Derontae Martin /// Part 1 /// 505 | Forensic Files

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[Music] what's the address of your emergency uh yes i need the cops that and an average
yeah apparently a guy just shot himself you said a guy just shot himself yeah and that's uh yeah
is that where you are yeah can you hear me yeah yeah is he breathing at all yeah
no do you think he's been beyond any help do you want to try cpr uh uh something i'll get in the back of my
uh okay okay you cut down uh okay i can't even get through here please hey can you hear me
see if he's breathing thank you he is breathing he he's gasping for air how old is he do
you know how is he maybe 20 19 20 21 somewhere like this in my head i can't really see him like her is he
alert at all is he conscious uh he don't look like it and when did this happen um
three minutes ago okay you're hard to hear again you're cutting out sir you're cutting out i can't understand
what was your name uh james ray can you hear me darante martin was born in saint louis
where he lived until he was about 10 years old then he his mom her name is erica lotz and his six
siblings moved to park hills a town of about 8 500 residents 60 miles southwest of st louis park
hills was a very different type of environment than the urban one in st louis first of
all of course it was a much smaller community in a town this size most people know each other it was a much less
racially diverse community durante and his family were very much in the minority
one article we found describes the old lead belt region of missouri where park hills is located as 95
white durante's family is black in the spring of this year 2021 durante was 19 years old and he had
graduated the year before from central high school durante started out at central but then
transferred to an alternate school due to his less than stellar attendance record while he was
at this other school an assistant football coach from central took note of him partially because of his impressive size
and encouraged him to get his attendance on track so he could return to central and play
football and he did durante's cousin isaiah welch later told nbc 5 news that the two
played on the team together and being football players changed their lives for the better
he said quote when we were kids we used to live in the same trailer park together
he lived right in front of me so our windows were facing each other and when our parents fell asleep we'd go
to the windows and open up the curtains and look at each other and sneak out of the house and do
whatever we wanted to do because we were bad kids football definitely changed us
the coaches and stuff like that just helping us through this life because we didn't have it easy
growing up darante was six foot three inches tall and 250 pounds and was very athletic
his cousin isaiah said he could do a lot of things big boys like him couldn't really do he was fast and he
could catch the ball real good there are quite a few stories in the local papers throughout durante's high
school football career in which his prowess on the field is reported it was a star defensive tackle on
central's rebels football team and earned himself a scholarship to a small college in another state
but the school was requiring that darante bring up his s.a.t scores so he took a year off after high school
and worked and studied for his entrance exams he was preparing to go to summer football camp and he held down two
jobs one at walmart and one at a local restaurant until he was laid off during the
pandemic then his mom bought a house in ferguson a suburb of saint louis and the family relocated again to the
town of about 20 000 people 13 miles northwest of st louis on april 23 2021 durante left the ferguson house in
the company of some friends from his alternative high school in park hills so he left the house
that night with people that his mother didn't know that well he told his mom that one of them would
drop him off at his grandmother's house this is kimberly robinson she still lived in park hills
but durante never showed up this next bit of information is all from a statement released by madison
county sheriff katie mccutcheon on april 29th on the sheriff's department's facebook
page this is what they put on there captain on sunday april 25th at approximately
301 a.m madison county dispatch received a 911 call from a residence located at 1773 highway
z in fredericktown in reference to a 21 year old male shot in the head and was not conscious
in the a man who 911 himself as james wade says he needs cops in an ambulance apparently a guy just shot himself he
says to the dispatcher he confirms the highway z address a girl in the background can be heard
crying and yelling something like i hate this he confirms that the victim is not breathing
and then tells someone in the background to check and see if he's breathing he is gasping for air it sounds like he
says when asked the victim's age the caller says he's 19 20 21 something like that
where was he shot the dispatcher asked in the head the caller says no he was not alert or
conscious the sheriff's statement continued madison county sheriff's office madison
county ems and cherokee pass fire department was dispatched to this location upon arrival to the
scene the male subject was located in the attic area of the residence and was found to
be deceased the statement said the dead man was identified as darante martin age 19. sheriff mccutcheon's facebook
statement went on to address the autopsy of the deceased saying an autopsy was performed on the deceased on monday
april 26 2021 at the saint francis county morgue in farmington missouri the initial investigation was led by the
madison county sheriff's and madison county coroner's office with the assistance of the missouri
