November 18, 2025 • 24 mins
The Journal Building was where young Kirksville residents went to rage. The apartment building was known for drugs, booze, and wild parties. When two of its residents died within months of each other — in the very same room — police began searching for answers. In this episode, we visit the room where the two victims died, a place some believe is inhabited by ghosts, and investigate Brandon’s claims of innocence in the death of Glenna Haught.
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Episode Transcript
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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. As we noted in the
last episode, Glenna Hatt was different than the other victims
in this story. Yes, Glenna, a dog trainer and bartender
who'd come to Kirksville for a new life, interacted with
(00:23):
Brandon Grosheim before her death, just like the members of
the Kirksville suicide Cluster, but she.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Didn't die by suicide.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Instead, in July twenty seventeen, she died of a ruptured liver,
having basically drank herself to death.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
She was twenty nine.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
She died in the apartment of her ex boyfriend, a
guy named Cody Robin. Cody wasn't there at the time
and they were no longer dating, but the stress of
this tragedy had to be overwhelming. Before long he moved
out of the apartment. It was understandable, certainly, that he
was shaken up after Glenna's death. Something like that would
(01:02):
be enough to rattle anybody. Still, his neighbors were sad
to see him go. They all lived in an apartment
complex known as the Journal Building, and he was a
big part.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Of the social circle.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
There, the Journal Building was a pretty wild place to live,
and Cody and his friends, including Brandon Grosheim, partied hard.
They blasted music, things got crazy. The small Kirksville bar
scene was right across the street, and so the Journal
Building could be like pregame and postgame party central. But
(01:39):
the Journal Building had seen two recent deaths, the suicide
of Alex's Vote and the death of Glenna Hatt. Now,
with Cody leaving, the party was truly coming to an end,
and so before Cody moved out, he had a bunch
of friends sign a.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Card for him.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It was actually a big piece of white tag board,
and his friends left all sorts of funny and inspirational
messages on it. There's a piece symbol, an anarchy symbol,
and even a quote from Tupac even though you're fed up,
keep your head up. It was also signed by Brandon Grosheim,
(02:20):
whose message raised some eyebrows with police because in it
he referred to himself as the die Master as in
Die Master. Here again is Brandon talking about it with
the Kirksville PD.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Second photo I want to show you this was a
picture of like a codey, almost like a poster board
or a wall board or something. I'm going to circle
the parts that they want me to ask you about.
Who signed your name, Brandon g And it says die Master.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, yes, di Master is a beer dive master. It's
a drinking game.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
No, okay, never heard of it. I guess maybe that's that.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
But it's really popular at AKL.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I know other fraternities had their own variations of their moviism. Okay,
so just a beer drinking game. And obviously you were
pretty good at him. They're calling you the last night.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I mean it's all about hands on EMMUSI and I'm
federal would die up to a certain point consuming on
the other side of the table if.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
You kept saying now.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
As Brandon claimed to the police, die Master was a
cheeky nickname referring to his prowess in a fraternity drinking
game and not to anything sinister. But the fact remained
that Brandon still had plenty of explaining to do when
it came to the journal building tragedies. In this apartment
that Cody was moving out of, two people had died.
(03:50):
When it came to the first Alex Vote, who killed
himself in January twenty seventeen, Brandon was one of the
last people to see him alive. In fact, Brandon let
the police into the building when they arrived on the scene.
When it came to the second death of Glenna Haught,
Brandon was the very last person to see her alive.
(04:14):
As you heard in the last episode, he faced a
battery of questions from police about the fact that she
was found nearly naked, that he had scratches on his body,
and the fact that he refused to submit to a
DNA test. There's all sorts of outstanding questions when it
comes to both of these deaths. And so today we're
(04:35):
going to focus on the Journal Building, the off campus
apartments where the deaths happened.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
What was it about this place.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
And how was it that Brandon Grosheim was able to
maintain his corrosive influence there. This podcast series tells the
story of the most infamous suicide cluster in American history.
It's a production of iHeart Podcasts and Cool Fire Studios.
I'm your host Ben Westoff along with Ryan Krawl. This
(05:07):
is the Peacemaker producer. Ryan and I wanted to visit
the Journal Building to better understand the environment these young
people were living in. But we couldn't exactly just go
barging in, and so Ryan and I got in touch
(05:29):
with a guy who used to live there named Dalton McVay.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Dald McVay is a character. I love this guy.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
He's quirky and he also has some serious six degrees
of Kevin Bacon connections to people in this story, a
lot of them. He's a former roommate of Brandon Grosheim
and they also work together at the local pizza place.
