though it certainly does raise a host of questions of
both ethics and conflicts of interest. And how can it
not be called into question that the primary job that
of chief of staff for the Prosecuting Attorney of Saint
Louis County may not be receiving the attention and quality
of service that is due. And if this moonlighting is tolerated,
we have to wonder what else is tolerated. Why is
(44:45):
it that people like Troy Doyle Junior can fail to
appear when summoned a court over and over again, or
that people like Perez Red don't have homicide charges filed
against them, or that Kilo was never charged for Darren's murder.
Is Bell's staff spread too things, his direction from the
top two disorganized to handle the county caseload. When Wesley
(45:06):
Bell first ran for the office of the Prosecuting Attorney
of Saint Louis County, he leaned into the Ferguson movement
and ideas of justice reform. Now, in his fifty year
in that office, there are numerous examples where he has
failed to take dangerous people off the streets. And now
mister Bell has his sites on a higher office, that
(45:26):
of a US Congressman from Missouri's first congressional district, a
position currently held by Corey Busch.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Also breaking today, Saint Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell he'll
challenge Congresswoman Corey Bush for her seat in the House.
Speaker 8 (45:40):
What a matchup. It will be sure to draw national
media attention, the prosecutor versus the activists, both of them
forging their pathways to power in the aftermath of the
uprising in Ferguson after the death of Michael Brown.
Speaker 10 (45:55):
We of course wanted to speak directly with Wesley Bell,
and we tried over and over again, but no matter
how many times we asked or which channel we sent
our requests through, he never agreed to interview with us.
I actually bumped into him randomly in the lobby of
a Saint Louis hotel and I took the opportunity to
plete our case. In that conversation, he said we could
(46:17):
schedule a time to address our concerns, and then still nothing.
So we decided to attend a Saint Louis County Council
meeting in which Wesley Bell and his office were scheduled
to go over their budget. We thought if we spoke
at that meeting, we might pressure mister Bell into finally
agreeing to an interview. It turns out he didn't even
show up, and he left his team to field the
(46:40):
questions asked by the council members. Hi, I'm sorry for
the hesitation.
Speaker 14 (46:45):
I was expecting mister Wesley Bell.
Speaker 12 (46:48):
Yeah, Now, Wesley had a previous engagement planned of town.
Speaker 10 (46:53):
During the citizen comment portion of the meeting, we spoke
our piece. Here's our producer, John Duffy at the microphone.
Speaker 6 (46:59):
I'm here tonight to talk about a concerning issue that
has come to our attention over the course of our
work investigating the twenty sixteen homicide of Darren Seal's. We
were happy to learn that Saint Louis County's Crimes against
Persons did, in fact seem to detect Darren's likely murderer.
Their suspect, Anthony Irvin went by the street name Kilo,
was our likely suspect as well. After conducting many community interviews.
(47:21):
What we found so concerning was that despite Saint Louis
County Police presenting an application of charges on mister Irvin
for prosecution on November two, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
He was never charged.
Speaker 6 (47:31):
Mister Irvin himself was then murdered in April of twenty
twenty and in the year and five months between the
time when the police told the prosecutor's office he was
Darren Seal's probable murderer and his own death, Wesley Bell's
office never moved forward to have mister Irvin arrested, a
move which ironically could have saved mister Irvin's life. We
have been desperately trying to get mister Bell to sit
with us to answer our questions, but have been rebuffed
(47:53):
time and time again. When we go to air in
June of twenty twenty four with our show, we will
be forced to present facts to the public to make
his tenure as the county prosecutor look like a disaster
for the safety of local families. Messie grants it's the
time to speak with him on these issues and provides
whatever explanations he has for what appears to be a
series of failures.
Speaker 10 (48:11):
Despite speaking publicly and despite our multiple requests for mister
Bell to go on the record and answer our questions.
As of this writing, he still has refused to do so.
And because of everything she learned about Wesley Bell and
her lack of faith in the level of dedication he
brings to his public service, Maria our Maria decided to
(48:32):
throw her hat in the ring and to run against
Wesley for the US House of Representatives.
Speaker 9 (48:38):
There's a new candidate in the race from Missouri's first
congressional district.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Former Missouri Representative and Senator Maria Chappelle Nadal is running.
Speaker 10 (48:46):
It was more than two years ago that we set
out to find the answer to who killed Darren Seals.
After conducting hundreds of hours of interviews and scouring thousands
of pages of documents, we think we've been able to
do that. Even if the finer details of exactly why
Darren was killed may still be uncertain. What we found
through our work lined up very closely with what Detective
(49:09):
Adams and the Saint Louis County Crimes against Persons Unit found,
and where we were off. Their work was able to
set most of the records straight. If it's true the
Kilo pulled the trigger on Darren and set the fire,
he got away with it. If it's true that LP
was in the jeep with him when Kilo shot Darren,
(49:30):
he got away with it. If it's true that Lil
Chris and whoever the driver he swopped places with took
part in moving Darren's jeep and body, they got away
with it. And if it's true that Darren's childhood friend
Jaybird put the whole thing into motion, he got away
with it. To many people, Darren was a hero. To others,
(49:51):
he was a real man, occupying various roles in their lives. Son, brother, friend.
We hope that listening to this show, all those people
feel some level of closure. And to everyone who is
baffled or shocked by what appears to be a high
level of dysfunction in Saint Louis County's ability to bring
(50:14):
criminals to justice, well that's next season on after the uprising.
Speaker 5 (50:23):
Fel Don't you're gonna be either looking out where you're
gonna hang over. You're gonna have some type of exchange
with him that you that's gonna be memorable, that you
won't be able to forget.
Speaker 13 (50:41):
He wasn't scared to speak his mind if he felt
you were being found. He's gonna call you out, whether
you were homie or somebody random.
Speaker 12 (50:49):
He was for his people.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
He was for his people, and he was literally the
true anss of Malcolm X right. Any means that's is there.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
If he was here, you know, hopefully he would be
doing what he loved, which was trying to be involved
in the music in Hopefully he would have been doing it.
Speaker 9 (51:12):
How would your life be different if Darren and vinion it.
Speaker 7 (51:14):
For the last seven years ago, I felt like we
would have honestly took over the world.
Speaker 10 (51:27):
After The Uprising is a production of Double Asterisk and
iHeart Podcasts in association with True Stories. Season two was written, reported,
and produced by Maria Chappelle, Nadal, John Duffy, Malory Kenoi,
and Reino Vashlski. Executive producers are Nikki Atour and Lindsay
Hoffman for iHeart Podcasts, John Duffy and Renoviaschewski for Double Asterisk,
(51:48):
David Cassidy and Ruth Baka for True Stories. Directed by
John Duffy and Renovashlsky. Theme 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 Yazy and Brandon Butler. Legal by Holly Decan for
iHeart Podcasts and Keith Scarr for Double Asterisk Missouri. Sunshine
(52:12):
Legal by David Roland. Show logo by iHeart Podcasts using
a photo by at Tillo Dagostino. 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
(52:33):
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 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
(52:55):
you're enjoying the show, leave us a rating and review
on your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 9 (52:59):
Thank you, Jamie Dennis, Danny Gonzalez, Jonathan Hartwig, Bethan Macaluso,
Matt McDonough, Melissa McKinnes, Ryan Mears, Tony and Valovyshewski, and
the family and loved ones of Darren Seals, Bottom, Boys and.
Speaker 10 (53:13):
Doa tracks used via fair use. So was the news reporting.
Archival copyright twenty twenty four. Double asteriskink
Previously when after the uprising, my detective.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Is not available to be indicating sections. We're still actively
pursuing possible other.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Suspects and you know them lose either got Q what
a imprevent for some other situations going life.
Speaker 4 (00:18):
Because that's who they was. We had two managers, two
guys managing us at one time.
Speaker 5 (00:24):
It was a street guy.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
I don't know if I still mentioned his name.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I mean he was in the streets before man he
was dealing with this dude named j Bird. Bird is
locked up. Sills was supposed to be taking care of
some shit for his family. They didn't go as it
was supposed to go, and they lined them up.
Speaker 6 (00:38):
He had the type of attitude if you felt like
he was a little skirit or just maybe a little bit.
Speaker 5 (00:43):
He sees off of it.
Speaker 7 (00:44):
Even if I did want to tell you something, what
I'm saying is that's a dangerous game to play. If
I even wanted to play that like, that's dangerous.
Speaker 8 (01:09):
What you're looking for is the aftermath of the grand
jury deciding not to indict office.
Speaker 9 (01:18):
A 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.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
They discovered Seal's body inside with a gunshop.
Speaker 10 (01:32):
You want a gun on me?
Speaker 4 (01:33):
Am?
Speaker 11 (01:33):
I am?
Speaker 5 (01:33):
I whats your older brother? Spargus? The PD grab me
by my heart, slam.
Speaker 12 (01:37):
Me off the car.
Speaker 10 (01:44):
He says, you might want to you might want.
Speaker 13 (01:45):
To pick your enemies better.
Speaker 10 (01:49):
This is after the Uprising season two, the murder of
Darren Seals.
Speaker 9 (01:59):
So now we have one source of information saying the
co manager of Bottom Boys, jay Bird, ordered it, and
the police believed that there was a prosecutable case around
Kilo being at least one of the participants.
Speaker 14 (02:16):
Before my mother passed away, someone told her this information.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
This is LaToya Seals, Darren's older sister, and she.
Speaker 14 (02:24):
Shared it with me, and she did not want to
believe that it was jay Bird because we grew up
with him. He went to school with him, I went
to school with his sister. I was friends with his
sister and they were like brothers. And she knew other
things that jay Bird had faced when he was a child,
watching his uncle kill his mother, and so many other
(02:47):
things that I could tell you, but my mom did
not want to.
Speaker 15 (02:52):
She just she did not want to believe.
Speaker 14 (02:54):
That it was jay Bird because she just they were
best friends and she never ever thought that it could
be possibly be him.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
The other part of it is in twenty twelve in
O'Fallon he had a gun. There were witnesses that said
that he had a gun. He was still on probation
at this time, so the fact that he had a
gun he could go to jail. Darren had to figure
out what was in his best interest.
Speaker 15 (03:23):
At the time.
Speaker 9 (03:25):
So it's an open question, right if the information is correct,
how jay Bird would have gotten the impression in twenty
sixteen that Darren was informing. And one way to look
at this is that he was not informing, but that
the Feds of the cops were pressuring him. Actually had
the result of Jaybird coming to believe that he was
(03:46):
informing when he wasn't.
Speaker 11 (03:47):
Or of course it's.
Speaker 10 (03:49):
Possible that he did inform, he was informing, that he
informed at once and that that was held over him,
or that that got leaked by No.
Speaker 15 (03:59):
I never informed.
Speaker 13 (04:01):
He was never informing for the Faith or anybody.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
We cut a whole final episode for this season, and
it started with this conversation with LaToya Us telling her
our theory. Darren's brother Byron was there too. We thought
we'd wrap up the season by giving his siblings our
best guess as to how and why their brother was murdered.
But then a few unexpected things happened. First, as you
(04:32):
heard everything we'd come up with, LaToya had already heard
through her mother. Bunnie never said any of this to us,
choosing instead to believe that it was the FBI or
some consortium of law enforcement bureaucrats who killed her son.
The second surprising thing is that we were given the
Saint Louis County Police Department's full investigative report into Darren's murder.
(04:58):
It came in a bundle of doc do we requested
about a side issue, and we're not sure why we
were given this report and whether or not it was
on purpose or by accident. Either way, it fell into
our lapse only weeks before we were set to begin
mixing and mastering all of our episodes, So the two
(05:20):
hundred page report coming into our possession set us to scrambling, Hey.
Speaker 15 (05:25):
Ray, this is Tracy Panna's a Saint Let's County.
Speaker 9 (05:27):
Please.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
After reading the report, we immediately wanted to get in
touch with the Saint Louis County Police to see if
we could get their detectives to go on record about it.
Knowing this was unlikely, Ray tried right at the outset
to complement the effort we saw reflected in the report,
and so.
Speaker 9 (05:46):
I mentioned I wanted to pitch you because when we
started this investigation, what we learned from a lot of
the black community, in the activist community, is that the
perception was that County PD wasn't gonna and hadn't done
it any investigation into Seals because he was an activist
and he was for police reform and all this stuff.
And we're seeing from the report a one point eighty
(06:08):
not the case. Detective Atoms and all of your team
did some incredible work. We would love it if Detective
Adams would reconsider give us an hour and talk us
through and sort of let him present his findings.
Speaker 15 (06:21):
Yeah, I can reach out to him and ask him
if he wants to sit down and talk.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
To you guys.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Before hanging up, Sergeant Panis wanted to make sure people
understood a few things about the department and how they worked.
Speaker 4 (06:33):
You know, I've been doing this twenty lush years.
Speaker 11 (06:35):
I went to the academy in ninety six.
Speaker 15 (06:37):
I have never seen us walk into a case and go, yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:39):
I don't like this guy who's a douchebag. I'm not
going to push it. Never never, Ever, some of the victims.
Speaker 9 (06:44):
That we deal with are not, you know, necessarily the
best victims.
Speaker 15 (06:48):
So we I've never seen any of our officers act
like that.
Speaker 13 (06:51):
Every single one of them is treated with yet.
Speaker 4 (06:53):
Most importance, as if it was our mom, dad, brother, sister.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
So Sergeant Panis eventually got back to us and explain
that no, Detective Adams did not want to be interviewed
for the show, so instead of having him walk you
through his report, we'll have to do it ourselves. And
the first thing we want to say about it is
that from day one of this case, Detective Adams was
working leads in sources and compiling a lot of valuable
(07:20):
information about Darren's murder, and what he found can clear
the air on some issues that we've raised throughout the season. First,
remember back in episode one, when people like Lalla and
Boating were saying that there were bullet shells on the
ground at the crime scene.
Speaker 15 (07:38):
Shell bulletshaill is all that stuff will still hit.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
The crimecy well. According to the report, the night of
Darren's murder. Detectives had used metal detectors to scan the
parking lot and they didn't find these bullets or shell casings.
The report also states detectives even examined trash in the
grassy area near the parking lot, noting Cinderello wrappers and
(08:02):
an empty water bottle. Remember when Bonnie said that on
top of the white foam that was left on the
scene by the fire department, that she saw shiny new bullets.
Speaker 15 (08:13):
In all that ash stuff and all that white phone stuff,
there were three shiny bullets. It looked like somebody too,
three brand new bullets and just laid in one of Corona.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
People were all over that crime scene in the morning,
including Kilo and other people possibly involved in the murder.
Anything could have been added to throw off the investigation,
and in the report, Detective Adams writes that he had
a conversation with our friend em and that Emir mentioned
shell ca scenes left on the scene. Detective Adams says
(08:46):
he told a mirror that they'd searched the lot with
metal detectors and when he asked where these shell case
scenes were, Amir said that someone had taken them, so
it wasn't something Detective Adams wasn't concerned with. Another issue
the report puts to rest is the mysterious man who
drove into the parking lot that first morning. Remember Darnell
(09:08):
in a mirror describing a white guy in a truck
that they filmed with a drone.
Speaker 16 (09:13):
We see this white guy pull up in a pickup
truck while the.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Man's got the drone in the air.
Speaker 15 (09:20):
And I turned to a mirror and I said, we
need to record that, get his license plate and everything.
Speaker 11 (09:24):
So a mayor Pools was rolled over the guy's trucks
and records to Singlis County Homicide.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
They actually came to the law office, sat down and
talked to me for a few minutes in reference to
the videotape and the content, and I.
Speaker 11 (09:38):
Gave him a copy of that.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Never heard anything else from them.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
You've seen the drone footage Darnell and a mirror had
given the department. Detective Adams was able to trace the
license plate on that truck and he went to the
owner's house. The man's name was Benjamin and he was
an amateur journalist. When Detective Adams spoke with him, Benjamin
made it clear that he'd been interested in the Ferguson
(10:03):
protests since twenty fourteen, and that he'd only gone to
the sight of Darren's killing out of curiosity. He was
cooperative and said he would be of assistance in any
way he could, should detectives require it. And on the
subject of white guys, we cannot forget our mystery man
seen by the Ridgeview witness, who appeared out of the
(10:24):
woods right before Darren's jeep was set on fire.
Speaker 17 (10:28):
But a white boy came from really good way through
the woods, and I'm thinking he's gonna come try to
find some timokregs. I'm not really paying attention then by
the time I turned away and look back. The whole
cause of flights, like the whole thing.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Though it took some time for the Ridgeview witness to
finally be willing to speak with Detective Adams, he did
eventually come into the police station and answer questions about
what he saw that night. He said at the time
he thought the white man had set Darren's jeep on fire,
but when drilling down into the details, he explained to
(11:03):
Detective Adams that actually he never saw the white guy
near Darren's jeep, stating that he saw him about thirty
five feet away from it before he also saw him
run back into the woods. During questioning, the Ridgeview witness
also slightly changed his thoughts about the height of the
person he'd seen exiting Darren's jeep with socks on his hands.
Speaker 17 (11:26):
He had some socks on his hand, and he wouldn't
have beg from what I was sending here, like, he's
probably about your side A part of the.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
While speaking with Detective Adams, the witness claims he thought
the man who driven the jeep was five ten. The
Ridgeview witness really didn't want to speak with police, and
only did so because Darren's girlfriend, Naomi coaxed him into it.
Remember how Bonnie thought Naomi was a fed.
Speaker 15 (11:54):
You know, as I kill watch and see how she
act toward you. I see it's unless she worked them
for some money, and I believe it's to this day,
I really sup believe it now.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
According to the report, Naomi was actually very interested in
finding out who killed Darren, and she spoke with police
several times and gathered a lot of information to hand
off to detectives. Nothing we can see in the report
makes her seem like anything but a genuinely concerned girlfriend.
(12:26):
In fact, she told detectives that before she even knew
Darren was dead, she had driven around looking for him
when he didn't come home that night. After going to
meet Keilo the next morning at the crime scene where
a vigil had been set up for Darren, Naomi reported
that all of the Bottom Boys came and Kilo was
drunk and acting aggressive towards everyone. Naomi also gave statements
(12:52):
to detective Adams that add clarity to one more loose end.
We're not sure where the idea came from that Darren's
phone call with Kilo was about a white music video maker,
but according to the report, when Kilo spoke to Darren
on the phone the night he died, they were actually
talking about an upcoming performance. Apparently, Kilo wanted the Bottom
(13:15):
Boys to open for another rap group, but it was
going to cost the money to do so, and Darren
thought this was a bad idea, saying the group should
get paid to perform, not the other way around. The
investigative report into Darren's death was incredibly thorough and shows
a hell of a lot of methodical detective work that
(13:37):
took place over the course of several years, starting immediately
when Darren was first killed. What it also shows is
that there was more than one witness to what happened
that night more after the break.
Speaker 10 (13:59):
Now back to the show. Remember when we first visited
the crime scene with Darnell and Emir back in episode three,
and Emir told us a story he'd heard about someone
who had witnessed Darren's murder, the.
Speaker 13 (14:12):
Guy who lived at that location.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
He told the two guys, y'all can't leave that body
in front of my house.
Speaker 10 (14:20):
As it turns out, the general thrust of this story
is true. According to the police report, there was a
witness who will call Andrea. The night of Darren's killing,
Andre had gone out to a night club with his
friend who will call Stephen. After the club, Andre went
back to his friend Steven's apartment to crash for the night.
Andrea had been sleeping when Stephen woke him up and
(14:42):
told him that someone had just been smoked outside. Andrea
and Stephen went out to the parking lot of the
apartment complex, where a jeep Wrangler with the engine running
and the lights on sat parked. They walked up to
the jeep, careful not to touch it, and looked through
the driver's side window and saw a body. He slumped
over the steering wheel. They returned to the porch of
(15:03):
Stephen's apartment to smoke a cigarette, when about twenty minutes later,
a car pulled up and dropped off a man. The
car left again, and the man approached Andrea and Stephen
and asked them for a cigarette. Andre told police that
he thought this man was trying to find out what
they knew about the jeep. While smoking a cigarette together,
Stephen told the man quote, I know what y'all just did.
(15:26):
You need to get that shit out of here, keep
the police away. The man asked Andrea and Stephen to
help him toe the jeep away, and when they refused,
the man made a phone call. A few minutes later,
another man exited from a nearby apartment. The first man
moved the dead body from the driver's seat to the
back seat of the jeep and then got into the
passenger seat himself. The second man, who'd just come out
(15:49):
of the nearby apartment, got into the driver's seat of
the jeep and began to drive it away, though he
was rusty with operating a stick shift and drove through
the grass. Detectives presented a series of mug shots to Andrea,
and he identified the first man as Kilo. He identified
the second man as Christopher Moore. Christopher Moore lived in
(16:09):
the apartment complex where this incident with Andrea and Stephen happened.
But no, it wasn't on Gamble Street in Saint Louis City.
It was at the Riverview Park Place apartments on Towell Lane,
exactly one point two miles north and west of the
Ridgeview Apartments where Darren's jeep was found burning. It's also
only half a mile from the Rock of Food Mart,
(16:30):
where a witness told Bonnie that they'd seen Darren and
his jeep having an argument.
Speaker 11 (16:34):
Some idee day was arguing in a truck and they
was on Diamond right across from the store, and they
said the he had used it on but he got
real heated, they got re elaped.
Speaker 10 (16:47):
Christopher Moore, the man identified as the driver of Darren's jeep,
went by the name Lil Chris. In the last episode,
we played audio of LP on a jail phone call
with his mother learning about Keelo having been shot in
Castle Point. It was Lil Chris that Kilo had been
with during that shooting. By the time Detective Adams had
this witness testimony about Lil Chris. It was twenty twenty
(17:10):
three and the statute of limitations on tampering with evidence
and abandonment of a corpse had expired. But one thing
we note that never gets a mention in the police
report is that when Andre sees Lil Chris drive with
Kilo in Darren's jeep out of the starting location at
the park Place Apartments, he doesn't report seeing any other cars,
(17:30):
and he also never mentions the driver pulling socks over
his hands. The witness at the Ridgeview Apartments who sees
the jeep pull in seems to describe a different driver.
Not only does the driver he describe have socks on
his hands, but he says he has dreads.
Speaker 17 (17:46):
There was only one dude they got out. He is like, yeah,
he had come thinking about.
Speaker 10 (17:52):
Lil Chris did not have dreads. Also, the Ridgeview witness
said there were two cars following Darren's jeep. So where
in the one point two mile drive from the park
Place Apartments to the Ridgeview Apartments did these cars join
the convoy and was there a driver swap. If so,
who is this second driver? Well, according to the police report,
(18:14):
in the evening of the day Darren was killed, a
man who will call Nick went to visit someone he
knew at the Riverview Park Place apartments. Outside, a group
of men were talking, knowing one of them a guy
he calls Jason. Nick approached the group and joined the conversation.
Jason told the group that the night before he was
there at the apartment complex when Darren and two members
(18:37):
of the Bottom Boys walked out of the unit where
Lil Chris lived. He said that the group was arguing
and that Darren seemed to be in distress. All three
men got into a jeep, and moments later there was
a pop after the gunshot. The two members of the
Bottom Boys got out of the jeep, wiped the door
handles with their sleeves, then went back into the apartment
(18:59):
for a few minutes, beare for coming out again and
driving the jeep away. Police asked Nick if he knew
Jason's real name, and he said he did not, but
he did say that Jason drove a gray Chrysler three
hundred with a modified loud exhaust. This car would seem
to be a perfect candidate for the vehicle the Ridgeview
witness described, so this Jason person may have been that
(19:21):
other driver. When police asked a manager at the Riverview
Apartments if they recognized that Chrysler three hundred, they said yes,
and that it was driven by a dark complexed man
with gold teeth.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Hi we on Facebook live behind a face.
Speaker 10 (19:37):
On May twenty sixteen, Darren went live on Facebook as
the Bottom Boys prepared to shoot the music video for
their song Can't Go. Recording with his phone, Darren walks
around the parking lot introducing the various people who will
be in the music video, and at one point he
puts his arm around a man with short dreads and
gold teeth, who he calls Trey.
Speaker 17 (20:00):
Point.
Speaker 9 (20:00):
We're still alone has a point man We outside the linel.
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Cordon Lyne may live snapping, we damn we outside.
Speaker 12 (20:09):
I'm a nigga trained to build last.
Speaker 14 (20:11):
Video, last video.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
We had to get his that this video he found
right actor man we it all man? How do you Warran?
Come highand hey hey hey get at it?
Speaker 3 (20:22):
I try to tail get that deal.
Speaker 1 (20:24):
Tell you this man is in the music video seen
in Darren's jeep. We don't know his real name or
if he is in fact Jason. Whoever Jason is He
also told Nick that Darren had made off with five
kilos of cocaine that belonged to someone named Jaybird, so
(20:45):
Jay Bird ordered the hit on Darren from the jail
where he was incarcerated. Because Nick didn't see these events himself,
police couldn't confirm with mugshots which two men walked out
of the apartment and into Darren's jeep with him, but
Nick did say that Jason claimed to recognize them from
their music videos, which he watched frequently. This would imply
(21:09):
that the second person was LP or LR. When we
interviewed them, neither LP or LR said they were with
Darren that night, So it's.
Speaker 7 (21:23):
You know, I know for sure, I wasn't there. I
highly doubt Kila had anything to do with it.
Speaker 9 (21:28):
Were you with Kilo that night?
Speaker 10 (21:30):
No.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
Aside from Jason claiming it was two Bottom Boys who
killed Darren, the police also had an inside informant. The
report doesn't name this person, only referring to them as
an s OI, which stands for source of information. During
Detective Adam's interview with this source, they revealed that the
(21:52):
Bottom Boys were a rap group turned street game and
that Jay Bird had been their primary leader. Until his
arrest that summer. The source explained that Kelo was the
group's muscle and that he's a known shooter. According to
the source, Jaybird had LP and Kelo killed Darren, and
the reason was that quote Jabird was tying up loose
(22:15):
ends and eliminating anyone who might be a liability. As
Detective Adams was putting the case together, he heard the
name Jaybird from several different sources. So after confirming Jaybird's
real name, Jerry Brown Junior, he went to visit Jaybird
at the prison where he was incarcerated. Jaybird spoke with
(22:38):
Detective Adams voluntarily and told him that he and Darren
had been close friends. J Bird said that Darren wanted
to get back into the dope game, but it was
him who told Darren not to. Jaybird even said that
right before he was arrested, he had lent Darren several
thousand dollars. We have to wonder if, if this loan
(23:00):
actually occurred, was it a standard loan between friends, or
was it actually drugs or drug money to be used
in dealing somehow. If so, it could line up with
next story to the police about Darren taking five kilos
of Jaybert's cocaine that would have been worth around a
quarter of a million dollars. By the way, when Detective
(23:23):
Adams turned the conversation to Darren's death, Jay Bird said
he heard several theories about it, but wouldn't go into detail.
At that point, Jaybird stopped cooperating and ended the interview.
We tried to talk to Jay Bird about all of this.
We left several messages with his attorney, Travis Noble.
Speaker 9 (23:46):
We were looking to see if we couldn't get an
interview with Travis's client, Jerry Brown Junior, or at least
a comment, and we thought it was fair to let
y'all know that there are some allegations pointed towards Jerry
Brown Junior as having ordered the murder of Darren.
Speaker 4 (24:02):
See.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
With each new suspect and each new name, Detective Adams
was creating a list of phone numbers, including Darren's, and
it was getting warrants to track not only the phone
calls made and received by those phones, but to track
their movements, which ultimately culminated in him building a rough
understanding of who in the Bottom Boys was communicating and
(24:25):
where they were moving to and from, leading up to
and right after Darren's death.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
I can't wait to kid you.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
This is a young man named David Anthony and he's
speaking to his sister on a jail cell telephone. David
was in the bottom Boy's wider circle, and we'd actually
first learned about him from Mosey's box of records. He
and Kilo were pulled over together a week after Darren's
murder and there was a pistol and some marijuana in
(24:56):
the car. This phone call is from when police finally
took David in for questioning about Darren's murder in twenty seventeen.
You'll hear him talk about how the police have everybody's
phone numbers.
Speaker 13 (25:09):
They talk about part of the main priority of bottom
boys or bottom boy storm a purple bullish like.
Speaker 4 (25:18):
To talk about the seed come he straight.
Speaker 13 (25:22):
Head, a pup of sea, pieces of material, the muscolk
p low, p money kres everybody like everybody calling up
with my own number, everything like hey all that is
on Peter.
Speaker 4 (25:39):
White pay phone.
Speaker 11 (25:42):
Sh I know what's goose?
Speaker 1 (25:44):
We find it telling that. In describing being arrested to
discuss Darren's murder, David says that the reason he was
brought in was because of Kilo and LP, which lends
support to next story about two bottom boys being the
ones in Darren's g when Darren was shot.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Well, why I came and got me? Yeah, they came
and got me because yot, that's all I got to be.
Speaker 11 (26:09):
They said the name.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
No, they just came and got me off the strength
of them.
Speaker 10 (26:14):
Police also arrested and questioned Mark kwan Lee, the young
man who was allegedly in a shootout with Kilo, the
knight of Darren's vigil.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
I mean you prow your lawyers. I hate to know
stuff because they got me for some shit.
Speaker 13 (26:28):
To ammificate, it's like three They worked in three different
cases with me.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
They worked in a Homo draft book of case. They
worked in a lot of ships. They worked in the
bottom boy set home Meet, they worked ke boyd.
Speaker 13 (26:39):
Chase on meech.
Speaker 4 (26:40):
They're trying to work over they work in a Rock
of six and they putting tellers on me. They trying
to pull back a whole year on me. They trying
to do a rock with me and tell me.
Speaker 13 (26:48):
They've been watching me for a whole fourteen months.
Speaker 10 (26:50):
Who tried that shot by triangulating, who spoke with whom
at what times. Detective Adams, with the assistance of the FBI,
was able to use cell phones to mat Darren being
called to Riverview by Kilo after many members in the gang,
including LP and Markwan, had seemingly hung around together or
at least their phones had been in the same vicinity.
(27:12):
The one person missing from the matrix of phone numbers
is Bottom Boys member LR. Based on everything in the
police report, Ricky Smith had no involvement in Darren's killing.
But the case against Keelo really came together with a
collection of surveillance video from the Speedy Gas station on
Broadway and Riverview, which is only one point eight miles
(27:33):
from the Ridgeview apartments. At Speedy Gas, detectives spoke with
the employee who had worked the night of Darren's murder.
This employee said a group of teenagers had been fighting
in the parking lot at about twelve twenty am, and
one of them had a small gas can in his hand.
The Speedy Gas manager gave detectives the security video from
that night, and detectives then played that video for several people,
(27:57):
one of whom was the Ridgeview witness. Can affirm that
the cars in the security video were the same cars
he saw followed Darren's jeep into the parking lot the
night of the murder. Another person detective showed the video
to confirmed that Keilo was one of the people captured
on camera.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
So at ten am on November one of twenty eighteen,
a number of detectives as well as at least one
FBI agent assembled to arrest Kilo at his girlfriend's house.
We can see that they forgot to redact Special Agent
Cunningham's name from the report, and if you recall, he's
the same FBI agent who would be involved in the
(28:36):
arrest of Lamont's Joiner for killing Kilo, as we discussed
in episode seven. But anyway, when they had Kilo back
at the precinct, detectives tried to interview him first, talking
about the Bottom Boys, which Kilo insisted was only a
rap group. When detectives tried to talk about the day
of Darren's murder, Kilo asked for a lawyer. Bactives told
(29:00):
Kilo he was being charged with murder, first degree, armed
criminal action, and tampering with physical evidence. Kilo told detectives
to quote come with it, bro, and said, quote, you've
been trying to get at me At that point, Kilo
was booked into the Justice Center on a twenty four
hour hold. Detective Adams brought his case materials and presented
(29:24):
them to the prosecuting Attorney's office, who would be responsible
for issuing a case, which would then send Kilo before
a judge to determine if he was eligible for bail.
And then somehow absolutely nothing happens with the case. We've
already mentioned in previous episodes that the Saint Louis County
(29:46):
Police brought their case to the prosecutor's office, but until
reading the full investigative report, we hadn't known that Keilo
had been in jail. Of course, we've also explained that
later Kilo wild out of jail, free to commit a
litany of crimes, and that he was murdered himself in
(30:06):
twenty twenty, So how the hell did he get released?
More after the break?
Speaker 10 (30:22):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
Did you have a prosecutor there named kil Gore?
Speaker 9 (30:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Years ago.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
This is our producer John Duffy Again.
Speaker 6 (30:32):
Okay, because I'm looking at a police investigative report and
it's telling me that the prosecuting attorney, Kimberly Kilgore, was
briefed on the facts of this case, and she took
the criminal complaint against Anthony Irvin under advisement pending further investigation.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
And at that time he was in jail.
Speaker 6 (30:49):
He was in the Justice Center. This is November one
of twenty eighteen. But all we conceive is that somehow
he gets out of the Justice Center, he goes on,
we have other criminal records for him, he goes on
to commit other crimes, and then he himself is murdered.
But I'm just wondering how he goes from being in
jail in November of twenty eighteen to being out of
(31:12):
jail and the police had booked him there for homicide.
I just thought there had to be some document that
said warrant refused or something like that that would explain
how he was then let off of his twenty four
hour hold.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
So if we would have issued something, there would have
been a warrant, there would have been a complaint, there
would have been a probable cause, all the normal documents
that we file when we issue a new case. But literally,
there is not one single document that got issued on
this case.
Speaker 16 (31:43):
Nothing.
Speaker 10 (31:44):
If Kila was in jail and no case was issued
by the Prosecutor's office within that first twenty four hour period,
he would simply have been let go. But we didn't
want to speculate about this.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
You know, the alther thing that you might do is
send their Sunshine requests to the jail.
Speaker 6 (32:02):
If I can tell you something crazy, Before I bothered
you with this, I did sunshine them first, figuring there
would have to be some document on releasing him, and
they told me that his records are exempt.
Speaker 10 (32:17):
The Justice Center, where Kilo had been held, refuse to
give us any documents on his release, claiming they were
exempt from state sunshine laws, citing a statute that refers
to cases that have been gnalli prost, which is a
fancy way of saying that the prosecutor chose not to
prosecute the case.
Speaker 2 (32:35):
If the case is nalipross, that means it got dismissed.
That means we said, oh, forget this case, we're gonna
we don't want to prosecute anymore. So, but we didn't.
You can't nalipros the case. It's never been issued and
this office did not issue any charges on that case.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
After this conversation, we went back to the Justice Center
saying that in fact, no, the case wasn't Nolli prost,
so please give us Kilo's release records. They apologized for
having cited the wrong legal statute and then supplied another
legal statute to prevent us from getting Kilo's records, and
(33:12):
that legal statute also didn't apply. As of this writing,
we still haven't gotten Kilo's release records from the Justice Center,
and they seem intent to continue hiding them from us.
So Sherry from the prosecutor's office gave us instructions on
how to request a search of Attorney Kimberly Kilgore's emails,
(33:36):
and so we did. We requested any of her emails
that contained the names Anthony Irvin, Keilo, Darren Seals, or
Detective Adams from that period of time. But the search
turned up nothing, and nothing ever happened in the case
against those suspected of murdering Kelo a year and a
(33:58):
half later. Both cases involved the FBI at some level,
and both cases had hard to access evidence that was
hidden or obscured or just downright missing. So, taking that
with everything else we knew about Kilo and Darren's murder, this.
Speaker 6 (34:17):
Is gonna be a weird question. It might be really bizarre,
and you can just laugh at me. In the event
that somebody is participating as an informant, either for the
police or for perhaps even the FBI is part of
a task force or something like that, if someone is
acting as an informant and they get released on that,
(34:38):
would that be sort of blacked out information?
Speaker 16 (34:40):
Oh wow?
Speaker 6 (34:42):
So that's good question, because here's the thing. He was
connected to another group of people who were all indicted
and arrested on federal charges of cocaine distribution. There was
a big drug ring that was busted there in Saint
Louis that had connections to the Cartel Mexico, and he
was associated with those individuals. There was an FBI agent
(35:05):
as part of his arrest, and even when he himself
was murdered, when they arrested the people they thought had
murdered him, a task force participated in that arrest.
Speaker 15 (35:14):
So I am wondering, was.
Speaker 6 (35:15):
This guy an informant of some kind who was then
led out to continue his informing And maybe the reason
we can't see documents is because that's being hidden.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
Ah, I.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I've never been answerd that. I can tell you. I
don't see anything in my system about this being a
confidential informant. Honestly, I couldn't even tell you how this
office handle's confidential informants, you know. I mean, I'm not
a prosecutor here, so there would be no reason for
me to be involved in that.
Speaker 9 (35:50):
And I'm not on the need to know list.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Yeah, that is definitely the way to say it. But
I can see every case associated with him, which is
only this one, and there is no documents on here,
and honestly, I can't even explain that.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
Since Sherry didn't understand what was going on with Kilo,
we decided to reach right out to the FBI man
who'd been on site for both Kilo's arrest and for
the arrest of his alleged killer.
Speaker 9 (36:24):
I't, Lewis, I'm trying to reach Owen Cunningham.
Speaker 4 (36:28):
Sure.
Speaker 16 (36:29):
Hello.
Speaker 9 (36:30):
Hey, my name is Raynovischewski. I'm a journalist who does
a podcast with iHeart called After the Uprising, and our
new season is about Darren Seals. At first, I thought
we were accidentally cut off, but when I called back,
I got the sense that Special Agent Cunningham had no
interest in talking to a journalist. Lewis, Hey, apologies, Could
(36:52):
you try Owen Cunningham one more time.
Speaker 15 (36:54):
I don't think he is available right now.
Speaker 9 (36:56):
Okay, how do you know that.
Speaker 15 (37:00):
Not picking up? So we'll let you know if he
can attact you later.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
They never got back to us more after the break.
Speaker 10 (37:19):
Now back to the show.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
I wanted Bonnie to have closure. Now I want Byron
and his sister to have closure. I want miss Peggy
to have closure knowing at least the person who or
persons that killed their loved one was prosecuted. You know,
even though they may not have lived the best kind
(37:43):
of life, they deserve justice too, And just because they're
black didn't mean that they don't receive justice. And what's
so injurious is when the prosecutor is black themselves and
does not prosecute. That is worse is when a prosecutor
fails to prosecute and lets these violent offenders out into
(38:09):
the streets so that they can kill again and again
and again and again.
Speaker 10 (38:14):
Maria and I are having a long conversation focusing on
the work of the Saint Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell.
Bell was elected as the first black Saint Louis County
prosecutor in twenty eighteen, and if you listen to the
first season of our podcast, you'll remember that we brought
him evidence and next steps we thought could settle the
question of the mysterious hanging death of Donie Jones. You
(38:37):
heard from him in this season as well, briefly back
in episode two, responding to media questions about why Perez Read,
the accused serial killer, had not been successfully prosecuted for
an arsony committed years before his killing spree. As part
of her work producing this podcast, Maria looked through boxes
and boxes of police reports that outlined a variety of
(38:59):
criminal actstions undertaken by a variety of young men over
and over again. In these reports, she would see that
warrants were refused or charges were never leveled against those
accused of assaults, thefts, and even murder. It sent Maria
on a long quest trying to understand why this kept happening.
While she was going municipality to municipality digging up paperwork,
(39:23):
I decided to check in on the status of Perez Read,
that alleged serial killer. So I called the prosecuting attorney's
office and spoke with Sherry Looter. This might seem like
a weird tangent, but bear with us. While speaking with her,
Sherry told me that they only had one open case
against Perez for misdemeanor assault, stemming from an incident in
(39:44):
which he allegedly headbutted a prison guard. Where were his
murder charges?
Speaker 12 (39:49):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (39:49):
Only other thing I can't figure out is why there
wouldn't have been reference to. September twelve, twenty twenty one,
readshot a man multiple times in Saint Louis County on
Chamber Road. September thirteenth, twenty twenty one murdered Marne Haines allegedly,
also Saint Louis County. September sixteenth, twenty twenty one murdered
(40:11):
Pamela Abercrombie allegedly and also paralyzed someone only referred to
as our h. September nineteen, twenty twenty one allegedly murdered
Carrie Ross and then September twenty sixth, twenty twenty one,
allegedly murdered Lester Robinson. Now I believe a couple of
those are Saint Louis City, but the rest certain occurred
(40:33):
in counties, but they weren't listed, And I was curious why.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I can't tell you because I'm looking in my system
at every case he has in this office. And there
are two, the misdemeanor assault force that is pending and
the arson case. And there are none of those homicides
you mentioned. None of them are in March the stuff,
(41:00):
not as a refusal and not as a charged case,
none of them.
Speaker 10 (41:04):
Now, this is strange, really strange. What is going on
at the prosecutor's office. Where are the assault and murder
charges against Perez Read?
Speaker 16 (41:15):
You have the attorney's office.
Speaker 9 (41:16):
I'm trying to reach Ryan Finland.
Speaker 10 (41:18):
I'll get teach whatever just a moment, Thank you, right.
Speaker 13 (41:22):
Hi, Ryan.
Speaker 9 (41:23):
My name is rayno Vischewski. I'm a journalist and I
was actually just wondering if you might give me an
update on the Perez Read case.
Speaker 10 (41:30):
Thinking that maybe I'd gotten something wrong. I called the
US Attorney's office. After all, if you remember when Perez
was arrested, it was by the FBI. He had traveled
into Kansas, where he committed his final crimes, and he
now had some federal charges pending as well. Homicide is
not something the Feds usually charge, but I figured i'd
(41:50):
ask about it and maybe the picture would come clear.
Speaker 9 (41:53):
Sorry, I won't take much of your time. But I
just spoke with the Saint Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's office
and she doesn't see any case entered or proceeding in
any fashion in county around the four murders in the
same time frame. I'm trying to figure out where those
cases are, like, who's.
Speaker 12 (42:10):
Taking on the sure and he was brought over for
our federal charges first on a complaint, and then he
was indicted, and then as our case was pending, Kansas
City charged him with the murder from that November one date.
Speaker 16 (42:27):
And so we sent them over to Kansas City to.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
Face that charge.
Speaker 9 (42:31):
So you're letting the local cases proceed first, and then federal.
Speaker 16 (42:37):
Correct there's local and arguably more serious cases proceed first.
He's just out in Kansas City on a rit to
face that murder charge, and then he'll come back to
federal custody.
Speaker 10 (42:50):
If what Ryan is telling us is accurate, and we
have no reason to doubt that it is, the federal
government is going to let the local governments with their
more or serious charges against Perez, meaning the assault and
murder charges go first, and when those trials conclude, the
Feds will move forward with their lesser cases. So again,
(43:13):
where are the Saint Louis County charges against Perez for homicide?
And it doesn't end with him.
Speaker 9 (43:19):
Obviously, we have Darren Seal's case in which Kilo was
not prosecuted. In trying to understand these failures to prosecute,
we wondered what might have prevented the prosecuting Attorney's office
from pursuing these cases. And that's when we learn that
Wesley Bell's chief of staff, Sam Alton, has held multiple
simultaneous jobs. Aside from his primary titles.
Speaker 10 (43:41):
For serving as Wesley Bell's chief of staff at the
Prosecutor's Office, mister Alton has paid one hundred and thirty
thousand dollars a year. He is also being paid to
serve in a variety of legal capacities for several different municipalities,
and on top of that, he still works out of
his private practice. According to publicly available rerects, since beginning
(44:01):
his service under Bell in twenty nineteen, Alton appears to
have been paid six hundred and seventy four thousand dollars
by Saint Louis County and he's been able to double
that by moonlighting in these other municipalities. According to the
Saint Louis Post Dispatch. Now, this double triple quadruple dipping
into different public budgets for income doesn't appear to be illegal,
(44:22):
though it certainly does raise a host of questions of
both ethics and conflicts of interest. And how can it
not be called into question that the primary job that
of chief of staff for the Prosecuting Attorney of Saint
Louis County may not be receiving the attention and quality
of service that is due. And if this moonlighting is tolerated,
we have to wonder what else is tolerated. Why is
(44:45):
it that people like Troy Doyle Junior can fail to
appear when summoned a court over and over again, or
that people like Perez Red don't have homicide charges filed
against them, or that Kilo was never charged for Darren's murder.
Is Bell's staff spread too things, his direction from the
top two disorganized to handle the county caseload. When Wesley
(45:06):
Bell first ran for the office of the Prosecuting Attorney
of Saint Louis County, he leaned into the Ferguson movement
and ideas of justice reform. Now, in his fifty year
in that office, there are numerous examples where he has
failed to take dangerous people off the streets. And now
mister Bell has his sites on a higher office, that
(45:26):
of a US Congressman from Missouri's first congressional district, a
position currently held by Corey Busch.
Speaker 2 (45:33):
Also breaking today, Saint Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell he'll
challenge Congresswoman Corey Bush for her seat in the House.
Speaker 8 (45:40):
What a matchup. It will be sure to draw national
media attention, the prosecutor versus the activists, both of them
forging their pathways to power in the aftermath of the
uprising in Ferguson after the death of Michael Brown.
Speaker 10 (45:55):
We of course wanted to speak directly with Wesley Bell,
and we tried over and over again, but no matter
how many times we asked or which channel we sent
our requests through, he never agreed to interview with us.
I actually bumped into him randomly in the lobby of
a Saint Louis hotel and I took the opportunity to
plete our case. In that conversation, he said we could
(46:17):
schedule a time to address our concerns, and then still nothing.
So we decided to attend a Saint Louis County Council
meeting in which Wesley Bell and his office were scheduled
to go over their budget. We thought if we spoke
at that meeting, we might pressure mister Bell into finally
agreeing to an interview. It turns out he didn't even
show up, and he left his team to field the
(46:40):
questions asked by the council members. Hi, I'm sorry for
the hesitation.
Speaker 14 (46:45):
I was expecting mister Wesley Bell.
Speaker 12 (46:48):
Yeah, Now, Wesley had a previous engagement planned of town.
Speaker 10 (46:53):
During the citizen comment portion of the meeting, we spoke
our piece. Here's our producer, John Duffy at the microphone.
Speaker 6 (46:59):
I'm here tonight to talk about a concerning issue that
has come to our attention over the course of our
work investigating the twenty sixteen homicide of Darren Seal's. We
were happy to learn that Saint Louis County's Crimes against
Persons did, in fact seem to detect Darren's likely murderer.
Their suspect, Anthony Irvin went by the street name Kilo,
was our likely suspect as well. After conducting many community interviews.
(47:21):
What we found so concerning was that despite Saint Louis
County Police presenting an application of charges on mister Irvin
for prosecution on November two, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
He was never charged.
Speaker 6 (47:31):
Mister Irvin himself was then murdered in April of twenty
twenty and in the year and five months between the
time when the police told the prosecutor's office he was
Darren Seal's probable murderer and his own death, Wesley Bell's
office never moved forward to have mister Irvin arrested, a
move which ironically could have saved mister Irvin's life. We
have been desperately trying to get mister Bell to sit
with us to answer our questions, but have been rebuffed
(47:53):
time and time again. When we go to air in
June of twenty twenty four with our show, we will
be forced to present facts to the public to make
his tenure as the county prosecutor look like a disaster
for the safety of local families. Messie grants it's the
time to speak with him on these issues and provides
whatever explanations he has for what appears to be a
series of failures.
Speaker 10 (48:11):
Despite speaking publicly and despite our multiple requests for mister
Bell to go on the record and answer our questions.
As of this writing, he still has refused to do so.
And because of everything she learned about Wesley Bell and
her lack of faith in the level of dedication he
brings to his public service, Maria our Maria decided to
(48:32):
throw her hat in the ring and to run against
Wesley for the US House of Representatives.
Speaker 9 (48:38):
There's a new candidate in the race from Missouri's first
congressional district.
Speaker 2 (48:41):
Former Missouri Representative and Senator Maria Chappelle Nadal is running.
Speaker 10 (48:46):
It was more than two years ago that we set
out to find the answer to who killed Darren Seals.
After conducting hundreds of hours of interviews and scouring thousands
of pages of documents, we think we've been able to
do that. Even if the finer details of exactly why
Darren was killed may still be uncertain. What we found
through our work lined up very closely with what Detective
(49:09):
Adams and the Saint Louis County Crimes against Persons Unit found,
and where we were off. Their work was able to
set most of the records straight. If it's true the
Kilo pulled the trigger on Darren and set the fire,
he got away with it. If it's true that LP
was in the jeep with him when Kilo shot Darren,
(49:30):
he got away with it. If it's true that Lil
Chris and whoever the driver he swopped places with took
part in moving Darren's jeep and body, they got away
with it. And if it's true that Darren's childhood friend
Jaybird put the whole thing into motion, he got away
with it. To many people, Darren was a hero. To others,
(49:51):
he was a real man, occupying various roles in their lives. Son, brother, friend.
We hope that listening to this show, all those people
feel some level of closure. And to everyone who is
baffled or shocked by what appears to be a high
level of dysfunction in Saint Louis County's ability to bring
(50:14):
criminals to justice, well that's next season on after the uprising.
Speaker 5 (50:23):
Fel Don't you're gonna be either looking out where you're
gonna hang over. You're gonna have some type of exchange
with him that you that's gonna be memorable, that you
won't be able to forget.
Speaker 13 (50:41):
He wasn't scared to speak his mind if he felt
you were being found. He's gonna call you out, whether
you were homie or somebody random.
Speaker 12 (50:49):
He was for his people.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
He was for his people, and he was literally the
true anss of Malcolm X right. Any means that's is there.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
If he was here, you know, hopefully he would be
doing what he loved, which was trying to be involved
in the music in Hopefully he would have been doing it.
Speaker 9 (51:12):
How would your life be different if Darren and vinion it.
Speaker 7 (51:14):
For the last seven years ago, I felt like we
would have honestly took over the world.
Speaker 10 (51:27):
After The Uprising is a production of Double Asterisk and
iHeart Podcasts in association with True Stories. Season two was written, reported,
and produced by Maria Chappelle, Nadal, John Duffy, Malory Kenoi,
and Reino Vashlski. Executive producers are Nikki Atour and Lindsay
Hoffman for iHeart Podcasts, John Duffy and Renoviaschewski for Double Asterisk,
(51:48):
David Cassidy and Ruth Baka for True Stories. Directed by
John Duffy and Renovashlsky. Theme 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 Yazy and Brandon Butler. Legal by Holly Decan for
iHeart Podcasts and Keith Scarr for Double Asterisk Missouri. Sunshine
(52:12):
Legal by David Roland. Show logo by iHeart Podcasts using
a photo by at Tillo Dagostino. 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
(52:33):
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 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
(52:55):
you're enjoying the show, leave us a rating and review
on your favorite podcast app.
Speaker 9 (52:59):
Thank you, Jamie Dennis, Danny Gonzalez, Jonathan Hartwig, Bethan Macaluso,
Matt McDonough, Melissa McKinnes, Ryan Mears, Tony and Valovyshewski, and
the family and loved ones of Darren Seals, Bottom, Boys and.
Speaker 10 (53:13):
Doa tracks used via fair use. So was the news reporting.
Archival copyright twenty twenty four. Double asteriskink
Hosts And Creators
Ray Nowosielski
Maria Chappelle-Nadal
John Duffy
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