state highway patrol preliminary evidence revealed the male subject died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the
head once the final autopsy results in all witness statements have been received
the complete report will be submitted to the madison county prosecutor's office for
further review so four days after the 9-1-1 call about darante being shot the sheriff had preliminarily concluded
that this was a suicide and said so publicly well we all know my feelings about them making statements too
early take your time say you're doing an investigation let the evidence lead you to your final
findings you're exactly right captain because they are saying in their own statement
this is not the final autopsy uh it is an autopsy that we performed and this is what we found
preliminary evidence is showing us that this was a self-inflicted gunshot wound my guess is that preliminary evidence
that they're talking about is less scientific and more witness statements right and so you're right
if this is not the final autopsy then why release anything at all because you've not finished your job
you've not completed the work and the other thing too if you're going to make such a statement that could be found to
be controversial which ends up being just that maybe release a more detailed statement
back it up with facts and actual evidence it's a very brief statement that says hey
we reviewed it this is what happened but they don't really tell you how they got to that conclusion
makes you question why a 19 year old is in a house that we he obviously doesn't know the house
that well but why is he in the attic by himself and where did he get this firearm again
that goes back to their statement we don't have much information we don't know what those witness statements would
be so it's hard to even say that he was in that space in that attic by himself right it gets really wishy-washy here
on this whole thing and that's what we're going to tear through right now because immediately daronte's mother and
grandmother both dispute the suicide findings they're saying look this kid was not
suicidal they say that darante was a big happy jolly kid and that seems to be an opinion that's
shared by his friends and family as well well but we all know depression is a [ __ ]
right and not always to somebody show signs of depression to others you're exactly
right and that's such a such a sad thing and you can understand maybe mom and grandma have it wrong
maybe that he was holding on to some kind of dark secret or maybe this was something he was able
to keep away from his family and of course unfortunately we've all seen cases where the family is
the last to know that their loved one is in fact suicidal but we also have some evidence
of his mindset i mean he is working two jobs that takes a lot of energy um motivation
to work at a walmart and a restaurant so i i'd be interested to see how many hours he's working
but to me that that is evidence of somebody that's more motivated trying to do something with their lives
yeah and keep in mind this is going to be going on after everything got shut down
and so he did lose one of those jobs because of the shutdown i this is one thing that's going to
perplex me for the rest of my days captain i don't understand why the mom and pop small stores and
restaurants got closed during the pandemic but the giants that don't need any money like
walmart and target were allowed to stay open and shuffle in as many people as they could but what i see here
and this is one of these stories that look i don't love the overall story of this case i love the beginning
of the story because what do we see here we see a young man a teenage a teenager who is not
necessarily doing the right things right he's skipping out of school maybe kind of half-assing it along the way
yeah but the system is not set up the school system is not set up for most kids but what i love about the story i think
where you're going is somebody says okay well you might not like this system and this
system might not favor you but do you like sports do you is there some interest that i
could get you involved in i mean i hated school awful student but because i enjoyed the music programs that that
was the gateway to try to be a good student you didn't want to miss class because
you're going to miss jazz band or you're going to miss orchestra class or so you went to school because those
classes kept kept you coming back and so same here oh i want to play sports why have to go
to school i have to do mathematics and english and science classes in order to be able to play sports well
and i don't you know the system doesn't really apply here in my opinion this is a setup where
the kid's just not going to school i mean it doesn't matter about the reason what's set up there if you don't
what i'm trying to do is what i'm saying is he might have gave up on school because it just wasn't working
for him what i love is exactly what you said you see a kid that is presented an opportunity
where and kudos to this coach who went out of the his way or her way to say hey look there's some here's something for
you a little light at the end of the tunnel if you will if you can get your attendance up and
actually participate in class and attend the classes there might be a spot for you on this football
team and so what we're seeing here to me is a kid that can find motivation or be presented
with motivation right and then work toward earning a goal an achievement and he did that
so much so that it translated into a scholarship offer for him and now he's kind of back at that step
again where hey i'm out of school for a year but i'm working toward getting those
sat scores up because my scholarship is still waiting for me so of course we have his
