Alonzo Brooks Pt. Two

April 3, 2004. La Cygne, Kansas. 23-year old Alonzo Brooks vanishes while attending a party at a farmhouse and his body is discovered on the banks of a nearby creek nearly one month later. While a forensic pathologist is unable to determine Alonzo’s exact cause of death, rumours start circulating that he was the victim of a hate crime before his body was placed at that location. In 2021, after Alonzo’s body is exhumed and given a new autopsy, it is announced that his death has officially been reclassified as a homicide. Who was responsible for killing Alonzo Brooks and what was the motive for his murder? If his death wasn’t a hate crime, what did actually happen to him? On this week’s episode of “The Path Went Chilly”, we explore a controversial case which was featured on the Netflix reboot of “Unsolved Mysteries”.If you have any information about this case, please contact the Kansas City FBI Office at [phone] or call the Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers TIPS Hotline at (816) 474-TIPS (8477).

Support the show: 

Patreon.com/julesandashley

Patreon.com/thetrailwentcold

Additional Reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alonzo_Brookshttps://unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com/wiki/Alonzo_Brooks

https://unsolved.com/gallery/no-ride-home/https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/22/us/alonzo-brooks-exhumed-unsolved-mysteries-trnd/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/06/us/alonzo-brooks-case-ruled-homicide-unsolved-mysteries-trnd/index.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20200928180109

/https://www.kansascitymag.com/what-happened-to-alonzo-brooks/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8556843/Family-friends-Unsolved-Mysteries-Alonzo-Brooks-speak-out.html

https://ew.com/tv/unsolved-mysteries-terry-dunn-meurer-rey-rivera-update/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Welcome back to the Path Went Chile for part two
of our series about the murder of Alonzo Brooks. Robin,
do you want to catch everyone up on what we
talked about in our previous episode?

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Well. This case was featured on the Netflix reboot of
Unsolved Mysteries in an episode titled No Ride Home. It
involves a mixed race man named Alonzo Brooks who was
twenty three years old at the time and was living
in Kansas. He decided to accompany some friends of his
to a party in a very small rural town called
Lacene on April third, two thousand and four. Do to

(00:59):
a SER's and miscommunications, Alonso never did get a ride home.
His friends gradually left throughout the night, assuming that Alonzo
would get a ride with somebody else, but instead he
wound up vanishing without a trace. When his family went
to the area to search, they found Alonzo's hat in
his boots located in separate ditches at the end of
the driveway near the farmhouse where the party had took

(01:21):
him place, so the instantly became concerned. Once the search
was launched for him, they were unable to find anything,
but then when Alonzo's family did their own search twenty
seven days after he originally disappeared. They wound up discovering
his body in a creek which was very close to
the farmhouse, and this creek had already been searched before
by an underwater rescue and recovery team who were absolutely

(01:42):
certain that if Alonzo had been there the entire time,
they would have found him. So this led to speculation
that he may have been planted there at a later time,
and that perhaps his body was kept in the freezer
for a couple weeks because he had very little sign
of decomposition, He did not have any noticeable injuries. He
only appeared to have decomposition on his neck, so as

(02:03):
a result, the original medical examiner was unable to determine
his exact cause of death, so it was officially listed
as undetermined. It was featured on Unsolved Mysteries in twenty twenty,
and by that point the FBI and the Department of
Justice had gotten involved started to investigate it as a
potential hate crime because this was a predominantly white air

(02:23):
area and there were rumors that Alonzo had gotten into
a fight at the party, that people had used a
racial slur in his presence, or that he had been
hitting on a white girl, but none of these rumors
were actually confirmed. After the Unsold Mysteries episode aired, the
investigation got new tips, so they decided to exume Alonzo's
body and perform a new autopsy. And while details are

(02:45):
vague and very secretive, the FBI did confirm that they
found new evidence that conclusively proves, beyond a shadow of
a doubt, that Alonzo was the victim of a homicide.
So his death was officially reclassified and is being investigated
at as a murder. But it's been a couple of
years now they're having any new developments in quite some times,

(03:05):
so at this particular moment, Alonzo's murder is still officially unsolved.
So honestly, before Alonzo's death was reclassified as a homicide,
I had mixed feelings about the case following my initial
viewing of the Unsaw Mysteries episode. On one hand, I
seriously doubted that this was a simple case of an
intoxicated man wandering away from a party and dying of exposure.

(03:29):
It did make a whole lot of sense to me
that Alonzo would leave the farmhouse walk to the end
of a long driveway, remove both of his boots, toss
them each into separate ditches, and then walk back onto
the property in the opposite direction towards Middle Creek. Admittedly,
people can do incredibly strange and a logical things when
they're drunk, but I had a hard time believing that

(03:49):
his body could have been missed at that location for
nearly an entire month. Of course, we covered a number
of other cases where people of God missing in a
rural or wilderness area and the remains were mist in
the initial search effort, only for them to be discovered
in the same area months or even years later. If
Alonzo's search effort had only been conducted by a small
town police department who were inexperienced at this sort of thing,

(04:12):
I could give them the benefit of the doubt that
they missed his body. But this particular search involved the KBI,
the FBI, and an underwater rescue and recovery team who
were specifically trained at this sort of thing. Members of
this team were even interviewed on UNSAWD mysteries, and they
seemed pretty certain that if Alonzo had been on the
creek bank the entire time, they would have found him.

(04:34):
While they certainly could be capable of making mistakes. I
think it says something that when Alonzo's family, who were
not trained at this sort of thing, performed their own
search of the property, they came across his body within
half an hour. But while the Unsolved Mysteries episode left
me with the impression that something strange occurred and that
Alonzo may have been the victim of foul play, my

(04:54):
biggest issue is that I cannot figure out how he
was killed or why his body would be concealed for
twenty seven days and planted near the creek.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
Okay, so super bizarre. The idea of this body not
being there for twenty seven days, like you talked about,
could it have been frozen? Was it simply just overlooked?
You know, they described having to cut back brush before
they found it. Is it possible that it really was
just hidden really well, and maybe an animal had pulled
it a few feet which made it more exposed. But

(05:25):
remember when you first were describing the day that the
family went back the first day after he was missing,
and they went back to look around this area and
found his boots in his hat. You remember that guy
that was on the ATV and ran them off and
told him to get off to the property. If there
had been a party at my house and you said, hey,
my son is missing, our best friend is missing. He

(05:47):
was here last night, I would I'd meet you with
grace and compassionate and be like, oh man, I'm so sorry.
I haven't seen anything. If I do, I'll make sure
you know to call you. Can I get your number.
But there was like an anger and a protection of
that property when it had been so open to people
just the evening before, So that's quite suspicious as well.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
Yeah, I don't think it's ever been conclusively established who
the guy on the ATV was, because we mentioned in
our last episode that this house was a rental and
that it was rented by four young males in their twenties,
but I don't know if they were there at that
particular point. I don't know if the guy on the
ATV was one of the four young males, but he
obviously he didn't take very kindly. I know this was

