March 16, 2021 • 33 mins
For some, including some of Jim Duncan's friends, the past is better left in the past. But for others, there will never be closure with so many open questions; and the chance to find answers is worth the pain of asking one last time. Late in our reporting, we learned that a legal team in New York could begin an independent investigation of this case, in the search for even more answers.
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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 Today. I think that
people might suggest that there's some ill will directed toward
him by the police, but there was nothing that we
could prove. No work at the newspaper in Rockyoll, South Carolina.
(00:23):
Was your dad, Russell Henson, the police officer from Lancaster.
That was what we was saying. Somethingbody the dog and
not gonna imagine that. You know, football player nationwide black,
you know you're come back home. You know at home song.
If Jim Duncan, who is used to even a degree
of hero worship in Baltimore, comes down to South Carolina,
(00:45):
the potential for explosive conflict is pretty obvious. Jones Thompson spears,
(01:07):
It's a bright January day when I pulled into the
Salem A. M. E. Zion Church Cemetery in Heath Springs,
South Carolina, not far from Lancaster Areas series on the
day he died. I'm confident Jim Duncan's finances were a
mess and his marriage wasn't much better. Jim's NFL career
(01:28):
seemed pretty much over, and he moved back into the
house he bought for his mother. Everything around Jim was
a reminder of where he had once been and what
his life had become. But there are so many things
I still can't say for sure. Linda, this is brought McCormick.
How are you including where Jim was actually laid to rest?
(01:51):
I'm good. I'm standing in the middle of a cemetery.
I was looking for a butcher's grave. Um does this
ring a bell? It's Salem A. M. E. Zion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay.
This church outside Lancaster is the one Jim's mother, Ellari,
grew up in. This cemetery is the one Jim's widow
hasn't been back to in decades. Elroy and Linda haven't
(02:13):
come back here either, not since the day Jim was buried.
Do you remember was he buried by a tree? I
don't know if you would remember that? Okay, I know
this is so long ago and it's hard to even visualize.
Those closest to Jim have believed for decades that he
never would have killed himself. But if they're right, how
(02:35):
did things go so wrong for the former star athlete
Inside that Lancaster police station. Could any other scenario be
more plausible than Jim simply taking his own life. Do
you remember that, like when he was buried, he had
a he had like a headstone. But I didn't know
at the time was that in that small town and
well beyond, word of my reporting was getting around. I
(02:57):
need to call you back later too, because I had
something weird happened over Christmas. Somebody that knows that I'm
working on this story called me and told me they've
found Suddenly maybe Jim's case wasn't closed just yet. From
the Herald McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio. This is
return man. I'm Brett McCormick, and this is part eight
(03:18):
speaking from the grave. M Do you have anything to remember?
But like, um, I have some magazines and some pictures
that my wife has gotten over the years, and I
(03:40):
have a painting. I'll show it you. I have it
actually up in Moral, United Clyburne is showing me around
his house outside Charlotte. Elroy said that every member of
the family had been offered a scholarship seven for seven.
It's not professional and yeah, initially world was reluctant to
(04:00):
speak with me. Initially, many of the people close to
the story were your kids ever asking about him? I mean,
did you ever have a conferent? So, I mean, my
daughter knows who that is on the picture upstairs. She's
pretty much where. You know, her uncle playing football for
the Colts and you know, the broadest story of the year.
(04:21):
You know, as she gets a little older, I'm sure
she may ask some questions the more Cold champs to
the American Conference, the Dallas Cowboys champs to the National Conference.
Over the past few years, I've been asked by Jim's
friends and family, by my editors and people i've interviewed,
(04:42):
how I think Jim died. The answer is, I'm not sure.
Jim was elusive in life as a kick returner, as
a brother, a husband, and a friend. And it should
be a simple question to answer what happened in that
police station. But I can't prove anything. George Lloyd so
he's the only one alive. That's no surprise to Morrow.
(05:08):
So George Lloyd had been at the Lancaster Police Department
for two weeks. He was working the desk and he
told me that Butch walked in the police lieutenant was
going through the mail, and that he said, can I
help you? And then he pulled a gun and stepped
back and shot him. The story has been set for
a long time. I mean, no one's changing that story.
I guess you said you can't dispute people that were there.
(05:30):
But at the same time, still some of this stuff
goes on. So what have we done? And forty six years?
So why bother? That's the follow up question I always get.
Why does it matter that a little known former football
player died in his hometown police station and we're not
really sure how Why put Jim's family and others involved
(05:55):
through all of it? Again? I think really, like, you know,
multiple people have asked me, mostly white people have asked me,
what are you going into this forward? And like why
are you bringing it back up? Alis and I talked
a lot about that. A lot of people who have
said over and over, man, if this happened nowadays, like
it would have been so different, you know, and and
that's kind of upsetting to me. Alice declined to lend
(06:19):
her voice to this podcast, but we spoke for nearly
four hours, the first time Alice has ever spoken at
length about the man she ultimately knew for just a
little over a year, or about the tension with Jim's
family that she thinks kept them all from demanding answers together.
The interesting thing to me, nobody had ever talked to
you that reported on this story. The first reason I
(06:41):
think this story is important is that, regardless of how
Jim died, his life is worth celebrating. I was surprised
and honored in a way that through my research I
was able to share things with Jim's family that they've
never known about him. Oh that's about really to gain
the sucking half underway this zone YouTube m I was
(07:01):
able to show moral highlights of his brother's NFL career
that he hadn't seen until we sat down together, Like
he just looks so much faster than everybody. Nor had
he heard many of these stories from Jim's teammates. Bob
Grant told me a lot of stuff that was his
professional friend or we do a lot about him. People
(07:25):
in Lancaster remember the man who wrote a hit song
Ranquility based here the ankle has landed in their hometown,
Astronaut rocket Point Granquility. We caught the on the ground.
You gotta bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're
breathing again. Thank a lot, but Moral's very name is
one of the only reminders that this former milltown also
(07:45):
produced a Super Bowl champ. This is the Orange Bowl.
It would be Jam eighty thousand fans to day Super
Bowl Day. Do you feel like he's been forgotten in Leicester? Um?
What do you know? Generation has come through from It's
just old time. Floyd White was one of Jim's coaches
at bar Street High School. He told me there was
(08:07):
once a corner store in the black part of town
that had a painting of gem on it. But that
store was demolished long ago and the mural went with it.
We had like up Gay Street down and when you
down now today there's a small history museum in the
(08:33):
basement of that same courthouse where Jim was married and
where the inquest announced how he died. There says we're
about to go on. A volunteer was working at the
museum when I visited. We're doing a video in a
podcast and a story on Jim Duncan. Do you know
(08:53):
Jim Duncan. Yeah. The museum has exhibits about Confederate soldiers
and ox for local Vietnam vets and memorabilia from Lancaster's past. Yeah, yeah, okay,
but there's nothing at all there about the man who
(09:14):
rose from a shotgun house in the poorest part of
that town to celebrate an NFL title mcil round defense
the Bimar the right quarterback Jim Drunk of number thirty five,
who was the top cook off re turned mad in
the American cop. We may never truly know how or
why Jim died, but his life should be remembered. When
(09:36):
I look back now and I'm like, okay, we'll see
this professional player came out of the college fast, and
You're like, man, you never know where that could have gone.
Here's moral again. Yeah, So when when did you start
learning about but You's death? I would say I hadn't
really learned about his death. We didn't really have talks
(09:58):
about this. This is literally something that we didn't talk
about at the end of the day. Is it something
for comfort or is it going to actually make a difference.
Someone somewhere either died with it or is going to
die with it um. And I think that's kind of
the gist that you know, I've gotten over the years
(10:18):
that you're never gonna get anything out of it. And
I don't mean that to deter you from doing what
you're doing. But I mean when you have that oh,
I'm sure I'm not based on your list. I won't
be the last. We'll be back in a moment, just
(10:43):
before game time. And believe me, it's been a tough
ticket for this game. They've been scoffing then for over
a hundred dollars in the hotel lobbies and around Miami.
Historians in Lancaster, may Or may not reclaim Jim's past,
but other see Jim's life as a lesson for the
present and guidance for the future. That's the second reason
(11:06):
I think this story is so important. Ballamar will kick
off from your ride. That will be saving ellery. Duncan
lived in the house at Isom Street for decades after
her eldest son's death. Once she died in two thousand one,
a few distant cousins lived there on and off, but
then the house set empty for years until recently being sold.
(11:28):
One summer day in one of our producers, Davin Coburn
drove past the house and he saw a car on
the driveway, so he rang the doorbell. The guy's name
is Jim Duncan and talked with the new owner about
the man who used to live there. He played for
the Baltimore Colts, and he actually died in the Lancaster
(11:49):
police station. Camelia Funderberg had never heard of Jim, and
she declined to appear in this podcast, but she knew
instantly what she thought of the official account of his death.
She said, quote, they're saying he walked into the police station,
it took a revolver and committed suicide. I don't believe
that for a former officer like Seth Stoughton, who is
(12:13):
now professor of law at the University of South Carolina,
that kind of reaction stops him cold. I asked her
if she knew anything about this case, and I would
like to just play you her reaction. In fact, it
did stop him cold. We played the conversation for him
and asked for his thoughts. Yeah, that's she had never
(12:37):
heard the story before. That sum total of her knowledge
about this was you outlining the facts for And it's fascinating,
isn't it, And a little frightening that her immediate conclusion is,
I don't believe that it's not completely crazy right, like
people absolutely have in the course of American his story
(13:01):
walked up to officers and attempted to wrestle their gun
out of their holsters. So why not believe it? I
would hazard a guess it's because either she doesn't trust
police now, which may be part of the story, or
she thinks about what policing was like at the time
in the nineteen sixties and says there's no way that
I'm going to trust that institution. For Stoughton, and he
(13:24):
hopes the law enforcement community as a whole, the importance
of rebuilding that trust is a lesson we should all
learn from Jim's death. There were few, if any, verified
facts that we could use to believe either story, So
why would a substantial portion of the community believe one
story not the other? In Stoton gave a ted X
(13:45):
talk about that specific issue in policing. Lack of trust
had primed the community to believe the most negative version
of events related in media reports, largely because of an
adversarial agency culture that emphasized aggressive of enforcement oriented approach
to policing. But he wasn't talking about Lancaster. He was
(14:08):
talking about Michael Brown. Almost forty five years after Jim's death,
there is growing outrage tonight after an unarmed African American
teenager were shot and killed by police in the St.
Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri. Stowton told us the fact
that we wouldn't have known the difference is exactly why
stories like Jim's matter. My initial reaction was, if we
(14:28):
changed the date, we could be having a conversation about
the Jim Duggan shooting from a year ago. There are
questions about transparency and accountability. There are questions about whether
there was a sufficient investigation. The issues that it raises
are exactly the same as a lot of the issues
that we see and a lot of the concerns that
(14:50):
are brought to a head by the Walter Scott shooting
in North Charleston, or the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson,
or the timor Rice shooting in Cleveland and so on.
There are even more modern parallels to Jim's story. Did anything.
(15:10):
We're gonna begin tonight with the NFL stand on players
who choose not to. Today, some of the most visible
and polarizing protesters of systemic racism and law enforcement are
NFL players. Following the lead of quarterback Colin Kaepernick, NFL
players began to kneel during the anthem to protest police
brutality and racism in America. Four years of systemic oppression
(15:35):
that slavery, Jim Crow new gym, Crow mass and casceration.
I just felt the need to say something about Eric
Reid is an NFL veteran. He's a defensive back, one
of the same positions Jim played back when Reid was
with the San Francisco forty Niners. He was the first
player to kneel alongside Colin Kaepernick. Read played for the
(16:01):
Carolina Panthers in nineteen not far from Lancaster. My colleagues
at the Charlotte Observer asked him about being one of
the faces of a modern civil rights movement, as we
said when we started calling, and uh, nothing will change
unless we talk about it. So we're gonna continue to
talk about it. We're gonna continue to hold America to
the standard that it says on paper that we're all
(16:23):
created equal, because it's not that we run now. I'm
a black man in America. I grew up black in America.
You can't tell me that what I've experienced and what
I've seen is not true. Those shadows of the past
can loom especially large for black men who grew up
(16:44):
in South Carolina. Somebody's got to have some sense and
as well, and a lot of right folk have demonstrated
eloquently that they don't have no sense, and roy should
we be that way? Martin Luther King Jr. Gave this
speech in Charles Austin in nineteen seven. Reason I'm not
gonna preach a doctrine of black supremacy is because I'm
(17:06):
so sick and todd a white supremacy. I still feel
that the sixties, in the seventies and eighties and civil rights.
It's not a historical event, It's an ongoing event. Rosie
Gilliam is the bar Street alum whose father coached Jim
in high school and then college. He's remained connected to
(17:28):
Lancaster's black community for decades. I don't think layer is
anything unusual about Lancaster. If you took away the date
and time, could you imagine that happening today? And the
answer is yes, you can. There is, of course, the
(17:56):
ultimate reason to tell this story. All right, My name
is I work at the newspaper in rock Hill, the
Search for Closure. I'm doing a story that I came
across your name. Maybe that's confirmation of the official narrative
or a different sort of justice. At the very least,
I hoped they would mean a fuller understanding for everyone
(18:18):
of why Jim's life came to an end. And late
in my work on this podcast, I learned I wasn't
alone in that mission. My name is Policy Johnson. I
am Professor of Law at Surracuse University College of Law.
I am also the director of the Cold Case Justice
Initiative at Turkish University College of Law. Our work is
(18:42):
to assist families and speaking information and justice and accountability
for racially motivated killings of their loved ones that have
not been solved and no one has been held to
answer for those crimes. We reached out to the Cold
Case Justice Initiative or c c j I after one
(19:03):
of my conversations with Elroy, you know, the Dollar contact us. Yeah,
wanted to reopen the case. I don't think we need
to put her through So it was when she was alife,
so other than the nineties. Yea, a spokesman for the
(19:23):
Lancashire chapter of the n double A CP, told us
they never launched any sort of formal investigation into Jim's death,
but I thought they might not have been the only
organization to try. Some of you may be familiar with
the Emmett Till case. Any of you familiar with the
least the name Emmett Till. They're in Syracuse. A rotating
(19:43):
team of about two dozen law school students each semester
has allowed c c j I to research hundreds of
possible Civil Rights era crimes, particularly murders where there's no
statute of limitations. If someone is responsible for taking someone
else life or for propagating a story that is not accurate,
(20:04):
you know, if they are shielding other people who participated
and so are responsible. The families deserved to know that,
whole communities deserve to know that. You know, those things
were done as messages to entire Black community, and so
the closure, so to speak, goes beyond any particular family member,
(20:28):
any particular community. This is a demand for justice for
the entire American society. Johnson told us. The answer was no,
c c j I had not looked into Jim's death, well,
not yet, anyway, His mother made me till Mobley had
insisted that his casket remained open. Now let me tell
(20:50):
you that the next slide is very graphic um the
coronavirus disrupted everything, including campus life at Syracuse. But having
read the few public new reports of Jim's death, Johnson
told me that as c c j I adapts workflows
moving forward, Jim's case could become a real focus for
her team. It was very interesting to see the different
(21:12):
accounts about what was going on, you know, for Mr
Duncan with respect to drugs, and that needn't be you know,
really here or there, as opposed to the most pivotal
part of this, and that is when he goes into
the police station. I mean, it's really curious to me,
(21:32):
for instance, that he walked in there and didn't say
anything to anyone. It just doesn't quite made sense to me.
It has always been the families who have insisted that
the world, that government officials, that the entities and the
apparatus of society and law enforcement take notice of these events,
(21:54):
that the lives of their loved ones, of their children matter.
Johnson co founded c c j I in two thousand
and eight along with Syracuse professor America Janice McDonald. The
Herald has not collaborated on this research with c c
j I, but Johnson said this reporting could be a
new jumping off point for their legal investigation, and that
(22:17):
teams like hers can sometimes unearth information news organizations cannot.
There can be parallels, but you know, sometimes our training
as lawyers may lead us to find that something raises
an issue for us that journalists may not pick up on. Now,
you know, we ourselves are not prosecutors, and so what
(22:40):
we try to do is put that information in some
kind of reports, and if it looks as though there
was something, you know, criminal involved, then we present that
to the relevant authorities. They may be local prosecutors, they
may be federals or state prosecutors, you know, but as
attorneys we kind of speak that language and understand what
(23:02):
kinds of things would be important for them to take
that and say maybe we'll convene a grand jury or
take this at that point. At the same time, some
of the people I spoke with for this story are
not pushing to reinvestigate Jim's death or pursue any sort
of legal action. The past has to become the past
(23:24):
at some point at a lesson base that includes some
of Jim's good friends like Bob Grant, Speedies death is
suspect it's a very sad event, but we have to
let go at some point. If we dwell too long
on some of the bad history, we're going to end
(23:45):
up having a bad future. So clearly, for some the
past really is better left alone see it. But others
told me they agreed to be interviewed because they'll never
find clue sure with so many open questions, and that
the chance for answers, whatever they may be, was worth
(24:06):
the pain of asking one last time. Well, it took
him a while because I never would have said, Okay,
do you I met with Elroy and Linda Duncan on
several occasions. The final time Elroy cried from the first
question to the last, which was a great and he
(24:29):
was on twenty six. Here I am just turned seventy
years old to the day. I still don't believe that
he killed us. So I don't believe it. We'll be
(24:51):
right back, I am. It looks what's HAPs back at
the Salem A. M. E. Zion Church cemetery. I've searched
for Jim's grave for more than half an hour, but
here's Duncan in the neighborhood. Maybe some of the headstones
(25:16):
are pressure washed with finely etched names and lifespans. Some
of the graves are marked only with a piece of stone.
We're a bit of concrete sticking out of the ground.
A lot of these don't really have names on them.
Eventually I call Linda, Linda, this is brought McCormick. How
are you, How are you? I'm good, I'm good. I'm
(25:38):
standing in the middle of a cemetery. I update her
on my research, as I do whenever we talk, and
I tell her that apparently word had gotten around about
my work. Somebody that knows that I'm working on this
story called me and told me they found some stuff
at an antique shop in Lexington, South Carolina. It was
like an autograph picture of butch Um, I guess, signed
(25:59):
by himself. For three years, this search has been a
tale of new leads, work at the newspaper in Rockyo,
South Carolina, and then trails that go cold. Unfortunately, the
year that you're looking for, along with many other years,
is missing, just tally missing. But the antique store is
a valuable lead, if only because Jim's family has almost
(26:20):
no physical reminders of him. The guy that owned the
antique store thought he had more stuff from Butch. I
think somehow he had acquired it. So there's the painting
of Jim and Moral's home and a few old news
clips they've collected, but no one knows where jim super
Bowl ring is now, and Elroy and Linda lost their
family photos in a house fire years ago. All right, well,
(26:43):
I'll get in touch with you later. Thanks again, all
right bye. Listeners of this podcast may have also noticed
that we've never heard from Jim himself. That's because I've
never heard his voice and hip on a great play
by the NCA. As many times times as I've asked
NFL teams and radio stations and TV networks if they
(27:04):
have historical footage of him, there were a good good Bob,
but dark one running up bottle duck him a great
good Bob break on her. For the thirty and as
many hours as I've spent looking through news archives, I
haven't found anything with his voice. I finally just asked
(27:24):
Floyd White if he could describe it. Did he have
like a like, any distinctive accent, just normal voice and
being from broken home? You know, I was from broken home.
I could read things and you know, think like that,
It's possible we might never get concrete answers. Oh, do
(27:45):
you know her? His wife? I'm sure I met her
a couple of times when I was infant, But in
talking to Moral, I wondered if there might at least
be a chance for reconnection. I drove to Greenville and
met her and talked to her for a couple hours,
because that was a pretty as much as Jim's family
and I talked about him these past few years, I
(28:06):
found myself telling them almost as much about each other.
Apparently she and Elary did not get along super well.
I told Moral stories about Alice. She was like twenty
years old when they got married. I mean, she was
basically a kid. Then I told Alice stories about Moral.
It would have been very interesting for you to hear
how he looked at it, because he's fourteen years younger
(28:27):
than any of the other siblings. I was like, well,
people ask you where your name comes from, and he's like, yeah,
that's the main time that I think about him. Alice
was most excited to hear about Moral's daughter, the youngest
addition to the family she was once part of, and
the girl who would have been her niece. Oh, his
daughter is eleven. I guess where middle name is. I
(28:48):
forgot about this ella. In the years since Jim's death,
his family suffered their tragedies. Two more of his siblings
died before reaching old age, and those who are still alive,
who are all tremendous athletes, at one point, haven't been
(29:09):
able to outrun Time was at Maryland State now that
John but we know did get to play against each other.
Elroy was a star quarterback at Johnson C. Smith University
in Charlotte. He took some big hits and games too.
It's hard fil meter room on the last day, other
(29:30):
than that he was killed and the way that he
was killed. These days, when Elroy loses a thought, Linda
lovingly calls him CTE and then gently steers him back
to the conversation. Horner thing he left his car park
in front of the Lancaster News. That's news. A still
(30:00):
lives near Greenville. She went on to have three children,
and we were joined in our conversations by her second husband,
Bobby Casting. She found some relief in our talk about
CTE and the idea that a fundamental disconnect between Jim's
mind and body could have driven some of his behavior.
That the things she saw weren't a true reflection of
(30:21):
the man she loved. Outside Salem a M. E. Zion Church,
there are headstones and markers from mc olwain's and Blackman's
and Thompson's m but nothing for James Edward Duncan. H
I thought back to that poem Alice told me about
(30:42):
let others cheer the winning man. There's one I hold worthwhile,
tis he who does the best he can, then loses
with a smile. From my research, it appears that the
poem is called The Cheerful Loser, was written by a
man named Arthur W. Beer. It seems to have been
first published in nine ten eleven in a magazine called
The Nautilus. There's a verse that follows the one Alice remembers.
(31:07):
It goes beaten he is, but not to stay down
with the rank and file. That man will win some
other day who loses with a smile. Later, I was
told by Elroy that Jim was buried without a headstone
because back in Nino the family couldn't afford one. Well,
that's about ready to get the second half underway. Date
(31:29):
public called Jim Duncan. So in the end I probably
did stand next to Jim Duncan's final resting place. Duncan
up to the fifteen, with plenty to the outside, but
even there in a graveyard on the outskirts of a
small town in South Carolina, the Return Man is elusive
once more. I'm Brett McCormick. This has been long shot
(32:00):
Season one Return Man. It's a production of The Herald,
McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio. Return End was produced
by Matt Walsh, Carrott, Taber, Kata Stevens, Rachel Wise, and
executive producer Davin Coburn. The executive producer for I Heart
Radio is Sean Titone. Cliff Harrington is the executive editor
(32:23):
of The Herald. Cynthia Dubos is mcclatchy's managing editor for
Audience Engagement. McClatchy Studios was created by Jonathan Forsyth and
special thanks to Gena Smith, J. Pilgreen, Eddie Alvarez, Gabby Garner,
and Sherry chisen All. For lots more on this story,
go to Harold online dot com slash return Man. If
(32:46):
you have any additional information about Jim 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 I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(33:09):
your favorite shows. H
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heart Radio. Previously on Return Man Today. I think that
people might suggest that there's some ill will directed toward
him by the police, but there was nothing that we
could prove. No work at the newspaper in Rockyoll, South Carolina.
(00:23):
Was your dad, Russell Henson, the police officer from Lancaster.
That was what we was saying. Somethingbody the dog and
not gonna imagine that. You know, football player nationwide black,
you know you're come back home. You know at home song.
If Jim Duncan, who is used to even a degree
of hero worship in Baltimore, comes down to South Carolina,
(00:45):
the potential for explosive conflict is pretty obvious. Jones Thompson spears,
(01:07):
It's a bright January day when I pulled into the
Salem A. M. E. Zion Church Cemetery in Heath Springs,
South Carolina, not far from Lancaster Areas series on the
day he died. I'm confident Jim Duncan's finances were a
mess and his marriage wasn't much better. Jim's NFL career
(01:28):
seemed pretty much over, and he moved back into the
house he bought for his mother. Everything around Jim was
a reminder of where he had once been and what
his life had become. But there are so many things
I still can't say for sure. Linda, this is brought McCormick.
How are you including where Jim was actually laid to rest?
(01:51):
I'm good. I'm standing in the middle of a cemetery.
I was looking for a butcher's grave. Um does this
ring a bell? It's Salem A. M. E. Zion. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay.
This church outside Lancaster is the one Jim's mother, Ellari,
grew up in. This cemetery is the one Jim's widow
hasn't been back to in decades. Elroy and Linda haven't
(02:13):
come back here either, not since the day Jim was buried.
Do you remember was he buried by a tree? I
don't know if you would remember that? Okay, I know
this is so long ago and it's hard to even visualize.
Those closest to Jim have believed for decades that he
never would have killed himself. But if they're right, how
(02:35):
did things go so wrong for the former star athlete
Inside that Lancaster police station. Could any other scenario be
more plausible than Jim simply taking his own life. Do
you remember that, like when he was buried, he had
a he had like a headstone. But I didn't know
at the time was that in that small town and
well beyond, word of my reporting was getting around. I
(02:57):
need to call you back later too, because I had
something weird happened over Christmas. Somebody that knows that I'm
working on this story called me and told me they've
found Suddenly maybe Jim's case wasn't closed just yet. From
the Herald McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio. This is
return man. I'm Brett McCormick, and this is part eight
(03:18):
speaking from the grave. M Do you have anything to remember?
But like, um, I have some magazines and some pictures
that my wife has gotten over the years, and I
(03:40):
have a painting. I'll show it you. I have it
actually up in Moral, United Clyburne is showing me around
his house outside Charlotte. Elroy said that every member of
the family had been offered a scholarship seven for seven.
It's not professional and yeah, initially world was reluctant to
(04:00):
speak with me. Initially, many of the people close to
the story were your kids ever asking about him? I mean,
did you ever have a conferent? So, I mean, my
daughter knows who that is on the picture upstairs. She's
pretty much where. You know, her uncle playing football for
the Colts and you know, the broadest story of the year.
(04:21):
You know, as she gets a little older, I'm sure
she may ask some questions the more Cold champs to
the American Conference, the Dallas Cowboys champs to the National Conference.
Over the past few years, I've been asked by Jim's
friends and family, by my editors and people i've interviewed,
(04:42):
how I think Jim died. The answer is, I'm not sure.
Jim was elusive in life as a kick returner, as
a brother, a husband, and a friend. And it should
be a simple question to answer what happened in that
police station. But I can't prove anything. George Lloyd so
he's the only one alive. That's no surprise to Morrow.
(05:08):
So George Lloyd had been at the Lancaster Police Department
for two weeks. He was working the desk and he
told me that Butch walked in the police lieutenant was
going through the mail, and that he said, can I
help you? And then he pulled a gun and stepped
back and shot him. The story has been set for
a long time. I mean, no one's changing that story.
I guess you said you can't dispute people that were there.
(05:30):
But at the same time, still some of this stuff
goes on. So what have we done? And forty six years?
So why bother? That's the follow up question I always get.
Why does it matter that a little known former football
player died in his hometown police station and we're not
really sure how Why put Jim's family and others involved
(05:55):
through all of it? Again? I think really, like, you know,
multiple people have asked me, mostly white people have asked me,
what are you going into this forward? And like why
are you bringing it back up? Alis and I talked
a lot about that. A lot of people who have
said over and over, man, if this happened nowadays, like
it would have been so different, you know, and and
that's kind of upsetting to me. Alice declined to lend
(06:19):
her voice to this podcast, but we spoke for nearly
four hours, the first time Alice has ever spoken at
length about the man she ultimately knew for just a
little over a year, or about the tension with Jim's
family that she thinks kept them all from demanding answers together.
The interesting thing to me, nobody had ever talked to
you that reported on this story. The first reason I
(06:41):
think this story is important is that, regardless of how
Jim died, his life is worth celebrating. I was surprised
and honored in a way that through my research I
was able to share things with Jim's family that they've
never known about him. Oh that's about really to gain
the sucking half underway this zone YouTube m I was
(07:01):
able to show moral highlights of his brother's NFL career
that he hadn't seen until we sat down together, Like
he just looks so much faster than everybody. Nor had
he heard many of these stories from Jim's teammates. Bob
Grant told me a lot of stuff that was his
professional friend or we do a lot about him. People
(07:25):
in Lancaster remember the man who wrote a hit song
Ranquility based here the ankle has landed in their hometown,
Astronaut rocket Point Granquility. We caught the on the ground.
You gotta bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're
breathing again. Thank a lot, but Moral's very name is
one of the only reminders that this former milltown also
(07:45):
produced a Super Bowl champ. This is the Orange Bowl.
It would be Jam eighty thousand fans to day Super
Bowl Day. Do you feel like he's been forgotten in Leicester? Um?
What do you know? Generation has come through from It's
just old time. Floyd White was one of Jim's coaches
at bar Street High School. He told me there was
(08:07):
once a corner store in the black part of town
that had a painting of gem on it. But that
store was demolished long ago and the mural went with it.
We had like up Gay Street down and when you
down now today there's a small history museum in the
(08:33):
basement of that same courthouse where Jim was married and
where the inquest announced how he died. There says we're
about to go on. A volunteer was working at the
museum when I visited. We're doing a video in a
podcast and a story on Jim Duncan. Do you know
(08:53):
Jim Duncan. Yeah. The museum has exhibits about Confederate soldiers
and ox for local Vietnam vets and memorabilia from Lancaster's past. Yeah, yeah, okay,
but there's nothing at all there about the man who
(09:14):
rose from a shotgun house in the poorest part of
that town to celebrate an NFL title mcil round defense
the Bimar the right quarterback Jim Drunk of number thirty five,
who was the top cook off re turned mad in
the American cop. We may never truly know how or
why Jim died, but his life should be remembered. When
(09:36):
I look back now and I'm like, okay, we'll see
this professional player came out of the college fast, and
You're like, man, you never know where that could have gone.
Here's moral again. Yeah, So when when did you start
learning about but You's death? I would say I hadn't
really learned about his death. We didn't really have talks
(09:58):
about this. This is literally something that we didn't talk
about at the end of the day. Is it something
for comfort or is it going to actually make a difference.
Someone somewhere either died with it or is going to
die with it um. And I think that's kind of
the gist that you know, I've gotten over the years
(10:18):
that you're never gonna get anything out of it. And
I don't mean that to deter you from doing what
you're doing. But I mean when you have that oh,
I'm sure I'm not based on your list. I won't
be the last. We'll be back in a moment, just
(10:43):
before game time. And believe me, it's been a tough
ticket for this game. They've been scoffing then for over
a hundred dollars in the hotel lobbies and around Miami.
Historians in Lancaster, may Or may not reclaim Jim's past,
but other see Jim's life as a lesson for the
present and guidance for the future. That's the second reason
(11:06):
I think this story is so important. Ballamar will kick
off from your ride. That will be saving ellery. Duncan
lived in the house at Isom Street for decades after
her eldest son's death. Once she died in two thousand one,
a few distant cousins lived there on and off, but
then the house set empty for years until recently being sold.
(11:28):
One summer day in one of our producers, Davin Coburn
drove past the house and he saw a car on
the driveway, so he rang the doorbell. The guy's name
is Jim Duncan and talked with the new owner about
the man who used to live there. He played for
the Baltimore Colts, and he actually died in the Lancaster
(11:49):
police station. Camelia Funderberg had never heard of Jim, and
she declined to appear in this podcast, but she knew
instantly what she thought of the official account of his death.
She said, quote, they're saying he walked into the police station,
it took a revolver and committed suicide. I don't believe
that for a former officer like Seth Stoughton, who is
(12:13):
now professor of law at the University of South Carolina,
that kind of reaction stops him cold. I asked her
if she knew anything about this case, and I would
like to just play you her reaction. In fact, it
did stop him cold. We played the conversation for him
and asked for his thoughts. Yeah, that's she had never
(12:37):
heard the story before. That sum total of her knowledge
about this was you outlining the facts for And it's fascinating,
isn't it, And a little frightening that her immediate conclusion is,
I don't believe that it's not completely crazy right, like
people absolutely have in the course of American his story
(13:01):
walked up to officers and attempted to wrestle their gun
out of their holsters. So why not believe it? I
would hazard a guess it's because either she doesn't trust
police now, which may be part of the story, or
she thinks about what policing was like at the time
in the nineteen sixties and says there's no way that
I'm going to trust that institution. For Stoughton, and he
(13:24):
hopes the law enforcement community as a whole, the importance
of rebuilding that trust is a lesson we should all
learn from Jim's death. There were few, if any, verified
facts that we could use to believe either story, So
why would a substantial portion of the community believe one
story not the other? In Stoton gave a ted X
(13:45):
talk about that specific issue in policing. Lack of trust
had primed the community to believe the most negative version
of events related in media reports, largely because of an
adversarial agency culture that emphasized aggressive of enforcement oriented approach
to policing. But he wasn't talking about Lancaster. He was
(14:08):
talking about Michael Brown. Almost forty five years after Jim's death,
there is growing outrage tonight after an unarmed African American
teenager were shot and killed by police in the St.
Louis suburb of Ferguson, Missouri. Stowton told us the fact
that we wouldn't have known the difference is exactly why
stories like Jim's matter. My initial reaction was, if we
(14:28):
changed the date, we could be having a conversation about
the Jim Duggan shooting from a year ago. There are
questions about transparency and accountability. There are questions about whether
there was a sufficient investigation. The issues that it raises
are exactly the same as a lot of the issues
that we see and a lot of the concerns that
(14:50):
are brought to a head by the Walter Scott shooting
in North Charleston, or the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson,
or the timor Rice shooting in Cleveland and so on.
There are even more modern parallels to Jim's story. Did anything.
(15:10):
We're gonna begin tonight with the NFL stand on players
who choose not to. Today, some of the most visible
and polarizing protesters of systemic racism and law enforcement are
NFL players. Following the lead of quarterback Colin Kaepernick, NFL
players began to kneel during the anthem to protest police
brutality and racism in America. Four years of systemic oppression
(15:35):
that slavery, Jim Crow new gym, Crow mass and casceration.
I just felt the need to say something about Eric
Reid is an NFL veteran. He's a defensive back, one
of the same positions Jim played back when Reid was
with the San Francisco forty Niners. He was the first
player to kneel alongside Colin Kaepernick. Read played for the
(16:01):
Carolina Panthers in nineteen not far from Lancaster. My colleagues
at the Charlotte Observer asked him about being one of
the faces of a modern civil rights movement, as we
said when we started calling, and uh, nothing will change
unless we talk about it. So we're gonna continue to
talk about it. We're gonna continue to hold America to
the standard that it says on paper that we're all
(16:23):
created equal, because it's not that we run now. I'm
a black man in America. I grew up black in America.
You can't tell me that what I've experienced and what
I've seen is not true. Those shadows of the past
can loom especially large for black men who grew up
(16:44):
in South Carolina. Somebody's got to have some sense and
as well, and a lot of right folk have demonstrated
eloquently that they don't have no sense, and roy should
we be that way? Martin Luther King Jr. Gave this
speech in Charles Austin in nineteen seven. Reason I'm not
gonna preach a doctrine of black supremacy is because I'm
(17:06):
so sick and todd a white supremacy. I still feel
that the sixties, in the seventies and eighties and civil rights.
It's not a historical event, It's an ongoing event. Rosie
Gilliam is the bar Street alum whose father coached Jim
in high school and then college. He's remained connected to
(17:28):
Lancaster's black community for decades. I don't think layer is
anything unusual about Lancaster. If you took away the date
and time, could you imagine that happening today? And the
answer is yes, you can. There is, of course, the
(17:56):
ultimate reason to tell this story. All right, My name
is I work at the newspaper in rock Hill, the
Search for Closure. I'm doing a story that I came
across your name. Maybe that's confirmation of the official narrative
or a different sort of justice. At the very least,
I hoped they would mean a fuller understanding for everyone
(18:18):
of why Jim's life came to an end. And late
in my work on this podcast, I learned I wasn't
alone in that mission. My name is Policy Johnson. I
am Professor of Law at Surracuse University College of Law.
I am also the director of the Cold Case Justice
Initiative at Turkish University College of Law. Our work is
(18:42):
to assist families and speaking information and justice and accountability
for racially motivated killings of their loved ones that have
not been solved and no one has been held to
answer for those crimes. We reached out to the Cold
Case Justice Initiative or c c j I after one
(19:03):
of my conversations with Elroy, you know, the Dollar contact us. Yeah,
wanted to reopen the case. I don't think we need
to put her through So it was when she was alife,
so other than the nineties. Yea, a spokesman for the
(19:23):
Lancashire chapter of the n double A CP, told us
they never launched any sort of formal investigation into Jim's death,
but I thought they might not have been the only
organization to try. Some of you may be familiar with
the Emmett Till case. Any of you familiar with the
least the name Emmett Till. They're in Syracuse. A rotating
(19:43):
team of about two dozen law school students each semester
has allowed c c j I to research hundreds of
possible Civil Rights era crimes, particularly murders where there's no
statute of limitations. If someone is responsible for taking someone
else life or for propagating a story that is not accurate,
(20:04):
you know, if they are shielding other people who participated
and so are responsible. The families deserved to know that,
whole communities deserve to know that. You know, those things
were done as messages to entire Black community, and so
the closure, so to speak, goes beyond any particular family member,
(20:28):
any particular community. This is a demand for justice for
the entire American society. Johnson told us. The answer was no,
c c j I had not looked into Jim's death, well,
not yet, anyway, His mother made me till Mobley had
insisted that his casket remained open. Now let me tell
(20:50):
you that the next slide is very graphic um the
coronavirus disrupted everything, including campus life at Syracuse. But having
read the few public new reports of Jim's death, Johnson
told me that as c c j I adapts workflows
moving forward, Jim's case could become a real focus for
her team. It was very interesting to see the different
(21:12):
accounts about what was going on, you know, for Mr
Duncan with respect to drugs, and that needn't be you know,
really here or there, as opposed to the most pivotal
part of this, and that is when he goes into
the police station. I mean, it's really curious to me,
(21:32):
for instance, that he walked in there and didn't say
anything to anyone. It just doesn't quite made sense to me.
It has always been the families who have insisted that
the world, that government officials, that the entities and the
apparatus of society and law enforcement take notice of these events,
(21:54):
that the lives of their loved ones, of their children matter.
Johnson co founded c c j I in two thousand
and eight along with Syracuse professor America Janice McDonald. The
Herald has not collaborated on this research with c c
j I, but Johnson said this reporting could be a
new jumping off point for their legal investigation, and that
(22:17):
teams like hers can sometimes unearth information news organizations cannot.
There can be parallels, but you know, sometimes our training
as lawyers may lead us to find that something raises
an issue for us that journalists may not pick up on. Now,
you know, we ourselves are not prosecutors, and so what
(22:40):
we try to do is put that information in some
kind of reports, and if it looks as though there
was something, you know, criminal involved, then we present that
to the relevant authorities. They may be local prosecutors, they
may be federals or state prosecutors, you know, but as
attorneys we kind of speak that language and understand what
(23:02):
kinds of things would be important for them to take
that and say maybe we'll convene a grand jury or
take this at that point. At the same time, some
of the people I spoke with for this story are
not pushing to reinvestigate Jim's death or pursue any sort
of legal action. The past has to become the past
(23:24):
at some point at a lesson base that includes some
of Jim's good friends like Bob Grant, Speedies death is
suspect it's a very sad event, but we have to
let go at some point. If we dwell too long
on some of the bad history, we're going to end
(23:45):
up having a bad future. So clearly, for some the
past really is better left alone see it. But others
told me they agreed to be interviewed because they'll never
find clue sure with so many open questions, and that
the chance for answers, whatever they may be, was worth
(24:06):
the pain of asking one last time. Well, it took
him a while because I never would have said, Okay,
do you I met with Elroy and Linda Duncan on
several occasions. The final time Elroy cried from the first
question to the last, which was a great and he
(24:29):
was on twenty six. Here I am just turned seventy
years old to the day. I still don't believe that
he killed us. So I don't believe it. We'll be
(24:51):
right back, I am. It looks what's HAPs back at
the Salem A. M. E. Zion Church cemetery. I've searched
for Jim's grave for more than half an hour, but
here's Duncan in the neighborhood. Maybe some of the headstones
(25:16):
are pressure washed with finely etched names and lifespans. Some
of the graves are marked only with a piece of stone.
We're a bit of concrete sticking out of the ground.
A lot of these don't really have names on them.
Eventually I call Linda, Linda, this is brought McCormick. How
are you, How are you? I'm good, I'm good. I'm
(25:38):
standing in the middle of a cemetery. I update her
on my research, as I do whenever we talk, and
I tell her that apparently word had gotten around about
my work. Somebody that knows that I'm working on this
story called me and told me they found some stuff
at an antique shop in Lexington, South Carolina. It was
like an autograph picture of butch Um, I guess, signed
(25:59):
by himself. For three years, this search has been a
tale of new leads, work at the newspaper in Rockyo,
South Carolina, and then trails that go cold. Unfortunately, the
year that you're looking for, along with many other years,
is missing, just tally missing. But the antique store is
a valuable lead, if only because Jim's family has almost
(26:20):
no physical reminders of him. The guy that owned the
antique store thought he had more stuff from Butch. I
think somehow he had acquired it. So there's the painting
of Jim and Moral's home and a few old news
clips they've collected, but no one knows where jim super
Bowl ring is now, and Elroy and Linda lost their
family photos in a house fire years ago. All right, well,
(26:43):
I'll get in touch with you later. Thanks again, all
right bye. Listeners of this podcast may have also noticed
that we've never heard from Jim himself. That's because I've
never heard his voice and hip on a great play
by the NCA. As many times times as I've asked
NFL teams and radio stations and TV networks if they
(27:04):
have historical footage of him, there were a good good Bob,
but dark one running up bottle duck him a great
good Bob break on her. For the thirty and as
many hours as I've spent looking through news archives, I
haven't found anything with his voice. I finally just asked
(27:24):
Floyd White if he could describe it. Did he have
like a like, any distinctive accent, just normal voice and
being from broken home? You know, I was from broken home.
I could read things and you know, think like that,
It's possible we might never get concrete answers. Oh, do
(27:45):
you know her? His wife? I'm sure I met her
a couple of times when I was infant, But in
talking to Moral, I wondered if there might at least
be a chance for reconnection. I drove to Greenville and
met her and talked to her for a couple hours,
because that was a pretty as much as Jim's family
and I talked about him these past few years, I
(28:06):
found myself telling them almost as much about each other.
Apparently she and Elary did not get along super well.
I told Moral stories about Alice. She was like twenty
years old when they got married. I mean, she was
basically a kid. Then I told Alice stories about Moral.
It would have been very interesting for you to hear
how he looked at it, because he's fourteen years younger
(28:27):
than any of the other siblings. I was like, well,
people ask you where your name comes from, and he's like, yeah,
that's the main time that I think about him. Alice
was most excited to hear about Moral's daughter, the youngest
addition to the family she was once part of, and
the girl who would have been her niece. Oh, his
daughter is eleven. I guess where middle name is. I
(28:48):
forgot about this ella. In the years since Jim's death,
his family suffered their tragedies. Two more of his siblings
died before reaching old age, and those who are still alive,
who are all tremendous athletes, at one point, haven't been
(29:09):
able to outrun Time was at Maryland State now that
John but we know did get to play against each other.
Elroy was a star quarterback at Johnson C. Smith University
in Charlotte. He took some big hits and games too.
It's hard fil meter room on the last day, other
(29:30):
than that he was killed and the way that he
was killed. These days, when Elroy loses a thought, Linda
lovingly calls him CTE and then gently steers him back
to the conversation. Horner thing he left his car park
in front of the Lancaster News. That's news. A still
(30:00):
lives near Greenville. She went on to have three children,
and we were joined in our conversations by her second husband,
Bobby Casting. She found some relief in our talk about
CTE and the idea that a fundamental disconnect between Jim's
mind and body could have driven some of his behavior.
That the things she saw weren't a true reflection of
(30:21):
the man she loved. Outside Salem a M. E. Zion Church,
there are headstones and markers from mc olwain's and Blackman's
and Thompson's m but nothing for James Edward Duncan. H
I thought back to that poem Alice told me about
(30:42):
let others cheer the winning man. There's one I hold worthwhile,
tis he who does the best he can, then loses
with a smile. From my research, it appears that the
poem is called The Cheerful Loser, was written by a
man named Arthur W. Beer. It seems to have been
first published in nine ten eleven in a magazine called
The Nautilus. There's a verse that follows the one Alice remembers.
(31:07):
It goes beaten he is, but not to stay down
with the rank and file. That man will win some
other day who loses with a smile. Later, I was
told by Elroy that Jim was buried without a headstone
because back in Nino the family couldn't afford one. Well,
that's about ready to get the second half underway. Date
(31:29):
public called Jim Duncan. So in the end I probably
did stand next to Jim Duncan's final resting place. Duncan
up to the fifteen, with plenty to the outside, but
even there in a graveyard on the outskirts of a
small town in South Carolina, the Return Man is elusive
once more. I'm Brett McCormick. This has been long shot
(32:00):
Season one Return Man. It's a production of The Herald,
McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio. Return End was produced
by Matt Walsh, Carrott, Taber, Kata Stevens, Rachel Wise, and
executive producer Davin Coburn. The executive producer for I Heart
Radio is Sean Titone. Cliff Harrington is the executive editor
(32:23):
of The Herald. Cynthia Dubos is mcclatchy's managing editor for
Audience Engagement. McClatchy Studios was created by Jonathan Forsyth and
special thanks to Gena Smith, J. Pilgreen, Eddie Alvarez, Gabby Garner,
and Sherry chisen All. For lots more on this story,
go to Harold online dot com slash return Man. If
(32:46):
you have any additional information about Jim 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 I heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
(33:09):
your favorite shows. H
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