family that are saying they're going to present the ideas that hey there's good things
going on in this kid's life that are i mean everything's moving in the right direction for darante at this time
and that's why they point out that hey if he were suicidal this point in his life doesn't
make any sense that he would be suicidal at this point in his life because things were bad before they're
not so bad now and they're moving in the right direction like we so we know that his
mother erica recently purchased a home in ferguson for herself and her kids this is the
first time in durante's life that he has his own bedroom rather than sharing one with
some of his siblings and then we have video footage that shows that he was still in the process of
settling into his new house in his new bedroom erica his mom bought darante new sneakers new clothes and a
flat screen tv for his room so according to the family durante was very happy erica told the tv news reporter that
durante was so excited about their new living situation that he was showing off his new room to friends
on video calls even though there wasn't even furniture in his room yet right and so again
they're just kind of underlining and echoing this idea that it just didn't really make sense that
darante who had challenges in the past would select this time in his life when things were looking up to
take his own life and they'd have more evidence than anybody else in the world you know his mother and grandmother yes
and we have nbc5 news who interviewed darante's former high school football coach
who had visited with durante just a month before his death this is corey schweich who
said he was happy big smile on his face i asked him how everything was going and
he said great and he was having a good time and again we also circle back to the
idea that we don't always know everything that's going on with an individual if they don't choose
to share ones and suicide is not something that's always something that's a lingering issue true
i believe there's some people that are very capable and having their life go in the right direction
and sometimes just wake up on the wrong side of the bed and that day they make a decision that's
a fatal one like everything else it can be impulsive at times now there are many things that we simply
do not know in this case and we're not going to sit here in the garage and try to pretend
otherwise and what we do know in this case only raises more questions for example there are no details that
this is this is the [ __ ] sorry this case gets me a little worked up this is the stuff that that we really
really need to be told so we can make heads or tails of what the hell happened here
because you have a very suspicious looking situation on the surface underneath the surface
however you want to shake it out until we know what the heck happened so what we do know only raises more
questions for example there are no details about where the gun came from whether the gun was
collected at the scene or even what type of gun it was and sheriff katie mccutcheon isn't talking
they're not filling in any of those blanks for us well that's [ __ ] another thing we do not know is what
exactly durante was doing at this house in the first place what is he doing at the place where he died
his family says they have no idea how he ended up where he did i have a couple of thoughts but we don't
have anything that's concrete to tell us why he would be at this house and there's reasons
to point out and suggest that maybe this might not be the most inviting or welcoming home for darante
to be hanging out at the house where darante was shot was the location for a party of kids
from a different high school not central so him being 19 years old makes some sense
he ends up at a party amongst his peers it was a girl's 18th birthday party at a home in fredericktown this is a
tiny town of about four thousand about 27 miles south of park hills there are conflicting accounts of how darante
ended up at this party reportedly he was brought there by some friends another rumor is that darante did not
want to go to this party because he knew that there would be some guys or a guy that he had a beef with according to one
source keep in mind darante's situation he's working hard to and studying trying to get those sat
scores up because he wants to take advantage of the opportunity of that scholarship
this does not strike me and again 19 we're all a little dumb in different ways i certainly will i was super dumb you
and i were leading the pack of dumbness i was i was head of the class i'm happy to knock on wood i'm happy to be alive
but so we know we we can factor in 19 year old male dumbness but what i see here is a
guy that's not going to screw up this opportunity that's being handed to him and so showing up at
a place where you know something might go down or please get called yeah isn't going to help you on your way to that
scholarship well also maybe you just don't want to fight somebody true no hey it's friday night you're
working your butt off the last thing you want to do on your free time is then have a fight
you know you just want to hang out with people have a good night according to one source
and please take this with a shot of whiskey and grain of salt as it has not been confirmed by any of
the authorities again they're not really saying anything but this piece of information hasn't even
been confirmed by darante's family but what the rumor is is that there was a white
teen at this party who had been arrested for first-degree assault in the past and for whatever reason this guy
believed that darante had ratted him out to the cops and the rumor that was going around is this
