Previously, on Murder at the U Everybody's a suspect when somebody dies. It was Brian and the girl, man. I used to ask him, well, w where you getting all this fucking money from? Then he'd be like, Oh, I gotta call my guy He never said the name.
But I just remember him like if you want it, man, come see me then. From the very beginning of our reporting, we knew the Patta family had a particular suspect in mind for who killed Brian. Yeah, we yeah, we know who did it. We we know who's responsible for it. This came in our first conversation with Edric Patta in 2017.
From somebody from outside. It was killed from University of Miami. So they might be they don't want to put it out here, but it was a teammate. In our investigation, multiple suspects emerged from different scenarios. There was a nightclub fight. Club fight with suspected gang members, Brian's alleged connection to the Zoe Pound leader Ollie Adam.
and potentially his girlfriend's twin brother. But this theory that a teammate killed Brian, it had our attention from the beginning. At first, Brian's brothers, Edric and Edwin, didn't want to implicate this teammate by name. But over time, they eventually did share a name with producer Dan Aruda. Did he mention having problems with anybody on the team? Yeah. His only guy was Oshon Jones. The Pada family was convinced that Brian was killed by his teammate, Rashawn Jones.
Edric told us his suspicion started after a conversation with a former Hurricanes player. Man, y'all need to look at the goddamn school. So he said there's some grimy, he said he used these words, there's some grimy niggas out there. I know somebody in the goddamn school know who killed Brian. Them cats know. Them players know. So when he says this to you, you think what? Can't be true. Miami. It's Miami man, it is brotherly love.
Smile is to you. It's Miami. They wouldn't you know who would do that? When was the first time you remember someone saying to you or you guys putting together that Rashawn was the one that pulled the trigger? down with the teammate and then we started putting put the puzzles together. Who did Brian had an altercation with? Brian had a fight with this guy. And when we heard different things, people started talking a little bit about Rashawn.
Who kept saying his name kept coming up. This is from former teammates. Yeah, former teammates, U web students. So people just started to talk. But could a teammate really have killed Brian in cold blood? As we dug deeper, we concluded that only one of two things could be true. Either Rashawn Jones killed Brian Patta, or someone else killed Brian, and Rashawn fell victim to a very unfortunate set of circumstances.
I'm Paula Levine. From 30 for 30 Podcast, this is Murder at the U. Episode 4, The Teammate. Väng firar 70 år av resor, och det gör vi med massor av erbjudanden som är omöjliga att motstå. Hitta våra bästa jubileumserbjudanden på ving.se. De bästa resorna försvinner först. Tänk till exempel att ligga med benen i högläge hjälper lite, ifs-Oycksfallsförsäkring hjälper mycket. After the PAT has identified Rashawn Jones by name in 2018, our reporting team tried to learn everything we could about him.
Rashawn was in his junior year when Brian Patta was murdered. The police questioned him, but he didn't hear from them after 2007. Rashawn was still on the team in the spring, but then, after failing another drug test, he left. He transferred to a college in North Carolina, and he ended up playing arena football in Texas. But after Texas, Rashawn moved back home to Florida. In 2018, he married his high school girlfriend Ashenda.
By that time, he had five children. And this is where our timelines converge. It had been nearly 12 years since Brian's murder. Rashawn and the people in his orbit were going about their lives, most likely not thinking about Brian Pada, until we began calling them up and asking questions. Rashon grew up in a small town in northern Florida called Lake City. Rashon's friend George Timmins describes the town this way.
It's just a little small country town. It's really not much of anything there. But you know, everybody's always everybody comes together for their sports. George grew up playing football with Rashawn from the age of eight or nine. We played for the Jaguars as a pop warner team. Like we was on teams together since we was little boys. Like we've been friends forever, it seemed like. Rishon was raised by his mother and grandmother.
George said he and Rashon would hang out at his grandmother's house. We always to go there, sit with her, talk to her. His grandmother was really she was like Rashawn's world. In high school, Rashawn became a nationally ranked cornerback. As he went into a senior year in Lake City, universities such as Tennessee, North Carolina, and Florida recruited him. But, like Brian, Rashawn chose the U. George also decided to play football at Miami.
I think me and him kinda went into together'cause we were like, you know, shoot, we boys, we been playing, let's just Go down here and do it together so it won't be like you alone. So we'll have each other as friends when we get down there, Miami. Roshan Jones recovers in the end zone for the touchdown.
Rashawn joined the Hurricanes in 2004, one year after Bryan. He played in about half the games in his first two seasons. Linebacker John Beeson came to Miami the same year as Rashawn and remembered him as a strong player. A guy could have been as good as anybody to play D B or return kicks. They're just a very, very talented dude.
But to fans and observers of the team, Rashon didn't really stand out. Even Nevin Shapiro, the Miami mega booster and self-proclaimed super fan, had no memory of Rashawn. So at the time, where was Rashawn Jones on your radar? Nowhere. Never met him my whole life. He wasn't a frontline guy. And I think he was an outsider for most. I don't I've never met him. I could if he was sitting here, I couldn't identify him.
We asked all the former Hurricanes players we spoke to what Rashawn was like at that time. He was just kind of uh in and out of trouble, like little stuff on campus, um, or with the team getting in trouble or suspended for games or whatnot and that Probably led to his demise as a University of Miami football player. At the U, Rashawn was remembered as an amazing athlete who didn't meet his full potential. He got in fights and received several suspensions.
But like Brian, he was also funny in a charming way, and he stood out as attractive, even on a campus full of young hot people. Sean was the good looking kid, man, he had a lot of girls, you know. The teeth, the the attitude, the The hair, the the dress. Now, bear in mind we spoke to a lot of team members, mostly friends of Brian's. We tried talking to more of Rashon's friends, but several of them turned down our interview request.
So our sample may have been a bit biased, but lots of players said versions of the same thing. Was Sha like kind of rub some people the wrong way? He's one of those cunning guys. He has a cunning look on his face all the time. He was a sleaze ball like that. That's all he really did when he was at UN was just, you know, trying to fuck girls. Like he wasn't trying to play football. You know what I mean?
Teammate Eric Houston told us that Rashawn's interest in women often seemed more important to Rashawn than football. These hookups were a point of friction with more than one of Rashawn's teammates. According to the police report and our interviews, Rashawn would go behind players' backs and hit on their girlfriend.
Willie Williams and Dave Howell both told police that Rashawn did this with the women they were dating at the time. Rashawn also allegedly went behind Brian's back to talk with his girlfriend, Jada Brody. He tried to mess with Jada while they were together. That's why they didn't like each other. Dan, you spoke to many of Brian's teammates. What did they tell you about his run ins with Rashawn?
So a lot of time has passed since they were all teammates. Details are kind of hard to confirm, but it was clear that Brian and Rashawn had several run-ins. One reason could have been because Brian's girlfriend Jada had at one point before dating Brian been involved with Rashawn. And when you say run ins, like did they just shout at each other? Were there fights? Like what what actually happened?
Again, these are hard to be exact about. The dates aren't always consistent. One was a locker room scuffle after Rashawn said something about Jada to Brian. We also heard about an argument they had in the cafeteria, also possibly about Jada, but that one wasn't physical. And then there's one significant fight which several people have told us about, including one of Brian's best friends, Eric Moncor. What did Eric tell you about that fight?
So according to Eric, he and Brian were returning to Eric's dorm room after an off-season summer workout. They get to the dorm room and the door is locked. But I see like, you know how the TV's on, you can see like on the ground. What the hell going on? So Brian and Eric go to another student's dorm room for a little while and they eventually come back. But now they see Rashon running down that hallway and Eric's door is just wide open. When they get to the room, there's porn playing on the TV.
Eventually Rashawn comes back, but now it's Eric and Brian and another teammate, Dave Howell, all three of them in the room. And Eric confronts Rashawn about being in his room. So I'm like, what the fuck are you doing in my room, bro? Like, don't do that no more, man. Like, you know what I'm saying? And... Brian just came out of nowhere. Like he he started getting a Rashawn face and then uh You know their argument escalated and then they started fighting. So Brian get on top of this dude.
head butts him five times. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. I dove in there, I grabbed Brian, threw Brian out, threw Rashawn out of the room. Then Rashawn was like, well you might as well go ahead and clip up. I was like, are y'all really finna like shoot each other right now over some some stupid stuff? To Eric, Rashawn saying clip up meant bring a gun next time. It was a threat. According to their teammate Chris Zellner, Brian and Rashon didn't get along afterwards.
They were kinda hanging out before that. You know what I'm saying? Like he would come over there talk like'cause Patty was friends with everybody. But I do remember after hearing that fight, they never they weren't like fucking cool after that. They fucking did not speak anymore. ESPN is now the home of MLB.tv. If you have the ESPN Unlimited Plan, you'll get a$15 discount on the 2026 C. And if you don't, no problem. When you sign up for M.
You'll receive a one-month free trial of ESPN Unlimited. Cancel any time without losing your MLB.tv access. That's stream. ESPN Unlimited Auto News at 20 minutes. promote that to free travel. Blackouts and other terms apply. Prosecutors talk about whether a suspect has motive, means, and opportunity for committing. From all the stories we'd heard, we knew that Brian and Rishon were at odds, and that it likely had something to do with Jada. That could have been a motive. What about the mean?
Brian was killed at close range with a handgun. Remember, before the 2006 season started, a shooting that involved two Hurricanes players led head coach Larry Coker to institute a no guns rule. A rule the players routinely broke. At least two of Rashawn's teammates.
say they saw him with a gun. Dave Howell told police that Rashawn threatened him with a gun, and his description of that gun could match the one used to kill Brian. Remember how police couldn't find a spent bullet casing at the crime scene? The gun Dave said Rashawn pointed at him was a revolver, meaning it wouldn't have left casings behind. And teammate Kareem Brown told police that Rashawn said he always carried a revolver, a thirty eight caliber handgun.
According to a detective's report, the medical examiner said a 38 was possibly the caliber of the bullet that killed Brian. So that could have been the mean. And what about opportunity? To establish that, we'd have to track Rashawn's movements as closely as possible on the day of the murder. On the morning of November 7, 2006, Rashon found out that he was suspended from the team for failing a drug test. He had marijuana in his system.
And so Rashawn wasn't at practice that day, which wouldn't have been unusual for a player who'd been suspended. None of the Miami players we spoke to knew where Rashawn was during that whole day and afternoon. Again, that might not have been so strange, if not for what happened that night.
I didn't know what it was, but they were like, no, it's important. Get here now. Get here now. Remember, immediately after Brian's murder, head coach Larry Coker called the whole team back to the Hecked Athletic Center for a mandatory team meeting. According to deposition testimony from a coach, a meeting like that would have included everyone on the team, even players who had been suspended.
From what we were told, all the players showed up for that meeting except Rashon. Everybody was looking for. Where's Rashawn? And the players noticed, including Chris Zellner. He was like, dude, the man kind of just went missing. Like where the fuck did he go? Like and then you kinda start looking back and like, yeah man, I I have really haven't seen that. He's gone. Yeah, he's gone. Like
I haven't seen him. So then it r you really start saying to yourself like, yo, did he could it could it really be? According to police, Rashawn initially told detectives that he had shown up for the team meeting, although later on, he said that he'd stayed at home. Either way, on the night of the murder, police say that Rashon made a phone call to another student athlete, a baseball player.
This call was overheard by an assistant chaplain on the football team named Che Scott. Producer Dan Aruda got in touch with Che to follow up on that lead. Hello Danny? Hey Chey, how are you man? I'm doing great. How are you? Good. Is this a good time to talk? What did you tell him about our story? I basically told him we were reporting on what had happened to Brian Paddock.
Scott didn't know we had been hearing rumors about Rashawn, and I definitely hadn't mentioned to him before that we knew about the overheard phone call. As you were talking to him, did that phone call come up? Yeah. After quite a bit of coaxing and reassuring, he eventually told me that the student athlete who had received the call Was a University of Miami baseball player named Mike Sanders. We got a phone call from another player.
who seemed a little bit shaky and nervous about something, but I'm sure there were a lot of people that were a little bit scared. that day. And today honestly I you'd have to go through a list of names of people for me to even tell you what the person's name. That's what that's what I'm trying to tell you. I couldn't even tell you the player's name. That pla that player was Rashawn Jones, is that right?
Yeah. Um yeah. And you know what, I'm actually getting a little bit uncomfortable with this whole thing. So it was reside, but I'm not gonna get in uh involved in any any anything else with this, honestly. So what happened after that? Well he wanted to end that conversation right then and there, but fortunately I got him to agree to meet me later for an unrecorded conversation face to face. And when you sat down with Scott, what did he tell you?
Chasecott told me that at the time he was roommates with another football player on the team. The night of Brian's murder, Mike Sanders comes by the apartment to check on the football player because news of Brian's death has been announced everywhere. So Mike comes by just to make sure that the player is okay. While Mike is in the apartment, Mike gets a call from Rashawn Jones. Che overhears this conversation, and it sounds like Rashawn is asking Mike for money.