Not only did Dalton used to live in the Journal Building,
he was also a member of the Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity,
(06:00):
which was, of course, where three of the victims killed themselves.
So to some extent, Dalton was in the middle of
all of this while it was going down. He's a
thoughtful guy, clearly very smart, but he also says some
things that might throw you for a loop, like what
he said on our walk over to the Journal Building
(06:21):
after I told him I'd gone running at a local
spot called Thousand Hills Park. It's beautiful, but the trail.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
There was one time I got a deer in a
headlock out there.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Wild stock in a headlock. Yeah, wow, you just kind
of standing there staring at me.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
Well, I walked out to him and I started patting him,
and I just gave him.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Dalton also showed us a lavender plant near the Truman
State campus, which he says he smokes for the terpenes.
And then he yelded a guy who drove by in
a really loud truck. I said, he's so cool.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
This truck is so loud, man, aren't you impressed? Very loud?
Speaker 5 (07:09):
Yeah, very loud.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Anyway, we finally arrived to the Journal Building. Dalton and
producer Ryan scoped out the place to see how we
could get in, but it turns out we needn't have worried.
The side door was wide open, so we just walked in.
After all, As I expected, the Journal building was kind
(07:46):
of a dump. Trash and junk on the floors, holes
in the doors, and then there was a washer and
dryer just sitting out in the middle of the hallway.
I thought they'd been abandoned, but no, it turns out
out that this was actually the laundry room.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
According to Dalton.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
However, this place was actually in better shape than when
he'd been living there a few years back.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So were we saying that used to it looks like
the roofsman fixed.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Yeah, well, it used to be a lot of these ceiling.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Titles like water damaged or broken or just fly up missing.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
There used to be a lot more like holes in
the wall like this, and some of the were very
large and substantial.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Anyway, Eventually we made it to apartment too. Dalton, Ryan
and I stood before the doorway. It was kind of
freaky to be here. I mean, this is the apartment
where two young people died only months apart under unsettling circumstances.
Finally we worked up the courage to knock.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Hey, how's it going, man, Yeah, so, sorry to bug you.
We're actually reporters from Saint Louis. We're making a podcast.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
Oh yeah, and part some of the events of the
podcast actually went down in this apartment.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Oh yeah, wild Yeah, I don't know. Have you heard
about the Truman State suicides? Yeah? From I knew some
of those guys, Oh you did? Who did he know?
I knew the guy who hung himself in here?
Speaker 5 (09:12):
Oh Alex?
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, oh hear that? How'd you know? Just from living gentually?
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So so yeah, we were hoping just to like, do
you wonder if we see the apartments, just to see
what it's like.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah, thanks quite nice to meet you, man.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Okay, it's been It turns out the current resident, Quinn,
had lived there about a year. He never met Glenna HoTT.
I knew alex Vote a little bit, but not too well.
As for the tragedies that took place in his apartment,
Quinn said he didn't learn about them until after he'd
(09:49):
already moved in.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
I didn't even realize I had any sort of connection
to him until I even moved in here.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I didn't even realize.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
Like to me, it's just an apartment that I live in.
It also, uh as far as I'm gonna where it too,
folks stid here.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I asked him what it felt like to live in
a place like that.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
You know, I lived here for about two weeks when
I found out, and uh, you know, I.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Just sort of got the place to Sage. That was
just my move. And then my girlfriend said.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
She hears noises, but I haven't experienced anything.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
To paint like what kind of like ghosts or something.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
She hears knocking and stuff, and she says that door
moves all the time.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
That cause it.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
But when you say, when you say Saged, just like
someone like a shaman or someone or.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
Yeah, just I have a friend whose local Wood's family
is much more like in Tune, I guess with some stuff,
and so she can't into the stage role and just
sort of cleansed this place. I guess really just because
I don't know my aunt's are witch or whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I don't.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
I don't know anything about any of that stuff, but
I'm I believe that somebody probably knows better than I do.
So when I first had moved in, there was like
knocks and stuff. But she's so huge it but I
haven't heard nothing since I saved.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
This was a lot to take in. We hadn't counted
on ghosts. I hoped he at least wasn't paying too much.
And so this building is it? Like?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Is it? When is your rant? If you don't mind
asking five? Okay, sounds like it's gone up a little since.
Speaker 5 (11:26):
Yeah, he's much more reasonable water though my electric's not
too high because I have these big fucking windows.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
It did have cool windows and some nice exposed brick,
but the apartment really wasn't much.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
It was basically a.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Studio, and Quinn told us that Dan Vote didn't own
the building anymore.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
If you recall we met Dan.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Vote at the Wooden Nickel a couple episodes back. He's
the father of the third suicide victim, Alex Vote. In
any case, the most intriguing part of this apartment was
the lofted bed area, a small space right above the
apartment's front door.
Speaker 5 (12:05):
Basically, in this little corner area of the loft, there's
a new plywood floor that wasn't then previously, It used
to just be like a shaft. And that's where I
was told he was found, and I was told she
died of like alcohol voice and just like here somewhere.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
This was a good segue for me to talk to
him about one of the sticky details from Brandon Grosheim's
interview with police. Brandon said the afternoon of Glenna's death
that he'd come over to check on her because he'd
heard a loud thump that sounded like someone falling out
of the lofted bed. That could potentially explain some of
(12:43):
the bruises found on her body and take some of
the heat off Brandon, who faced pretty intense questioning, but
was this believable that she might have fallen out of
the bed, Quinn said it was.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
I think that is so believable.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Oh really, so believable.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
Tell me, especially because this apartment down in here, My
buddy Lake used to live in there. His loft is
like narrower like. His bed just barely fits in there,
I asked, So he added the little legs that keeps
him in his bed because he heard about the lady
who rolled out.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, have you ever had an issue?
Speaker 5 (13:19):
You know, because I sleep in a tiny bed.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Basically, what Quinn is saying is that it's difficult enough
to stay in one of these lofted bed areas when
you're sober. If you've been drinking, falling out is a
definite possibility. We continued talking to Quinn about Brandon Grosheim.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
He'd never met him.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
He had heard about this story over the years, but
he had some of the details wrong.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Is this the philamb case?
Speaker 4 (13:48):
No Is Alpha was a different fraternity that had one
or so incidents.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
There were a few years back.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Phi Lamb had a similar incident where a guy was
basically just convincing people to kill them.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So, really, this sounds like the same thing. Yeah, this
is the same thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
But then right in the middle of our conversation, the
door across the hall just suddenly blew open.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
The door, just blown. Yeah, you were more kid about
the door. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
You're gonna just pull it. Did anybody else?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
I don't know if it was a ghost or what.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And I hadn't even realized Quinn's door was open, but
suddenly we found ourselves staring into Brandon Grossheim's old apartment.
No one was there, and Brandon didn't live there anymore,
but the place resembled what it likely often looked like
while he was living there. A total mass Domino's delivery
(14:53):
boxes flattened out on the floor, an overflowing dirty laundry basket,
tee during atop a camping chair, a cat meowing at us,
and of course it lacked the most basic things you'd
expect from an apartment, like a functioning door. There was
even an extension cord dangling from the rafters, making me
(15:17):
suspect that the apartment still didn't have electricity, years after
Brandon had been complaining about it. Anyway, it felt rude
to be staring into someone's apartment, so we closed the door,
only to have it blow open again almost immediately. At
this point, we were pretty much spooked, so we said
(15:37):
goodbye to Quinn. After we went to the Journal Building,
(16:02):
Dalton gave us an impromptu tour of some of the
other places where Brandon Grosheim lived during his time in Kirksville.
It was a pretty short walking tour. I mean, Kirksville
is a tiny place, with the Truman State Campus and
the Akl House and the town Square and the Journal
Building all basically within a few blocks of each other.
(16:23):
I'm not exactly sure on the timeline of where Brandon
lived when, but in twenty nineteen, Brandon and Dalton lived
together in an apartment above Polley's Pizza on the town Square,
where both of them worked for a while. Dalton said
this apartment was pretty grim.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
I remember, like the hot water didn't order. I mean,
not a particularly great, like pretty run down old apartment
that was not properly maintained, but certainly not what most
people would consider like acceptable living conditions for a developed nation.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
At a different point, Brandon also lived in this apartment
with a girlfriend. Anyway, after that, Dalton also showed us
the house near the Alpha Kappa Lamba fraternity where Brandon
lived with a different roommate.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Interestingly, somebody tried to burn it down the summer they
were moving in.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
The vinyl signing was.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
All scorched up on the outside of the out That
was Brandon's room on the bottom floor. I know there
was some pretension from his cats. He very quickly got
three cats in a rapid successions. Yeah, they were multiple nause.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Okay, So just a little note about Brandon and his cats,
because he was really into cats. His former housemate at
the Alpha Kappa Lamba fraternity, Connor Templeton, said he had
a bunch of cats and kittens there at the house
and then apparently after Brandon was kicked out of the fraternity,
these kittens just kept on comment. This is from a
(18:02):
twenty eighteen Facebook video when he was living off campus somewhere.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Long story, sure, a sweet little messy.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I had a baby.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
If everybody can see that right there, but here this
little little buddy is a little tiger.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
No idea if it's a boy or girl. Yet, I
am expecting more to come.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
And then here's another one from two days later, Maddie,
whenever I came home last night eleven thirty, was in
the middle of having another baby, so he was having
a little difficulty last night.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
He's been knowing very well.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I'm really proud of so guy.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
It looks he's gonna be alright.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
I'm expecting at least one more because Maddie's very fat still,
so we'll see how she does.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
But she still either way very happy. So if you
guys posted, thanks forevers paying attention.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
These videos and Brandon's fixation on his cats paint a
portrait of Brandon's mindset following the suicide cluster and the
death of Glenna Hawt. The last death, Glenna's, happened in
July twenty seventeen, and the coming years would be extremely
difficult for Brandon. He was at the center of a
(19:27):
police investigation, and though he wouldn't be charged, he was
constantly discussed in the media and also had a lawsuit
filed against him. For solace, he turned to his cats, and,
according to Connor Templeton, began writing dark poetry. At the
same time, his substance abuse ramped up. According to people
(19:48):
who knew him, like Dalton McVeigh.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
No, we had been roommates for like a couple months
and then just he had kind of like developed a
like pretty bad alcohol addiction, and Brandon never like opened
up too much about like his personal struggles regarding that stuff.
I think, you know, he didn't want to be too
(20:15):
much of a burden.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Apparently he was barely speaking to his parents around this
time either. It seems like he may have been drowning
his sorrows.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
And booze vodka was like his main drink of choice
early on in his like drinking career, but like later on,
like whenever you'd like to send it into like full alcoholism. Yeah,
like Aristocrat vodka was like consumed very heavily. He had
already been like an alcoholic at that point. I don't
(20:49):
know exactly when like he got to a point of
like problematic drinking, but I know that, like we, he
had been working at a local restaurant called the Wooden Nickel,
and he had already developed a bit of a drinking problem.
(21:09):
I don't know if I would go so far as
to say, like it was like full blown alcoholism, but
like I think that's probably where it started. Was like
working there, it wasn't a very good like work environment,
and by the time like we were working together at Polyey's,
sometime during like his employment at Polyiyesac kind of like
(21:30):
became abundantly clear to most people around him that he
had like a full blown addiction. He would be drinking
in the morning, like very visibly, like in abriated on
the job.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
The Kirksville PD investigation of Brandon kicked back up in
twenty nineteen. You'll recall that a detective showed up to
the pizza place to interview Brandon while he was at work,
but then just as quickly the investigation wound down. Sure,
he was never charged, but by the summer of twenty nineteen,
(22:03):
Brandon had been dealing with these suicides and their aftermasks
for three full years. Things had been bright for him
when he started at Truman Stay, but now his life
was a total mass. He was twenty two, he hadn't graduated,
was stuck in a dead end job, and many people
close to him were dead.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Then the pandemic hit.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
He couldn't stop working because he had legal bills. Now,
if you think Brandon is guilty of encouraging his friends
to commit suicide, you probably don't have a lot of
sympathy for him. I understand that, but I'm sure, like us,
you don't want to resort to an easy scapegoat. You
(22:48):
want to consider all of the possibilities, and one possibility
is this. What if Brandon was just getting a bad rap?
What if he was just made to be the fall?
Now stay with me here, but what if the real problem,
the more likely explanation for all these deaths, was more obvious.
(23:10):
What if it had been right in front of us
the whole time? That's next time on the Peacemaker. The
Peacemaker is a production of Cool Fire Studios.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
And iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
It's hosted by me Ben Westoff and Ryan Crawl. Our
executive producers are Jeff Keene, David Johnson, and Steve Lubert.