(06:30):
an area not known for the best race relations, and
that at least one of Alonzo's friends in that day
was black, so maybe that's why I had a problem
with him being on the property. But It's easy to
assume that if something ne faris happened to Alonzo, that
maybe some sort of cover up was taking place, and
that's why these people did not want his friends anywhere
near the property.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
And so his body shows up on those banks. There's
a question of whether or not it was frozen, because
there's minimal decomposition. Is it possible that pretend somewhere on
this property he was held for like X amount of
days and then say he'd only been dead for a
short while and his body was dumped at a later date,
rather than him being killed right away and being put

(07:12):
into a freezer and then disposed of the creek right
before the search party.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
I think that's possible, because I don't think anyone has
ever determined Alonzo's exact time of death. I mean, I
know that doctor Mitchell, the original medical examiner, believed he
had been at the creek the entire time, but it
is possible that he was alive or kept in captivity
for a couple of days before his body was planted
at a later time. I know we talked about in

(07:40):
our last episode the Kurt Sava case for Unsolved Mysteries,
where there was always speculation that he got alcohol poison
and he was kept in the basement of the duplex
where the party attended was being held in hopes that
he would nurse back to health. But then he died
and that's why they decided to dump his body in ravine. So,
for all we know, Alonzo still could have been alive

(08:00):
and being kept somewhere during the time period his friends
were searching the property.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Well, let me play Devil's advocate with that. Remember when
his bodi's found, there's no bruising, there's no sign of
any kind of damage to the body. If you were
a sober grown man and you're being held against your will,
don't you think there would have had to have been
some kind of restraints used against you, some type of

(08:25):
physical altercation to get you into submission, to be quiet,
to be held. Don't you think he would have fought
physically to get out of a confined space. I'm thinking
you might have seen signs of that on his body
if he truly was being held against his will. And remember,
he's wearing the same clothes he was wearing the night
of the party.

Speaker 1 (08:46):
But what if they used a paralytic that they didn't
know to test for because they just would probably do
a standard panel for toxicology, would they not.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah, they haven't really released many details about what they
found during the toxicolity you've results, so I'm willing to
think that if he was given something like a paralytic
that it could have been missed during the original autopsy.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
So the theory pushed forward by Alonzo's family is that
when Lynn County Sheriff Marvin Stitz granted them permission to
search the property, word got back to the people who
were responsible for Alonzo's death, so they responded by placing
his body on the creek bank for the family to find.
But where did they keep the body for nearly a month?
The mild level of decomposition on Alonzo's body really seems

(09:31):
to go against the idea that he was lying out
in the elements for weeks, and since he was carrying
personal possessions which should not have noticeable water damage, it's
unlikely that he was submerged in Middle Creek. This is
why a theory has spread around that the body was
kept inside a freezer for a few weeks, And I
think one of the reasons this rumor caught buyer is

(09:51):
because a prominent family from the area who were suspected
of being complicit in Alonzo's death apparently owned a restaurant
with a large freezer. All that being said, it would
be incredibly risky and brazen to store a body of
a murder victim at your place of business. In fact,
why even hold onto the body to begin with. Lacine

(10:12):
is surrounded by a lot of open land, so there
would be plenty of spots to bury a victim and
ensure he would never be found. But then perhaps the
responsible parties felt that if Alonzo continued to remain a
missing person, people would keep returning to the area to
keep searching for him for years to come, so they
felt they should leave them something to find.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
Okay, So, I hate to break this to you guys
because you're from Canada, but US Americans are food loving mongrels,
and it is no surprise if you walk into someone's
house and they have a large, deep freezer, especially if
you live in an area like we do, where hunting, fishing,
those kinds of things are common. You'll have someone who has,

(10:56):
you know, a deer head sitting in their freezer forever,
or even in the freezer. Right, So I mean, I
think a deep freezer. It would be kind of normal
to think that you have a deep freezer. My poor
mama still hoards freezer food, like she's feeding twenty people
and it's just her and my dad. So it's this
like nine foot deep freezer. I'm like, what are you?

(11:17):
What's in there? You know? And there's a lock on it,
which makes it really fun. But yeah, I think that
the place that they were rinning could have easily had
a deep freezer, or another farm, you know, two doors
down where another kid lives, could have had a deep freezer.
So it would not surprise me if it was more
common than not in this rural area for families to

(11:37):
have a deep freezer.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yeah, I'm thinking that if of this family that was
believed to be responsible had a deep freezer at one
of the residents or at a farm, that's probably more
believable than literally putting a Lonzo's body at the restaurant
where people are going in and out all the time.
Of course, until the most recent autopsy, one of the
biggest issues with the homicide theory was that there did
not appear to be any noticeable injuries on Alonzo's body

(12:02):
or anything to indicate his exact cause of death. Doctor
Eric Mitchell, the forensic pathologist who perform the original autopsy,
acknowledged that he could not rule out the possibility of
drowning or strangulation, but he did seem to feel that
the evidence supported the idea that Alonzo's body had been
lying on the creek bank the entire time he was missing.
But while Mitchell was Douglas County Corner at the time

(12:25):
he examined Alonzo, he does have a pretty controversial background.
Before he relocated to Kansas, Mitchell had worked in upstate
New York as the Onondaga County Medical Examiner, but resigned
from his position in nineteen ninety three over allegations of
his conduct as His offenses included harvesting organs from deceased
victims without the consent of their families and improperly storing

(12:47):
skeletons and body parts inside his office. Mitchell has also
been at the center of a wrongful conviction case from
Douglas County, as a daycare worker named Carroty Buckhorn was
charging convicted of second degree murder for her ledged role
in the death of a nine month old infant named
Oliver Ortise. The conviction was made possible by doctor Mitchell's

(13:07):
testimony as he believed that Oliver had a skull fracture
which was caused by his head being stepped on. But
it would later come out that the boy actually died
from congenital heart disease and there was never any foul play,
So Bockcorn's conviction was overturned and she was released from
prison after serving four years for a crime that never happened.
So this obviously shows that Mitchell has some credibility issues

(13:31):
and that he could have made mistakes during his autopsy
and Alonso and missed something which showed that he was
the victim of a homicide. All we know about the
second autopsy from the Armed Forces medical Examiner is that
Alonzo had injuries which were quote unquote inconsistent with normal
patterns of decomposition. If I had to make an educated guess,

(13:51):
I think that Alonso may have had injuries to his neck,
as Mitchell even acknowledged that he couldn't rule out the
possibility of strangulation. A Lonzo's body was found, the soft
tissues of his neck were gone due to decomposition and
damage from animals and insects. If Alonzo had some noticeable
wounds on his neck when his body was placed on

