Welcome back to the Pathway Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules.
And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.
April third, two thousand and four, Laucine, Kansas, While attending a party at a farmhouse, twenty three year old Alonso Brooks vanishes without a trace, and his body is discovered on the banks of a nearby creek. Nearly one month later, well, a forensic pathologist is unable to determine Alonzo's exact cause of death, rumors start circulating that he was a victim of a hate crime before his body was placed at
that location. In twenty twenty one, after Alonzo's body is exhumed and given a new autopsy, it is announced that his death has officially been reclassified as a homicide, but there are still no conclusive answers about how he was killed.
After that, the path went Chile. So this week we're going to be exploring a case which was featured on the Netflix reboot of Unsolved Mysteries, the two thousand and four Unexplained Death of Alonzo Brooks, or I guess we can now officially call it the Murder of Alonzo Brooks. This is the story of the young man who went missing after attending a party at a farmhouse in rural Kansas, before his body was discovered on the banks of a
nearby creek nearly one month later. While Alonzo's exact cause of death cannot be determined, there was no direct evidence of foul play, but since Alonzo was one of the only persons of color attending this party in a predominantly white area, the authorities did explore the possibility that he
was the victim of a hate crime. There was also some controversy over the fact that the area where Alonzo's body was found had been extensively searched during the twenty seven day period he was missing, leading to speculation that
someone planted his body there at a later time. It's now been over five years since the Unsolved Mysteries Netflix reboot was launched, and a number of their episodes have featured cases where a victim's death was officially ruled to be a suicide or an accident, but their loved ones were certain that they had been murdered and were seeking justice.
One of the biggest criticisms the reboot has received is that it has often been accused of twisting its narratives and leaving out key details about these stories which do point towards the death being suicide or an accident after all. However, the Alonzo Brooks case may be the exception to this, because shortly after the Unsolved Mysteries episode aired, his body was exhumed for a new autopsy and new evidence was uncovered, which led the authorities to officially reclaimed sify his death
as a homicide. Of course, this took place just over four years ago, and there have not been any new developments in the investigation since then, but at the very least, we now know that there is an actual crime to solve and a perpetrator or perpetrators to bring to justice. The details of how Alonso was killed and how his body wound up on the banks of that creek are still unclear, so we're going to have a lot to analyze on this episode.
This is so interesting, especially when you talk about the fact that there was a twenty seven day period that he was missing and then his body finally shows up in a place where it was extensively already searched, and he was still ruled a suicide or an unknown death originally.
Just an accidental death like they thought then he might have been intoxicated and passed out, so they did not initially suspect foul play, but in recent years they have officially reclassified it as a homicide.
Yeah, that's really interesting because if they had extensively searched that and this body shows up twenty seven days later, and you say, well, I bet he was intoxicated and stumbled off and passed away, there would be so many question marks of how did he get there and was he intoxicated For twenty seven days, I'm assuming people didn't really raise suspicion about that search not resulting in a body, and then twenty seven days later it just happened to
turn up. But that seems like an incredible red flag to me. That says he didn't just stumble away that night, or he would have been easily located.
As we're going to talk about, this area was extensively searched, and it seems like a weird coincidence that when Alonzo's family decided to perform their own independent search of the property, that's when the body magically turns up, which questions wasn't really there the whole time?
This one really stuck with me when I saw it on Unsolved Mysteries, and I think, Ashley, it's going to stick with you if you haven't already seen it, just because of so many bizarre elements and the fact that Alonzo was a black man, and how a lot of the people that he was dealing with that evening were white, and so there's a race element that kind of underscores this entire case.
Actually, I know you've watched the Unsold Mysteries reboot. Do you recall watching this episode?
I vaguely remember, I think seen an episode. I want to say he was wearing a flannel shirt walking up to the house party or something like that, But I don't remember this case in the specifics. I really don't remember a body not being discovered for twenty seven days. That alone would raise hairs on the back of my neck. But I want to say I might have watched it, but I surely don't recall the specifics.