Music and audio engineering by Brent Johnson. Executive producers for
iHeart Podcasts are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etour. If you
are someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, there are
(23:52):
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. As we noted in the
last episode, Glenna Hatt was different than the other victims
in this story. Yes, Glenna, a dog trainer and bartender
who'd come to Kirksville for a new life, interacted with
(00:23):
Brandon Grosheim before her death, just like the members of
the Kirksville suicide Cluster, but she.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Didn't die by suicide.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Instead, in July twenty seventeen, she died of a ruptured liver,
having basically drank herself to death.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
She was twenty nine.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
She died in the apartment of her ex boyfriend, a
guy named Cody Robin. Cody wasn't there at the time
and they were no longer dating, but the stress of
this tragedy had to be overwhelming. Before long he moved
out of the apartment. It was understandable, certainly, that he
was shaken up after Glenna's death. Something like that would
(01:02):
be enough to rattle anybody. Still, his neighbors were sad
to see him go. They all lived in an apartment
complex known as the Journal Building, and he was a
big part.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Of the social circle.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
There, the Journal Building was a pretty wild place to live,
and Cody and his friends, including Brandon Grosheim, partied hard.
They blasted music, things got crazy. The small Kirksville bar
scene was right across the street, and so the Journal
Building could be like pregame and postgame party central. But
(01:39):
the Journal Building had seen two recent deaths, the suicide
of Alex's Vote and the death of Glenna Hatt. Now,
with Cody leaving, the party was truly coming to an end,
and so before Cody moved out, he had a bunch
of friends sign a.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Card for him.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
It was actually a big piece of white tag board,
and his friends left all sorts of funny and inspirational
messages on it. There's a piece symbol, an anarchy symbol,
and even a quote from Tupac even though you're fed up,
keep your head up. It was also signed by Brandon Grosheim,
(02:20):
whose message raised some eyebrows with police because in it
he referred to himself as the die Master as in
Die Master. Here again is Brandon talking about it with
the Kirksville PD.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Second photo I want to show you this was a
picture of like a codey, almost like a poster board
or a wall board or something. I'm going to circle
the parts that they want me to ask you about.
Who signed your name, Brandon g And it says die Master.
Speaker 1 (02:52):
Yeah, yes, di Master is a beer dive master. It's
a drinking game.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
No, okay, never heard of it. I guess maybe that's that.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
But it's really popular at AKL.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I know other fraternities had their own variations of their moviism. Okay,
so just a beer drinking game. And obviously you were
pretty good at him. They're calling you the last night.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
I mean it's all about hands on EMMUSI and I'm
federal would die up to a certain point consuming on
the other side of the table if.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
You kept saying now.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
As Brandon claimed to the police, die Master was a
cheeky nickname referring to his prowess in a fraternity drinking
game and not to anything sinister. But the fact remained
that Brandon still had plenty of explaining to do when
it came to the journal building tragedies. In this apartment
that Cody was moving out of, two people had died.
(03:50):
When it came to the first Alex Vote, who killed
himself in January twenty seventeen, Brandon was one of the
last people to see him alive. In fact, Brandon let
the police into the building when they arrived on the scene.
When it came to the second death of Glenna Haught,
Brandon was the very last person to see her alive.
(04:14):
As you heard in the last episode, he faced a
battery of questions from police about the fact that she
was found nearly naked, that he had scratches on his body,
and the fact that he refused to submit to a
DNA test. There's all sorts of outstanding questions when it
comes to both of these deaths. And so today we're
(04:35):
going to focus on the Journal Building, the off campus
apartments where the deaths happened.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
What was it about this place.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
And how was it that Brandon Grosheim was able to
maintain his corrosive influence there. This podcast series tells the
story of the most infamous suicide cluster in American history.
It's a production of iHeart Podcasts and Cool Fire Studios.
I'm your host Ben Westoff along with Ryan Krawl. This
(05:07):
is the Peacemaker producer. Ryan and I wanted to visit
the Journal Building to better understand the environment these young
people were living in. But we couldn't exactly just go
barging in, and so Ryan and I got in touch
(05:29):
with a guy who used to live there named Dalton McVay.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Dald McVay is a character. I love this guy.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
He's quirky and he also has some serious six degrees
of Kevin Bacon connections to people in this story, a
lot of them. He's a former roommate of Brandon Grosheim
and they also work together at the local pizza place.
Not only did Dalton used to live in the Journal Building,
he was also a member of the Alpha Kappa Lambda fraternity,
(06:00):
which was, of course, where three of the victims killed themselves.
So to some extent, Dalton was in the middle of
all of this while it was going down. He's a
thoughtful guy, clearly very smart, but he also says some
things that might throw you for a loop, like what
he said on our walk over to the Journal Building
(06:21):
after I told him I'd gone running at a local
spot called Thousand Hills Park. It's beautiful, but the trail.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
There was one time I got a deer in a
headlock out there.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Wild stock in a headlock. Yeah, wow, you just kind
of standing there staring at me.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
Well, I walked out to him and I started patting him,
and I just gave him.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Dalton also showed us a lavender plant near the Truman
State campus, which he says he smokes for the terpenes.
And then he yelded a guy who drove by in
a really loud truck. I said, he's so cool.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
This truck is so loud, man, aren't you impressed? Very loud?
Speaker 5 (07:09):
Yeah, very loud.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Anyway, we finally arrived to the Journal Building. Dalton and
producer Ryan scoped out the place to see how we
could get in, but it turns out we needn't have worried.
The side door was wide open, so we just walked in.
After all, As I expected, the Journal building was kind
(07:46):
of a dump. Trash and junk on the floors, holes
in the doors, and then there was a washer and
dryer just sitting out in the middle of the hallway.
I thought they'd been abandoned, but no, it turns out
out that this was actually the laundry room.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
According to Dalton.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
However, this place was actually in better shape than when
he'd been living there a few years back.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
So were we saying that used to it looks like
the roofsman fixed.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Yeah, well, it used to be a lot of these ceiling.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
Titles like water damaged or broken or just fly up missing.
Speaker 4 (08:20):
There used to be a lot more like holes in
the wall like this, and some of the were very
large and substantial.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Anyway, Eventually we made it to apartment too. Dalton, Ryan
and I stood before the doorway. It was kind of
freaky to be here. I mean, this is the apartment
where two young people died only months apart under unsettling circumstances.
Finally we worked up the courage to knock.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Hey, how's it going, man, Yeah, so, sorry to bug you.
We're actually reporters from Saint Louis. We're making a podcast.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
Oh yeah, and part some of the events of the
podcast actually went down in this apartment.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Oh yeah, wild Yeah, I don't know. Have you heard
about the Truman State suicides? Yeah? From I knew some
of those guys, Oh you did? Who did he know?
I knew the guy who hung himself in here?
Speaker 5 (09:12):
Oh Alex?
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Yeah, oh hear that? How'd you know? Just from living gentually?
Speaker 4 (09:18):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (09:19):
So so yeah, we were hoping just to like, do
you wonder if we see the apartments, just to see
what it's like.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
Yeah, thanks quite nice to meet you, man.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Okay, it's been It turns out the current resident, Quinn,
had lived there about a year. He never met Glenna HoTT.
I knew alex Vote a little bit, but not too well.
As for the tragedies that took place in his apartment,
Quinn said he didn't learn about them until after he'd
(09:49):
already moved in.
Speaker 5 (09:50):
I didn't even realize I had any sort of connection
to him until I even moved in here.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I didn't even realize.
Speaker 5 (09:56):
Like to me, it's just an apartment that I live in.
It also, uh as far as I'm gonna where it too,
folks stid here.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I asked him what it felt like to live in
a place like that.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
You know, I lived here for about two weeks when
I found out, and uh, you know, I.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Just sort of got the place to Sage. That was
just my move. And then my girlfriend said.
Speaker 5 (10:16):
She hears noises, but I haven't experienced anything.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
To paint like what kind of like ghosts or something.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
She hears knocking and stuff, and she says that door
moves all the time.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
That cause it.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
But when you say, when you say Saged, just like
someone like a shaman or someone or.
Speaker 5 (10:35):
Yeah, just I have a friend whose local Wood's family
is much more like in Tune, I guess with some stuff,
and so she can't into the stage role and just
sort of cleansed this place. I guess really just because
I don't know my aunt's are witch or whatever.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
I don't.
Speaker 5 (10:53):
I don't know anything about any of that stuff, but
I'm I believe that somebody probably knows better than I do.
So when I first had moved in, there was like
knocks and stuff. But she's so huge it but I
haven't heard nothing since I saved.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
This was a lot to take in. We hadn't counted
on ghosts. I hoped he at least wasn't paying too much.
And so this building is it? Like?
Speaker 1 (11:20):
Is it? When is your rant? If you don't mind
asking five? Okay, sounds like it's gone up a little since.
Speaker 5 (11:26):
Yeah, he's much more reasonable water though my electric's not
too high because I have these big fucking windows.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
It did have cool windows and some nice exposed brick,
but the apartment really wasn't much.
Speaker 1 (11:41):
It was basically a.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Studio, and Quinn told us that Dan Vote didn't own
the building anymore.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
If you recall we met Dan.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Vote at the Wooden Nickel a couple episodes back. He's
the father of the third suicide victim, Alex Vote. In
any case, the most intriguing part of this apartment was
the lofted bed area, a small space right above the
apartment's front door.
Speaker 5 (12:05):
Basically, in this little corner area of the loft, there's
a new plywood floor that wasn't then previously, It used
to just be like a shaft. And that's where I
was told he was found, and I was told she
died of like alcohol voice and just like here somewhere.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
This was a good segue for me to talk to
him about one of the sticky details from Brandon Grosheim's
interview with police. Brandon said the afternoon of Glenna's death
that he'd come over to check on her because he'd
heard a loud thump that sounded like someone falling out
of the lofted bed. That could potentially explain some of
(12:43):
the bruises found on her body and take some of
the heat off Brandon, who faced pretty intense questioning, but
was this believable that she might have fallen out of
the bed, Quinn said it was.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
I think that is so believable.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Oh really, so believable.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
Tell me, especially because this apartment down in here, My
buddy Lake used to live in there. His loft is
like narrower like. His bed just barely fits in there,
I asked, So he added the little legs that keeps
him in his bed because he heard about the lady
who rolled out.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, have you ever had an issue?
Speaker 5 (13:19):
You know, because I sleep in a tiny bed.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Basically, what Quinn is saying is that it's difficult enough
to stay in one of these lofted bed areas when
you're sober. If you've been drinking, falling out is a
definite possibility. We continued talking to Quinn about Brandon Grosheim.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
He'd never met him.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
He had heard about this story over the years, but
he had some of the details wrong.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Is this the philamb case?
Speaker 4 (13:48):
No Is Alpha was a different fraternity that had one
or so incidents.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
There were a few years back.
Speaker 5 (13:55):
Phi Lamb had a similar incident where a guy was
basically just convincing people to kill them.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
So, really, this sounds like the same thing. Yeah, this
is the same thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
But then right in the middle of our conversation, the
door across the hall just suddenly blew open.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
The door, just blown. Yeah, you were more kid about
the door. That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5 (14:23):
You're gonna just pull it. Did anybody else?
Speaker 1 (14:28):
I don't know if it was a ghost or what.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
And I hadn't even realized Quinn's door was open, but
suddenly we found ourselves staring into Brandon Grossheim's old apartment.
No one was there, and Brandon didn't live there anymore,
but the place resembled what it likely often looked like
while he was living there. A total mass Domino's delivery
(14:53):
boxes flattened out on the floor, an overflowing dirty laundry basket,
tee during atop a camping chair, a cat meowing at us,
and of course it lacked the most basic things you'd
expect from an apartment, like a functioning door. There was
even an extension cord dangling from the rafters, making me
(15:17):
suspect that the apartment still didn't have electricity, years after
Brandon had been complaining about it. Anyway, it felt rude
to be staring into someone's apartment, so we closed the door,
only to have it blow open again almost immediately. At
this point, we were pretty much spooked, so we said
(15:37):
goodbye to Quinn. After we went to the Journal Building,
(16:02):
Dalton gave us an impromptu tour of some of the
other places where Brandon Grosheim lived during his time in Kirksville.
It was a pretty short walking tour. I mean, Kirksville
is a tiny place, with the Truman State Campus and
the Akl House and the town Square and the Journal
Building all basically within a few blocks of each other.
(16:23):
I'm not exactly sure on the timeline of where Brandon
lived when, but in twenty nineteen, Brandon and Dalton lived
together in an apartment above Polley's Pizza on the town Square,
where both of them worked for a while. Dalton said
this apartment was pretty grim.
Speaker 4 (16:42):
I remember, like the hot water didn't order. I mean,
not a particularly great, like pretty run down old apartment
that was not properly maintained, but certainly not what most
people would consider like acceptable living conditions for a developed nation.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
At a different point, Brandon also lived in this apartment
with a girlfriend. Anyway, after that, Dalton also showed us
the house near the Alpha Kappa Lamba fraternity where Brandon
lived with a different roommate.
Speaker 4 (17:15):
Interestingly, somebody tried to burn it down the summer they
were moving in.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
The vinyl signing was.
Speaker 4 (17:22):
All scorched up on the outside of the out That
was Brandon's room on the bottom floor. I know there
was some pretension from his cats. He very quickly got
three cats in a rapid successions. Yeah, they were multiple nause.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Okay, So just a little note about Brandon and his cats,
because he was really into cats. His former housemate at
the Alpha Kappa Lamba fraternity, Connor Templeton, said he had
a bunch of cats and kittens there at the house
and then apparently after Brandon was kicked out of the fraternity,
these kittens just kept on comment. This is from a
(18:02):
twenty eighteen Facebook video when he was living off campus somewhere.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Long story, sure, a sweet little messy.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I had a baby.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
If everybody can see that right there, but here this
little little buddy is a little tiger.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
No idea if it's a boy or girl. Yet, I
am expecting more to come.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
And then here's another one from two days later, Maddie,
whenever I came home last night eleven thirty, was in
the middle of having another baby, so he was having
a little difficulty last night.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
He's been knowing very well.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Guys.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I'm really proud of so guy.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
It looks he's gonna be alright.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
I'm expecting at least one more because Maddie's very fat still,
so we'll see how she does.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
But she still either way very happy. So if you
guys posted, thanks forevers paying attention.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
These videos and Brandon's fixation on his cats paint a
portrait of Brandon's mindset following the suicide cluster and the
death of Glenna Hawt. The last death, Glenna's, happened in
July twenty seventeen, and the coming years would be extremely
difficult for Brandon. He was at the center of a
(19:27):
police investigation, and though he wouldn't be charged, he was
constantly discussed in the media and also had a lawsuit
filed against him. For solace, he turned to his cats, and,
according to Connor Templeton, began writing dark poetry. At the
same time, his substance abuse ramped up. According to people
(19:48):
who knew him, like Dalton McVeigh.
Speaker 4 (19:52):
No, we had been roommates for like a couple months
and then just he had kind of like developed a
like pretty bad alcohol addiction, and Brandon never like opened
up too much about like his personal struggles regarding that stuff.
I think, you know, he didn't want to be too
(20:15):
much of a burden.
Speaker 2 (20:19):
Apparently he was barely speaking to his parents around this
time either. It seems like he may have been drowning
his sorrows.
Speaker 4 (20:27):
And booze vodka was like his main drink of choice
early on in his like drinking career, but like later on,
like whenever you'd like to send it into like full alcoholism. Yeah,
like Aristocrat vodka was like consumed very heavily. He had
already been like an alcoholic at that point. I don't
(20:49):
know exactly when like he got to a point of
like problematic drinking, but I know that, like we, he
had been working at a local restaurant called the Wooden Nickel,
and he had already developed a bit of a drinking problem.
(21:09):
I don't know if I would go so far as
to say, like it was like full blown alcoholism, but
like I think that's probably where it started. Was like
working there, it wasn't a very good like work environment,
and by the time like we were working together at Polyey's,
sometime during like his employment at Polyiyesac kind of like
(21:30):
became abundantly clear to most people around him that he
had like a full blown addiction. He would be drinking
in the morning, like very visibly, like in abriated on
the job.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
The Kirksville PD investigation of Brandon kicked back up in
twenty nineteen. You'll recall that a detective showed up to
the pizza place to interview Brandon while he was at work,
but then just as quickly the investigation wound down. Sure,
he was never charged, but by the summer of twenty nineteen,
(22:03):
Brandon had been dealing with these suicides and their aftermasks
for three full years. Things had been bright for him
when he started at Truman Stay, but now his life
was a total mass. He was twenty two, he hadn't graduated,
was stuck in a dead end job, and many people
close to him were dead.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Then the pandemic hit.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
He couldn't stop working because he had legal bills. Now,
if you think Brandon is guilty of encouraging his friends
to commit suicide, you probably don't have a lot of
sympathy for him. I understand that, but I'm sure, like us,
you don't want to resort to an easy scapegoat. You
(22:48):
want to consider all of the possibilities, and one possibility
is this. What if Brandon was just getting a bad rap?
What if he was just made to be the fall?
Now stay with me here, but what if the real problem,
the more likely explanation for all these deaths, was more obvious.
(23:10):
What if it had been right in front of us
the whole time? That's next time on the Peacemaker. The
Peacemaker is a production of Cool Fire Studios.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
And iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
It's hosted by me Ben Westoff and Ryan Crawl. Our
executive producers are Jeff Keene, David Johnson, and Steve Lubert.
Music and audio engineering by Brent Johnson. Executive producers for
iHeart Podcasts are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Etour. If you
are someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, there are
(23:52):
resources available to you. Please call the Suicide and Crisis
Lifeline nine eight eight
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