(14:11):
the creek bank. Then it's only natural that this would
be the first spot that scavengers feasted upon, So I
would not be surprised if the second autopsy found evidence
of damage to Alonzo's neck. I don't know how true
this is, but it's worth mentioning that one of the
many unconfirmed rumors which is spread around the community is
that a shot collar or nearly used to train dogs,

(14:33):
was placed around Alonzo's neck in order to torture him.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
Oh my goodness, that's horrible to think about, and that
could lead to what Jules was saying, where you have
that he was maybe held against his will. But also,
remember we talked about on the last episode, it's also
possible that the FBI uncovered information that told them more
that said, hey, go look at the back right of

(14:57):
his head, Go look behind his ear, go look at
at his elbow, and this is what happened. And you
could have someone who had given such specific information that
a relook at the body then showed a very different
story because they had very specific information, and or, like
you said, you simply have someone who was caught with

(15:19):
misconduct and making you know, really wrong claims that had
some big consequences relocate to this tiny town and he's
just not as attentive as he should be and or
makes assumptions to quickly clear his desk off, or he
didn't have the information that would have allowed him to
find this damage as well. So tons of options of

(15:41):
what could have really happened when you look at the
discrepancies in the autopsies.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
I mean, theoretically, if the rumors are true that this
was a hate crime, then one possible manner of death
could have been hanging, and maybe someone like lynch Alonzo
or hung him from somewhere or broke his neck. And
when they performed this new autopsy, that's when they discovered
evidence that this might have take place. And all this
evidence might have been concealed because of the decomposition and

(16:07):
because the animals feasted upon his neck and maybe concealed
any injuries he might have received.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
That makes me shudder, and it makes me think of
Keith Warren for me too.

Speaker 2 (16:17):
I just thought of Keith too.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Another potential issue with the foul play theory is the
idea that Alonso could have been killed at the party
in the presence of several witnesses, and they have all
somehow managed to keep their mouths shut about it for
over twenty years. Of course, there have always been allegations
that this cover up was made possible because the responsible
parties had ties to local law enforcement, but I'm not

(16:43):
sure that's an entirely fair assessment. The Lynn County sheriff
at the time was Marvin Steitz, who has since passed
away and is no longer a round to comment on
the case, but the Brooks family did not have many
flattering things to say about him on the Unsolved Mysteries episode.
On the one hand, he did not seem to take
Alonzo's disappearance all that seriously at first, and if he

(17:06):
really did try to imply that Alonzo left the party,
took off his boots, and attempted to walk back to
his home forty seven miles away, then yes, that's pretty ridiculous.
But on the other hand, Stites did contact the KBI
for assistance only four days after Alonzo went missing, and
of course the rumors about a potential hate crime soon

(17:27):
led to the FBI becoming involved in the investigation. If
Stites was attempting to orchestra to cover up to protect
Alonzo's killers. I have my doubts that he would bring
in all these outside law enforcement agencies so quickly. It's
also worth noting that, even though Lcine is a very
small town, Alonzo's death was not the only high profile

(17:49):
criminal case to occur during that time period. Notorious serial
killer John Edward Robinson happened to live on a farm
near Lycine and was arrested there only four years earlier
in June two thousand. Robinson is currently serving multiple life
sentences in prison and was responsible for the murders of
at least eight victims, two of whom were found inside

(18:11):
some chemical drums on his property. Marvin Stites was still
Lynn County Sheriff at that time, so he was no
stranger to bringing in outside agencies like the KBI and
the FBI when the investigation was too large for him
to handle. It's yet to be conclusively proven if Alonzo's
death was actually a hate crime, but even if it wasn't,

(18:32):
these rumors have helped ensure that the FBI is continuing
to take the case seriously.

Speaker 3 (18:37):
And let's assume that Marvin Stites was covering for somebody
I guarantee you the moment that those external agencies came in,
they were not covering for anyone, and so they have
nothing to gain by covering up a violent crime. They
have nothing to gain by protecting law enforcement that might
be crooked. And so I think that that kind of
shatters that myth and that that idea behind it case.

(19:00):
But it does make sense when the family's frustrated in
and angry at stites. First of all, think about the
emotional component. I'm telling you my son's missing. You didn't react.
What if you had reacted sooner, would he still be alive.
There's that kind of emotional weight that comes with an
investigation like this. And also when you don't have an

(19:22):
offender to blame, you start to blame everyone else. When
I would work with cold case families, they would say,
you know, I hate to say it, but at some
point I blamed my son or I blamed my husband.
Why were they out that late? Why did they go
to the party. Then I blamed myself. Why did I
let them go to that party? Why did I not

(19:42):
shut it down? Why didn't I say yes, let's go
to dinner instead? I blamed law enforcement. I blamed the friends.
So when you don't have a target to say I
will now hold you accountable and you're responsible for choosing
to take the life of my son, then all of
a sudden, I need to direct that anger towards someone
to have a fair narrative. And so oftentimes, if law

(20:05):
enforcement has not solved the case, they become the person
held responsible for this being an unsolved murder, and it
would likely feel that they don't care enough, or they
didn't try hard enough, or it would have been solved.
So that's I think a very natural reaction for a
family to have, even if law enforcement had been working
very hard to solve this case.

Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, that would make sense because we just brought up
the possibility that maybe Alonso was not killed on the
same night he went missing, that he was being held
in captivity and was alive for a few days, in
which case, perhaps if Sheriff Stites had taken his disappearance
more seriously at first, they might have been able to
find him or rescue him while he was still alive.
So I can imagine like his family totally second guessing

(20:46):
everything all these years later because it's still unsolved and
Sheriff's Sites has become the target of some of the wrath.
I know that many of Alonzo's friends and family members
have always believed that racism played a role in his death,
as we have how the account from his brother Billy
and sister in law Cindy that people were looking at
them very strangely while they were searching through Lacene. During

(21:08):
the Unsolve Mysteries episode, there was a vivid moment when
Alonzo's friend Rodney English, who also happens to be black,
revisits the spot where he found Alonzo's hat and boots
and then tells the camera crew that he needs to
get out of there because he doesn't feel safe at all. Rodney,
as well as Alonzo's family, have always felt a lot
of resentment towards Alonzo's friends for leaving him behind at

(21:29):
the party. Since all these other friends were white, I
get the sense that Rodney believes they severely underestimated the
racial tension surrounding Alonzo's presence that night and should never
have left him alone in such a potentially hostile environment.
And while Alonzo is known for being a very sweet
and easygoing guy who got along with everyone, it also
sounds like he would show no hesitation to confront someone

(21:52):
if they used a Rachel slur in his presence. But
if Alonzo was murdered at the farmhouse, how would these
events have played out?

Speaker 3 (22:00):
Okay, to defend the friends, I think there's a naivity.
There's you're pretty naive when you are someone who doesn't
understand what it's like to be the minority. So if
you know, Alonzo and I are friends and Alonzo's just
my best buddy, you know, people say like, oh, I
don't see the fact that he's not like me racially, right,

(22:20):
Like I don't see that this is my friend who's
you know, a black man. It's just Alonzo, right, And
I'm just justin like, it just is what it is.
But as kids and when they're not paying attention to
the community, the circumstances, how other people react. Not everybody
has the same mentality or relationship with Alonzo like these

(22:43):
boys did. But I truly believe that those boys were
just ignorant to the fact that when Alonzo leaves the
safety of that group and he's a minority at a
party where it's not a welcoming group necessarily, or there's
these underlying currents of racist tendencies that the friends don't
pick up on that Alonzo could have, and then he's

(23:06):
left in this situation regardless with these people who don't
have his best interests at heart. But I truly believe
his poor friends were just like, yeah, it's Alonzo, Like
we didn't even we weren't even thinking that these are
some young kids going to a party to drink and
being silly and pretty flippant with who's going where and when.
So I don't know, I just have a lot of

(23:28):
sympathy for the fact that these are young kids who
didn't pay attention to things that they very likely should have.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
They got a lot of criticism too, Like I can
think back to parties that I went when I was
in high school or my early twenties, and like you'd
mentioned earlier, ash when you're like, oh, I'm fine, you
just leave me behind, where either I was the person
who said that or I ended up leaving because friends
were like, no, no, we want to stay. And you
just have this presumption that everything is going to work

(23:57):
out okay, because you always think that it was at
that age until it doesn't. And then, like you said,
these kids, they've just got all of this scrutiny, and
they're getting criticized by so many people. But I do
think it was a brave thing to go on Unsolved
Mysteries and to put yourself out there, and I do
think that it shows that they do care about Alonzo.
And although his one friend may have a story that

(24:20):
changes in places, I think that, like Robin had mentioned earlier,
it could be that he was driving drunk that night.
Just because he may come off as looking deceptive doesn't
mean that he's being deceptive because he did something to Alonzo.

Speaker 2 (24:34):
And I do think they do seem genuinely remorseful and
distraught that Alonzo died under their watch during their Unsolved
Mysteries interviews, and that it still haunts them to this day.

Speaker 3 (24:44):
Be shame and guilt and blame and all kinds of
stuff that they hold on themselves. So and like I said,
you know, at forty one, looking back at assumptions, attitudes,
ignorance that I had when I was twenty twenty five,
five twenty eight, I'm a very different person now and
I understand the world more now, but back then you don't.

(25:07):
And so I just see this group of friends who
said let's be stupid and go to this party that
they thought was going to be a tiny party. It
ends up kind of falling apart and everybody ends up
almost miscommunicating what's going on. And I just think it's
a sad, sad situation. And you have tons of victims
in this case, because no one's life when your best
friend goes missing and then this found murdered, no one's

(25:28):
life is the same after that. The guilt you would
carry for and in feelings you would carry for his
poor parents and his siblings and those kinds of things,
even though you aren't to blame, that would change the
whole trajectory of your life.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
While The Unsolved Mysteries episode features interviews with three of
Alonzo's friends who attended the party with him, Justin Spragge,
Daniel Thun, and Tyler Bogard, though we know there were
other friends who went with them and did not appear
on camera. The story goes that they decided to the
night celebrating because one of these friends was leaving to
join the military. But what's frustrating is that it's never

(26:06):
been made clear why they decided to leave Gardner and
travel to this particular party. In the scene, since Alonzo
was described as being more of a homebody. His family
was a bit surprised that he even wanted to go
to the party, so I get the impression that this
was not his idea and he just wanted to tag
along with his other friends. While their identities have never

(26:28):
been made public, this farmhouse was being rented by four
young males at the time, but it sounds like they
weren't really living there per se, and just decided to
use the location as a party house, which wound up
attracting people from outside the area since it was an
ideal spot for underage drinking. While Alonzo was twenty three,
he was actually a few years older than most of

(26:51):
his other friends from this group, who were technically not
the legal drinking age yet. I've read that one of
Alonzo's friends had a loose connection with one of the
four individuals renting the farmhouse, and they had once gone
to the same high school together, so this might explain
how they found out about this party to begin with,
even though it took place nearly fifty miles away from

(27:13):
where they lived. Now, he goes without saying that Alonzo's
friends have received a lot of criticism for leaving him
behind at a party, and some online sloops have gone
so far as to accuse them of being responsible or
being involved in Alonso's death. At the very least, there's
been suspicion that these friends have never told the whole

(27:33):
truth about what actually happened. But it's worth noting that
they were extensively questioned and investigated by law enforcement who've
never publicly stated that they believe any of them are
withholding information. And while I would certainly find them guilty
of being young, drunken, irresponsible, I would stop short of

(27:54):
accusing them of being complicit in a murder.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
Imagine being question by the police when you went to
this party, Like what if there was weed at the party?

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Now?

Speaker 3 (28:05):
What if they were going out to meet some girls
and the girls ended up being underage? Or what if
there had been something that was nefarious and not legal.
But you're just stupid and young, and you're going, oh
my gosh, they're questioning me about my missing friend, and
I'm going to just kind of be tight lipped and
try to answer questions about Alonzo specifically and kind of
elude other information, like I was drinking and driving. I'm

(28:26):
not going to tell them that I had smoked some weed.
I'm not going to tell them that. And I think
at some point, you know, investigators down there like, listen,
I do not care about anything else right this second.
I don't care if you were high as a kite.
I don't care if you were doing cocaine. I don't
care if you were selling drugs. I don't care if
you were having sex. I don't care. The only thing
I'm asking you for is tell me the truth about Alonzo.

(28:48):
And I guarantee you by the time they get there,
with these young, scared kids, they're able to get the
best version of what they can remember that night about
what happened to Alonzo. So did they come on off suspicious?
Did their stories change? I bet their stories did change.
I bet they did evolve because they got more comfortable,
they remembered more things. You know, there's a chance that

(29:11):
at some point they talked to each other and get
called back to the police department. They're like, oh man,
do you remember this? Oh yeah, I remember, I forgot
about that. So stories do change, and it's not always
because someone's involved and didn't want to tell the truth
about the situation.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
So the very least I think you can cut some
slack with Daniel Foon and Tyler Bogard as they both
said goodbye to Alonzo when they left the party, and
said that nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Since Justin
Sprague had driven Alonzo there, I'm sure they assumed that
Justin would give him a ride home. There appeared to
be contradictory accounts from Daniel and Justin during their Unsaw
Mysteries interviews, as Daniel said that Alonzo got into an

(29:48):
argument with another partygoer before he intervened and pulled him away. Well,
Justin reported seeing no confrontations or hostility at all, and
said that Alonzo was having a great time. Well, this
doesn't necessarily mean Justin as being untruthful, because if he
was separated from Alonzo at the time and not present
to witness this altercation with the partygoer, then he was

(30:08):
probably unaware that anything happened had had no qualms about
leaving Alonzo alone to go out and buy cigarettes. Justin's
stories that he got lost and his car got stuck
on those rural gravel roads, so rather than go to
the trouble of making a lengthy drive back to the party,
he called a friend of his named Adam and asked
him to give Alonzo a ride back home to Gardner.

(30:29):
But of course Adam was not interviewed on Unsawn Mysteries,
and since we've never heard him publicly share his side
of the story, it's unclear why he left without Alonzo well.
On our last episode, we discussed a post about this
case from the Cold Case Kansas blog, and it makes
mention of a guy named Edward Smith, which I think
is probably an alias for the mysterious Adam. According to

(30:51):
this post, Edward Slash Adam did approach Alonzo about leaving
the party, but Alonzo told him he wanted to stay
and would get a ride home with someone else. If
this account is true, then it's possible that Alonso may
not have been aware that all of his other friends
were gone and there was no one left to give
him a ride. But if he was intoxicated, it's understandable

(31:12):
that he wouldn't be thinking clearly. We also have all
these uncorroborated rumors that Alonzo have been flirting with a
white woman at the party, and if these rumors are
accurate and Alonso thought he was getting somewhere well, this
could provide an explanation for why he wanted to stay
and turn down Adam's offer for a lift.

Speaker 3 (31:29):
That's exactly what I was thinking right now, was that
if he is with a group of guys and he's
getting attention from a female, if he thinks that the
females you know, thinks he's funny and they're having a
good time and they're being talkative, he does what Jules
and I have said we've dumbly done before, where we go, oh,
just leave, just leave, I'll find a ride home, you know,

(31:50):
because it's kind of this at twenty three years old,
you're just fixated on this relationship and maybe you know,
being intimate with somebody or have fun that night, and
so I think you get this kind of tunnel vision,
especially if you've been drinking, where you think about, I'm
making progress here. I can figure out a solution once

(32:11):
I get what I want, which could be this girl.
And so I very much believe that could be potential.
Where he's shoving the guys, I'll just go, just go,
like you're interrupting my flow, get away from me. I'm actually,
you know, getting somewhere with this girl, and then things
could turn south. Let's say she has somebody else who's
interested in her. Let's say it's just motivated by race.

(32:31):
In someone's sees and says, I'm not okay with this
because there are different races. But it could be a
million things concerning that specific girl. I wish that a
female had emerged from the party and said, yeah, we
were getting along so well and then you just disappeared,
or we were getting along so well and then you know,
my friend Steve got really angry or something like that.
But we have no information about a girl specifically at

(32:54):
that party that's been identifying.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Yeah. I mean, this rumor makes so much sense, Like
I could see something escalating into violence, if Alonzo was
hitting on a white girl and some of the other
partygoers didn't like it. But unfortunately, we just don't have
any first hand accounts to corroborate if this is true.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
So on August seventh, twenty twenty, The Daily Mail published
an extensive article about Alonzo's case, containing a lot of
information which was not mentioned during the Unsolved Mysteries episode.
I shout out of his claimer that since the Daily
Mail is a notorious tabloid which is known for being
an unreliable source of information, I would take the information

(33:33):
that I'm about to share with a huge grain of salt,
but if their reporting is accurate, it could shed some
additional insight into why Alonso was left behind at the party.
Rodney English was interviewed for the article and claimed the
story shared by Justin on Unsolved Mysteries it was different
than the one he shared right after Alonzo went missing,

(33:53):
as he apparently never mentioned anything about getting lost and
only said that his car broke down and he was
able to fix it himself by the side of the road.
Alonzo's mother, Maria, also alleged that Justin has changed his
story about six times over the years, while The Daily
Mail spoke to an anonymous source who was supposedly close
to Justin and claimed he'd received death threats since he

(34:15):
appeared on Unsolved Mysteries and felt the show had let
him down by editing out significant parts of his interview.
According to this source, Justin did leave the party to
go purchase cigarettes, but the episode did not mention that
he was actually accompanied by another friend. They did apparently
get their car stuck in the ditch, but Justin elected
not to call for help because he was drunk and

(34:38):
high at the time, since he was about to enlist
in the army, he did not want a dui charge
to potentially scoopings up. But if Justin was not entirely
truthful about how events unfolded that night, this could provide
an explanation why. However, The Daily Mail reported that phone
records did support Justin's story that he used his cell

(34:58):
phone to call Adam at the party, and that surveillance
cameras showed that Justin went to a gas station and
withdrew two hundred dollars from an ATM. Justin and his
friend then went to a strip club, but they wound
up being ejected from there for unknown reasons. Thus far,
the Daily Mail is the only media outlet I've seen
which has published this account of Justin's story. But if

(35:21):
it's true, then it gives him an alibi placing him
away from the farmhouse and would clear him of any
direct involvement in Alonzo's death. So yes, while Justin may
have been irresponsible that night, it sounds like he does
not have any further insight into how or why Alonso
was killed, And during his Unsolved Mysteries interview, Justin became

(35:42):
fairly emotional, so I get the sense that he was
genuinely guilt ridden and remorseful about not being there for
his friend.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
Let's say, let's say you got stuck, you fixed your car,
you went the wrong way, and then you end up
going to a strip club. I could see omitting that.
I mean, you're sitting there, You're talking about somebody who
has their own life, has their own career, has their
own placement in society, has perhaps their own family. And
you sit there and you say, you know, why didn't

(36:11):
he tell us he was at a strip club? Well,
he's getting ready to go into the army. Is it
something that he was worried would make him look bad?
Is it something he was worried his parents would be
embarrassed about. Is it something you know five years later
that he doesn't want his wife to know. I mean,
there's other explanations for a change in stories, And there's
also the way that our memories changed. They're malleable, they're pliable.

(36:35):
When you sit there and you have a dream about
the incident, you wake up and you wonder what was
fact and what was the dream. When you talk to
someone else, your story shifts a little bit. So I
believe you know, by your fifth interview, it's possible a
piece of information has been added or taken away. I
don't think Justin seems like a person who is a

(36:57):
dark force in this story. I think he was an
other kid making some really bad decisions and had no
idea that the consequences because he had no anticipation that
his friend was going to pass away that night. He
thought that he was leaving his friend and many other
people that knew Alonzo, and that his buddy would make
it back just the way he said he would.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
There's another detail mentioned in the Daily Mail article which
I think might shed some light on all the confusion
surrounding the circumstances of Alonzo's disappearance. The party was held
with daylight saving time took and the clocks moved forward
an hour at two am on the morning of April
to fourth. For this reason, investigators had a hard time
nailing down a precise timeline, because when you're dealing with

(37:39):
a bunch of partygoers who have been drinking, I'm sure
many of them are not going to be keeping track
of when the clocks move forward. Where I have an
accurate recollection of what time certain events occurred, it's been
reported that a fight took place at the party sometime
around two or three am, although it's unclear if Alonzo
was involved, and the original reporting on this story said
the last time Alonzo was seen was at around three

(38:02):
or four AM. I'm sure these inconsistencies are the results
of different witnesses having different recollections of what time these
events took place, as I doubt that all of them
would have taken daylight saving time into account. But what's
important is that we don't seem to have a solid,
concrete account of the last time Alonso was confirmed to
be alive.

Speaker 3 (38:22):
What's interesting, though, is that if you did look at
that time frame, it's two thirty to three or three
to four, that could be all the same same hour,
right if it was a change in the clock. We
didn't always have iPhones that switched, you know, immediately at midnight,
or sometimes my iPhone doesn't switch at midnight, it's which
is at like four am. So isn't it possible that
that could all just be the same timeframe?

Speaker 2 (38:45):
It is? Yeah, I think that is a possibility. And
what's so frustrating about this case is that we just
don't have any information about when this party really ended
and when people started trickling out of there and going home.
So we've talked about how it seems unlikely that if
there were a couple dozen people there and something happened
to Alonzo, that that many people would keep a secret.
So that's why it would be useful to know, like

(39:07):
how many people were still at that party by the
time something happened to Alonzo.

Speaker 3 (39:12):
And remember there was another party going on too, some
people were leaving and going to that other party.

Speaker 2 (39:17):
Yeah, so it makes me wonder like how many people
were present who might be covering some sort of secret.

Speaker 1 (39:23):
During her interview on Unsolved Mysteries, Cindy said that when
she and Billy traveled to the scene to search for
Alonzo and checked out the farmhouse, she looked in through
the window and saw that it was empty and it
did not look like a place where there had been
a huge party the night before. The wording is a
bit ambiguous, so I'm not sure if Cindy's trying to

(39:43):
imply that the house are being completely cleaned up or
cleared out, but this could be taken as a sign
that something happened to Alonzo there and the responsible parties
made sure to do a very thorough cleanup job in
order to get rid of potential evidence. One thing that
has never made sense to me is why Alonzo's hat
and boots were found in separate ditches across the road

(40:05):
from each other near the end of the farmhouse driveway.
We didn't find it likely that Alonzo would take off
his boots there and walk back onto the property towards
the creek, but if he was murdered, it's also weird
that someone would get rid of his boots at that
particular spot. Rodney English theorized that someone may have driven
to the end of the driveway and tossed the hat

(40:26):
and one of the boots in a ditch across the
road from a moving vehicle, and then tossed the other
boot into a different ditch after they turned right and
started heading in that direction. When Justin picked up Alonzo
at his residence that night, he said that Alonzo put
on two pairs of socks and rolled one pair down
to tie his boot tighter since he'd recently suffered an

(40:46):
ankle injury. But if Alonzo's ankle was bothering him that night,
could he have decided to remove his boots at the
party before something happened. If Alonzo was not wearing his
boots when he was killed, this could explain why they
were found step or from his body. But then why
not just get rid of the boots altogether rather than
leave them out in the open at a spot near

(41:07):
the farmhouse. This has caused speculation that perhaps the responsible
parties wanted the boots to be found in order to
send some sort of message, which adds to the whole
aura of Lacine being a close knit small town concealing
a dark secret, with most of the residents feeling powerless
to do anything.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
I'm wondering if you would take your boot off if
your ankle was hurting and you are in a place
that you're unfamiliar with. You know, my husband won't take
his boots off unless he's done for the day, because
he's like, my feet hurt so bad. My feet are hurting,
and he's like, if I take him off, it's almost
like I get more pain in my feet because I
have no support or anything going on. So I wonder
if he would have left the boots on to provide

(41:47):
the support for that ankle instead of saying, hey, I'm
going to take it off and have no stability on
my foot.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
And was this an inside slash outside party, because if
it was and people were kind of going in the
farmhouse and out into the yard, which it kind of
sounds like from what they've said, then I would find
it unlikely that he would take off his boots because
that would be the only thing that would be supporting
his ankle.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
And remember, there's one hundred people, so I think it
has to be in and out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Yeah, it's never really been clarified how much was spent
inside and outside at the party. But it was April,
so it would have been warm enough I think for
people to be hanging out outside.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
And like Ashley just said, there's one hundred people, So
good luck fitting one hundred people inside a house unless
it's really big with the square footage.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah, exactly. Now. The aforementioned Daily Mail article also said
that a number of different sources gave them the name
of an out of towner who picked a fight with Alonso,
though it's unclear if this is the same individual who
was involved in the argument that Daniel Foon had witnessed,
but the story goes that when this guy left the party,
he drove nearly two hundred miles out of state, and

(42:53):
he was one of the partygoers who refused to take
a polygraph and lawyered up when investigators attempted to question him.
While I'm not saying this guy was responsible for Alonzo's death,
it does open up the interesting possibility that Alonzo was
killed by someone who did not actually live in the
Lacine area. If Alonzo realized that all of his friends
had left and he no longer had a ride home,

(43:15):
could he have accepted a ride from a stranger he
just met at the party that night. Could this person
have murdered Alonzo at another location and then brought his
body back to Lcine and planted it on the bank
of Middle Creek. What's interesting is that when doctor Mitchell
performed his original autopsy, it sounds like he was unable
to provide a conclusive determination of how long Alonso had

(43:36):
been dead before he was found, though he was inclined
to believe that his body had been lying on the
creek bank during the entire time period he was missing.
But how can we be so certain that Alonzo was
dead during that entire twenty seven day window. We've heard
all these wild theories about Alonzo's body being kept inside
a freezer in order to explain why he had such

(43:56):
mild decomposition. But the alternate explanation is that someone could
have abducted him and held him in captivity for a
few weeks before he was killed, and they then proceeded
to bring his body back to the property and dump
him on the creek bank. Of course, I'm not entirely
sure why they would keep him alive this entire time,
as it's not like he had any noticeable injuries on

(44:16):
his body to suggest he was tortured. But then again,
maybe something was found during the most recent autopsy to
indicate that Alonzo experienced violence or torture before he died.

Speaker 3 (44:27):
This almost makes me feel like a Matthew Shepherd kind
of thing, where you had someone who wanted to hurt
Matthew Shepherd because of his sexuality. But they targeted him
in a way that they befriended him and they isolated him,
and they made promises to him of like, hey, let
us take you home, let's go hang out, let us
take you home, and then their whole plan all along

(44:48):
was to attack him. And then they placed his body
on that fence that night and so I'm wondering could
something like that have happened where someone got frustrated they
liked the girl that he was talking to, but instead
of in front of all these people being rude to him,
they befriend him and manipulate him to a point where, hey,
man will take you home. Hey buddy, why'n't you ride

(45:09):
with us? And they get him in the car under
pretenses that they're going to be good to him, and
then turn on him when they're away from the rest
of the party gooders, So it rose absolutely no suspicion
with anybody.

