March 8, 2022 • 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. New episodes coming each Tuesday, through March 16. To continue supporting work like this, visit heraldonline.com/podcasts and consider a digital subscription.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I
Heart Radio. Previously on returnment concussion of things like field,
he hit the deep into the corner at the ducom.
This time dum will come out with it. Since we've
known that people exposed to many concussions couldn't lead them
(00:23):
to be demented, just like someone with Alzheimer's disease, but
at a much younger age. He was very free with
his money may like about which was a lot of
money in Jim had some problems, but I didn't remember
what they were, and I did not get involved. An
(00:49):
unnatural quiet hangs over South Carolina State College today, a
day after state highway patrolman opened fire on rampaging students.
By the time Jim moved back to his hometown, Lancaster
and South Carolina were 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
(01:13):
civil rights battles like this one at South Carolina State
University were becoming somewhat less common, and the a c
P leaders demanded that steps would 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
(01:35):
team with schools. Floyd White has lived 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 teachers in the school,
and then the next year which cole In agreed a
(01:56):
few years before lawmakers in Columbia, South Carolina's 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
(02:19):
Campus Two's when we integrated to high school, like high
school came laf High School and number one and they
would be juniors and saying you Street became Black High
School camp to the ninth grades and ten grads. What
was it like though, I mean it had to be tense.
It was no it was good. Why do you think
(02:41):
there was because we at the black school too, and
what's gonna be high, It's gonna be We kept it
in front of Kevin, in front of Kevin, and they accepted.
He told me integration went more smoothly in Lancaster, not
because of less racism there, but because they did a
better job of teaching the black children to expect it.
(03:05):
Keys went to and had to flag. I called flag,
comp flag, You know what did? We don't play really,
so they saw the Confederate flag and they just but
they always kind of banded together, didn't unity instrument, so
(03:26):
they kept together. Yeah. 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
(03:48):
on your part to the extent of irresponsible journalism. That's
the environment Jim Crash landed back into in the fall
of nineteen two, coming down in front of the goal
post with the blue guid I'm a 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
(04:16):
a six ft two embodiment of the change that frightened
so many in Lancaster. In Baltimore, those things helped make
him a celebrity from the corner duck run wills come
out with it, But in Lancaster they might have made
him a target look out dunker at the Kansas City
forty nine yard line. From The Herald, McClatchy Studios and
(04:37):
I Heart Radio, this is return Man. I'm Bret 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
(05:00):
at Jim's mother, so she would leave the house in
Lancaster and temporarily moved back in with her parents in Greenville.
He was going to be with 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
(05:20):
as soon as Jim arrived, people there could tell something
was wrong. Not a doctor of 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
(05:42):
Athletic Trainers Hall of Fame. Clein Schmidt said, Jim arrived
to the Saints out of shape and under a dark cloud.
He was not a call lap, he was not a
revel rouser. He was not mad at all. I think
he was more to himself. You know, I don't remember
every cattle players mild, but I don't remember him being
(06:02):
fun loving jokes. I don't remember that at all. You know,
I remember him 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.
(06:25):
I mean, they can have family problems, they can have whatever,
still play. But I remember Jim would have gotten a
Super Bowl chap right, yeah, yeah, And he made some
kind of statement about I just never realized that having
so much money would create so many problems and him
(06:49):
a great play by Jim Dunca, he made good good
pack was 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
(07:10):
a patient's mental health would be a flagrant violation of
federal privacy law, but those laws were only enacted in
so at least legally, Sarum 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
(07:33):
I saw him, he seemed to be on the road
to recovery. Had he 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
(07:55):
going undefeated, becoming one of the most celebrated teams in
sports history. It turns out Jim caught a glimpse of
that himself. After he was waived by the Saints, Jim
was invited to Miami by head coach Don Shula, who
had originally helped draft Jim in ninety eight when he
coached the Baltimore Colts. But Jim was just as out
of sorts in Miami. Shula told The New York Times
(08:19):
in nineteen two, quote, we were hoping he'd be a
backup defensive back and run back kickoffs for us. But
he wasn't covering well and he'd 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 than two years later. He said, on
(08:45):
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 her so. After he got cut by
(09:06):
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? Those Dolphins finished that season, laying
(09:27):
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 hm. Jim arrived back to the
(09:47):
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 told you or would he
(10:09):
be the kind that would like child 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 do want we see him and and like
our great tone, you know, they're nothing bad that I
(10:30):
could tell you 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 pain
(10:51):
killers and 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 stay 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 because 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 Colts 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, you
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 pick 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 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 like an altered state, I think that
(13:17):
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 here he here going toward school.
We had to go through bushes and stuff. Floyd White
(14:24):
was one of Jim's high 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 Will, and he's strung out. He was you always
call him, you will. It's evident no one in Lancaster
(14:52):
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 of what was going on
(15:12):
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 had worried you. That's scary, Yeah,
(15:34):
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 visit or had he been there for a
(15:54):
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
(16:16):
of investigating 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,
(16:37):
Jim was living in the Isom Street house he'd 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 Uniteds Clyburne. Alice told me that by that
morning she hadn't talked to Jim in a week. Jim's
mother later told reporters about one of her last versations
(17:00):
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, Jim's best friend in Baltimore, mentioned another
(17:23):
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 stopped a number of times because he
(17:45):
was driving the big car thinking He and I had
talked about it, and I don't think that anybody else
in Lancaster ahead of Lincoln mark three whiter black in
his was canary yellow, So there was no way that
you could missed that. But he was warned about well.
When Speedy returned to Lancaster after New Orleans, even before
(18:07):
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 of didn't cross. You know, he
was still a colored man back there. Today he may
(18:30):
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 told me she's aware of
claims about Jim's unfaithfulness, which continued until the day he died.
(18:53):
During her time with Jim, there was a paternity suit
brought against him by another woman in nearby Winnsboro, South Carolina.
H Elroy had told me that Jim had a had
a kid with a woman in Winnsboro, South Carolina. Alice
told me she 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
(19:15):
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.
(19:35):
That Friday, October, we know, Jim drove his mother to
the ABC liquor store where she worked. Ellery 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.
(19:57):
At one he asked for an ice scraper, At the
other some manty freeze. When he died, We've believing 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
go to his house the way we were situated there,
(20:17):
and he looked, well did he looked just in the
days like driving, what do you passed? And 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 a day's It's not clear
(20:37):
exactly what time that was, but Jim was next scene
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
(21:00):
there to buy a gun. Huh. Okay. There's a lot
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
(21:22):
he would have to get it from the police station.
It's not clear what sort of paperwork might have been
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 Grap Jr.
Say out his 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 CTE 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 two thousand six, Andre Waters,
(22:54):
forty 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.
(23:15):
Victor 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 sell
your 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 ha, it's
(23:37):
behavior 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 will come out.
He found psychiatric problems were pretty common, but suicidal behavior
was not. Unfortunately, almost no one is studying the Scott
(24:00):
during their life, doing all the tests they need to,
then 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 cyrus disease in
nineteen o seven and it has not even begun in CT.
(24:24):
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 area which was
covered in dark wood panety. Inside the doorway faced a
(24:48):
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 police department at the time.
Just a few steps inside the front door, a chest
(25:10):
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, including for the Lancaster
Police Chief, a thirty six year old marine veteran from Savannah,
Georgia named Larry Lower. By that October, Lower had been
(25:34):
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 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
(25:55):
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 two It
has been a long time, he told me quote, there's
nothing I can recall, Thank you, and that was it. Wow.
(26:19):
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 called him read. That
Friday morning in ninety 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,
(26:45):
he wore his own personal holster that day, not the
department standard issue holster. The 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.
(27:06):
For example, Chief Lour reportedly removed his gun as soon
as he arrived and stored 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,
(27:27):
so you know, telling my oldest brother played with the colts.
He's deceased. You know 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
a police officer and shot himself in the head. The
(27:48):
former football players two pound frame collapsed to the ground
in the small hallway to the right of the counter.
He was dead before the ambulance arrived. Anything's possible, but again,
no one's going to talk about it. Never has this
been something that anybody remotely see interested in talking about.
(28:09):
Jim Duncan was twenty six years old. For nearly fifty years,
that's about all we've known for sure until now. And
on part five of Return Man, everybody like suicide with
police good. Back in the day at a smaller agency
(28:30):
that may not have been leading the charge of police
reform and professionalization, 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,
(28:51):
so you you would have been sitting at the desk
and he just walked Right by I'm Brett McCormick. Return
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
(29:13):
for I Heeart 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
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
(29:34):
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 returnment concussion of things like field,
he hit the deep into the corner at the ducom.
This time dum will come out with it. Since we've
known that people exposed to many concussions couldn't lead them
(00:23):
to be demented, just like someone with Alzheimer's disease, but
at a much younger age. He was very free with
his money may like about which was a lot of
money in Jim had some problems, but I didn't remember
what they were, and I did not get involved. An
(00:49):
unnatural quiet hangs over South Carolina State College today, a
day after state highway patrolman opened fire on rampaging students.
By the time Jim moved back to his hometown, Lancaster
and South Carolina were 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
(01:13):
civil rights battles like this one at South Carolina State
University were becoming somewhat less common, and the a c
P leaders demanded that steps would 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
(01:35):
team with schools. Floyd White has lived 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 teachers in the school,
and then the next year which cole In agreed a
(01:56):
few years before lawmakers in Columbia, South Carolina's 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
(02:19):
Campus Two's when we integrated to high school, like high
school came laf High School and number one and they
would be juniors and saying you Street became Black High
School camp to the ninth grades and ten grads. What
was it like though, I mean it had to be tense.
It was no it was good. Why do you think
(02:41):
there was because we at the black school too, and
what's gonna be high, It's gonna be We kept it
in front of Kevin, in front of Kevin, and they accepted.
He told me integration went more smoothly in Lancaster, not
because of less racism there, but because they did a
better job of teaching the black children to expect it.
(03:05):
Keys went to and had to flag. I called flag,
comp flag, You know what did? We don't play really,
so they saw the Confederate flag and they just but
they always kind of banded together, didn't unity instrument, so
(03:26):
they kept together. Yeah. 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
(03:48):
on your part to the extent of irresponsible journalism. That's
the environment Jim Crash landed back into in the fall
of nineteen two, coming down in front of the goal
post with the blue guid I'm a 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
(04:16):
a six ft two embodiment of the change that frightened
so many in Lancaster. In Baltimore, those things helped make
him a celebrity from the corner duck run wills come
out with it, But in Lancaster they might have made
him a target look out dunker at the Kansas City
forty nine yard line. From The Herald, McClatchy Studios and
(04:37):
I Heart Radio, this is return Man. I'm Bret 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
(05:00):
at Jim's mother, so she would leave the house in
Lancaster and temporarily moved back in with her parents in Greenville.
He was going to be with 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
(05:20):
as soon as Jim arrived, people there could tell something
was wrong. Not a doctor of 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
(05:42):
Athletic Trainers Hall of Fame. Clein Schmidt said, Jim arrived
to the Saints out of shape and under a dark cloud.
He was not a call lap, he was not a
revel rouser. He was not mad at all. I think
he was more to himself. You know, I don't remember
every cattle players mild, but I don't remember him being
(06:02):
fun loving jokes. I don't remember that at all. You know,
I remember him 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.
(06:25):
I mean, they can have family problems, they can have whatever,
still play. But I remember Jim would have gotten a
Super Bowl chap right, yeah, yeah, And he made some
kind of statement about I just never realized that having
so much money would create so many problems and him
(06:49):
a great play by Jim Dunca, he made good good
pack was 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
(07:10):
a patient's mental health would be a flagrant violation of
federal privacy law, but those laws were only enacted in
so at least legally, Sarum 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
(07:33):
I saw him, he seemed to be on the road
to recovery. Had he 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
(07:55):
going undefeated, becoming one of the most celebrated teams in
sports history. It turns out Jim caught a glimpse of
that himself. After he was waived by the Saints, Jim
was invited to Miami by head coach Don Shula, who
had originally helped draft Jim in ninety eight when he
coached the Baltimore Colts. But Jim was just as out
of sorts in Miami. Shula told The New York Times
(08:19):
in nineteen two, quote, we were hoping he'd be a
backup defensive back and run back kickoffs for us. But
he wasn't covering well and he'd 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 than two years later. He said, on
(08:45):
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 her so. After he got cut by
(09:06):
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? Those Dolphins finished that season, laying
(09:27):
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 hm. Jim arrived back to the
(09:47):
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 told you or would he
(10:09):
be the kind that would like child 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 do want we see him and and like
our great tone, you know, they're nothing bad that I
(10:30):
could tell you 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 pain
(10:51):
killers and 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 stay 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 because 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 Colts 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, you
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 pick 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 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 like an altered state, I think that
(13:17):
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 here he here going toward school.
We had to go through bushes and stuff. Floyd White
(14:24):
was one of Jim's high 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 Will, and he's strung out. He was you always
call him, you will. It's evident no one in Lancaster
(14:52):
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 of what was going on
(15:12):
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 had worried you. That's scary, Yeah,
(15:34):
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 visit or had he been there for a
(15:54):
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
(16:16):
of investigating 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,
(16:37):
Jim was living in the Isom Street house he'd 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 Uniteds Clyburne. Alice told me that by that
morning she hadn't talked to Jim in a week. Jim's
mother later told reporters about one of her last versations
(17:00):
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, Jim's best friend in Baltimore, mentioned another
(17:23):
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 stopped a number of times because he
(17:45):
was driving the big car thinking He and I had
talked about it, and I don't think that anybody else
in Lancaster ahead of Lincoln mark three whiter black in
his was canary yellow, So there was no way that
you could missed that. But he was warned about well.
When Speedy returned to Lancaster after New Orleans, even before
(18:07):
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 of didn't cross. You know, he
was still a colored man back there. Today he may
(18:30):
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 told me she's aware of
claims about Jim's unfaithfulness, which continued until the day he died.
(18:53):
During her time with Jim, there was a paternity suit
brought against him by another woman in nearby Winnsboro, South Carolina.
H Elroy had told me that Jim had a had
a kid with a woman in Winnsboro, South Carolina. Alice
told me she 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
(19:15):
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.
(19:35):
That Friday, October, we know, Jim drove his mother to
the ABC liquor store where she worked. Ellery 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.
(19:57):
At one he asked for an ice scraper, At the
other some manty freeze. When he died, We've believing 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
go to his house the way we were situated there,
(20:17):
and he looked, well did he looked just in the
days like driving, what do you passed? And 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 a day's It's not clear
(20:37):
exactly what time that was, but Jim was next scene
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
(21:00):
there to buy a gun. Huh. Okay. There's a lot
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
(21:22):
he would have to get it from the police station.
It's not clear what sort of paperwork might have been
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 Grap Jr.
Say out his 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 CTE 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 two thousand six, Andre Waters,
(22:54):
forty 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.
(23:15):
Victor 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 sell
your 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 ha, it's
(23:37):
behavior 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 will come out.
He found psychiatric problems were pretty common, but suicidal behavior
was not. Unfortunately, almost no one is studying the Scott
(24:00):
during their life, doing all the tests they need to,
then 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 cyrus disease in
nineteen o seven and it has not even begun in CT.
(24:24):
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 area which was
covered in dark wood panety. Inside the doorway faced a
(24:48):
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 police department at the time.
Just a few steps inside the front door, a chest
(25:10):
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, including for the Lancaster
Police Chief, a thirty six year old marine veteran from Savannah,
Georgia named Larry Lower. By that October, Lower had been
(25:34):
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 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
(25:55):
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 two It
has been a long time, he told me quote, there's
nothing I can recall, Thank you, and that was it. Wow.
(26:19):
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 called him read. That
Friday morning in ninety 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,
(26:45):
he wore his own personal holster that day, not the
department standard issue holster. The 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.
(27:06):
For example, Chief Lour reportedly removed his gun as soon
as he arrived and stored 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,
(27:27):
so you know, telling my oldest brother played with the colts.
He's deceased. You know 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
a police officer and shot himself in the head. The
(27:48):
former football players two pound frame collapsed to the ground
in the small hallway to the right of the counter.
He was dead before the ambulance arrived. Anything's possible, but again,
no one's going to talk about it. Never has this
been something that anybody remotely see interested in talking about.
(28:09):
Jim Duncan was twenty six years old. For nearly fifty years,
that's about all we've known for sure until now. And
on part five of Return Man, everybody like suicide with
police good. Back in the day at a smaller agency
(28:30):
that may not have been leading the charge of police
reform and professionalization, 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,
(28:51):
so you you would have been sitting at the desk
and he just walked Right by I'm Brett McCormick. Return
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
(29:13):
for I Heeart 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
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
(29:34):
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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