Our story begins in Kansas in two thousand and four, and our central figure is twenty three year old Alonzo Brooks. Alonzo was born in Tapika to an African American father, Billy Brooks Sor and Mexican mother, Maria Ramirez. He was the youngest of their five children and described as being a quote surprise baby since he was born many years
after his brother and three sisters. At some point, Billy Senior and Maria got divorced and she got remarried and moved to the town of Gardner, while Alonzo remained into Peka and worked with his father until he was in his early twenties. He ultimately decided to relocate to Gardner and move in with his mother and got a job as a custodian for a stepfather's janitorial company. Alonzo was always described as a home body who loved spending time
with his family. While he was a bit shy, he was also known for being a very nice person who got along with everyone and never caused any trouble. On the evening of April third, Alonzo and his circle of friends made plans to attend a party, as one of them was leaving to join the military and they wanted to celebrate his departure. The party would take place at a rural farmhouse on Highway K one fifty two just outside Lacene, a small town located in Lynn County with
a population of around one thousand, one hundred people. Lucene is forty seven miles south of Gardner, so the group of friends would travel to party in separate vehicles, and since Alonzo did not drive, he hitched a ride with a friend named Justin Sprague. Before he left, Alonzo told his mother that he would return home later that night, but this would turn out to be the last time
she ever saw him alive. When Alonzo and his friends arrived at the farmhouse for the party, they apparently thought it would only be a small gathering, but throughout the course of the evening, it's believed that upwards of one hundred people showed up and trickled in and out of there. The attendees appeared to be between the ages of sixteen and twenty five, and while Alonzo and his friends recognized a few of them from Gardner, they did not know
most of the people. Regardless, everyone described Alonzo as being more outgoing than usual at the party, as he drank a lot of alcohol and appeared to be having a great time. However, one of Alonzo's friends, Daniel Boone, would later describe an incident in which he noticed that Alonzo had gotten into an argument with enough partygoer until Daniel managed to intervene and pull Alonzo away before the confrontation could get physical.
Okay, so we know a couple things are going on here. There's a lot of people that they do not know at this party. Like you said, it's also Alonzo stands out. He's the only black man who's there and there's one hundred people in this very white farm ruled town. So are there people at that party who are not welcoming of Alonzo? There's a high possibility of that. Is there also the idea that this person who he gets into a fuss with wants to get revenge or wants to
retaliate against him. What do we know about Justin and Daniel. They're the two buddies who are mentioned just a second ago. Justin drove him and Daniel is the one helping intervene in this fight. Did either of them get concerned at the end of the night when they couldn't find Alonzo. He didn't drive, so they had to know that he couldn't get home without them.
Well, I'm going to start talking about that momentarily. But Daniel, Justin and another friend of theirs named Tyler would be interviewed on the Unsolved Mystery segment, and they provide more details, and it sounds like there was just kind of a horrible miscommunication that happened where they assumed that Alonzo was going to get a ride with somebody else, but it didn't happen, and then at one point he just seemed
to vanish without a trace. And that's the big mystery is what ultimately happened to him and why did he not turn up until twenty seven days later. So, like I just said, when the case was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, Daniel Foon and another friend of Alonzo's named Tyler Bogard agreed to be interviewed. They both discussed leaving the party at different points throughout the night and saying goodbye to Alonzo, but said there appeared to be nothing out of the
ordinary when they last saw him. Alonzo was supposed to get a ride home with Justin Sprague, but when the two friends both ran out of cigarettes, Justin offered to step out and drive somewhere in order to buy some. There's been a lot of dispute about what happened next, and we'll discuss this in more detail later on in the episode, but for now, here's the version of events
that Justin shared during his interview on Unsolved Mysteries. According to Justin, after he drove away from the farmhouse, he took a wrong turn on some gravel roads and got lost until he wound up getting his car stock about thirty minutes away from Lacine. Since Justin did not want to go to the trouble of finding his way back to the farmhouse, he used his cell phone to call
another friend of his at the party named Adam. Justin wanted Adam to tell Alonzo that he had got lost, and Justin said that he could even hear Alonzo joking about it in the background. Justin said that Adam promised him he would give Alonzo a ride home, but for reasons that are still not entirely clear, this never took place. It seems like Alonzo and Adam lost track of each other or there may have been a miscommunication of some sort,
but Adam wound up leaving without him. Media outlets at the time reported that a fight took place at the party, sometimes between two and three am on the morning of April the fourth, though it could not be confirmed if Alonzo was involved. In it. They reported that the last time a lot was seen with some time between three and four am, But what actually happened to him would become a major unsaw mystery.
Do you know if that fight that they described was the same one that Daniel Fune would say had happened with Alonzo that he had to break up.
I don't think so, because this took place a couple hours after Daniel already left, when apparently none of Alonso's friends with there, and Alonzo should have been the only one still there, but it's unclear if he was nearby when this fight took place.
Interesting, okay, And we know that Justin wasn't even at the party, so he's excluded from this. Adam is the one who says he would take Alonzo home. But we've all been at a party where friend says like, now, man, leave me, I'm going to hang out some more. No, man, I got another guy who will take me home, and you leave right against your better judgment. But we're assuming all the friends have nothing to do with this since they participated. I'm sure they were cleared by police as well.
Yeah, I know we're going to talk about it later on that some details about Justin's story would have changed, but it does sound like he has a pretty solid alibi which shows that he was nowhere near the house when Alonzo disappeared. And even though these friends have gotten a lot of criticism on social media and read it for leaving Alonzo behind, I do not believe they were covering anything up more involved than his death. And I think they genuinely have no idea what happened to him.
And I think sometimes when stories change, we have to question why. And it's not always because they're hiding some
kind of guilty knowledge. I think it's sometimes, in maybe the case of Justin here that he received criticism or people had come up with points like places in his story where they're trying to poke holes, and so he's trying to assuage any objections and edit his story ever so slightly, and that could come off as being deceptive when he's just trying to appear a certain way when he thinks that people are saying like, oh, he could be guilty or he could have something to do with that.
Yeah, And I think that's what happened, because as we're going to talk about, he was probably driving drunk that night and doing stuff he wasn't supposed to, so I can see him being motivated to change his story a bit to pain himself in the best possible light, But that doesn't mean that he was complicit in Alonzo's death.
So later that morning, one of Alonzo's friends called his residence and spoke to his mother. Maria had assumed that Alonzo returned home in the middle of the night, but when she checked his room, she discovered that Alonzo was not there and his bed had clearly not been slept in. Alonzo's friend suggested that he might have spent the night at someone else's house, but Maria immediately became concerned, since he was out of character for him to do this
without contacting her. When Maria called Alonzo's other friends, she could not find anyone who could confirm having given him a ride from the party, and no one seemed to know where he was. This prompted Justin and some of Alonzo's other friends to drive back to Lacine. They were also joined by Rodney English, a childhood friend of Alonzo's from Topeka who had not attended the party who was
concerned about his absence. They proceeded to perform a search of the area surrounding the farmhouse, but could not find any trace of Alonzo. A long driveway separated the house from the highway, and while looking around there, Rodney came across Alonzo's hat and one of his boots in the ditch across the road. It wasn't long before Rodney found Alonzo's other boot in a ditch on the opposite side
of the road, several feet away. Since these items were lying out in the open, it did not appear that anyone had made an attempt to conceal them, and Rodney suspected that they were thrown from a moving vehicle. While Rodney and the rust of Alonzo's friends attempted to continue their search, a man driving an ATV suddenly showed up
and told them to leave the property. While this was going on, Maria attempted to contact the police and file a missing person's report for Alonzo, but was told that she would have to wait at least forty eight hours.
Oh goodness, that is so frustrating. I totally understand why they say that, but it's incredibly upsetting when you think about the circumstances here and Maria saying, my son told me he was going to be home. He never didn't show up. His friends said that he was coming home, and he never showed up. And then you find the boots scattered in these different places in his hat. I mean, could someone be intoxicated and be silly and be in the back of someone's truck or something and just throw
their shoes off. Maybe, But when you look at the fact that these boots are dispersed these two different areas and his hat's missing, I wonder if that sent off alarm belts automatically. My first default would not be some intoxicated kid just got rid of these things. Where's he going to walk without his boots? How's he going to get anywhere without his shoes on? Because if you're in rural farmland, you're sure not wanting to walk without shoes
for miles or to get somewhere. I would have immediately said, this doesn't seem right. They're in different.
Location, yeah, exactly, because I could see someone becoming drunk enough to toss off their boots just as a lark. But obviously they're not going to go very far without them walking. So it makes you think either he left in a vehicle with someone else. But if that's the case where is he because he doesn't really know anyone from the area, and none of his friends gave him a ride home, so that's why they were immediately concerned that it was probably someone else who tossed them from
a moving vehicle to dispose of evidence. On April the fifth, Alonzo's brother Billy Brooks Junior and sister in law Cindy decided to travel to the farmhouse in Lacene. They learned that the house was a rental and the tenants were four men in their twenties who were not from the area, but the place was empty when Billy and Cindy arrived. The identities of these four men have never been released publicly, but it's been reported that they were evicted from the
house a short time after Alonzo went missing. Billy and Cindy tried searching through Lacene and the surrounding area for Alonzo, but cannot find him. No notice that they seemed to draw suspicious looks from the local residents. They finally decided to travel to nearby Mound City in order to pay a visit to the Lynn County Sheriff's office. Billy and Cindy both spoke with Sheriff Marvin Stites, who did not seem overly concerned about Alonzo's disappearance and said that he
was probably just quote unquote out walking around. Well. Needless to say, Billy and Cindy did not believe this, since both of Alonzo's boots were found lying in separate ditches, and he had recently suffered an ankle injury while playing basketball, which made it difficult for him to walk long distances.
In spite of this, the sheriff's office did eventually agree to open a missing person's investigation for Alonso, and on April the seventh, they turned the case over to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation aka the KBI.
Yeah, when you look here and you have this idea that he had recently suffered this ankle injury. So in addition to you're in a place you don't know, you're in a rural area. This isn't like, oh, we have these nice sidewalks, you know, and these really lovely places to walk. No, he is miles away from where he's supposed to be, he doesn't know anybody there, and he has an injury, and you're telling me that this is just some drunk kiddo that stumbles away and gets lost
and passes away because of it. Immediately it says, that's not what happened. I don't like the idea that race could play a role here. You have people who are ignorant and drinking and doing things that you know puts you in a heightened level. He's already getting into fusses with people at this party that he does not know. And again with drug with you know, alcohol and maybe
drugs being present. What does that do and how does that amp up people to feel pretty empowered to do whatever they want, especially when Alonzo's friends leave him and he's isolated and alone.
And that's the thing is Alonso is a stranger. He's not from the area, so the majority of people at that party wouldn't have known him before and may have just had an issue with the fact that a black man showed up there. And if he doesn't have his friends around to protect him, I'm sure the thinking that he could have gotten himself into some trouble if he was alone.
And correct me if I'm wrong, Robin, And maybe we're going to talk about this later. But wasn't it in the original? Not the original? It's the reboot of Unsolved Mysteries. But when they talked about the boots, wasn't a big deal made about the fact that the boots were found because I think his mom or somebody else had said something along the lines of these are the only footwear that he wears. He even plays basketball in these boots.
They might have. I don't recall that specific thing, but apparently they were very distinct. So they're thinking to themselves that if he's just leaving these laying around in a rural area, that's just not something that he would do. So that's why the instantly thought that something bad might happen to him.
Well, rumors started circulating throughout the area that Alonzo's disappearance might have been race related, as Lucine was a predominantly white area and Alonzo was only one of three persons of color who had attended the party that night. Some witnesses would claim that after Alonzo's friends left the party, a number of racial slurs and threats started getting tossed around.
Alonzo was supposedly seen flirting with a white girl, which may have escalated some tensions, and one witness would claim they overheard someone say that Alonzo quote won't get out of here alive. Even though Alonzo was known for being an easygoing guy, his friends believed that he was capable of getting mad and starting a fight if someone used
a racial slur in his presence. For this reason, the KBI brought in the FBI to assist them with their investigation and look into the possibility that Alonzo may have been the victim of a hate crime. They conducted hundreds of interviews with witnesses who attended the party and extensively questioned Alonzo's friends who went there with him that night.
So for me, when you talk about the friends, like you said they had left, at that point, there was confirmation that these friends had been in communication with one another that they had left. I was originally suspicious when Justin says he turned the wrong way, got lost and stuck. But then when you said that he called back and asked for people to help organize Alonzo getting home, and he could even hear Alonzo being silly in the background. It really relieved a lot of worry I had about
Justin being involved. And immediately all of the friends side with Maria and they say we need to go back and help you look for him. So there's no attempt to separate themselves from Alonso, there's no attempt to deny what happened. There, seeming to be pretty forthcoming and wanting to be a part of helping find him as well.
The issue with a lot of the information we just shared is that it does sound like it's hearsay, because the only people who agreed to be interviewed on Unsolved Mysteries were Alonzo's friends, who left before a lot of these alleged incidents took place. But I yet to see any interviews where someone has gone on the record and said that, yeah, I saw someone use a racial slur with Alonzo, or I saw Alonzo flirting with a white girl.
So even though we're hearing a lot of this information thirdhand, I'm not entirely sure if it's true or if it's verified, and if these incidents actually happened. So that's one of the most frustrating elements of this case is that we really don't have too many first hand accounts of what happened to Alonzo after his friends left the party.
And because there is racial tension, or there is a potential or illusion that there could have been racial tension, there also could have been assumptions made by people that became these truths that they start to tell as well, because they're thinking, like, what could have motivated this, what
could have driven this? And if race becomes part of the conversation, I could see people recalling things that maybe didn't even happen or didn't happen at that specific event, and feeling like those were factual.
A large search effert was performed at the area, and even though the farmhouse was mostly surrounded by fields, there was also a large stream of water called Mill Creek located about two hundred and fifty feet away. On April the twelfth, the Lee's Summit Underwater Rescue and Recovery team were brought into search the creek as the water was only about three feet deep, but they failed to turn
up any trace of Alonzo. While this was going on, the Brooks family constantly phoned the Lynn County Sheriff's office for updates, but were eventually told to stop contacting them because they were busy quote unquote working on things. Since the search effort was coming up empty, the Brooks family wanted to perform their own search of the property surrounding the farmhouse, but After the request was repeatedly denied for weeks,
Sheriff's Tits finally granted them permission to do so. On May the eleventh, twenty seven days after Alonzo was last seen. Alonzo's friends and relatives started searching the property alongside around fifty volunteers. Well only about a half hour after they started. Some of the search volunteers started heading towards a white shed on the property, but while cutting through some brush in order to clear a path, they suddenly came across
Alonzo's body on the banks of Middle Creek. It was lying on top of a pile of debris, and aside from his missing boots, Alonzo was fully clothed. Investigators from the KBI and the FBI were quickly summoned to the scene to recover his body.
Okay, two questions. Do we know if he was wearing the same clothes that he was wearing the night.
Of the party? I think so, yes, Okay.
And then when you look at this idea that they had to cut down brush before they found him. Originally we said that this had been extensively searched. If they're having to cut brush down, do you think that he was just well placed inside that brush and that's why nobody found him.
I'm not entirely sure because I just made mention of the Least Summit Underwater Rescue and Recovery team who searched this creek, and they were the ones who are adamant that if Alonzo's body had been there the entire time, they believed that they would have found it the first
time around. And I know that people miss bodies during search efforts all the time, but this wasn't a particularly big creek and it was only like three feet worth of water, And because this was a professional search team, I do find questionable that they would have missed Alonzo's body. And it just seems weird to me that once Alonzo's family started performing their own search, they find them within a half hour.
Really interesting fun fact. I have two friends that have served on the Least Summit Underwater Recovery Team before. They are deep sea divers and they're really big in a scuba diving and things like that, and so when they got the opportunity, they actually served on it for several years. So they do amazing work and it's a lot of volunteers who are doing incredible things and helping a lot of families, so very very interesting.
Alonzo's autopsy would be performed by doctor Eric Mitchell, a forensic pathologist who was Douglas County's coroner at the time. Doctor Mitchell was unable to determine Alonzo's exact cause of death, as his post mortem examination turned up no broken bones or fractures, no penetrating injuries, no sign of blunt force trauma,
and no gunshot or stab wounds. Mitchell could not rule out the possible ability that strangulation may have occurred, as the soft tissues of Alonzo's neck had been decomposed and damaged by animals and insects, and even though there was no water in Alonzo's lungs, Mitchell could not completely dismiss the idea that he drowned, but since there was no direct evidence of foul play, Alonzo's cause of death was
officially ruled to be undetermined. Since Alonzo had been drinking at the party, one potential theory was that he became so intoxicated that he wandered away from the farmhouse towards Middle Creek before he passed out and died of exposure. While Mitchell could not say with any certainty that Alonzo's death was accidental, he did believe that the evidence found on his body was consistent with having been out there
on the banks of the creek for nearly a month. Well, Alonzo's loved ones had a hard time believing that, as he only had a mild level of decomposition on his body, so it did not appear that he'd been out in the elements for twenty seven days. Mitchell theorized that Alonzo could have wound up in Middle Creek and was trapped under water in a clog of branches and other debris before a rainstorm caused the water levels to rise and his body was jarred loose and floated towards the bank
where he was found. However, Alonzo's family did not think he was underwater for an extended period of time, as his body did not appear to be bloated and his skin complexion looked normal. Furthermore, Alonzo also had a number of personal items on him, such as a billfold, wallet, and a bandana, which showed no signs of water damage.
The Lee's Summit Underwater Rescue and Recovery team were also certain that they would not have missed Alonzo's body during their initial search of Middle Creek, since the water was only a few feet deep. The fury provided by Alonzo's brother Billy, is that when Sheriff's sites gave permission for their family to perform their own search of the property, he may have told other people about it, and word eventually got back to those who were responded for Alonzo's death.
They then responded by placing Alonzo's body on the banks of Middle Creek for his family to find. Indeed, one unconfirmed rumor, which is always circulated throughout the community is that Alonzo's body was kept inside a freezer during a twenty seven day window he was missing, which is why his body only had mild decomposition when it was discovered.
I mean, I was going to ask that I was going to ask, is there a way that he could have been stored somewhere for twenty seven days? Because I find it really really interesting that when they find his body, there aren't evidence signs of abuse to the body. There's no significant bruising, there's no lacerations, there's no gunshot wound. I was really expecting you to tell me that there were some kind of injuries to his body, and they justified it like he fell or something. But he looked
pretty pristine. And I'm wondering I don't know this. I should probably, but if you did freeze a body instantly after you killed, it, would bruising and everything have already set in? Or would that stop? Would the blood freeze so quickly that it couldn't saturate the skin or color the skin?
I don't think you'd get like liver mortis and stuff, where the blood settles in a certain place. If it freezes quickly enough, you would think that the blood would freeze where it is. So if it's all in going through the veins at that point, somebody's put in there. I guess it just depends how quickly it freezes. Okay, so body is put in there, and then it's in there for twenty seven days in a freezer. You then take out the body and the body has mild decomposition.
But then, because it had been frozen for that time, decomposition should hasten right Like it would catch up to the point where it should be once it's been out in the elements for a while, would it not.
Yeah, like it would have rapid cell interioration and stuff like that and damage after it rewarmed. Yeah, I would think so too, because there's still damage to the quality of the tissu shoes and things into the cell formations. But I don't know, it's just the bruising might even come back or something to that effect, because it would have deep tissue bruising anyway.
But I don't know.
I really thought, as i'all were describing it, I'm like, what if he was frozen? But I would think that a pathologist could go through and look at that and maybe tell very interesting.
I have no idea. Well, that's the thing is, we're going to talk about this later. But they gave Alonzo another autopsy a couple of years ago after his body was exhumed, which made them change the ruling, but they've been very secretive on what exact evidence they found. I was going to talk about doctor Mitchell as a doctor who has kind of questionable qualifications, so I could see
him missing something during the original autopsy. So I do wonder after doing this second autopsy, if they did find some evidence which made them lean towards the idea that he could have been in a freezer for twenty seven days, is.
It as bad as doctor Malick.
No, nobody as bad as doctor Malick. Don't worry. He didn't say that Alonzo smoked twenty marijuana cigarettes, so we're free from that at least.
Or three self inflicted gunshot wounds.
Yeah, exactly perfect.
I thought of you, Robin. I heard the other day my husband was reading me something about how somebody in Russia had I guess, somebody who'd probably likely vne against Putin or whatever, had wound up dead and they were saying that he was decapitated, and they were saying that it was suicide.
And I'm like, sounds like.
Yeah right, I'm like, it is doctor Malick over there.
Maybe he faked his own death. That is working for Russia now, because he did do one where someone was found with his head missing, and he said that he died of an ulcer or something like that, and the dog ate his head, so that's why it was missing. And I wish I was joking when I said that.
That's what I thought of. When I thought about, Hi'm like, it's gotta be famy mel like, maybe he's a double agent.
Yeah I never know, Oh my gosh.
And no that guys, anyone listening, We're not laughing at the desk. I promise we're laughing at this doctor who's horrific. It's got a laugh or you just wouldn't know what to do with yourself.
So, even though dozens of witnesses who had attended the party were interviewed by law enforcement, none of them provided information that led the investigation any closer to resolution, and some of these witnesses reportedly lawyered up before they could be questioned and declined to take polygraph tests. The case would remain dormant until June of twenty nineteen, when the KBI announced that they were unable to turn up any evidence that Alonzo had been the victim of a crime,
so they were closing the investigation into his death. But one year later, on June the eleventh, twenty twenty, it was publicly announced that the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the United States Attorney's Office had reopened the investigation and were still exploring the possibility that Alonzo had been the victim of a hate crime. A one hundred thousand dollars reward was now being offered for information which led to the arrest and conviction of the individual responsible for
Alonzo's death. According to Stephen McAllister, the US Attorney for the District of Kansas, the case had been brought to their attention by Unsolved Mysteries, who were about to launch a reboot of their show on Netflix. During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, one of the show's co creators, Terry dun Muir, confirmed that Alonzo's story had been on the radar since twenty seventeen and they were always hoping to
feature it once they relaunched. While in July, the first the Unsolved Mysteries reboot finally dropped on Netflix, and Alonzo's episode was titled No Ride Home. As a result, a number of new tips came in and were passed on to the FBI. One new piece of information, which was later shared publicly, is that a second party had taken place in l Scene on the night Alonzo went missing. When a fight broke out there, a number of the attendees wound up leaving and heading over to the party
at the Farmhouse. So investigators were hoping that anyone who attended both parties might have useful information and would come forward.
And did they were. They Some of the people who called in and gave some of the new tips that hit when Unsolved Mysteries as.
I'm not entirely sure unfortunately. I mean, they just said that they got tips, but I know that a lot of the time they don't like to share what a lot of these tips are unless they lead to a new development to the investigation. So still kind of a mystery.
Just over three weeks after the release of the Unsolved Mysteries episode, the FBI had Alonzo's body exhumed and transported to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for a new autopsy from the Armed Forces Medical Examiner. In April twenty twenty one, the FBI announced that this autopsy had allowed them to conclusively determine that Alonzo's death was not an accident.
While they've been very secretive, as Robin mentioned about specific details, they did state this new examination revealed that Alonzo had injuries to his body which were quote inconsistent with normal patterns of decomposition. Therefore, his death was officially reclassified as
a homicide. Timothy Langan, the Special Agent in charge of the Kansas City Branch of the FBI, stated, quote, we remained dedicated to uncovering the truth surrounding the murder of Alonzo Brooks and ensuring those responsible are held accountable for their actions. While the FBI has launched a new investigation into Alonzo's death, no new developments have been publicly released during these past four years, so the circumstances of how he was killed continue to remain an unsolved mystery.
So I guess you could say the path went Chile.
Do you guys think that the original autopsy just overlooked these things or do you think that some of the tips in information that came in gave guidance as to where to look or what to look for, and it just created more of a information basis for a new autopsy to reveal a different outcome. Because it takes a lot to change an original autopsy report. There's a very huge hesitation for any law enforcement agency to say we're going to change it to a homicide not undetermined, but
to a homicide. So if it was that clear, was it just overlooked or was it it kind of impossible to find without details that perhaps some of these tips led to.
I think it's a combination of both. I think that doctor Mitchell may have missed something during the original autopsy. And I'll reveal my new theory in our next episode. But I kind of have my own thoughts about what kind of new injury they discovered on Alonso that they
might have missed the first time around. And I do think that it is a possibility that maybe some new tips came in, like they could have been nothing more than hearsay or unverified rumors about what happened to them, but it could have compelled the FBI to decide, we're going to perform a new autopsy and we're going to look for this specific injury, and that might be what they discovered to make them change the ruling and finally decide that yes, he was the victim of a homicide.
So I still remember when the episode about this story dropped on Netflix and Unsaw Mysteries fans were instantly comparing it to one of the most memory cases from the original series, and that's the unexplained nineteen eighty one death of Kurt Sova. As you probably know, that story has also been featured on The Trail Went Cold and the Pathwent Chili and involved a seventeen year old kid who went missing while attending a party until his body was
discovered in a nearby vacant lot five days later. Even though Kurt had supposedly been drinking a lot of alcohol in then I was last seen alive, the medical examiner was unable to determine an exact cause of death. This lot had also been searched on a previous occasion. During the five day window, Kurt was missing and his body was not there, so of course there was speculation that whoever was involved in Kurt's death planted him at that
location to be found. Well, I'm sure you can already see the parallels with the Alonzo Brooks case, though I'd say this one is even more puzzling. Instead of five days, Alonzo had been missing twenty seven days before he was found, and his body was at a location which had been extensively searched by numerous law enforces agencies. And while the circumstances of how Kurt Sooba died are still a mystery, the consensus seems to be that it was accidental and
possibly the result of something like alcohol poisoning. So I doubt that a homicide took place. However, that's certainly not the case with Alonzo Brooks, who was a person of color who went missing and was found dead in a predominantly white area that seems to have a reputation for racism among its residents. Now that it's officially been confirmed that foul play took place, there has been speculation that
he was the victim of a hate crime. As you can imagine, this theory picked up a lot of steam because, by pure coincidence, the Unsaw Mysteries episode happened to drop just over a month after the murder of George Floyd, so, as you can imagine, racial tensions were running high in
the United States at that time. Even though the Kansas Bureau of Investigation had closed Alonzo's case in twenty nineteen, the FBI and the Department of Justice still felt it was worth pursuing, and I fight it interesting that they publicly announced that they were investigating his death as a hate crime a few weeks before the Unsolved Mysteries episode
came out. I'm sure they sensed that there would be a strong reaction to the presentation of Alonzo's story and wanted to preemptively assure the public that yes, they were working on the case and taking it seriously. And sure enough, it wasn't long before Alonzo's body was exhumed and given a new autopsy which uncovered new evidence to compel the
authorities to officially reclassify his death as a homicide. All we know is that they made this determination based on a re examination of injuries on Alonzo's body, But I'm sure a lot of details have been withheld from the public and we have no idea what leads, if any then investigators may have looked into these past four years.
You know what's interesting is that when you look at the idea that they reclassified it as a hate crime before the Unsolved Mysteries case came out on television, they must have had some pretty interesting information because I could see this changing big decisions like that, or again going back and exhooming the body and looking for something based
on a tip they received. But to make conclusions like that we're investigating this as a hate crime prior to getting a renewal of this case and kind of a new look at this case is really interesting. Yes, law enforcement was looking at it before Unsolved Mysteries aired the episode, but I'm sure they got a lot of information, both valid and nonsensical, once that aired. So speaks volumes about what information they already had before the show, even broadcasts this episode, and.
I can tell you that even though this case did get a whole lot of media coverage before Unsolved Mysteries, it was like a case I got a lot of unverified gossip and rumors online because there are always discussions about it on Reddit and various message boards, because it was one of those stories that took place in a small town where everybody had their own story about what
they believed happened and would gossip about it. So I think law enforcement was aware that once this gets national exposure on Netflix, there's going to be a lot of discussion about this and we should definitely take it seriously because if we just ignore it, there's going to be a backlash. So we should assure the public that we're going to give it our full attention.
So we mentioned in the intro that the biggest criticism of the Unsolved Mysteries reboot is that they've covered a number of cases involving suspicious suicides or accidental deaths and had a tendency to leave out key details which did
not fit the foul play narrative. Like the original series, this reboot could potentially be used as a valuable tool to bring a resolution to unsolved crimes, but it doesn't really help much when you're focusing on a bunch of stories in which there is no actual crime to solve. Whenever new episodes have dropped on Netflix, it's become a tradition for media outlets to publish articles about the featured
cases titled quote what unsolved mystery is left out? We've seen them publish this type the article for the episode on Alonzo Brooks, as the show did leave out some details, But to be fair, we haven't found any new information during our research which would point towards Alonzo's death being an accident or the show giving a dishonest presentation in
order to fit their narrative. But out of all these cases featured on the Unsolved Mysteries reboot, I think the death of Alonzo Brooks is Probably Sorry is probably the one in which you're going to find the largest amount of rumors, gossip, and unconfirmed speculation online. They even acknowledged this during the episode and discuss some of the uncorroborated theories which have been shared on places like Reddit and
social media these past two decades. Back in twenty ten, a blog called Cold Case Kansas published a post about this case, and its comment section is just flush with people claiming to be from the Lacine area, who share Lucine, from the Lacine area, who've all shared, who have shared all the rumors in gossip that have supposedly spread throughout
the years. This case has often been described as one of those small town mysteries in which the entire community knows who did it, but a cover up has been orchestrated to protect the guilty parties, and the authorities lack the necessary evidence to make an arrest.
Well.
One thing the Unsolved Mysteries episode did not do is present the names of any potential suspects or persons of interest, and other than three of Alonzo's friends, we do not know the identities of anyone who hosted or attended the party which took place on the night Alonzo disappeared. But if you search hard enough online, you can find the names of some local residents who are rumored to be
involved in Alonzo's death. Since their names have never been shared by law enforcement, we're not going to repeat them on this episode, but I will mention that a number of these people hail from a prominent family in the area, which is why there have been so many conspiracy theories about a cover up. One of the most prevalent rumors is that Alonzo's dad occurred because he flirted with a young white woman at the party who was a member of this family, which may have paid the way for
a hate crime. During an interview she gave with Dateline, Alonzo's mother, Maria Ramirez, stated quote, I'm Mexican and his father is black, so he's mixed. They didn't just target one race or kill one race, they killed two. He was targeted because of the color of his skin.
Do we know if these are just an extension of the rumors? Do you think that law enforcement has fed Maria information that supports the idea that this was racially motivated? Is it an assumption that people are making because of the dynamics of that party, because of the minority status of Alonzo, that he's in the middle of a rural farm town and he is not the same race as
the other people who are at the party. Do we know if any of the fights were something where a racial slur or derogatory comments were made.
Well, like, we've heard a lot of rumors about these fights and how one of them allegedly started because someone used a racial slur and Alonzo's presence, But we just don't have any like first hand accounts, like anyone who has gone on the record and said that, yeah, I saw this happen. It all seems to be like a lot of hearsay, gossip and rumors, so I don't know about how many of them are actually true. But that
is a good question. I don't know if law enforcement has shared any information with Alonzo's family in which they've told them that yes, we have information that his death was a hate crime, or if that's just speculation, because of course it's all over the internet. A lot of people have been sharing rumors that this is what took place, But I don't know how much law enforcement has been able to deviate fact from rumor.
You know, it's hard for a family who doesn't have answers because you want to know why, why would someone think that they could steal my son's life from him? What could have motivated this? They try to play the scenes in their head and in the most natural explanation is yes, it probably was racially motivated. But I'm wondering, is it something where their grief is leading to I need answers, and so I build narratives that make sense or that could explain the situation, or is it information
that's been given to me? Because sometimes information is helpful, sometimes it further causes trauma that there's no solution to at the time, And then information can also be something that helps to heal and write the narrative that allows you to move forward and process even when you don't
have a perpetrator. But I'm just wondering to what extent the poor families left with creating the narrative versus being fed certain information that could again complicate or help the grief that they're feeling.
Well. I do know that during the early stages of the investigation, the family was quite frustrated because law enforcement didn't appear to be taking Alonzo's disappearance seriously or do anything. But I think they've been a lot more cooperative in recent years because it is the FBI the Department of Justice, So I would not be surprised at all if they had given the family information to keep them in the loop. And that's why the family has their own ideas about
what happened. So I think that about brings an end to part one join us next week as we present part two of our series about the murder of Alonzo Brooks.
Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit about the Trail Went Cold Patreon?
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 the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon, and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries. 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 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.
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 Pathwent Chili mini's, which are always over an hour, so they're not very mini, 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.
So I want to thank you all for listening, and any chance you have to share us on social media with a friend or d rate and review is greatly appreciate it. You can email us at the Pathwentchili at gmail dot com. You can reach us on twit or at the Pathway. So until next time, be sure to bundle up because cold trails and Chili pass call for warm clothing.
Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy