February 16, 2021 • 29 mins
After a series of injuries and bizarre behavior, Jim Duncan's last chance to catch on with a new NFL team fell short. By the fall of 1972, he was back in Lancaster; his career was over, his marriage wasn't much better off, and he was running out of money. On the morning of Oct. 20, 1972, Duncan left his family's house and drove downtown. It was the last time his loved ones saw him alive.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heart Radio. Previously on Return man Field, he hits the
deep end of the corner at the ducan. This time
dr will come out with it. Since we've known that
people exposed to many concussions couldn't lead them to be demented,
(00:24):
just like someone with Alzheimer's disease, but at a much
younger age. He was very free with his money, like
at which was a lot of money in Jim had
some problems, but I didn't remember what they were. Man,
I did not get involved. An unnatural quiet hangs over
(00:51):
South Carolina State College today, the day after state highway
patrolman opened fire on rampaging students. By the time moved
back to his hometown Lancaster and South Carolina, we're struggling
with their own transitions. Three students are dead. It has
been called one of the ugliest racial confrontations in the South.
In modern times, bloody civil rights battles like this one
(01:15):
at South Carolina State University were becoming somewhat less common,
and the a c P leaders demanded that steps be
taken immediately to put a stop to what they see
as open police brutality. But if the mechanics of inequality
were changing, the mindset behind it was stubbornly entrenched. We
had decentregration and nine with schools. Floyd White has lived
(01:39):
in Lancaster for almost sixty years. He was one of
Jim's coaches at bar Street High the black high school
in town six and then start putting the black teams
in the school, and then the next year which integre
a few years before lawmakers in Columbia, South Carolina. He's
(02:00):
a Confederate flag over the Capitol Dome, a defiant symbol
in the face of the civil rights movement. They're in
small town Lancashire. The most vivid example of change was
the school integration Floyd White lived through as a coach,
when Jim's alma mater once again changed its name to
Lancaster High School Campus two. What's it when we integrated
(02:22):
to high school? L High School came Laon High School
and number one and it would be juniors and Senior
Street became Black High School, Campbell to the ninth grades
and grades? What was it like though? I mean it
had to be tense. It was no, it was good.
Why do you think there was because we at the
(02:44):
Bright School too, and what's gonna be high, It's gonna
be We kept it in front of Kevin, in front
of Kevin and excepted. He told me. Integration went more
smoothly in Lancashire, not because of less racism there, but
because they did a better job of teaching the black
children to expect it. Kids went to and I had
(03:07):
the flag I called flag compared to flag, you know,
did he We don't play really, so they saw the
Confederate flag and they just but they always kind of
banded together. Didn't new unity instrument, so it kept together. Yeah.
(03:29):
I read a letter to the editor from around that time,
written by a Lancaster resident to the Charlotte Observer. The
letter writer was upset the newspaper had described the Ku
Klux Klan as a hate group. He insisted, quote, your
writings on the clan and others who are aware of
basic racial differences show a bias on your part to
the extent of irresponsible journalism. That's the environment Jim Crash
(03:54):
landed back into in the fall of nineteen two, coming
down in front of the goal of both at the
Blue Eid. I'm the duncan up to the fifteen. He
was a one time super Bowl hero and a black
man with inward demons and an outward love of women, nightlife,
and audacious cars. He was practically a six ft two
(04:17):
embodiment of the change that frightened so many in Lancaster.
In Baltimore, those things helped make him the celebrity be
front of the corner, Duncker wills come out whatever, But
in Lancaster they might have made him a target. Look
Out Duncan at the Kansas City forty nine yard Ye
from the Herald, McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio. This
(04:39):
is return Man. I'm Brett McCormick, and this is part
four October two. That's summer of seventy two. The plan
was that Jim would go to Saints training camp in
New Orleans. Alice wasn't getting along with Jim's mother, so
(05:01):
she would leave the house in Lancaster and temporarily moved
back in with her parents in Greenville. He was going
to be what the Saints. Alice declined to lend her
voice to this podcast, but we spoke for nearly four hours.
Were you like thinking about moving to New Orleans? Or
she planned to join Jim in New Orleans as soon
as training camp ended. But almost as soon as Jim arrived,
(05:21):
people there could tell something was wrong. Not a doctor,
I'm an athletic trainer, but no, you can tell what
things are bothering people, and Jim seemed to be just
always seemed to be bothered with something. Dean klein Schmidt
was a twenty five year old athletic trainer for the Saints.
He went on to work forty years in the NFL
and was inducted into the National Athletic Trainers Hall of Fame.
(05:44):
Clein Schmidt said, Jim arrived to the Saints out of
shape and under a dark cloud. He was not a
coup later, he was not a revel rouser. He was
not that at all. I think he was more to himself.
You know, I don't remember every title players Miles, but
I don't remember him being the fun, loving jokes. I
don't remember that at all. You know, I remember him
(06:07):
being quiet, and Jim could put on a brave face
when he had to, like when he told the local Times,
picking you in newspaper quote, I like New Orleans a
lot enough to want to make it my home. Maybe
my bad luck is behind me now, but inside the
locker room, Jim couldn't hide his troubles. I mean, they
can have family problems, they can have whatever, still play.
(06:30):
But I remember Jim would have gotten the Super Bowl
chap right bonus, Yeah yeah, And he made some kind
of stingment about I just never realized that having so
much money would create so many problems. And him on
a great play by Jim Duncan made two good tackles
(06:53):
coming up from the quarterback position. Saints management wondered if
a blow to the head had affected Jim mentally, so
they took what was at the time an unusual step
of sending the NFL player to a psychiatrist named Dr Williams.
Sor Um. Today, a psychiatrist telling reporters about a patient's
mental health would be a flagrant violation of federal privacy law,
(07:15):
but those laws were only enacted in so at least legally,
Storm could speak freely about his semi famous patient, his
expert opinion, which he told to the Philadelphia Inquiry. At
the time, Duncan was depressed, but football was good therapy,
he said. Quote. By the time I saw him, he
seemed to be on the road to recovery. Had he
(07:37):
continued to play football, I think he would have worked
things out and made a complete recovery. Jim continued his
playing slump in New Orleans, and the Saints waived him
before the season began. For football fans, two stands out
for a different reason, the Miami Dolphins going undefeated, becoming
one of the most celebrated teams in sports history. It
(08:00):
turns out Jim caught a glimpse of that himself. After
he was weighed by the Saints. Jim was invited to
Miami by head coach Don Shula, who had originally helped
draft Jim in nineteen when he coached the Baltimore Colts.
But Jim was just as out of sorts in Miami.
Shula told The New York Times in nineteen seventy two, quote,
(08:21):
we were hoping he'd be a backup defensive back and
run back kickoffs for us. But he wasn't covering well
and he lost some of his speed. One of the
best moments of Jim's life had occurred there in Miami's
Orange Bowl, where the Colts won Super Bowl five less
(08:43):
than two years later, he said, on the bench in
that stadium, watching the Dolphins play their final preseason game
of seventy two. He was cut three days later. The
first thing I did ask what the Saints was, did
you do a physical? I'm not sure that he was
there long enough. The first time Alice heard about any
of her husband's time in Miami was when I told
(09:03):
her so. After he got cut by the Saints September
seven or something like that, he signed with the Dolphins
for like a few days, which would have been Shula
was down there, but he was only with them very briefly,
and then he got cut again, and then he was
back in Lancaster. So yeah, I mean, it's just a
it's a lot. You're probably like, what are you doing here?
(09:25):
Those Dolphins finished that season, laying claim to being the
greatest team ever. Jim came back to Lancaster. His football
career was over. We'll be back in a moment. M
(09:46):
Jim arrived back to the house on Isom Street in
September of nine. A Lancaster phone book from that year
indicates he was employed at a local dry cleaner, though
it's unclear how long he worked there or what kind
of money he made. It's one of the many things
about the following few weeks that are tough to get
a firm handle on. Do you think something had been
going badly for him? Do you think he would have
(10:08):
told you or would he be the kind that would
like chield you from it. Yeah, I can see that
Jim's brother, Elroy, was living in nearby Charlotte by the
time Jim returned home to Lancaster. If you don't want
me to see him and and like, are great tonight?
You know, there's nothing bad that I could tell you
(10:30):
about what other than he just loved one. A few
people I spoke with said Jim liked to smoke marijuana,
but that was hardly unusual in the seventies, especially considering
the professional environment he came from. Forget drug testing. NFL
team doctors had fishing tackle boxes full of painkillers and
(10:52):
other medications they gave out to help players on the field.
He smoked a little bit. That could be a way
that you're dealing with whatever tic a little bit uh
back then, you know, like they're part of him, and
they stayed out late at night, so they need some
type of pill to keep going. Yeah, yeah, medically, Kevin,
you wouldn't believe, you know, And it was all doctors
(11:14):
described as the doctor's back. Then they took care of
their athletes. Bob Grant, who played with Jim in Baltimore,
told me those pills may have been a gateway to
something more serious. Speedy developed a problem addiction to heroin,
(11:34):
and the Baltimore Coats did send them to one of
the rehab clinics. Now, I never actually saw him do it,
but I had heard from our old teammates and from ownership.
You know that Speedy has this problem. Even with his
football career hanging by a threat, Jim couldn't stay clean.
(11:54):
I tried to keep an eye on it. One afternoon,
I guess it just got to it, and uh, he says,
I gotta go. I try to say, no, Speedy, Uh
you know, stay here. You know what are you gonna make? No? No, no, no,
I've got to go and I've got to see some people.
He went, and uh, you know, he scored. You know,
(12:16):
broke my heart. I picked it kind of broke his
heart too, because he was embarrassed. I didn't try to
chastise him or say anything like you do it. I
think the one thing that I might he says, Okay,
you've got that out of your system to start over again.
None of Jim's NFL medical records are available. Neither the
New Orleans Saints nor the Indianapolis Colts, the franchise that
(12:37):
now holds Baltimore Colts Records, had anything in their archives
about him. Players and executives I spoke with said they
had no indication Jim was using hard drugs, and Grant
said he didn't initially pick up on it either, but
not because Jim hit it, just because drug use of
some sort was so common in an NFL locker room
(12:57):
for players to perform in games. He had doctors who
were giving speed and the other operas, and they were
there for the asking. You just told the doctor what
you wanted and the doctor gave those to you. And
when someone was in the can altered state, I think
(13:17):
that people knew so at the risk of offending some people,
I don't care who it was, player, coach, staff, or
anyone who says that they didn't know it, bullshit, Yes
they did. If a drug habit followed Jim back home
to Lancaster. Alice said she never saw it, and that
(13:40):
makes sense because I don't think it would be something
that he was proud of or anything like that. But
then again, she told me she's come to understand how
much he didn't know about her former husband. And I
think that that was something that was kept from everybody
in Lancaster. It's clear Jim grew increasingly disconnect it from
his life of just a few months earlier. He doesn't
(14:04):
seem to have been training or staying in shape in
case an NFL team called. People there at the time.
Mostly remember seeing him drinking at a downtown pool hall.
I saw him one day half here, he s here
and going toward half school. We had to go through
bushes and stuff. Floyd White was one of Jim's high
(14:25):
school coaches in Lancaster. He lived near Jim's family on
Isom Street. We're seeing Jim's brothers and sisters walked by.
It was just part of daily life. And to talk
to him, you see wait, wait, wia He was strung out.
He was. He always called me you will. It's evident
(14:51):
no one in Lancaster completely grasped the severity of Jim's
issues personal, professional, financial, mental, or otherwise. Even Alice, who
represented the closest thing Jim had to personal stability, was
still back in Greenville, living with her parents. That that
was interesting because I don't think anybody was really aware
(15:11):
of what was going on with him. Some news reports
later suggested she and Jim were in the midst of
a divorce, but Alice firmly disputes that. However, she did
tell me that by October of seventy two, Jim's behavior
was making her uneasy and at times even made her
feel unsafe. You know, it appeared that there was like
a pattern that was kind of starting to develop, which
(15:32):
had worried you. That's scary, Yeah, I mean that you
were worried for him, but also that you were kind
of like, I wanted to be careful in the situations
you were in with him. On Friday, October of that year,
Jim drove to Greenville to see her. You saw you
saw him the week before he passed away. How how
long had he been there? Was that like a short
(15:53):
visit or had he been there for a week or
something or Jim stayed one night and left for Lancaster
earlier than next day. That Saturday morning was the last
time she saw him alive. After three years of investigating
(16:16):
Jim's life and interviewing dozens of people, here's what we
know about Friday, October two, or what we know with
as much certainty as anyone can. It was a cold
morning in Lancaster, just creeping into the thirties, the sort
of cold that catches the South. By surprise, Jim was
(16:38):
living in the Isom Street house he bought for his family,
and he'd spent at least some of the previous night there.
Jim's mother, Ellery, later said that he spent that evening
playing with his eighteen month old brother. Moral United's Cleburne.
Alice told me that by that morning she hadn't talked
to Jim in a week. Jim's mother later told reporters
(16:58):
about one of her last conversations with Jim, which scared her.
Ellery said Jim confided in her that an unnamed person
in town had been threatening him. Ellerie died years ago,
so it's impossible to know for sure what was said
between the two. Perhaps she misremembered the conversation, or Jim
might have been confused or even hallucinating. But Bob Grant,
(17:21):
Jim's best friend in Baltimore, mentioned another aspect of Jim's
life that could be relevant his infidelity. A bachelorhood he
says Jim never quite gave up and a color blind
love life that stood out in a southern milltown struggling
with basic integration. He was worn by the police and
(17:43):
stopped a number of times because he was driving the
big car thinking he and I had talked about it,
and I don't think that anybody else in Lancaster. I
had a Lincoln Mark three whiter black in his was
canary yellow, so there was no weight that you could
miss that, but was warned about well when Speedy returned
(18:03):
to Lancaster after New Orleans, even before he was dating
a few of the local white girls. I don't think
that it was anything serious or anything like that. Yeah,
he was a hometown hero, you know, as a ball player,
but even then there were certain lines that you kind
(18:24):
of didn't cross. You know, he was still a colored
man back there. Today he may not make that much difference,
but at that time it was something that some people
were obviously threatened by. The Other thing was I didn't
want to surprise you that. I didn't want you to
read it and just be like what you know. Alice
(18:48):
told me she's aware of claims about Jim's unfaithfulness, which
continued until the day he died. During her time with Jim,
there was a paternity suit brought against him by another
woman in nearby Winnsboro, South Carolina. U el Roy had
told me that Jim had a had a kid with
a woman in Winnsboro, South Carolina. Alice told me she
(19:08):
was aware of the allegation and that Jim and his
mother had even gone to court about it. One day.
They're at the same Lancaster courthouse where he and Alice
had married. I wasn't able to find any official records
of the case or its resolution, but Alice told me
firmly that the child was not Jim's. Oh wow, Okay,
maybe a claim that was made, Okay. That Friday, October,
(19:37):
we know Jim drove his mother to the ABC liquor
store where she worked. Elleri later told The New York
Times quote. He didn't act depressed or anything. That morning.
He told me he was heading for home, and that's
the last time that I saw him. After dropping her off,
Jim reportedly stopped at two different gas stations. At one
(19:57):
he asked for an ice scraper, At the other some
manny freeze. When he died. We'll believe it on the
same street. Glenn Crawford grew up down the street from Jim.
As kids, they played sandlot football together. I saw him
that morning, really yeah. He passed my house to go
to his house the way we were situated, man, and
(20:17):
he looked, well did he looked just in the days
like driving when he passed and I hollered at him
and he kept going. But that's we didn't have a conversation. Yeah,
he normally would have said something to you, right, yeah,
but he was like in the day's. It's not clear
exactly what time that was, but Jim was next scene
(20:40):
for sure. Around eleven am, he parked his yellow convertible
downtown outside the offices for the Lancaster News, the only
newspaper in town owned by Springs Mills. Jim walked across
the street into a local pond shop, which sold everything
from diamonds to firearms. As Alice understands it, Jim was
there to buy a gun. Huh. Okay. There's a lot
(21:06):
of evidence at points to the fact that he was
struggling with a lot of things, Like it seems to
me there was a lot on his mind like that
he just was troubled. But Jim was only in the
pawn shop briefly, Alice said, Jim was told that he
needed additional paperwork for that kind of purchase and that
he would have to get it from the police station.
It's not clear what sort of paperwork might have been
(21:28):
needed or why Jim had to go to the police
station to get it. I couldn't independently confirm the story,
Alice was told, but it's the closest thing we have
to an answer for why Jim was in the police
station at all. We'll be right back. We're gonna turn
(21:48):
out to the questions surrounding the suicide of NFL Grape Jr.
Say out is shocking suicide just eight months ago, a
gunshot to the chest, some speculating he knew his brain
needed to be preserved for examination. Alice told me Jim
might have wanted a gun as protection from the person
he said was threatening him. The football world has been
(22:09):
rocked this week by the sad death of a former
star or safety. Dave Durson took his own life. He
could have wanted a gun for other reasons. The fifty
year old killed himself with a gunshot to the chest.
Durson asked his brain be examined for chronic traumatic and
cephalopathy or CTE. Jim hadn't seen his wife in a week.
(22:31):
There's every reason to believe that he was depressed, and
many of his behaviors that friends and family found strange
could have been symptoms of ct caused by head trauma
from his football career. He's tagged, and I mean rather rudely,
by Andre Waters. There's another tragic outcome the general public
often links with CTE. Remember thousand six, Andre Waters, forty
(22:55):
six years old, decided to put a gun into his head.
But Jeff victor Off caution that the connection between CTE
and suicide isn't its clear cut. There are very few
cases that have legitimate comparisons between brain and behavior. Victor
(23:15):
Roff is the neurologist at the University of Southern California.
He wrote the textbook on Concussions and Traumatic Encephalopathy. Ordinarily,
if we do something called clinical pathological correlation, you study
a person during their life, wait for them to die,
and then cut their brain and look at it. At
that point you can sort of say, ah, this behavior
(23:38):
seems to be due to this brain change. Victor Roff
has examined dozens of cases of former athletes who are
diagnosed with CT after their debts, nothing will come out.
Whatever he found, psychiatric problems were pretty common, but suicidal
behavior was not. Unfortunately, almost no one is studied the
(24:00):
SCOTT during their life, doing all the tests they need
to been waiting for them to die in after that,
looking to see what kind of brain changes, explain what
kind of behavior. That work started in al CRUs disease
in nineteen o seven and it has not even begun
(24:21):
in CT. Two large blocks away from the pawn shop
is the Lancaster Police Station, which said on the west
side of Main Street, directly next to the courthouse where
Jim and Alice married. That two story police station has
since been demolished, but at the time, the front door
of the white brick building opened into a small reception
(24:43):
area which was covered in dark wood panety. Inside the
doorway faced a long reception desk running parallel to the
back wall. On that back wall was the seal for
the City of Lancaster, next to framed eight by ten
photos of the department's former police chiefs. Every one of
them was white, as was the vast majority of the
(25:04):
police department at the time. Just a few steps inside
the front door, A chest high counter separated visitors from
the receptionist and from the police dispatcher who sat next
to her. Photos from the time show a few gumball
machines on the far right end of that counter. Past
them was a short haulway that led to the administrative offices,
(25:25):
including for the Lancaster Police Chief, a thirty six year
old marine veteran from Savannah, Georgia named Larry Louer. By
that October, Lower had been in Lancaster about seven months. Hi,
my name is Brett McCormick. I work at a newspaper
in South Carolina. I reached Lower at his home in Savannah,
but he declined to let us use his voice in
(25:45):
this podcast, and come across your name and wandered, have
you got some time to talk on the phone. He
seemed a bit caught off guard. Uh, it was about
the NFL player that committed suicide in Lancaster, but I
think he mostly wanted to know reporter was calling about
an incident from nearly half a century ago. It was,
it was it has been a long time. He told
(26:07):
me quote, there's nothing I can recall. Thank you, And
that was it. Wow. Also there in the reception area
that morning was a fifty two year old lieutenant named
Russell Henson. His sturdy build and a shock of red
hair made him stick out in the crowd. Colleagues just
(26:30):
called him read that Friday morning in nineteen seventy two.
The side arm on Henson's right hip was a Smith
and Wesson thirty eight caliber Chief Special Revolver. Two things
were unusual about that First, he wore his own personal
holster that day, not the department standard issue holster. The
(26:50):
leather holster he wore had a snapdown strap across the
top to keep a gun from falling out, and was
more typical of plain clothes detectives than a uniformed lieutenant.
The second unusual thing was that officers didn't normally wear
their guns inside the building. For example, Chief Lour reportedly
removed his gun as soon as he arrived and stored
(27:11):
it in his filing cabinet, But Henson was wearing his
gun around eleven am that morning when Jim found himself
in the reception area of the police station. I mean,
the store comes up all the time with my main
being moral, right eyes clamorant, so you know, telling my
oldest brother played with the Colts. He's deceased. You know
(27:32):
what happened. We know that a short time later a
bullet from Henson's gun ripped through Jim's skull and ricocheted
off the wood paneling nearby. The story was that my
brother took a gun off of the police officer and
shot himself in the head. The former football players two
pound frame collapsed to the ground in the small hallway
(27:53):
to the right of the counter. He was dead before
the ambulance arrived. Anything's possible, but again, no one's been
to talk about it. Never has this been something that
anybody remotely seen interested in talking about. Jim Duncan was
twenty six years old for nearly fifty years. That's about
(28:14):
all we've known for sure until now. And on part
five of Return Man, everybody suicide. When police look good
back in the day, at a smaller agency that may
not have been leading the charge of police reform and professionalization,
(28:37):
a lot of ship happened that never got reported. Historically,
corners keep all their records in their home. Unfortunately, the
year that you're looking for, along with many other years,
is missing, just totally missing. And just to be clear,
so you. You would have been sitting at the desk
and he just walked right by. I'm Brett McCormick. Return
(29:01):
Man is a production of The Herald, McClatchy Studios and
I Heart Radio. It's produced by Matt Walsh, Kara Tabor,
Kata Stevens, Rachel Wise, and Davin Coburn. The executive producer
for I Heart Radio is Sean Titone. For lots more
on this story, go to Harold online dot com Slash
return Man. If you have any additional information about Jim
(29:23):
Duncan's life or death, email us at return Man at
Harold online dot com. To continue supporting this kind of work,
visit Harold online dot com slash Podcasts and consider a
digital subscription. And for more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heart Radio. Previously on Return man Field, he hits the
deep end of the corner at the ducan. This time
dr will come out with it. Since we've known that
people exposed to many concussions couldn't lead them to be demented,
(00:24):
just like someone with Alzheimer's disease, but at a much
younger age. He was very free with his money, like
at which was a lot of money in Jim had
some problems, but I didn't remember what they were. Man,
I did not get involved. An unnatural quiet hangs over
(00:51):
South Carolina State College today, the day after state highway
patrolman opened fire on rampaging students. By the time moved
back to his hometown Lancaster and South Carolina, we're struggling
with their own transitions. Three students are dead. It has
been called one of the ugliest racial confrontations in the South.
In modern times, bloody civil rights battles like this one
(01:15):
at South Carolina State University were becoming somewhat less common,
and the a c P leaders demanded that steps be
taken immediately to put a stop to what they see
as open police brutality. But if the mechanics of inequality
were changing, the mindset behind it was stubbornly entrenched. We
had decentregration and nine with schools. Floyd White has lived
(01:39):
in Lancaster for almost sixty years. He was one of
Jim's coaches at bar Street High the black high school
in town six and then start putting the black teams
in the school, and then the next year which integre
a few years before lawmakers in Columbia, South Carolina. He's
(02:00):
a Confederate flag over the Capitol Dome, a defiant symbol
in the face of the civil rights movement. They're in
small town Lancashire. The most vivid example of change was
the school integration Floyd White lived through as a coach,
when Jim's alma mater once again changed its name to
Lancaster High School Campus two. What's it when we integrated
(02:22):
to high school? L High School came Laon High School
and number one and it would be juniors and Senior
Street became Black High School, Campbell to the ninth grades
and grades? What was it like though? I mean it
had to be tense. It was no, it was good.
Why do you think there was because we at the
(02:44):
Bright School too, and what's gonna be high, It's gonna
be We kept it in front of Kevin, in front
of Kevin and excepted. He told me. Integration went more
smoothly in Lancashire, not because of less racism there, but
because they did a better job of teaching the black
children to expect it. Kids went to and I had
(03:07):
the flag I called flag compared to flag, you know,
did he We don't play really, so they saw the
Confederate flag and they just but they always kind of
banded together. Didn't new unity instrument, so it kept together. Yeah.
(03:29):
I read a letter to the editor from around that time,
written by a Lancaster resident to the Charlotte Observer. The
letter writer was upset the newspaper had described the Ku
Klux Klan as a hate group. He insisted, quote, your
writings on the clan and others who are aware of
basic racial differences show a bias on your part to
the extent of irresponsible journalism. That's the environment Jim Crash
(03:54):
landed back into in the fall of nineteen two, coming
down in front of the goal of both at the
Blue Eid. I'm the duncan up to the fifteen. He
was a one time super Bowl hero and a black
man with inward demons and an outward love of women, nightlife,
and audacious cars. He was practically a six ft two
(04:17):
embodiment of the change that frightened so many in Lancaster.
In Baltimore, those things helped make him the celebrity be
front of the corner, Duncker wills come out whatever, But
in Lancaster they might have made him a target. Look
Out Duncan at the Kansas City forty nine yard Ye
from the Herald, McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio. This
(04:39):
is return Man. I'm Brett McCormick, and this is part
four October two. That's summer of seventy two. The plan
was that Jim would go to Saints training camp in
New Orleans. Alice wasn't getting along with Jim's mother, so
(05:01):
she would leave the house in Lancaster and temporarily moved
back in with her parents in Greenville. He was going
to be what the Saints. Alice declined to lend her
voice to this podcast, but we spoke for nearly four hours.
Were you like thinking about moving to New Orleans? Or
she planned to join Jim in New Orleans as soon
as training camp ended. But almost as soon as Jim arrived,
(05:21):
people there could tell something was wrong. Not a doctor,
I'm an athletic trainer, but no, you can tell what
things are bothering people, and Jim seemed to be just
always seemed to be bothered with something. Dean klein Schmidt
was a twenty five year old athletic trainer for the Saints.
He went on to work forty years in the NFL
and was inducted into the National Athletic Trainers Hall of Fame.
(05:44):
Clein Schmidt said, Jim arrived to the Saints out of
shape and under a dark cloud. He was not a
coup later, he was not a revel rouser. He was
not that at all. I think he was more to himself.
You know, I don't remember every title players Miles, but
I don't remember him being the fun, loving jokes. I
don't remember that at all. You know, I remember him
(06:07):
being quiet, and Jim could put on a brave face
when he had to, like when he told the local Times,
picking you in newspaper quote, I like New Orleans a
lot enough to want to make it my home. Maybe
my bad luck is behind me now, but inside the
locker room, Jim couldn't hide his troubles. I mean, they
can have family problems, they can have whatever, still play.
(06:30):
But I remember Jim would have gotten the Super Bowl
chap right bonus, Yeah yeah, And he made some kind
of stingment about I just never realized that having so
much money would create so many problems. And him on
a great play by Jim Duncan made two good tackles
(06:53):
coming up from the quarterback position. Saints management wondered if
a blow to the head had affected Jim mentally, so
they took what was at the time an unusual step
of sending the NFL player to a psychiatrist named Dr Williams.
Sor Um. Today, a psychiatrist telling reporters about a patient's
mental health would be a flagrant violation of federal privacy law,
(07:15):
but those laws were only enacted in so at least legally,
Storm could speak freely about his semi famous patient, his
expert opinion, which he told to the Philadelphia Inquiry. At
the time, Duncan was depressed, but football was good therapy,
he said. Quote. By the time I saw him, he
seemed to be on the road to recovery. Had he
(07:37):
continued to play football, I think he would have worked
things out and made a complete recovery. Jim continued his
playing slump in New Orleans, and the Saints waived him
before the season began. For football fans, two stands out
for a different reason, the Miami Dolphins going undefeated, becoming
one of the most celebrated teams in sports history. It
(08:00):
turns out Jim caught a glimpse of that himself. After
he was weighed by the Saints. Jim was invited to
Miami by head coach Don Shula, who had originally helped
draft Jim in nineteen when he coached the Baltimore Colts.
But Jim was just as out of sorts in Miami.
Shula told The New York Times in nineteen seventy two, quote,
(08:21):
we were hoping he'd be a backup defensive back and
run back kickoffs for us. But he wasn't covering well
and he lost some of his speed. One of the
best moments of Jim's life had occurred there in Miami's
Orange Bowl, where the Colts won Super Bowl five less
(08:43):
than two years later, he said, on the bench in
that stadium, watching the Dolphins play their final preseason game
of seventy two. He was cut three days later. The
first thing I did ask what the Saints was, did
you do a physical? I'm not sure that he was
there long enough. The first time Alice heard about any
of her husband's time in Miami was when I told
(09:03):
her so. After he got cut by the Saints September
seven or something like that, he signed with the Dolphins
for like a few days, which would have been Shula
was down there, but he was only with them very briefly,
and then he got cut again, and then he was
back in Lancaster. So yeah, I mean, it's just a
it's a lot. You're probably like, what are you doing here?
(09:25):
Those Dolphins finished that season, laying claim to being the
greatest team ever. Jim came back to Lancaster. His football
career was over. We'll be back in a moment. M
(09:46):
Jim arrived back to the house on Isom Street in
September of nine. A Lancaster phone book from that year
indicates he was employed at a local dry cleaner, though
it's unclear how long he worked there or what kind
of money he made. It's one of the many things
about the following few weeks that are tough to get
a firm handle on. Do you think something had been
going badly for him? Do you think he would have
(10:08):
told you or would he be the kind that would
like chield you from it. Yeah, I can see that
Jim's brother, Elroy, was living in nearby Charlotte by the
time Jim returned home to Lancaster. If you don't want
me to see him and and like, are great tonight?
You know, there's nothing bad that I could tell you
(10:30):
about what other than he just loved one. A few
people I spoke with said Jim liked to smoke marijuana,
but that was hardly unusual in the seventies, especially considering
the professional environment he came from. Forget drug testing. NFL
team doctors had fishing tackle boxes full of painkillers and
(10:52):
other medications they gave out to help players on the field.
He smoked a little bit. That could be a way
that you're dealing with whatever tic a little bit uh
back then, you know, like they're part of him, and
they stayed out late at night, so they need some
type of pill to keep going. Yeah, yeah, medically, Kevin,
you wouldn't believe, you know, And it was all doctors
(11:14):
described as the doctor's back. Then they took care of
their athletes. Bob Grant, who played with Jim in Baltimore,
told me those pills may have been a gateway to
something more serious. Speedy developed a problem addiction to heroin,
(11:34):
and the Baltimore Coats did send them to one of
the rehab clinics. Now, I never actually saw him do it,
but I had heard from our old teammates and from ownership.
You know that Speedy has this problem. Even with his
football career hanging by a threat, Jim couldn't stay clean.
(11:54):
I tried to keep an eye on it. One afternoon,
I guess it just got to it, and uh, he says,
I gotta go. I try to say, no, Speedy, Uh
you know, stay here. You know what are you gonna make? No? No, no, no,
I've got to go and I've got to see some people.
He went, and uh, you know, he scored. You know,
(12:16):
broke my heart. I picked it kind of broke his
heart too, because he was embarrassed. I didn't try to
chastise him or say anything like you do it. I
think the one thing that I might he says, Okay,
you've got that out of your system to start over again.
None of Jim's NFL medical records are available. Neither the
New Orleans Saints nor the Indianapolis Colts, the franchise that
(12:37):
now holds Baltimore Colts Records, had anything in their archives
about him. Players and executives I spoke with said they
had no indication Jim was using hard drugs, and Grant
said he didn't initially pick up on it either, but
not because Jim hit it, just because drug use of
some sort was so common in an NFL locker room
(12:57):
for players to perform in games. He had doctors who
were giving speed and the other operas, and they were
there for the asking. You just told the doctor what
you wanted and the doctor gave those to you. And
when someone was in the can altered state, I think
(13:17):
that people knew so at the risk of offending some people,
I don't care who it was, player, coach, staff, or
anyone who says that they didn't know it, bullshit, Yes
they did. If a drug habit followed Jim back home
to Lancaster. Alice said she never saw it, and that
(13:40):
makes sense because I don't think it would be something
that he was proud of or anything like that. But
then again, she told me she's come to understand how
much he didn't know about her former husband. And I
think that that was something that was kept from everybody
in Lancaster. It's clear Jim grew increasingly disconnect it from
his life of just a few months earlier. He doesn't
(14:04):
seem to have been training or staying in shape in
case an NFL team called. People there at the time.
Mostly remember seeing him drinking at a downtown pool hall.
I saw him one day half here, he s here
and going toward half school. We had to go through
bushes and stuff. Floyd White was one of Jim's high
(14:25):
school coaches in Lancaster. He lived near Jim's family on
Isom Street. We're seeing Jim's brothers and sisters walked by.
It was just part of daily life. And to talk
to him, you see wait, wait, wia He was strung out.
He was. He always called me you will. It's evident
(14:51):
no one in Lancaster completely grasped the severity of Jim's
issues personal, professional, financial, mental, or otherwise. Even Alice, who
represented the closest thing Jim had to personal stability, was
still back in Greenville, living with her parents. That that
was interesting because I don't think anybody was really aware
(15:11):
of what was going on with him. Some news reports
later suggested she and Jim were in the midst of
a divorce, but Alice firmly disputes that. However, she did
tell me that by October of seventy two, Jim's behavior
was making her uneasy and at times even made her
feel unsafe. You know, it appeared that there was like
a pattern that was kind of starting to develop, which
(15:32):
had worried you. That's scary, Yeah, I mean that you
were worried for him, but also that you were kind
of like, I wanted to be careful in the situations
you were in with him. On Friday, October of that year,
Jim drove to Greenville to see her. You saw you
saw him the week before he passed away. How how
long had he been there? Was that like a short
(15:53):
visit or had he been there for a week or
something or Jim stayed one night and left for Lancaster
earlier than next day. That Saturday morning was the last
time she saw him alive. After three years of investigating
(16:16):
Jim's life and interviewing dozens of people, here's what we
know about Friday, October two, or what we know with
as much certainty as anyone can. It was a cold
morning in Lancaster, just creeping into the thirties, the sort
of cold that catches the South. By surprise, Jim was
(16:38):
living in the Isom Street house he bought for his family,
and he'd spent at least some of the previous night there.
Jim's mother, Ellery, later said that he spent that evening
playing with his eighteen month old brother. Moral United's Cleburne.
Alice told me that by that morning she hadn't talked
to Jim in a week. Jim's mother later told reporters
(16:58):
about one of her last conversations with Jim, which scared her.
Ellery said Jim confided in her that an unnamed person
in town had been threatening him. Ellerie died years ago,
so it's impossible to know for sure what was said
between the two. Perhaps she misremembered the conversation, or Jim
might have been confused or even hallucinating. But Bob Grant,
(17:21):
Jim's best friend in Baltimore, mentioned another aspect of Jim's
life that could be relevant his infidelity. A bachelorhood he
says Jim never quite gave up and a color blind
love life that stood out in a southern milltown struggling
with basic integration. He was worn by the police and
(17:43):
stopped a number of times because he was driving the
big car thinking he and I had talked about it,
and I don't think that anybody else in Lancaster. I
had a Lincoln Mark three whiter black in his was
canary yellow, so there was no weight that you could
miss that, but was warned about well when Speedy returned
(18:03):
to Lancaster after New Orleans, even before he was dating
a few of the local white girls. I don't think
that it was anything serious or anything like that. Yeah,
he was a hometown hero, you know, as a ball player,
but even then there were certain lines that you kind
(18:24):
of didn't cross. You know, he was still a colored
man back there. Today he may not make that much difference,
but at that time it was something that some people
were obviously threatened by. The Other thing was I didn't
want to surprise you that. I didn't want you to
read it and just be like what you know. Alice
(18:48):
told me she's aware of claims about Jim's unfaithfulness, which
continued until the day he died. During her time with Jim,
there was a paternity suit brought against him by another
woman in nearby Winnsboro, South Carolina. U el Roy had
told me that Jim had a had a kid with
a woman in Winnsboro, South Carolina. Alice told me she
(19:08):
was aware of the allegation and that Jim and his
mother had even gone to court about it. One day.
They're at the same Lancaster courthouse where he and Alice
had married. I wasn't able to find any official records
of the case or its resolution, but Alice told me
firmly that the child was not Jim's. Oh wow, Okay,
maybe a claim that was made, Okay. That Friday, October,
(19:37):
we know Jim drove his mother to the ABC liquor
store where she worked. Elleri later told The New York
Times quote. He didn't act depressed or anything. That morning.
He told me he was heading for home, and that's
the last time that I saw him. After dropping her off,
Jim reportedly stopped at two different gas stations. At one
(19:57):
he asked for an ice scraper, At the other some
manny freeze. When he died. We'll believe it on the
same street. Glenn Crawford grew up down the street from Jim.
As kids, they played sandlot football together. I saw him
that morning, really yeah. He passed my house to go
to his house the way we were situated, man, and
(20:17):
he looked, well did he looked just in the days
like driving when he passed and I hollered at him
and he kept going. But that's we didn't have a conversation. Yeah,
he normally would have said something to you, right, yeah,
but he was like in the day's. It's not clear
exactly what time that was, but Jim was next scene
(20:40):
for sure. Around eleven am, he parked his yellow convertible
downtown outside the offices for the Lancaster News, the only
newspaper in town owned by Springs Mills. Jim walked across
the street into a local pond shop, which sold everything
from diamonds to firearms. As Alice understands it, Jim was
there to buy a gun. Huh. Okay. There's a lot
(21:06):
of evidence at points to the fact that he was
struggling with a lot of things, Like it seems to
me there was a lot on his mind like that
he just was troubled. But Jim was only in the
pawn shop briefly, Alice said, Jim was told that he
needed additional paperwork for that kind of purchase and that
he would have to get it from the police station.
It's not clear what sort of paperwork might have been
(21:28):
needed or why Jim had to go to the police
station to get it. I couldn't independently confirm the story,
Alice was told, but it's the closest thing we have
to an answer for why Jim was in the police
station at all. We'll be right back. We're gonna turn
(21:48):
out to the questions surrounding the suicide of NFL Grape Jr.
Say out is shocking suicide just eight months ago, a
gunshot to the chest, some speculating he knew his brain
needed to be preserved for examination. Alice told me Jim
might have wanted a gun as protection from the person
he said was threatening him. The football world has been
(22:09):
rocked this week by the sad death of a former
star or safety. Dave Durson took his own life. He
could have wanted a gun for other reasons. The fifty
year old killed himself with a gunshot to the chest.
Durson asked his brain be examined for chronic traumatic and
cephalopathy or CTE. Jim hadn't seen his wife in a week.
(22:31):
There's every reason to believe that he was depressed, and
many of his behaviors that friends and family found strange
could have been symptoms of ct caused by head trauma
from his football career. He's tagged, and I mean rather rudely,
by Andre Waters. There's another tragic outcome the general public
often links with CTE. Remember thousand six, Andre Waters, forty
(22:55):
six years old, decided to put a gun into his head.
But Jeff victor Off caution that the connection between CTE
and suicide isn't its clear cut. There are very few
cases that have legitimate comparisons between brain and behavior. Victor
(23:15):
Roff is the neurologist at the University of Southern California.
He wrote the textbook on Concussions and Traumatic Encephalopathy. Ordinarily,
if we do something called clinical pathological correlation, you study
a person during their life, wait for them to die,
and then cut their brain and look at it. At
that point you can sort of say, ah, this behavior
(23:38):
seems to be due to this brain change. Victor Roff
has examined dozens of cases of former athletes who are
diagnosed with CT after their debts, nothing will come out.
Whatever he found, psychiatric problems were pretty common, but suicidal
behavior was not. Unfortunately, almost no one is studied the
(24:00):
SCOTT during their life, doing all the tests they need
to been waiting for them to die in after that,
looking to see what kind of brain changes, explain what
kind of behavior. That work started in al CRUs disease
in nineteen o seven and it has not even begun
(24:21):
in CT. Two large blocks away from the pawn shop
is the Lancaster Police Station, which said on the west
side of Main Street, directly next to the courthouse where
Jim and Alice married. That two story police station has
since been demolished, but at the time, the front door
of the white brick building opened into a small reception
(24:43):
area which was covered in dark wood panety. Inside the
doorway faced a long reception desk running parallel to the
back wall. On that back wall was the seal for
the City of Lancaster, next to framed eight by ten
photos of the department's former police chiefs. Every one of
them was white, as was the vast majority of the
(25:04):
police department at the time. Just a few steps inside
the front door, A chest high counter separated visitors from
the receptionist and from the police dispatcher who sat next
to her. Photos from the time show a few gumball
machines on the far right end of that counter. Past
them was a short haulway that led to the administrative offices,
(25:25):
including for the Lancaster Police Chief, a thirty six year
old marine veteran from Savannah, Georgia named Larry Louer. By
that October, Lower had been in Lancaster about seven months. Hi,
my name is Brett McCormick. I work at a newspaper
in South Carolina. I reached Lower at his home in Savannah,
but he declined to let us use his voice in
(25:45):
this podcast, and come across your name and wandered, have
you got some time to talk on the phone. He
seemed a bit caught off guard. Uh, it was about
the NFL player that committed suicide in Lancaster, but I
think he mostly wanted to know reporter was calling about
an incident from nearly half a century ago. It was,
it was it has been a long time. He told
(26:07):
me quote, there's nothing I can recall. Thank you, And
that was it. Wow. Also there in the reception area
that morning was a fifty two year old lieutenant named
Russell Henson. His sturdy build and a shock of red
hair made him stick out in the crowd. Colleagues just
(26:30):
called him read that Friday morning in nineteen seventy two.
The side arm on Henson's right hip was a Smith
and Wesson thirty eight caliber Chief Special Revolver. Two things
were unusual about that First, he wore his own personal
holster that day, not the department standard issue holster. The
(26:50):
leather holster he wore had a snapdown strap across the
top to keep a gun from falling out, and was
more typical of plain clothes detectives than a uniformed lieutenant.
The second unusual thing was that officers didn't normally wear
their guns inside the building. For example, Chief Lour reportedly
removed his gun as soon as he arrived and stored
(27:11):
it in his filing cabinet, But Henson was wearing his
gun around eleven am that morning when Jim found himself
in the reception area of the police station. I mean,
the store comes up all the time with my main
being moral, right eyes clamorant, so you know, telling my
oldest brother played with the Colts. He's deceased. You know
(27:32):
what happened. We know that a short time later a
bullet from Henson's gun ripped through Jim's skull and ricocheted
off the wood paneling nearby. The story was that my
brother took a gun off of the police officer and
shot himself in the head. The former football players two
pound frame collapsed to the ground in the small hallway
(27:53):
to the right of the counter. He was dead before
the ambulance arrived. Anything's possible, but again, no one's been
to talk about it. Never has this been something that
anybody remotely seen interested in talking about. Jim Duncan was
twenty six years old for nearly fifty years. That's about
(28:14):
all we've known for sure until now. And on part
five of Return Man, everybody suicide. When police look good
back in the day, at a smaller agency that may
not have been leading the charge of police reform and professionalization,
(28:37):
a lot of ship happened that never got reported. Historically,
corners keep all their records in their home. Unfortunately, the
year that you're looking for, along with many other years,
is missing, just totally missing. And just to be clear,
so you. You would have been sitting at the desk
and he just walked right by. I'm Brett McCormick. Return
(29:01):
Man is a production of The Herald, McClatchy Studios and
I Heart Radio. It's produced by Matt Walsh, Kara Tabor,
Kata Stevens, Rachel Wise, and Davin Coburn. The executive producer
for I Heart Radio is Sean Titone. For lots more
on this story, go to Harold online dot com Slash
return Man. If you have any additional information about Jim
(29:23):
Duncan's life or death, email us at return Man at
Harold online dot com. To continue supporting this kind of work,
visit Harold online dot com slash Podcasts and consider a
digital subscription. And for more podcasts from my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
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