Speaker 2 (45:22):
Yeah, that would make sense to me as well. And theoretically,
like I said, if they killed Alonzo at another location
or kept him in captivity and the people from Lecine
had nothing to do with it, they may have decided, Hey,
I'm going to leave his body in the spot where
I originally took him from so that it'll divert the
suspicion away from me.

Speaker 1 (45:41):
And it makes sense to me if it was some
guy that also liked this girl who's from the prominent family.
But it would also make sense to me if it
was say a relative of hers, maybe a cousin, maybe
a brother, somebody who is connected to the family who
thinks I'm not going to stand for that. This is
somebody who I don't know how they would have viewed him,

(46:03):
if they viewed him his mixed race or they viewed
him as black, but either way they are thinking our
family is white and we aren't going to invite somebody
who is from the outside in in that capacity. And
it makes a lot of sense to me, like you said, Ash,
that they could have befriended him, and they could have
gotten close and then used that against him at another location,

(46:28):
whatever the case. Coming up with a concrete theory about
what actually happened to Alonzo is incredibly difficult because even
though there are a ton of rumors, gossip, and hearsay
about events which may have taken place at that party,
there are very few verifiable facts. Other than Justin Tyler
and Daniel, no one who was in attendance that night

(46:50):
have gone on the record to speak about it. And
assuming these three guys are telling the truth, they would
have already been gone before the events which caused Alonzo's
death took place. Even though we've heard reports about people
from the party lawyering up and refusing to be questioned
or take polygraphs. That doesn't necessarily mean they're guilty of
anything or concealing information, because refusing to take a polygraph

(47:15):
or speak to the police without an attorney is always
considered to be sound legal advice, even if you're an
innocent person. It sounds like the lack of a coherent
timeline has always been one of the biggest obstacles for
this investigation, because we know at some point that party
had to come to an end, but we have no
idea if Alonzo was still there at that time and

(47:36):
when the last confirmed sighting of him took place. I've
always found it hard to believe that something bad could
have happened to Alonzo at the party in full view
of several witnesses, because I just don't believe that many
people could keep a secret for two decades. Remember, this
case has been investigated by many agencies, including the KBI
and the FBI, so even if local law enforcement was

(48:00):
witnesses would have had many avenues to turn to if
they wanted to talk. Granted, we're not privy to all
the details of this investigation, so perhaps people would have
come forward to share important information with the authorities, but
they still don't have the necessary evidence to file charges
against anyone. I still wouldn't rule out the possibility that

(48:20):
Alonzo's death did not actually take place at the party,
but instead occurred after he hitched a ride with someone
who harms him at another location. If this is what happened,
there may only be one person or a small handful
of people who know the truth about how he died.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
I'm gonna have to go with that. I'm really leaning
towards this idea that he needed to get home, and
it was the party was winding down. There probably weren't
a lot of people there anymore. People were already dispersing
and or were so intoxicated at the time they're not
paying attention. But he's befriended by somebody who says, I'll
give you a ride, buddy, and so zero people raise

(48:58):
an eyebrow. Zero people are on to that situation. And
then once in that truck, we have no idea what happens.
And then they're discarding his items and his shoes, his hat,
those types of things. I don't know. I just have
to lean more towards that the idea that people lawyered
up or didn't take a polygraph test. My goodness. I
think there's a host of families, especially in small towns,

(49:21):
that they could have an attorney friend who said, you know, like, hey,
you tell your kids if they're ever questioned, the answer
is not without an attorney present, and no way will
they take a polygraph. So I don't see that as
being a clear sign that these kids knew. But I
definitely think that it's somebody who was at that party

(49:42):
who said, Hey, I'm going to isolate this man away
from this group, and then I can do whatever I want,
punish him, get revenge, quiet him, whatever their goal was,
And I'm starting to lean towards that's how that occurred.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
I just don't see how doing a polygraph test, unless,
for example, you're the parents and your child is missing,
if you want law enforcement to eliminate you as a
suspect so they can focus their energies elsewhere, I could
see doing a polygraph in that context, because you want
to make sure that they're not focusing on you and
that they're doing everything that they can outside of the

(50:17):
family unit. But in this case, people who went to
the party, they might have a myriad of things to hide,
so they might register as deceptive on a bunch of
different questions or come up as inconclusive. So if it
were my kid, or even if I was in my
twenties and know what I know now, I certainly wouldn't
be doing a polygraph.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Yeah, it could be a thing where they took illegal
drugs at the party, or they did underage drinking. So
even though they may have had nothing to do with
Alonzo's death or have any information about what happened to them,
they're probably paranoid that it's going to register on the
polygraph test if they don't tell the full truth about
what happened, and so they would have every reason to
refuse to do it.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Imagine getting asked a question like is there anything you're
hiding about the day Alonzo died or about the day
Alonzo went missing, and you're doing some kind of drugs
that are like more than we'd write something that would
be a Schedule one narcotic, and you don't want to
admit that to your parents or to police. You don't
want anyone to know that, And so it would come

(51:17):
up that you are lying or you're being deceptive on
that polygraph. But the reality is you know nothing about
Alonzo's death. There just is stuff that you're not telling
the police, or.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
Hey, did you contribute it all to the death of Alonzo?

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (51:30):
I poured him a drink. Yeah, I uh was the
one who did drugs with him. Yeah, I'm the one
who introduced him to the people there. You know, Like,
so am I quote responsible? Maybe because I interacted with
him and I was part of his night that evening,
So who knows of one of my actions quote contributed
to his death?

Speaker 1 (51:49):
And I think that's why it really does depend on
the polygrapher, because I think they're supposed to be asking
the same question like three different ways, so that like, yeah,
if you said something like that, did you contribute to
the death? You could say did you directly contribute to
the death of ants contribute? If you asked it several ways,

(52:09):
you could get different answers. So if you've got somebody
who's only asking it one way, then you could come
up with tests that are full of deception.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
One other thing I wanted to mention is that there's
a website about this case at Alonzo Brooks dot com
and it has been used to promote an upcoming documentary
series and accompanying podcasts about the case, which is being
put together by a Kansas based filmmaker named Josh Pratt.
According to the website, Pratt has been working on this
project for several years, even before the Unsolved Mysteries episode

(52:38):
came out, and it's going to contain a number of
interviews with people connected to the case, including Alonzo's friends
and relatives, law enforcement officials, and even persons of interest. However,
I have no idea when the series is going to
be completed or when its projected release date might be,
and perhaps the reclassification of Alonzo's death as a homicide
in twenty twenty one has sent the project in an

(52:59):
entire life different direction. Whatever the case, if and when
this series does get released, it may finally shed some
additional light on things and answer a lot of the
questions I've had. By all accounts, Alonzo Brooks was a
very nice person who loved his family and never caused
any trouble. So if he was the victim of a
hate crime and the responsible parties have managed to get
away with it for two decades, then that's a terrible injustice.

(53:23):
We still can't be one hundred percent certain that his
death was a hate crime. But even if that wasn't
the actual motive, a young man still had his life
stolen away from him. When I first watched the Unsolved
Mysteries episode back in twenty twenty, I have to admit
that I had mixed feelings about Alonzo's death being a homicide,
as I felt his death could have been some sort
of accident, such as a negative reaction to drugs or alcohol,

(53:46):
and someone decided to conceal what happened before placing his
body out in the open. However, the results of the
latest autopsy do seem to confirm with absolute certainty that
Alonzo was murdered, and even though it's been four years
since that announcement was made, I do hope that things
are still going on behind the scenes to build a
case against the responsible perpetrator or perpetrators, and that they

(54:08):
will eventually face justice. So if you have been to
have any information about the murder of Alonzo Brooks, please
contact the Kansas City FBI office at eight one six
by one two eight two zero zero. That's eight one
six by one two eight two zero zero. You can
also submit a tips through the FBI website or called

(54:28):
the Greater Kansas City Crime Stoppers Tips Hotline at eight
one six four seven four tips. That's eight one six
four seven four eight four seven seven Jules Ashley. Any
final thoughts in this case.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
This one's heartbreaking when you think about the way that
the families had to navigate the degrief here. When they
first called and they said he didn't come home, my
son is missing. We need your help, and they're told, well,
we have to wait forty eight hours, and then they're
on their way trying to do their own invent instigation,
turned away by the man on the ATV, to leave

(55:04):
the feeling that my voice doesn't matter, that no one
listened when I said something was wrong, No one listened
to us when we were begging them to search to
help us find him. We had to go and find
him ourselves twenty seven days later, and then you know,
there's this continued flee from the family to say, listen,

(55:24):
there were one hundred people there that night. Someone saw something,
and so they're right. It's likely that people know tiny
little piece of information that seemed incredibly insignificant, and yet
if they came forward and if they were able to
share those there's potential that this case could have a resolution.
But the idea that you know, no one's talking and

(55:46):
that their own voices are not being heard has to
be something that completely complicates and elongates the weight of
the grief that they're feeling. Alonzo went to a party
that night, a kid that doesn't really even get out
of his house. He's a homebody, and you know, so
he went to spend time with his friends and to
go along with their plan, and something that should have
been so innocent and so fun in it in his death.

(56:10):
And so I'm praying that this is one of those
cases that because there is a tension, because people are
finally listening, is this a case that actually could be solved.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
I feel so deeply for Alonzo's parents and for all
of those who loved him, and for his friends that
appeared on the documentary. I think, of course, it looks
like they might be hiding certain things, but I don't
think they're hiding anything to do with the death of Alonzo.
I think there is a lot of guilt there, and
like Robin mentioned earlier, when I watched it, I felt

(56:40):
genuine emotions watching them talk about it. It felt like
there was remorse, and not remorse in the sense that
I'm sorry because I hurt this person, but remorse because
they weren't there in the capacity that they felt like
they should, and they've taken a lot of heat for that.
This case has just made so much more complex, given
the fact that there's all these conspiracy theories about prominent

(57:02):
families and a potential white girl from a prominent family
and Alonzo being quite drunk and getting into a verbal
altercation with somebody. So there opens up all these different possibilities.
Because there weren't his friends there to basically hold him
back and go buddy, like it's time to walk away,
it's time to leave. He was left to his own devices,

(57:24):
and nobody else is talking about exactly what went down
that night. I honestly don't know if he was taken
somewhere else or his body was frozen, but it does
seem odd that he ended up somewhere that had previously
been searched. There is a possibility that he could have
been frozen. I think it is less likely that he
was held at another location for close to a month

(57:45):
and then killed and then put there. But the idea
of the shot caller was brought up and like that
is a possibility, But it seems like if you're going
to hold somebody there for a long period of time,
that you're going to do so because you want to
torture them with more than just a shocking dog collar.
But I mean, I have no idea. This is just
a case that has left me with more questions than answers.

Speaker 2 (58:08):
Yeah, this made a vivid impression on me when I
saw it on the Unsolved Mysteries reboot about five years ago,
and I talked at length about how some of the
cases they've shown are ones where it does seem that
they're obvious suicides or accidental deaths, and that the show
is trying to make the stories look a lot more
mysterious than they really are. But this one is definitely
the exception to the rule, because this is a rare

(58:29):
case where it was technically an unexplained, undetermined death when
they originally featured it on the show, and then one
year later they gave a new autopsy and were able
to confirm with one hundred percent certainty that Alonzo was
the victim of a homicide and that there was a
crime here that needed to be solved. It is frustrating
that it's now been four years and we still don't
seem to have any further answers about what happened, but

(58:51):
I do think that law enforcement is vigorously working on
it behind the scenes, and for all we know, maybe
the big break they need is for someone to come
forward with in because if it took place at a party,
then it's possible that there are people out there who
know the truth and have kept silent about it for
two decades, and we have so many uncorroborated rumors. I mean,
some people think that because Alonzo was a minority in

(59:14):
a predominantly white area and was causing some friction at
this party, that maybe he was the victim of a
hate crime, And just hearing about the decomposition on his
neck has made me suspect that that might have been
the source of his homicide. That he could have been
murdered by being lynched literally or being strangled to death
or having his neck broken, and that's why it was

(59:35):
missed on the autopsy the first time around. So if
it was and Alonzo was targeted because of the color
of his skin, then this would fit the definition of
a hate crime and whoever was responsible definitely deserves to
face justice. I mean, I can't come up with the
theory of what happened with the information we have. I
don't know where Alonzo was during the twenty seven days
he was missing, why his body wound up on that

(59:56):
creek bank after all that time, But I do not
believe he was there the entire time when the original
search effort took place. So something fishy definitely has been
going on here. And I do sense that there are
a number of people in this small town in rural
Kansas who have their own ideas about what happened but
have not talked. So it's now been over twenty years,
and Alonzo's family definitely deserves to see justice done because

(01:00:20):
it is long overdue.

Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars
tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in
which I talk about cases which are not featured on

(01:00:49):
The Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to
Patreon and if you join our highest tier tier free
the ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer
is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries,
where you can download an audio file and then boot
up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in

(01:01:12):
the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
first episode that I did a commentary track over was
the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
download a commentary track in which I make more smart
ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Tier three.

Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
So I want to let you know a little bit
about the Jeweles and Nashty patreons. So there's early ad
free episodes of The Path Went Chili. We've got our
Path Went Chili mini's, which are always over an hour,
so they're not very many, but they're just too short
to turn into a series, and we're really enjoying doing those,
so we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link
them in the show notes.

Speaker 2 (01:01:51):
So I want to thank you all for listening, and
any chance you have to share us on social media
with a friend or to rate and review is greatly
appreciate it. You can email us at the path went
Chili at gmail dot com. You can reach us on
Twitter at the Pathwin. So until next time, be sure
to bundle up because cold trails and chili pass call
for warm clothing.

Speaker 4 (01:02:10):
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy