October 14, 2025 • 33 mins
This introductory episode is set at the Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity at Truman State University, in the small college town of Kirksville, Missouri. In 2016 and 2017 the fraternity was rocked by a series of suicides, which all happened in disturbingly similar fashion. All of the victims had one thing in common: They were close friends with a student named Brandon Grossheim. Brandon called himself “The Peacemaker” for his supposed abilities to counsel kids in crisis. But as he became tied up in one death after another, the fraternity brothers took action.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A warning.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This episode discusses youth depression and suicide. These topics may
be distressing for some listeners.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
And there's an incident tonight, and so we're just trying
to get some information about what's going on with.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
That, anything that you have.
Speaker 5 (00:26):
To maybe the last week or so or working with
them tonight at all.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
No, but she is my roommate and she is my friends.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
So okay, do you know as far as their.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Relationship and was there any issues or anything like that
or no, I've.
Speaker 6 (00:41):
Just known them to be like friends.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
What you are hearing is audio from the body cameras
of police who responded to a call from a fraternity
house in Missouri in August twenty hears.
Speaker 7 (01:00):
That he took his own line.
Speaker 8 (01:04):
Last night of.
Speaker 7 (01:07):
Yeah, so that's it.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
The student who took his own life was named Jake Hughes.
He was a sophomore at Truman State University, one of
Missouri's most prestigious colleges. Hughes was a psychology major who
hailed from outside Saint Louis. He was found around two
(01:35):
in the morning in his room at the fraternity where
he lived.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
He had hung himself.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Hughes was found by one of his fraternity brothers named
Brandon Grossheim. Grossheim was the fraternity's house manager and they
were friends. Afterwards, Grossheim talked with police investigators. He told
them Hughes and his girlfriend had gotten into a fight
that evening.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
You can tell you he was crying. I gave mug
I asked now that he was going and told me
it wasn't okay. And I had said, I was like,
I was here for him. You need me, I'm here,
you can talk to me. It's like, I've got some people.
I promise I'll.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Call you, Except that night, Hughes didn't call him. When
Grossheim realized this, he sprinted to Hughes' room, where he
found him hanging from a wardrobe.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I lifted him up, I told, I yelled out and
told somebody called nine one one now, and then I
kept on for help. This roommate, the sweet mate, the
sweet mat I came and help me.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
This was an awful situation, unimaginable for most people. Except
it wasn't unimaginable for the members of this Truman State
University fraternity called Alpha Kapa Lambda. That's because they'd seen
the suicide death of another fraternity brother only three weeks earlier.
(03:01):
That student was named Alex Mullins, a rising junior like Hughes.
He had also hung himself in his room at the fraternity,
also from a wardrobe. The guy who discovered his body
also Brandon Grossheim. That's the person we just heard talking.
(03:22):
It was a time of chaos, with parents, fraternity members,
and police struggling to figure out what was going on.
This was the second suicide the cops were investigating in
just three weeks. They were surprised to learn that the
same fraternity member, Brandon Grossheim, had found both bodies. Here
(03:42):
is audio of police questioning Grossheim about the deaths on
the evening of Jake Hughes's suicide at the fraternity house
where it happened. Their conversation was captured on an officer's
body camp.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Did you find the last one?
Speaker 9 (03:59):
Yep, the first one to find him.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
It was the exact same way.
Speaker 10 (04:03):
Not.
Speaker 11 (04:04):
I don't know about the knut.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
I mean, did you take him down? Youre talking about
Mullens or Duke.
Speaker 9 (04:11):
Ja.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I took down Mullens.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I didn't. Mollens was there longer.
Speaker 8 (04:15):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Whenever I got through the window.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I tried to pick him up and his body was stiff.
That's why I just walked out. I didn't even look
at then.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
It was a highly unusual situation for two fraternity brothers
to die by suicide in just three weeks was already suspicious.
News of the deaths spread around the campus and across town.
People didn't know if this was just a coincidence, or
if foul play was involved. Could it have had something
(04:47):
to do with fraternity hazing. When people learned that Brandon
Grossheim had discovered both bodies, most felt.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Sympathy for him, at least at first.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
In fact, even the police were sympathetic, considering he'd just
lost two close friends in a very short time span.
After all, discovering the dead body of a close friend
would be traumatizing and could affect a person's sense of
self and safety. But in some ways, grappling with difficult
(05:20):
feelings was familiar territory for Brandon. In his personal life,
he seemed to gravitate towards those who were struggling, and
saw himself as an ally for students who were suffering
from depression and feeling overwhelmed by their college experience at
Truman State. Even the girls he dated, he probed them
(05:40):
about their personal issues and had late night conversations with
them about depression. He believed in his special abilities to
help people in distress so much that he'd come up
with a nickname for himself. He called himself the Peacemaker.
Speaker 12 (05:58):
He called himself the Peacemaker. Why would you give yourself
that title? What peace did you make with someone?
Speaker 1 (06:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 12 (06:05):
That's an interesting piece.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
People didn't know what to think.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
There was clearly something strange going on, but little did
everyone know it was about to get even more bizarre,
because when it came to Brandon Grossheim and people he
knew taking.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Their own lives, this was only the beginning.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
My name is Ben Westoff, and I'm a journalist from
Saint Louis. I've been following this story since the beginning.
I know people who went to Truman State, and none
of them can make sense of these deaths. People are
still suffering, and some of the suicide victim's parents have
filed lawsuits. No one has any clarity, and so for
(06:53):
this reason, I wanted to dig deeper to find out
what really happened. The suicides took place nine years years ago,
but to this day, people still want to know why
was this young man, Brandon Grosheim, only nineteen at the time,
so closely tied up in so many deaths?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Was Brandon somehow to blame?
Speaker 13 (07:15):
The lawsuit says Grossheim was one of the last people
to see each victim before their deaths, and was reportedly
seen wearing one of the victim's clothing. All the suicides
were in this same manner.
Speaker 8 (07:26):
He needs to pay for what he's done.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Or was he just incredibly unfortunate to be in the
wrong place at the wrong time, again and again and again.
From iHeart Podcasts and Cool Fire Studios, this podcast tells
the story of the most infamous suicide cluster in American history.
This is the Peacemaker, named for the only president to
(08:10):
hail from Missouri. Truman State has consistently been named the
top public university in the Midwest by US News and
World Report. It's located in the rural college town of Kirksville, Missouri,
in the north central part of the state, near the
Iowa border, home to about eighteen thousand people. I recently
(08:31):
strolled through the oak Line quad there where a Christian
Fellowship group was getting ready to play a concert. But
even though it was a beautiful day. The campus seemed quiet.