I think Scott believed that Rashawn was trying to gather money up so he can get out of town. A lot of guys that night were worried for their own safety. Brian had been killed. No one knew who it was. Some of them thought maybe people are targeting University of Miami players. Now on the flip side of that, while a lot of players were worried about their safety,
Rashawn is the only one that doesn't return to the Hex Center that night. Chasecott was a chaplain. Uh, and so was Steve Caldwell. He was the other chaplain you talked to. Did Caldwell know about this phone call too? He didn't know about that specific call, but he had his own thoughts about Rashawn. What has stuck with me and has always been with me that Well, Sean has something to do with it. He was the only one that didn't show up to the team meeting that night.
Why didn't you show up? Everyone got the call. Everyone knew. At first, we wondered if maybe Rashon didn't get the call. That's because, according to the police, Rashon changed his cell number after Brian's death. So it's possible that coaches couldn't get a hold of him because they didn't have his new number. But Rashon's phone records seem to tell a different story.
They show that Rashawn got a new phone number around three PM, hours before Brian was killed, and at least one person on the football team had this new number. The log shows several calls with his teammate Bruce Johnson that night, and Rashawn would later admit to police that Bruce had told him about the meeting.
His phone records also confirmed that he called Mike Sanders' number around 10 p.m. And five minutes after that call ended, Rashawn placed two calls to an 800 number for Bank of America. That could be relevant because in the days before smartphones, one of the ways you could check your balance was to call the bank's automated number. Pastor Caldwell told us that he got a strange call that night, too, but not from Rashawn.
It came from Rashon's girlfriend at the time, Sherry Abramson. Sherry's brother Ross also played on the team, and Sherry was one of Caldwell's Bible study students. Sherry called me in like in a panic about Brian being dead and someone shot him and she immediately asked me is Rashawn there? She wanted to know if Rashawn was out there. Right. And I said, no, he's not here. And I think he was the only player that didn't show up. And and she was just freaking out about him.
And that's what I told the police. She was just acting real weird about where he was and, you know, worried about him. Yeah. When Sherry called you that.
Do you believe that she was worried for Rashawn's safety? At the time I thought she was worried about Rashawn's safety. Like somebody was trying to get at University of Miami players. It's like it you know I didn't pay attention to it at at that moment, but after dialing it back and then once the investigators started talking to me, it was like, Well well damn, you know.
Did she know something? Did she know that he was planning something like this? Or why was she so worried about his well being? And I asked myself that question. Objectively speaking, um, I think she was worried about something because she knew something. What I truly believe is that I think Sherry could shed more light. I think she could. So you knew that we wanted to talk to Sherry. How long did it take for you to get in touch with her? Sherry was my white whale for a while.
Our team always believed that if we were ever going to learn what happened to Rashan and his actions that night, Sherry was gonna be the key. It took more than a year of texts and calls to get her to go on the record with us. Hello? Hi Sherry, it's Dan. How are you? Hey, good. How are you? Good. It's now a good time. Uh, just give me a second.
And when you finally did get her, what'd she tell you about that night? On the night of Brian's murder, Sherry was actually working at Pottery Barn. I don't have good service there. So once I got out, my phone was going nuts. And I it was one of the other players that got me on the phone and the first thing he said was, Where is Rashawn? And I said, I don't know, I just got out of work, what's up? He said, I I need to find himself I'm like, okay, why? And they said somebody shot Pada.
I said, what's that have to do with Rashan? He said, Well he left practice'cause he got in trouble and he's the only one that we can't account for. And I said, I gotta go. And I called him a million times and I did not get a hold of him. What was your concern for Rashawn in that moment? Was he safe? Was he okay? And that was because a teammate had just been shot and he was the only one that they couldn't track down. Yeah, I mean w had he been shot too, I didn't know. Mhm.
Why wasn't he there that day? Do you remember that? Yeah, he tested positive again for marijuana. You said you tried him a bunch of times. Did it just w what happened when you called? Did we just go to voicemail or? Yeah, his phone's off. I called his grandmother. Maybe his sister. I called everybody asking had you heard from him? Is he okay have you heard from him? Nobody knew. So he finally called me a couple hours later. When you finally got a hold of him, how did that conversation go?
I said, Where the hell are you? What happened? He told me what happened, that he showed up for practice, he had another positive test. They told him that he'd gone. So he said he left. He shut his phone off. He was very upset and taking the time by himself to kind of process, you know, he knew we fucked up. So he spent that afternoon on his own, is what he told you. Yeah, that he was just driving around or that he went to go think or you know, it was something along the line.
Was that something he d did normally, just kind of go off by himself when things weren't going well, or was that abnormal for him on that day to do something like that? No, he loved going for drives alone. He would just go. He would go anywhere. He would go up ninety five just for a drive. He would go down Ocean Drive. He would just go. Always. He liked to smoke uh like a cigarette kind of a thing and just dry. is stupid music on, really loud. So it's not surprising to me.
It wasn't out of character. So we've spoken to someone who says Rashawn called another student athlete that night and was looking for money to get out of town. Does that ring a bell? Does that sound No. It doesn't. No. It doesn't seem accurate at all. Because what I do believe and maybe I'm a fool or something like that, if he needed money or somebody to help him get out of town it would have been me.
Did you tell him that evening what had happened to Brian? I didn't have to. He already knew. Do you know how he found out? Yeah, everyone was calling him. What was his reaction to finding out that Brian had been shot? It was shocked. He he knew it was fucked up. He couldn't believe it. What was their relationship like, Brian and Rashon? There wasn't a big relationship between the two. I mean it's not like they had like an outstanding feud. I mean they did get into it in the locker room one time.
But I mean that's all that it was. Did Rashawn at one point date Jada? I don't know. Date no. Could they have been talking, texting, something along those lines? Sure. And there wasn't a girl in Miami that he didn't. mm talked to at one point. Rashon. Yeah. Do you think that could have been the friction between them that Rashon at one point was hooking up with Jada? Sure. I wouldn't doubt it. I wouldn't be surprised. It wouldn't shock me.
Did he tell you why he didn't end up going back to the hex center that night? Uh no. I don't recall. When was the next time you saw him? I don't recall. Probably that night. Did he come o to your place do you think? Always, yeah. Was Rashon worried for his safety that night? You know I don't know. I think he was trying to stay under the radar.
A lot of people were assuming that he had something to do with it, so I think he just wanted to stay kinda quiet. So you think even that first night people were pointing fingers at Rashawn? I think in the first minute people were pointing fingers at Rashad. See that's the thing that surprised us. Like if you say that they didn't have a terrible relationship I don't understand why people would point fingers at Rashawn right away.
I don't know, I mean I can tell you over the course of our relationship he was never somebody that like flashed guns around and we never ha to my knowledge ever had a gun on him. Did he have a gun? Possibly. Had I ever seen it in a year the couple of years they were together? No. Was his reaction to Brian's murder more sorrow for Brian or scared that this could be more than just Brian? I think it was a mixture of the bowl. He definitely seemed genuinely upset that Pada was dead.
I mean there were no tears shed w in front of me. But I mean there was no celebration either. He didn't like Patta. There's no secret there. They did not like each other. Did it ever was there ever anything that would have justified him murdering him? No. Nothing that I ever knew of. So a a motive of he was so upset that he had been kicked off the team and he had to take his anger out on somebody and Brian was the closest person that he could think of. What was I'll never believe that.
Why not? I'll never ever believe that. Because Pada had n Pada had nothing to do with him testing positive again. Nothing. And if you're asking me point blank do I think that he did it, the answer is no. I don't. Do I think he can ever pull the trigger on anybody just to take someone's life? I don't know. There's some people that I would tell you sure. Yeah. It just isn't him.
He was his grandma's boy. You know, like he wasn't raised by tough guys. He was raised by, you know, his grandmother and then his mom. So it's not like he was raised with, you know, like thugs and you know in a violent household. He wasn't. I mean I might be one of the only ones that you talk to that can't this, but I mean
I don't think that Rashawn had anything to do with it. I think that the timing was unbelievably coincidental in a terrible way. Just don't think he has it in him to be a killer. Really don't. Well I I think you hit it on the head, Cher. I think the reason so many people are able to believe so easily is because that window that Brian was murdered. Yeah. Was when he was missing. Yeah. On a horrible day for him. I see that. I understand that.
So Sherry's version of events is that this is just an really terrible coincidence for Rashawn. That's right. She believes if Rashawn had been with her or with anyone else Sherry Abramson could be right about Rashawn's innocence, but some of what she told us doesn't line up with the information we have from Rashawn's phone record. They show that Sherry and Rashon were in touch a number of times that night, starting before Brian's death at seven PM.
And there's no evidence of a missed call from Sherry after news of the murder had started to spread. Instead, he called her twice around seven forty five. Sherry apparently didn't pick up. Then Sherry called Rashawn back at 8 30. That call lasted twelve minutes. We asked Sherry about these discrepancies, but she didn't remember it playing out that way. Still, the fact of the matter is that Sherry said she didn't think Rashawn could have done it, and she wasn't the only one.
I feel like the whole situation, it it really got blown out of proportion. This is Rashawn's childhood best friend and roommate, George Timmins, again. He refers to Rashon by his nickname Rick. I don't think Rick did it. I really don't. I believe Pater w was ki sometime he had a issue. He had spurts to being a bully sometime. And I feel like he messed with the wrong person outside in the street.
And somebody it was somebody but I like say I personally did not I don't see Rashawn doing that. Rashawn would never I let my personal opinion. And uh like Padder had a lot of enemies. We talked to another friend of Rashawn's about that night, a fellow UM student named Trish Morgan. Trish was also very close with Brian. They'd known each other since they were fourteen years old. She says they were actually distantly related.
We never like ran down our lineage, but we we have a cousin in common, so we always said that we were related on my mom's side. Trish was so close to Brian and Jada that after the murder, Jada came to live with her for a while. Dan spoke to Trish in twenty nineteen. When he asked whether she'd heard the rumors about Rashawn's involvement in the murder, she said she couldn't imagine it. I would never in a million years.
a million years. Like Rashawn was one of my closest friends, um, at Miami. I don't see Rashawn committing murder. Trish, what was he like? Describe Rashawn back then. So I mean I can describe him now. I I saw him and his wife a couple months ago. They came to Atlanta. He's funny. He is hilarious. He was always a good friend to me. Um and I thought he was a good friend um to Brian. I don't maybe you know something that I don't know since you hear this rumor.
After Brian's death, life went on for the hurricanes. The team didn't skip any of its scheduled games. Head coach Larry Coker explained that decision in a press conference. Players expressed the opinion they wanted to do what they felt like Brian Patter would want to do. They felt like Brian would want to practice. They felt like Brian would want to play. And so they uh that's uh that's a decision that we've respected and I think it's the right decision.
Life went on for Rashawn, too. His drug suspension lasted two weeks. He returned to the roster by Miami's next home game, which was on Thanksgiving. That was the game where the team gathered around a banner of Brian to pay tribute to him. Thank you. Slaying hurricane teammate, a banner that fans made and the team gathering around it at midfield. What a moment. Miami fights from behind. Grieving one of their own.
Players are kneeling in what looks like prayer, some are holding hands. Almost all of them have their eyes closed. But now one player sticks out, Rashawn Jones. There are almost a hundred players on this team, but somehow he's made it to the front row. He's on one knee, looking down at Brian's face on the banner, arm in arm with his teammates. Knowing the rumors that were swirling around the team at that time, that photo started to look very different to us.
Dan, did other players on the team say that they thought Rashawn might have been involved? We ended up speaking with more than 20 players over those first few years of reporting. Some said yes, it wouldn't surprise them. Eric Moncour actually said the rumor started the night of the murder. So none of you guys after Brian's death ever thought to yourselves or talked amongst each other and said, I wonder if Rashawn did it. Yeah. You guys did? Yeah.
Did all the players you talked to have that reaction? No, not at all. Some said they couldn't imagine one teammate killing another. It was just too hard for them to believe. I talked to Josh Holmes about a month after interviewing Eric Moncor. Josh was one of the freshmen that Brian gave a lift to the dorms earlier that night. This is the first time I've ever heard that, to be honest with you. Yep. Yeah, it's the third time I've Somebody say somebody on our teams possibly to
I talked to Randy Phillips, who was a sophomore defensive back on that O six team, and he reacted the same way. Rashon. I don't even think Rashawn was down here at that time, was he? Yeah. I mean I never heard that. You never heard that? That's the first time I ever heard that. What about the coaches? Had they heard these rumors about Rashawn? To my knowledge, no coaches had ever admitted to hearing rumors about Rashawn.
I asked Coach Heard about it, and he says he was surprised to hear any kind of rumor like that. The family has a theory about what happened. They believe that Rashawn Jones had something to do with it. What is your reaction to that? I was not under the impression that their relationship was that bad. that they had that strongly would dislike from one another.
You know, I heard stories about, you know, that those two had issues and they didn't get along, but I never heard it be or like a relationship that was so bad that it could ever go to that. So I would just be shocked if I don't have an opinion on this. If I think that's the case or not, I have no idea. But when I spoke to Ed Hudak, that Coral Gables police officer who worked security for the Canes, He said he had discussed that very possibility with head coach Larry Coker.
His name came across my desk talking with Coach Coker and things like that and some things that he was dealing with because I'm not privy to all the stuff, what h his performance issues were. But there was a very strong sentiment that uh you know, he had something to do with it. When that was brought up to me by the players I made sure that the detectives had that and what came of those leads I don't know. Do you remember how the coaching staff reacted to that possibility?
Um I think some of them bought into it. Uh some of them, you know, said nah it wouldn't happen or you would get that well if it was any of our guys, that kind of thing. How do you interpret what Ed Hudak just said when he goes, if it was any of our guys? I took it as if anyone on the team could be suspected of something like this, it would be Rashawn.
How did the team feel about having Rashawn around with all of these rumors swirling? Pastor Steve Caldwell told me it was weird. This was something that was a hard thing to discuss. Because I believe everyone thought I ain't gonna say say everyone, that's absolute, but a lot of people thought we had a killer mom. That's what blows me away. Is that he was allowed he was allowed to return and be with the team with this cloud of suspicion over him. But what do you do as a coach?
When you you you have no substantiated proof. So you you go to what they say, innocent until proven guilty. And so that's how you operate as a coaching staff. Early on in his reporting, Dan spoke with head coach Larry Coker. He wanted to ask Coker directly about the Rashon theory. I'm working with the family on this and I've interviewed his mom and his brothers and sisters and and they have a a theory that there was someone involved in his shooting that was involved with the team.
Would that surprise you if that was true? Yes. It would. Why why would it surprise you? I just don't believe it. You don't believe it's possible that anyone that had some kind of affiliation with the team was capable of something like that? Oh I don't believe it it's possible though. I don't believe it. I don't believe it happened that way. What do you believe happened? I don't know. I don't know.
No I thought he was trashed for murder. Whether Coker believed it happened or not, the rumors were out there. They were swirling among Brian's closest friends and family, and had found their way to the police. Dave Howell had his own history with Rashawn and had witnessed the fight between Rashawn and Brian in the dorm room. He remembered the police asking him about whether that could have been a motive.
I told him, I said no. I didn't think that it would go that far, but like I told them, I said, which you never know because you don't really know the inside of a individual. But it's like I told them then, I said, I don't I I don't see him Taking it there. But others did, and their suspicions were still running high when Dan interviewed them. I don't know if he can come to a UM function. Really?
Kareem Brown was a defensive lineman in the same year as Brian. Dan spoke to him in twenty eighteen. Do you think Rashawn knows that people think he may have something to do with? Of course you do. Oh he's not stupid. And I don't think he would come and just like, hey, I'm in Miami, guys. Like, I don't think he would do that. Because who knows what would happen from that.
Here's what we'd learned about Rashawn. He had a series of conflicts with Brian. He would have known the hurricane's practice schedule and what time Brian would arrive home, and teammates said he owned a gun. No one could vouch for where he was at the time that Brian was killed. And he'd called a friend reportedly asking for money to get out of town.
When we finally reviewed Rashawn's phone records, we noticed the call logs were only from the number activated that afternoon and nothing from before. When we asked the state attorney's office about that omission, they declined to provide any information. On the call logs we did have, we saw that he'd made or received fifty-six calls after Brian died.
Four of those calls were with Trish Morgan, who was friends with both Rashawn and Bryant. Five were with his family back in Lake City. Eight were with his teammate Bruce Johnson. And sixteen were with Sherry. But there's one notable gap in Rashawn's call log. For one hour, between 6.40 and 7.40 p.m., there were no calls in or out. The one hour all night that Rashawn's phone wasn't active was the time of Brian's murder.
According to the police report, there were no eyewitnesses to the shooting. No murder weapon was ever found. There wasn't any security camera footage, and there was no record of any physical evidence linking Rashawn to the crime. The entire case against Rashawn Jones appeared circumstantial. But then there's this. A piece of evidence we learned about only in our final interview with detectives.
There was an individual who saw a black male running away from the scene, uh, who's a resident in that apartment complex. And uh he's cooperating with the investigation. And he's still uh at this point we can't disclose his identity because he's still an active witness in this case. When we heard this, I felt like a cartoon character with an exclamation point going off over my head.
It's still unclear what prompted police to finally disclose this information after five interviews and two years of conversations, but we were grateful for it. We'd eventually learn more about this witness and what he told the police. He didn't witness the shooting itself, but he saw someone leaving the colony apartments on foot. He would later identify Rashon as the person he saw.
Throughout our reporting, we'd hoped to get Rashawn's side of the story. Remember, it had been twelve years since Rashon had talked to the police about Brian's case. We knew we might get only one chance to talk to Rashawn. So we wanted to wait until we had done enough reporting and knew exactly what questions to ask. In the spring of 2019, Dan finally got Rashawn on the phone.
Rashawn didn't want the phone call to be recorded, so after they hung up, Dan filled in the rest of us on a conference call. Welcome to the Walt Disney Company Conference Center. Enter your conference code. Thank you. You will now be placed in conference. Time is on. Stand here. Danny, what do you got? It's not good, unfortunately. Um I spoke to Rashawn twice in the last half an hour. Uh the first time we got cut off. Uh he is pretty adamant that he will not be taking part in our story.
Um Rashon's feelings are this has been over for twelve years. The police didn't follow up with their after their initial interview. This is over and done with. This is a part of his life that he doesn't want to go back to. He sees absolutely no reason Uh and nothing good that can come from sitting down and talking to us. He said himself, if God Almighty came down and asked me to sit down, I would not do it. Did he say why? He just doesn't see any reason to do it. Um
he he says he d had nothing to do with it and nothing he can say is going to change anyone's mind and he doesn't care what anybody thinks of him anyway. Did he say anything about possibly being a suspect? All he said was that I talked to the police twelve years ago, that I talked to them, Sherry talked to them, and they never I never heard from them again, so obviously I'm not a suspect, or else I would have been arrested.
I mean, I gotta admit, it innocent or not, like either way, I mean it's not wrong. It's not uh it's uh Everyone's got a lot of things. It makes sense that he wouldn't want to. Stop, stop. Rashawn is calling me. I'll call you back in a minute. Okay. About twenty minutes later, Dan came back onto the conference call. Uh wow. You guys all still there? Yep. What do we know? So it wasn't Rashawn, it was his wife. And we just had one doozy of a conversation.
Obviously Rashawn is a bit freaked out about all this at this point and he called his wife and she decided to call me to try and figure out what's going on. So I explained to her as best I could what we were doing, why we were doing it. I tried to make it clear as I did to Rashon that we're not out to get anybody, that we o have no agenda, that we're trying to do our diligence as journalists. and allowing him to give us his side of the story.
And she uh just like he said there is no his side, he didn't do anything, the police spoke to him once, he was never arrested, there's no side of the story. She said, you know, it's gotta be his decision or whatever he decides I will back him on. Rishon decided not to sit down for an interview with us, nor would his wife. After all, it had been over a decade.
He knew the police had looked closely at him years ago, but nothing came of it. Why would he talk to a group of reporters about this case when it had all happened so long ago? But once we began asking questions, the sense that all of this was firmly in the past began to unravel. And if Rashawn thought that the Miami Dade police no longer considered him a suspect, that confidence would turn out to be very misguided. Does MDPD know who killed Brian Pada?
Yeah, we have a strong uh belief as to who's responsible for his death. That's next time on Murder at the U. Murder at the U is based on reporting by me, Paula Levine, and Dan Aruda, with support from Scott Frankel, Elizabeth Merrill, and ESPN's investigative unit. Our senior producer is Matt Frasica. Our senior editorial producer is Preeti Varathon. Our associate producers are Megan Coyle and Gus Devaro.
Story editing by Adiza Egan. Additional editing by Ben Weber and Mike Drago. Our archival producer is Matthew Fisher. Our line producer is Kath Sankey. Production managers are Jason Schwartz and Sheena Williams. Fact checking by David Sabino. Original music and sound design by Ryan Ross Smith. Chris Buckle is Vice President of ESPN Investigative, Enterprise, and Digital Journalism. Marcia Cook, Brian Lockhart, Heather Anderson, and Burke Magnus are executive producers for 30 for 30.