That may have been because everyone was inside studying.
Speaker 10 (08:47):
Every time I bring up like, oh I go to
Truman State, it's like, oh, that's like a challenging school.
You must be really smart. So also just put another
layer of like I'm trying to have the academic success
for myself.
Speaker 9 (09:00):
Yeah, it's hard to balance too, because I would consider
myself a pretty like outgoing social person and so it's
like I kind of feed off being with other people.
But then it's hard when you go to such a
hard school because it's like, Okay, well, I have to
like take all this time for school, which is like
fine because obviously I'm in college and I know that.
Speaker 11 (09:15):
That's what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 9 (09:16):
But you have to make sure you have a balance
with like the things that make you happy too.
Speaker 8 (09:20):
Yeah, but that's kind of hard.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Those are current students Chloe Schwab and Jesse Bruce. Truman
State is often called the Harvard of the Midwest, and
indeed the course load can be demanding. Many students make
their studies priority number one, but not everyone. Many others
find plenty of time for socializing, and though Truman is
(09:46):
a dry campus that doesn't stop much of the student
body from enjoying their fair share of booze. In fact,
many people I spoke with described rampant alcoholism. Here's a
former student named trist and Wiser.
Speaker 6 (10:02):
My freshman year at Truman Week, I drank every single
day and like that was the way to make friends.
And then sororities and fraturnities have these special parties that
like you want to get into because that's the way
to make good friends.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Considering the academic stress and the culture of drinking, perhaps
it's not surprising that many Truman State students consider themselves depressed.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
In fact, about half of.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
The students who responded to a Missouri College Health and
Behavior study from twenty sixteen, the year these suicides began,
said they'd thought about suicide. Meanwhile, their rates of depression,
panic attacks, and anxiety were higher than average. One student
(10:46):
who seemed to have his head on straight was Brandon
Grossheim before his life became engulfed by tragedy. Grossheim was
a psychology major with a slight twang and a big vocabulary.
He was raised near Saint Louis in a faded rivertown
called Alton, Illinois, once famous as the site of a
(11:07):
Lincoln Douglas debate. In his big, middle class Catholic family,
he had four younger sisters and one older brother. He
was involved with his church youth group, and his confirmation
name was Saint Francisco, the patron Saint of Animals. In
(11:27):
high school, he was into theater, working as a crew
member and also performing, sometimes including as police Officer Number
two in a play called Rehearsal for Murder. This play
within a play concerns the death of an actress, which
was originally believed to be suicide, but which turns out
(11:48):
to be murder.
Speaker 14 (11:50):
I thought the theater program was great there. You know
a lot of the kids, you know, we all got
along pretty well. We put on some pretty good productions.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And how I find That's one of Brandon's high high
school theater colleagues who doesn't want his name used because
he says Brandon kind of freaks him out due to
his strange behavior dating back to high school. Not everyone
feels this way about him, however. In fact, others described
Brandon as friendly and outgoing. He'd cheer on the school's
(12:20):
football team at games and greet his friends in the
hallways with big backbreaking hugs. The local newspaper described how
after some senior's toilet paper a bunch of trees in
front of the high school, Brandon assisted the staff in
cleaning it up. But his theater colleague described Brandon as
(12:41):
having a Messiah complex back then, someone who would give
strange self help spiels to the other theater kids.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
It was just kind of a way of speaking about
your mental struggles or physical struggles or what ever, and whatever,
maybe like willpower and like like you're the master of
your own fate, and you know, at high school, it's.
Speaker 14 (13:06):
Kind of like what the hell are you talking about.
He was just very into like like health in general.
We're in the dressing room or whatever for theater, and
he would he be doing like push ups and like
pull ups on things and like kind of encouraging everybody
to like kind of get in there. I don't know
(13:29):
if you know, if you know the like wim Hoff is.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Wim Hoff is a Dutch motivational speaker famous for taking
ice baths.
Speaker 15 (13:40):
Reset This creating not adrenaline, fire dopamine two hundred and
fifty to three hundred percent more. It's all signs this
will battle effectively your mental disorder called depress him, bipolar
or any other coming to you.
Speaker 14 (14:01):
He honestly reminded me so much of the whim Hoff guy,
just the spiel he had going on. Nothing nefarious, but
like you know, kind of the just the idea of
mental health and you know, mind over matter.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
But as much as Brandon Grosheim was into health, he
was also clearly fascinated by death. One time, Brandon and
his mother arrived to visit his grandmother when they realized
she had died from cancer, but he sent his mother away,
according to his story in The New Yorker, and chose
to confront the body himself. Have you ever seen a
(14:38):
dead person, he asked the writer of the story. The
bowel is often clear, he said. After high school, Brandon
attended community college before transferring to Truman State. There, just
like in high school, he brought a certain energy that
(14:58):
was appealing to some people.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
This is his former roommate Dalton McVeigh.
Speaker 7 (15:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 16 (15:04):
No, like Brandon, he strupped me as like a very
wanting to like live in people's moods for like whatever reason,
and sometimes it would go so far as to get
on people's nerves. But he definitely presented himself as a
goofball and like a little bit of a gesture to
try and like liven people up.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Despite this appearance, during his time at Truman State, Brandon
would become increasingly depressed, according to his friends, but he
didn't focus on his own sorrows. Instead, he wanted to
talk with you about your problems. He offered himself up
as a sort of amateur counselor, running toward other people's
(15:43):
pain the way a hero might run into a burning building.
And that's the way he thought of himself as a hero,
as someone who could do good. Brandon soon joined the
Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity. Now, if you're thinking of an
animal house style keggers and sticky floors, well you're not
(16:03):
far off. Located a few minutes off campus, AKL had
a huge house with white clapboards siding and a blue roof.
You could find bonds laying around, guys strumming guitars. This
branch of Alpha Kappa Lambda has some famous alums, like
the junior US Senator from Missouri, Eric Schmidt. But around
(16:27):
campus AKL was known for their parties like the Don
Ho Party, which was Hawaiian themed. Another was called the
Borders party, for which the house was separated into countries,
each one having a different drink. There was rum and
coke for America, margaritas for Mexico, and no one can.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Really remember what drink Canada had.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
In the back of the house was a cavernous spot
called the Party Bar. It had a high triangle roof
and there wasn't much ambiance, but many nights at puld
with music like a night club. The spartan space was
designed to be as indestructible and as easy to clean
as possible.
Speaker 12 (17:09):
It just pretty much big room with mint floor and
drains for the beer.
Speaker 16 (17:13):
So y.
Speaker 12 (17:14):
I mean there's drains in the grounds. You know, if
you spill it, it say, no big deal, we can just
mop it into a drain. So you know, it's perfect,
pretty much perfect place for a party.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
That's former Alpha Kappa Lambda member Connor Templeton, who now
lives outside Saint Louis. He absolutely loved his fraternity experience
despite all the tragedy.
Speaker 12 (17:32):
It was the best decision I've ever made. I mean,
my roommates now is from Akale. Everyone to hang out
with every week from Akale. It's like those are my
best friends, and that would be uh, you know, if
I get married, that's my best man will be bing Akal.
My grooms won will be a Kales.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
At the time, though, in late twenty sixteen, Alpha Kappa
Lambda was absolutely reeling from the first two suicides, and
Brandon Grosheim, who discovered the bodies, was taking the dust
especially hard, his friends say, but he was also saying
things that sounded crazy to some people, Like to Tommy Lona,
(18:05):
who was friends with both suicide victims.
Speaker 17 (18:08):
I think that was his view on suicide though, that like, yeah,
he just agreed with it that if that's how you
wanted to go, you should go on your own terms.
And of course with him saying that kind of thing,
it did piss me off even more. It is like,
why would you tell somebody that if you don't know
what they're going through. What if they're going through actual
(18:30):
suicidal thoughts and you tell somebody that.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
In fact, after the members of the fraternity had time
to process these deaths, some of them began levying accusations
against Brandon. Some of these accusations were for things Brandon
did that might be chalked up to the grieving process.
Other accusations, however, were much more disturbing. Some of Brandon
(18:57):
Grossheim's fraternity brothers found it strange when, after the death
of the second suicide victim, Jake Hughes, Brandon started dating
Jake's girlfriend. They also accused him of breaking into a
safe Jake had in his room and stealing his drugs
and his money. Some of them also wondered aloud, could
(19:19):
Brandon have had something to do with Alex in Jake's deaths.
This wasn't their only concern either. The brothers also feared
that Brandon might try to kill himself, just like his
two friends had. He had begun behaving erradically, and so
the fraternity called a meeting. Some of the members wanted
to expel him. The meeting got very heated. Here's AKL
(19:44):
member Connor Templeton.
Speaker 12 (19:47):
I mean it's literally just you know, the angel and
devil on your shoulders. I mean, did he do it?
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Did he?
Speaker 4 (19:51):
N Do we feel bad from this cater wer we
get this kid out of here, because way it's too
much reliability and it's absolutely impossible to know which answer
is right, and I still wouldn't be able to tell
you to this day which she answered to be right.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Ultimately, the fraternity did decide to kick Brandon out, leaving
him demoralized. He took a bunch of LSD and reportedly
went on a bizarre rant about death at the frat house.
He moved into an off campus apartment and soon had
dropped out of Truman State. Even after Brandon was kicked
(20:56):
out of the fraternity, he didn't cut off all of
his ties with al for Kappa Lambda. In fact, he
was still in touch with a new recruit to the fraternity,
an eighteen year old business administration major named Josh Thomas.
Josh joined Alpha Kappa Lambda after the first two suicides.
He was openly gay, which is probably not as uncommon
(21:19):
as you might think at Truman State fraternities. Some friends
remember Josh as a life of the party type.
Speaker 8 (21:26):
He is so much fun and he's hilarious and like
sire of attention. He was really famous for like his
turking and so I remember, you know, we partied a lot, right,
and I remember him like we don't ask him to
like walts work, right, and it was so much fun. Yeah,
he was just like incredibly outgoing and exciting and really
(21:49):
like upbeat, intense, like funny energy.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
That's Elenea Bora, a former Truman State student who is
one of Josh's best friends. But on the inside, Josh
was also battling depression. In fact, he had a very
dark past. According to a police report, he said he'd
been raped as a boy and had been involved with prostitution.
(22:13):
He didn't open up about this with everybody, but he
developed a close relationship with Brandon Grossheim.
Speaker 8 (22:19):
He felt close to Brandon. He loved Brandon. He felt
like Brandon was one of the only people who understood him.
I think it's entirely possible that because Brandon had been
through so much trauma, that he was someone that Josh
could connect to about art and Truman's a small school, right,
There's nobody that I don't at least have one mutual
(22:41):
friend with. I think it's really easy for people with
the most significant trauma to find each other.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
One night, Josh even brought Brandon to a party at
akl although the brothers wouldn't allow him to stay. But
if Brandon was in a bad state by this point,
Josh Thomas was even worse. On the evening of April fifth,
twenty seventeen, Josh attended a panic at the Disco concert
in Saint Louis with some friends after returning home. Sometime
(23:12):
during the night, Josh Thomas hung himself at.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
The Alpha Kappa Lambdahause.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
This time, Brandon Grosheim didn't discover him, but something else
strange happened. Found next to Josh's body was a torn
piece of notebook paper which had Brandon's name written on it,
alongside two email addresses for him. Absolutely no one knew
what to make of all of this, three deaths at
the same fraternity in less than eight months. In fact,
(23:45):
the death of Josh Thomas is probably the moment all
hell started breaking loose at Truman State What could have
possibly been going on here? With so little reliable information available,
rumors began flying around. Here's Ethan Trouer, who is Josh
Thomas's ex boyfriend.
Speaker 7 (24:05):
After the first two they thought it was just a coincidence,
but then after the third one they thought it was
a pattern and that something was going on. So the
rumors started flying around that something was going on with
the fraternity. The biggest theory was that it was just
hazing related that their hazing was getting out of control.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
This theory would be later dismissed, but as the media
attention began to swell, the parents of the victims became
desperate for answers.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
So let's pause here.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I realized this story contains a lot of information to unpack,
and I thought it might be helpful to bring in
our producer Ryan Kraull to help provide some context.
Speaker 18 (24:50):
So Hey Ryan, Hey Ben, Yeah, there was definitely a
lot to unpack.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Here, Okay, So just to lay it all out kind
of simply make sure everyone understands.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
So, so far, there have been three suicides.
Speaker 12 (25:01):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 18 (25:02):
There was Alex Mullins was first, followed very shortly by
Jay Hughes. Both of those suicides occurred in August twenty sixteen,
and they both happened in very similar fashion, both at
the AKL the Alpha Kapa Lambda.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
House, okay, and then the third death was.
Speaker 18 (25:19):
Now, that was Josh Thomas, who also took his own life,
also at the Alpha Kapa Lambda House, but that wasn't
until April of twenty seventeen, about eight months later.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Okay, So then let's talk about Brandon gross on him.
So he found the first two bodies.
Speaker 18 (25:36):
That's right, and it was a little bit different with
the third Josh Thomas in that case, Grossheim had already
moved out of the frat house. But whenever they found
Thomas's body, he had a slip of paper with him
that had email addresses for Brandon Grossheim written on it.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Okay, and so at this point Brandon had already been
kicked out of the fraternity. Can you tell us more
about why?
Speaker 18 (25:57):
Yeah, Well, basically, many of the members were just kind
of creeped out by Brandon's behavior. He started dating the
girlfriend of the second victim, Jake Hughes, and he also
started wearing Jake's clothes around campus, and people definitely took
note of that. And some people also think that Brandon
broke into a safe that belonged to Jake in his
room and stole drugs and money.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And then in.
Speaker 18 (26:20):
September of twenty sixteen, which would have been like one
month after the first two deaths, roughly, the president of
the fraternity contacted police and they basically said, we're concerned
about Grossheim. We think he's unstable and he needs some
kind of intervention. They thought he might kill himself next.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
All right, so now let's talk about what happened after that.
After Josh Thomas's death, everything did not exactly calm.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Down, not at all.
Speaker 18 (26:46):
In fact, the situation quickly got worse. One of the
parents of one of the victims started investigating, and she
quickly found some shocking information.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
The parent who began investigating was mal us A bad
Or Airy, the mother of Alex Mullins.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Who was the first of the suicides.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
She'd been grieving since the previous year and was growing
increasingly perplexed by the situation at Truman State.
Speaker 11 (27:15):
On the advice of an investigator we had talked to
at the time, they said, you should go get all
of the police records and things, because this is odd.
This is odd, this seems beyond the pale. Because if
you know anything about you know, suicide clusters and contagion,
they generally are not this small and specific like you'll
see a college have multiple or you'll see a high school.
(27:38):
You won't see a fraternity one place where they all
lived and they all die in the exact same manner
type of thing.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And so she made a trip to Kirksville with her
ex husband to speak with police about the three suicides.
Speaker 11 (27:53):
Because at that point, sitting in front of the detective,
they let us know they had reopened Alex's case. I
don't know if they would have ever told us so
if we hadn't gone up to get the information. And
that's when the police looked at us and said, we're
looking at someone that's in common with all four deaths.
And we kept saying and I finally looked at my
ex husband and said, is he saying four?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
This was not a mistake.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Somehow it had been kept out of the media and
kept secret from the grieving parents that another Kirksville student
had recently killed himself. His name was also Alex Alex Vote,
and though he was not a Truman State student, he
attended another nearby school. But here's where it gets really crazy.
(28:41):
After Brandon was kicked out of the fraternity, he moved
into an off campus apartment building. It was the same
building where this new Alex Vote lived. Brandon moved in
directly across the hall from him, just a few feet away,
and shortly after Brandon moved in, Alex Vote killed himself.
(29:05):
It was as if everywhere Brandon went, suicide followed him
once again.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Brandon was one.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Of the last people to see this suicide victim alive.
When the police came to investigate the death, Brandon let
them into the building.
Speaker 11 (29:24):
That's when it kind of all started to take a
different turn.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
If you will.
Speaker 11 (29:29):
Well, just the fact that at that point to find
out that Brandon had been either present to find the bodies,
or had been the last known person to be seen
with them, or showed up at the scene and asked
about the bodies. Like, all these things started coming out
(29:49):
because the police were telling us about them, and that's
when you know, I started putting some of the back
pieces together.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
True Human State suicide cluster would have widespread ramifications, not
just for the families and friends of the victims, but
for Alpha Kappa Lambda and Truman State at large. To
this day, almost nobody has any answers. Some blame the
fraternity for these deaths, and some blame the university. Many, however,
(30:21):
blame Brandon Grossheim. Here's a former Truman State student who
knew Brandon named Tristan Wiser.
Speaker 19 (30:29):
There's a difference between telling somebody and comforting, like telling
them that they can open up to you and tell
you those things about that, and somebody asking for that
information to be able to beed into Oh, well, this
is how you can end it.
Speaker 8 (30:44):
If that's really how you feel this is how you
can end it.
Speaker 18 (30:47):
That's not how you comfort somebody.
Speaker 6 (30:48):
That's not how you help somebody work through those feelings.
For him to have taken the advantage of people that
didn't see it and push them to that point to
where it was actually done.
Speaker 8 (31:00):
Like it. It doesn't need to be ignored and just
gone by.
Speaker 20 (31:05):
It doesn't.
Speaker 6 (31:06):
It deserves to be figured out and go through the court.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
And here's Javad Khazzali, the plaintiff's attorney in the civil
case against Brandon.
Speaker 20 (31:17):
The biggest issue I see is the official version of
what happened just doesn't make sense. There's still so many
questions out there, and all the people who should have
been looking for the answers stopped. Also, I want to
be clear, as a forty eight year old, I've never
found a dead body.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Many people, however, don't blame Brandon at all. He was
never charged criminally, and his defenders believe he's gotten a
raw deal. They say that the trauma of watching so
many of his close friends die has only been compounded
by the media attention in the lawsuit.
Speaker 16 (31:56):
I think there was an element of like escapegoatism, like
these allegations against Brandon, like no matter what.
Speaker 8 (32:03):
It's fun to find someone specific to blame, right, that's
easier to digest. That's the smaller problem. It's nice to
find a bad guy, but at the end of the day,
like the only person responsible as a society and a
community that does not have ways to help people heal.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Now, nine years after these suicides, the civil lawsuit against
Brandon Grossheim is winding towards trial. A day of reckoning
will finally be at hand. We will be there for
it as we uncover the entire twisted backstory of the
chaos and tragedy that engulfed Truman State University. During this time,
(32:42):
we will focus on the man at the center of
this story, Brandon Grossheim. Brandon is intriguing because he seemed
to truly believe he could help people deal with their depression,
despite so much evidence to the contrary, which is why
the nickname he had for himself now seems so oh ironic.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
The Peacemaker.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
The Peacemaker is a production of Cool Fire Studios and
iHeart Podcasts. It's hosted by me Ben Westoff and Ryan Krall.
Our executive producers are Jeff Keene, David Johnson, and Steve Lubert.
Music and audio engineering by Brent Johnson. Executive producers for
iHeart Podcasts are.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Katrina Norvell and Nicki Etour.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
If you are someone you know is having suicidal thoughts,
there are resources available to you. Please call the Suicide
and Crisis Lifeline nine eight eight
A warning.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
This episode discusses youth depression and suicide. These topics may
be distressing for some listeners.
Speaker 3 (00:19):
And there's an incident tonight, and so we're just trying
to get some information about what's going on with.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
That, anything that you have.
Speaker 5 (00:26):
To maybe the last week or so or working with
them tonight at all.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
No, but she is my roommate and she is my friends.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
So okay, do you know as far as their.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Relationship and was there any issues or anything like that
or no, I've.
Speaker 6 (00:41):
Just known them to be like friends.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
What you are hearing is audio from the body cameras
of police who responded to a call from a fraternity
house in Missouri in August twenty hears.
Speaker 7 (01:00):
That he took his own line.
Speaker 8 (01:04):
Last night of.
Speaker 7 (01:07):
Yeah, so that's it.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
The student who took his own life was named Jake Hughes.
He was a sophomore at Truman State University, one of
Missouri's most prestigious colleges. Hughes was a psychology major who
hailed from outside Saint Louis. He was found around two
(01:35):
in the morning in his room at the fraternity where
he lived.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
He had hung himself.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Hughes was found by one of his fraternity brothers named
Brandon Grossheim. Grossheim was the fraternity's house manager and they
were friends. Afterwards, Grossheim talked with police investigators. He told
them Hughes and his girlfriend had gotten into a fight
that evening.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
You can tell you he was crying. I gave mug
I asked now that he was going and told me
it wasn't okay. And I had said, I was like,
I was here for him. You need me, I'm here,
you can talk to me. It's like, I've got some people.
I promise I'll.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Call you, Except that night, Hughes didn't call him. When
Grossheim realized this, he sprinted to Hughes' room, where he
found him hanging from a wardrobe.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
I lifted him up, I told, I yelled out and
told somebody called nine one one now, and then I
kept on for help. This roommate, the sweet mate, the
sweet mat I came and help me.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
This was an awful situation, unimaginable for most people. Except
it wasn't unimaginable for the members of this Truman State
University fraternity called Alpha Kapa Lambda. That's because they'd seen
the suicide death of another fraternity brother only three weeks earlier.
(03:01):
That student was named Alex Mullins, a rising junior like Hughes.
He had also hung himself in his room at the fraternity,
also from a wardrobe. The guy who discovered his body
also Brandon Grossheim. That's the person we just heard talking.
(03:22):
It was a time of chaos, with parents, fraternity members,
and police struggling to figure out what was going on.
This was the second suicide the cops were investigating in
just three weeks. They were surprised to learn that the
same fraternity member, Brandon Grossheim, had found both bodies. Here
(03:42):
is audio of police questioning Grossheim about the deaths on
the evening of Jake Hughes's suicide at the fraternity house
where it happened. Their conversation was captured on an officer's
body camp.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
Did you find the last one?
Speaker 9 (03:59):
Yep, the first one to find him.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
It was the exact same way.
Speaker 10 (04:03):
Not.
Speaker 11 (04:04):
I don't know about the knut.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
I mean, did you take him down? Youre talking about
Mullens or Duke.
Speaker 9 (04:11):
Ja.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I took down Mullens.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
I didn't. Mollens was there longer.
Speaker 8 (04:15):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Whenever I got through the window.
Speaker 3 (04:18):
I tried to pick him up and his body was stiff.
That's why I just walked out. I didn't even look
at then.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
It was a highly unusual situation for two fraternity brothers
to die by suicide in just three weeks was already suspicious.
News of the deaths spread around the campus and across town.
People didn't know if this was just a coincidence, or
if foul play was involved. Could it have had something
(04:47):
to do with fraternity hazing. When people learned that Brandon
Grossheim had discovered both bodies, most felt.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
Sympathy for him, at least at first.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
In fact, even the police were sympathetic, considering he'd just
lost two close friends in a very short time span.
After all, discovering the dead body of a close friend
would be traumatizing and could affect a person's sense of
self and safety. But in some ways, grappling with difficult
(05:20):
feelings was familiar territory for Brandon. In his personal life,
he seemed to gravitate towards those who were struggling, and
saw himself as an ally for students who were suffering
from depression and feeling overwhelmed by their college experience at
Truman State. Even the girls he dated, he probed them
(05:40):
about their personal issues and had late night conversations with
them about depression. He believed in his special abilities to
help people in distress so much that he'd come up
with a nickname for himself. He called himself the Peacemaker.
Speaker 12 (05:58):
He called himself the Peacemaker. Why would you give yourself
that title? What peace did you make with someone?
Speaker 1 (06:05):
I don't know.
Speaker 12 (06:05):
That's an interesting piece.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
People didn't know what to think.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
There was clearly something strange going on, but little did
everyone know it was about to get even more bizarre,
because when it came to Brandon Grossheim and people he
knew taking.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Their own lives, this was only the beginning.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
My name is Ben Westoff, and I'm a journalist from
Saint Louis. I've been following this story since the beginning.
I know people who went to Truman State, and none
of them can make sense of these deaths. People are
still suffering, and some of the suicide victim's parents have
filed lawsuits. No one has any clarity, and so for
(06:53):
this reason, I wanted to dig deeper to find out
what really happened. The suicides took place nine years years ago,
but to this day, people still want to know why
was this young man, Brandon Grosheim, only nineteen at the time,
so closely tied up in so many deaths?
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Was Brandon somehow to blame?
Speaker 13 (07:15):
The lawsuit says Grossheim was one of the last people
to see each victim before their deaths, and was reportedly
seen wearing one of the victim's clothing. All the suicides
were in this same manner.
Speaker 8 (07:26):
He needs to pay for what he's done.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
Or was he just incredibly unfortunate to be in the
wrong place at the wrong time, again and again and again.
From iHeart Podcasts and Cool Fire Studios, this podcast tells
the story of the most infamous suicide cluster in American history.
This is the Peacemaker, named for the only president to
(08:10):
hail from Missouri. Truman State has consistently been named the
top public university in the Midwest by US News and
World Report. It's located in the rural college town of Kirksville, Missouri,
in the north central part of the state, near the
Iowa border, home to about eighteen thousand people. I recently
(08:31):
strolled through the oak Line quad there where a Christian
Fellowship group was getting ready to play a concert. But
even though it was a beautiful day. The campus seemed quiet.
That may have been because everyone was inside studying.
Speaker 10 (08:47):
Every time I bring up like, oh I go to
Truman State, it's like, oh, that's like a challenging school.
You must be really smart. So also just put another
layer of like I'm trying to have the academic success
for myself.
Speaker 9 (09:00):
Yeah, it's hard to balance too, because I would consider
myself a pretty like outgoing social person and so it's
like I kind of feed off being with other people.
But then it's hard when you go to such a
hard school because it's like, Okay, well, I have to
like take all this time for school, which is like
fine because obviously I'm in college and I know that.
Speaker 11 (09:15):
That's what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 9 (09:16):
But you have to make sure you have a balance
with like the things that make you happy too.
Speaker 8 (09:20):
Yeah, but that's kind of hard.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Those are current students Chloe Schwab and Jesse Bruce. Truman
State is often called the Harvard of the Midwest, and
indeed the course load can be demanding. Many students make
their studies priority number one, but not everyone. Many others
find plenty of time for socializing, and though Truman is
(09:46):
a dry campus that doesn't stop much of the student
body from enjoying their fair share of booze. In fact,
many people I spoke with described rampant alcoholism. Here's a
former student named trist and Wiser.
Speaker 6 (10:02):
My freshman year at Truman Week, I drank every single
day and like that was the way to make friends.
And then sororities and fraturnities have these special parties that
like you want to get into because that's the way
to make good friends.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Considering the academic stress and the culture of drinking, perhaps
it's not surprising that many Truman State students consider themselves depressed.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
In fact, about half of.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
The students who responded to a Missouri College Health and
Behavior study from twenty sixteen, the year these suicides began,
said they'd thought about suicide. Meanwhile, their rates of depression,
panic attacks, and anxiety were higher than average. One student
(10:46):
who seemed to have his head on straight was Brandon
Grossheim before his life became engulfed by tragedy. Grossheim was
a psychology major with a slight twang and a big vocabulary.
He was raised near Saint Louis in a faded rivertown
called Alton, Illinois, once famous as the site of a
(11:07):
Lincoln Douglas debate. In his big, middle class Catholic family,
he had four younger sisters and one older brother. He
was involved with his church youth group, and his confirmation
name was Saint Francisco, the patron Saint of Animals. In
(11:27):
high school, he was into theater, working as a crew
member and also performing, sometimes including as police Officer Number
two in a play called Rehearsal for Murder. This play
within a play concerns the death of an actress, which
was originally believed to be suicide, but which turns out
(11:48):
to be murder.
Speaker 14 (11:50):
I thought the theater program was great there. You know
a lot of the kids, you know, we all got
along pretty well. We put on some pretty good productions.
Speaker 2 (11:57):
And how I find That's one of Brandon's high high
school theater colleagues who doesn't want his name used because
he says Brandon kind of freaks him out due to
his strange behavior dating back to high school. Not everyone
feels this way about him, however. In fact, others described
Brandon as friendly and outgoing. He'd cheer on the school's
(12:20):
football team at games and greet his friends in the
hallways with big backbreaking hugs. The local newspaper described how
after some senior's toilet paper a bunch of trees in
front of the high school, Brandon assisted the staff in
cleaning it up. But his theater colleague described Brandon as
(12:41):
having a Messiah complex back then, someone who would give
strange self help spiels to the other theater kids.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
It was just kind of a way of speaking about
your mental struggles or physical struggles or what ever, and whatever,
maybe like willpower and like like you're the master of
your own fate, and you know, at high school, it's.
Speaker 14 (13:06):
Kind of like what the hell are you talking about.
He was just very into like like health in general.
We're in the dressing room or whatever for theater, and
he would he be doing like push ups and like
pull ups on things and like kind of encouraging everybody
to like kind of get in there. I don't know
(13:29):
if you know, if you know the like wim Hoff is.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
Wim Hoff is a Dutch motivational speaker famous for taking
ice baths.
Speaker 15 (13:40):
Reset This creating not adrenaline, fire dopamine two hundred and
fifty to three hundred percent more. It's all signs this
will battle effectively your mental disorder called depress him, bipolar
or any other coming to you.
Speaker 14 (14:01):
He honestly reminded me so much of the whim Hoff guy,
just the spiel he had going on. Nothing nefarious, but
like you know, kind of the just the idea of
mental health and you know, mind over matter.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
But as much as Brandon Grosheim was into health, he
was also clearly fascinated by death. One time, Brandon and
his mother arrived to visit his grandmother when they realized
she had died from cancer, but he sent his mother away,
according to his story in The New Yorker, and chose
to confront the body himself. Have you ever seen a
(14:38):
dead person, he asked the writer of the story. The
bowel is often clear, he said. After high school, Brandon
attended community college before transferring to Truman State. There, just
like in high school, he brought a certain energy that
(14:58):
was appealing to some people.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
This is his former roommate Dalton McVeigh.
Speaker 7 (15:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 16 (15:04):
No, like Brandon, he strupped me as like a very
wanting to like live in people's moods for like whatever reason,
and sometimes it would go so far as to get
on people's nerves. But he definitely presented himself as a
goofball and like a little bit of a gesture to
try and like liven people up.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Despite this appearance, during his time at Truman State, Brandon
would become increasingly depressed, according to his friends, but he
didn't focus on his own sorrows. Instead, he wanted to
talk with you about your problems. He offered himself up
as a sort of amateur counselor, running toward other people's
(15:43):
pain the way a hero might run into a burning building.
And that's the way he thought of himself as a hero,
as someone who could do good. Brandon soon joined the
Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity. Now, if you're thinking of an
animal house style keggers and sticky floors, well you're not
(16:03):
far off. Located a few minutes off campus, AKL had
a huge house with white clapboards siding and a blue roof.
You could find bonds laying around, guys strumming guitars. This
branch of Alpha Kappa Lambda has some famous alums, like
the junior US Senator from Missouri, Eric Schmidt. But around
(16:27):
campus AKL was known for their parties like the Don
Ho Party, which was Hawaiian themed. Another was called the
Borders party, for which the house was separated into countries,
each one having a different drink. There was rum and
coke for America, margaritas for Mexico, and no one can.
Speaker 1 (16:48):
Really remember what drink Canada had.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
In the back of the house was a cavernous spot
called the Party Bar. It had a high triangle roof
and there wasn't much ambiance, but many nights at puld
with music like a night club. The spartan space was
designed to be as indestructible and as easy to clean
as possible.
Speaker 12 (17:09):
It just pretty much big room with mint floor and
drains for the beer.
Speaker 16 (17:13):
So y.
Speaker 12 (17:14):
I mean there's drains in the grounds. You know, if
you spill it, it say, no big deal, we can just
mop it into a drain. So you know, it's perfect,
pretty much perfect place for a party.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
That's former Alpha Kappa Lambda member Connor Templeton, who now
lives outside Saint Louis. He absolutely loved his fraternity experience
despite all the tragedy.
Speaker 12 (17:32):
It was the best decision I've ever made. I mean,
my roommates now is from Akale. Everyone to hang out
with every week from Akale. It's like those are my
best friends, and that would be uh, you know, if
I get married, that's my best man will be bing Akal.
My grooms won will be a Kales.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
At the time, though, in late twenty sixteen, Alpha Kappa
Lambda was absolutely reeling from the first two suicides, and
Brandon Grosheim, who discovered the bodies, was taking the dust
especially hard, his friends say, but he was also saying
things that sounded crazy to some people, Like to Tommy Lona,
(18:05):
who was friends with both suicide victims.
Speaker 17 (18:08):
I think that was his view on suicide though, that like, yeah,
he just agreed with it that if that's how you
wanted to go, you should go on your own terms.
And of course with him saying that kind of thing,
it did piss me off even more. It is like,
why would you tell somebody that if you don't know
what they're going through. What if they're going through actual
(18:30):
suicidal thoughts and you tell somebody that.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
In fact, after the members of the fraternity had time
to process these deaths, some of them began levying accusations
against Brandon. Some of these accusations were for things Brandon
did that might be chalked up to the grieving process.
Other accusations, however, were much more disturbing. Some of Brandon
(18:57):
Grossheim's fraternity brothers found it strange when, after the death
of the second suicide victim, Jake Hughes, Brandon started dating
Jake's girlfriend. They also accused him of breaking into a
safe Jake had in his room and stealing his drugs
and his money. Some of them also wondered aloud, could
(19:19):
Brandon have had something to do with Alex in Jake's deaths.
This wasn't their only concern either. The brothers also feared
that Brandon might try to kill himself, just like his
two friends had. He had begun behaving erradically, and so
the fraternity called a meeting. Some of the members wanted
to expel him. The meeting got very heated. Here's AKL
(19:44):
member Connor Templeton.
Speaker 12 (19:47):
I mean it's literally just you know, the angel and
devil on your shoulders. I mean, did he do it?
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Did he?
Speaker 4 (19:51):
N Do we feel bad from this cater wer we
get this kid out of here, because way it's too
much reliability and it's absolutely impossible to know which answer
is right, and I still wouldn't be able to tell
you to this day which she answered to be right.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Ultimately, the fraternity did decide to kick Brandon out, leaving
him demoralized. He took a bunch of LSD and reportedly
went on a bizarre rant about death at the frat house.
He moved into an off campus apartment and soon had
dropped out of Truman State. Even after Brandon was kicked
(20:56):
out of the fraternity, he didn't cut off all of
his ties with al for Kappa Lambda. In fact, he
was still in touch with a new recruit to the fraternity,
an eighteen year old business administration major named Josh Thomas.
Josh joined Alpha Kappa Lambda after the first two suicides.
He was openly gay, which is probably not as uncommon
(21:19):
as you might think at Truman State fraternities. Some friends
remember Josh as a life of the party type.
Speaker 8 (21:26):
He is so much fun and he's hilarious and like
sire of attention. He was really famous for like his
turking and so I remember, you know, we partied a lot, right,
and I remember him like we don't ask him to
like walts work, right, and it was so much fun. Yeah,
he was just like incredibly outgoing and exciting and really
(21:49):
like upbeat, intense, like funny energy.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
That's Elenea Bora, a former Truman State student who is
one of Josh's best friends. But on the inside, Josh
was also battling depression. In fact, he had a very
dark past. According to a police report, he said he'd
been raped as a boy and had been involved with prostitution.
(22:13):
He didn't open up about this with everybody, but he
developed a close relationship with Brandon Grossheim.
Speaker 8 (22:19):
He felt close to Brandon. He loved Brandon. He felt
like Brandon was one of the only people who understood him.
I think it's entirely possible that because Brandon had been
through so much trauma, that he was someone that Josh
could connect to about art and Truman's a small school, right,
There's nobody that I don't at least have one mutual
(22:41):
friend with. I think it's really easy for people with
the most significant trauma to find each other.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
One night, Josh even brought Brandon to a party at
akl although the brothers wouldn't allow him to stay. But
if Brandon was in a bad state by this point,
Josh Thomas was even worse. On the evening of April fifth,
twenty seventeen, Josh attended a panic at the Disco concert
in Saint Louis with some friends after returning home. Sometime
(23:12):
during the night, Josh Thomas hung himself at.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
The Alpha Kappa Lambdahause.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
This time, Brandon Grosheim didn't discover him, but something else
strange happened. Found next to Josh's body was a torn
piece of notebook paper which had Brandon's name written on it,
alongside two email addresses for him. Absolutely no one knew
what to make of all of this, three deaths at
the same fraternity in less than eight months. In fact,
(23:45):
the death of Josh Thomas is probably the moment all
hell started breaking loose at Truman State What could have
possibly been going on here? With so little reliable information available,
rumors began flying around. Here's Ethan Trouer, who is Josh
Thomas's ex boyfriend.
Speaker 7 (24:05):
After the first two they thought it was just a coincidence,
but then after the third one they thought it was
a pattern and that something was going on. So the
rumors started flying around that something was going on with
the fraternity. The biggest theory was that it was just
hazing related that their hazing was getting out of control.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
This theory would be later dismissed, but as the media
attention began to swell, the parents of the victims became
desperate for answers.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
So let's pause here.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
I realized this story contains a lot of information to unpack,
and I thought it might be helpful to bring in
our producer Ryan Kraull to help provide some context.
Speaker 18 (24:50):
So Hey Ryan, Hey Ben, Yeah, there was definitely a
lot to unpack.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Here, Okay, So just to lay it all out kind
of simply make sure everyone understands.
Speaker 1 (24:58):
So, so far, there have been three suicides.
Speaker 12 (25:01):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 18 (25:02):
There was Alex Mullins was first, followed very shortly by
Jay Hughes. Both of those suicides occurred in August twenty sixteen,
and they both happened in very similar fashion, both at
the AKL the Alpha Kapa Lambda.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
House, okay, and then the third death was.
Speaker 18 (25:19):
Now, that was Josh Thomas, who also took his own life,
also at the Alpha Kapa Lambda House, but that wasn't
until April of twenty seventeen, about eight months later.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
Okay, So then let's talk about Brandon gross on him.
So he found the first two bodies.
Speaker 18 (25:36):
That's right, and it was a little bit different with
the third Josh Thomas in that case, Grossheim had already
moved out of the frat house. But whenever they found
Thomas's body, he had a slip of paper with him
that had email addresses for Brandon Grossheim written on it.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Okay, and so at this point Brandon had already been
kicked out of the fraternity. Can you tell us more
about why?
Speaker 18 (25:57):
Yeah, Well, basically, many of the members were just kind
of creeped out by Brandon's behavior. He started dating the
girlfriend of the second victim, Jake Hughes, and he also
started wearing Jake's clothes around campus, and people definitely took
note of that. And some people also think that Brandon
broke into a safe that belonged to Jake in his
room and stole drugs and money.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
And then in.
Speaker 18 (26:20):
September of twenty sixteen, which would have been like one
month after the first two deaths, roughly, the president of
the fraternity contacted police and they basically said, we're concerned
about Grossheim. We think he's unstable and he needs some
kind of intervention. They thought he might kill himself next.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
All right, so now let's talk about what happened after that.
After Josh Thomas's death, everything did not exactly calm.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Down, not at all.
Speaker 18 (26:46):
In fact, the situation quickly got worse. One of the
parents of one of the victims started investigating, and she
quickly found some shocking information.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
The parent who began investigating was mal us A bad
Or Airy, the mother of Alex Mullins.
Speaker 1 (27:04):
Who was the first of the suicides.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
She'd been grieving since the previous year and was growing
increasingly perplexed by the situation at Truman State.
Speaker 11 (27:15):
On the advice of an investigator we had talked to
at the time, they said, you should go get all
of the police records and things, because this is odd.
This is odd, this seems beyond the pale. Because if
you know anything about you know, suicide clusters and contagion,
they generally are not this small and specific like you'll
see a college have multiple or you'll see a high school.
(27:38):
You won't see a fraternity one place where they all
lived and they all die in the exact same manner
type of thing.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
And so she made a trip to Kirksville with her
ex husband to speak with police about the three suicides.
Speaker 11 (27:53):
Because at that point, sitting in front of the detective,
they let us know they had reopened Alex's case. I
don't know if they would have ever told us so
if we hadn't gone up to get the information. And
that's when the police looked at us and said, we're
looking at someone that's in common with all four deaths.
And we kept saying and I finally looked at my
ex husband and said, is he saying four?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
This was not a mistake.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Somehow it had been kept out of the media and
kept secret from the grieving parents that another Kirksville student
had recently killed himself. His name was also Alex Alex Vote,
and though he was not a Truman State student, he
attended another nearby school. But here's where it gets really crazy.
(28:41):
After Brandon was kicked out of the fraternity, he moved
into an off campus apartment building. It was the same
building where this new Alex Vote lived. Brandon moved in
directly across the hall from him, just a few feet away,
and shortly after Brandon moved in, Alex Vote killed himself.
(29:05):
It was as if everywhere Brandon went, suicide followed him
once again.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Brandon was one.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Of the last people to see this suicide victim alive.
When the police came to investigate the death, Brandon let
them into the building.
Speaker 11 (29:24):
That's when it kind of all started to take a
different turn.
Speaker 3 (29:27):
If you will.
Speaker 11 (29:29):
Well, just the fact that at that point to find
out that Brandon had been either present to find the bodies,
or had been the last known person to be seen
with them, or showed up at the scene and asked
about the bodies. Like, all these things started coming out
(29:49):
because the police were telling us about them, and that's
when you know, I started putting some of the back
pieces together.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
True Human State suicide cluster would have widespread ramifications, not
just for the families and friends of the victims, but
for Alpha Kappa Lambda and Truman State at large. To
this day, almost nobody has any answers. Some blame the
fraternity for these deaths, and some blame the university. Many, however,
(30:21):
blame Brandon Grossheim. Here's a former Truman State student who
knew Brandon named Tristan Wiser.
Speaker 19 (30:29):
There's a difference between telling somebody and comforting, like telling
them that they can open up to you and tell
you those things about that, and somebody asking for that
information to be able to beed into Oh, well, this
is how you can end it.
Speaker 8 (30:44):
If that's really how you feel this is how you
can end it.
Speaker 18 (30:47):
That's not how you comfort somebody.
Speaker 6 (30:48):
That's not how you help somebody work through those feelings.
For him to have taken the advantage of people that
didn't see it and push them to that point to
where it was actually done.
Speaker 8 (31:00):
Like it. It doesn't need to be ignored and just
gone by.
Speaker 20 (31:05):
It doesn't.
Speaker 6 (31:06):
It deserves to be figured out and go through the court.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
And here's Javad Khazzali, the plaintiff's attorney in the civil
case against Brandon.
Speaker 20 (31:17):
The biggest issue I see is the official version of
what happened just doesn't make sense. There's still so many
questions out there, and all the people who should have
been looking for the answers stopped. Also, I want to
be clear, as a forty eight year old, I've never
found a dead body.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
Many people, however, don't blame Brandon at all. He was
never charged criminally, and his defenders believe he's gotten a
raw deal. They say that the trauma of watching so
many of his close friends die has only been compounded
by the media attention in the lawsuit.
Speaker 16 (31:56):
I think there was an element of like escapegoatism, like
these allegations against Brandon, like no matter what.
Speaker 8 (32:03):
It's fun to find someone specific to blame, right, that's
easier to digest. That's the smaller problem. It's nice to
find a bad guy, but at the end of the day,
like the only person responsible as a society and a
community that does not have ways to help people heal.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Now, nine years after these suicides, the civil lawsuit against
Brandon Grossheim is winding towards trial. A day of reckoning
will finally be at hand. We will be there for
it as we uncover the entire twisted backstory of the
chaos and tragedy that engulfed Truman State University. During this time,
(32:42):
we will focus on the man at the center of
this story, Brandon Grossheim. Brandon is intriguing because he seemed
to truly believe he could help people deal with their depression,
despite so much evidence to the contrary, which is why
the nickname he had for himself now seems so oh ironic.
Speaker 1 (33:01):
The Peacemaker.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
The Peacemaker is a production of Cool Fire Studios and
iHeart Podcasts. It's hosted by me Ben Westoff and Ryan Krall.
Our executive producers are Jeff Keene, David Johnson, and Steve Lubert.
Music and audio engineering by Brent Johnson. Executive producers for
iHeart Podcasts are.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Katrina Norvell and Nicki Etour.
Speaker 2 (33:32):
If you are someone you know is having suicidal thoughts,
there are resources available to you. Please call the Suicide
and Crisis Lifeline nine eight eight
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