dude wanted payback and he was preparing to get it aided by you know a group of his friends now we
were able to verify that this guy named online as adam rulo was indeed arrested for
serious assault on another guy and it involved a shooting we found this article in the
park hills missouri daily journal dated april 15 2021 just three weeks before darante's death
that says an area man faces felony charges in saint francis county after allegedly shooting another man in
february adam ruleo 19 of park hills was charged on wednesday with first degree assault
and armed criminal action according to a probable cause statement from the saint francis county
sheriff's department rulo reportedly shot a man on february 17 at a location on route dd south of
farmington the bullet reportedly hit the alleged victim in his stomach area and lodged near the man's spine the
report states that doctors are unable to remove the bullet from the man's body due to its location
the lodge projectile now reportedly prevents the man from engaging in any sporting activities court records
show rulo has previous convictions of fourth degree assault stemming from a 2019 incident
and he pled guilty to the charge and was given a suspended sentence of two years of unsupervised probation
yeah so we have this guy that this teenager that wants to be a gangster and then we have this other teenager
that not only is he trying to get his life together his mother is a shining example of
progression through life and and winning at the game of life through hard work and you know this thing we review this
situation from the newspaper article here and we understand it's a totally unrelated
incident but it does show that one this adam rulo was involved in a skirmish right before ronte's death with a
firearm exactly two he likes to shoot people yeah so if the rumor was that he wanted to
get payback against darante this statement could hold some weight this rumor could hold some weight
because there is this information backing some of that thought up right and no matter if you're 6'3
250 you're not going to go in to a gunfight with fisticuffs so that might be another reason why
he didn't want to go to a party where this individual might be at because he knows this
individual whether it's he has extra friends but he knows this individual is probably carrying a gun
and probably going around telling everybody that he's carrying around guns again this could mean absolutely zero
right but what it does is it starts to piece together that we have this guy that we know to be
involved in gun violence that may or may not have been at this party we don't have
confirmation that adam ruler was at the party just allegations posted online by people
claiming to be in the know saying that he was in fact there so we have if they are right and he
was there then we have a situation where we have a guy that we know to be involved in gun
violence is at the same place at the same time as someone who ends up being killed by way of gun
well this along with the evidence and thought process of his mother and his grandmother these are reasons
that you don't come out and give findings of suicide until you're absolutely 100 percent sure thank you
[Music] [Music] all right we're back cheers to the people this nasty people in the front and uh
cheers to you colonel but also look we're not experts we're not health mental health experts so
anything that we're saying um know that we take suicide very serious and if you are
struggling with anything a number that you can call is 1-800-273-8255 that's the national
suicide prevention lifeline and they will be happy to talk with you as much as you need it now darante's
shooting captain took place at a home owned by a man named james wade reportedly that night was his daughter's
18th birthday party in an interview with kdsk saint louis wade said that he got home
from fishing about 30 minutes before he heard the shot he said he was downstairs and he heard
the gunshot from upstairs he called 9-1-1 to try to help he said it needs to be said that this guy wade
has never been named by police in this case in fact some mainstream media outlets won't even publish his
name but he has a public facebook page and has posted openly about this case and acknowledged the
shooting at his home in social media and in interviews so we consider his name fair game darante's mother
erika lotz says that her son had zero connections to this wade guy according to nbc 5 news
wade said that his daughter didn't know darante well but he showed up at their house with
some other friends who the other party attendees were has never been released to the public my guess
here is captain she's turning 18 maybe a certain percentage maybe even a large percentage of these other party
attendees might be minors and that might be the thought for not releasing the names and we know how high school
parties go we don't know if this was supposed to be this huge birthday bash or if it was hey we're having 15 20
people over and then that turns into everybody and their brother showing up i want to throw something out here too
because i think this is lost in the mix here because there's a lot to get heated about in this case a lot to
get worked up on and sometimes we can overlook or under think some of the information that's provided
to us and you're not going to hear me come to the defense of this james wade very often heck this might be
the only time in this episode that i do so but because we don't have clarity or an understanding of
like you said captain the the parameters of this party we also need to keep in mind there's a
chance there's a chance that james wade may not have known this party was going to be
happening in his house right high school kids i don't know if this is a news flash for
anybody out there if it is you late to the party yourself but uh news flash sometimes high school kids have parties
at their parents homes and the parents don't know about it and maybe they thought
maybe his daughter thought dad's going to be gone the whole night fishing and came home and found oh there's a
party in my house and for all we know he was tipped off by somebody hey do you know there's
all these people at your house and then we go back to something else that we again it's a lot of we do not know um
we don't know what durante was doing in the attic of this house or if anybody else was
with him at the time that this gun goes off well it's also not clear because an addict here to me you'd have to get
up in to somebody's crawl space and so you'd be going through a little rinky dink ladder
through a little hole or was there attic something where it was like a a third level that they just used as storage or
something yeah i'm guessing this must be uh i have no idea you're right some of them are quite
small in tight spaces there's other ones that people turn into rooms right in their home heck clark griswold
spent a whole afternoon in his attic one day so yeah we don't know what he was doing
up in this space of the house and if there was anyone with him at the time when this gun went off
if you could prove that there wasn't anybody with him then we'd have a pretty open and shut
case right again they've they being the sheriff's department have come to a conclusion
but they're not telling us how they arrived at that conclusion now on the flip side of what i said
about james wade not knowing about this party that there's a small chance that that
happened rumors are that james wade was known to host these types of parties where there is
underage drinking going on so a responsible parent right there's also a rumor and if mr wade
wants to come out at me for some of these rumors this is all stuff that can be found online
uh this is not stuff that i'm just creating and making up so there you need to come out a lot of
people but there's a strong i would say there's a good rumor going around that he might be involved in some
drug dealing or low-level drug dealing and maybe these parties if in fact he is hosting
or allowing these parties to go down at his home right that maybe some of the party attendees
are his customers if you want to call him that again we can't verify any of this these
are all rumors and accusations posted by other people on the madison county sheriff's facebook page
and wade's own page they might not be customers but he might view this as a business
opportunity now this next bit contains information that we cannot back up we cannot find
any articles reporting it but many people in the area have pointed out in the wake of darante's death
that there was a previous suicide of a young man on james wade's property now again we cannot verify this but in a
way james wade himself did so someone screen grabbed a text response he sent to their phone we don't know
what it was in response to but here's what wade's response said hey stupid ass it's only two
suicides that have happened and i wasn't here for either of them you blank [ __ ] it goes on but it's
just more derogatory and insulting language so we'll leave it out oh come on read it well
the interesting thing here captain is i don't think it's very hard for people to believe
that a suicide went down at someone's house now if you told me that two of them went
down at someone's house something's wrong right don't you start to question everything
at that point you go okay we need to review both of these situations in detail and really get to the bottom of what's
going on because it doesn't make no sense no now what makes james wade extremely suspicious in
the eyes of the martin family and the activist community is that he is a racist and white supremacist his
facebook profile picture is not a photo of himself but rather a cartoon drawing of a middle finger imposed against an
american flag background with the caption here's my apology for being white according to nbc 5 news in 2017
and 2018 wade posted pictures on his facebook page including one of a black man with a chain around his neck and the
words my great great great grandfather's tractor oh so this guy wade is a giant piece of [ __ ] yes
he is you can smell the racism well and that's what we're we're pointing out here is that
even if let's pretend everything went down just as as we're told that it did right
this guy is not a good guy and horrible guy and even just this happening one suicide
on his property of a black young male should be looked at under the lens of suspicion
yes i mean look we talked about ayla reynolds case and one thing that was local rumor that we didn't
report on in that case because we had a lot of facts in that case but one rumor that i believe to have
been true is that when the police showed up to the call of this missing little kid
there's beer bottles and beer cans and paraphernalia all over the house paraphernalia don't
you go into that situation saying there's a missing toddler and this is what i'm seeing
is going on in the house when all these kids are here and you look at that under a lens of
suspicion you show up to a racist home where a person of a different ethnicity dies on his property you're looking at
this with a suspicion with some suspicion yeah because your job is to serve and protect every citizen
no matter what race they are but on top of that you owe it to this family you owe it to the
community to say this wade guy is suspicious because of his ignorant thoughts on the world and of other
people and so we have to do we need to double down on our due diligence and make sure that
we are as transparent as possible not only with the family but the community well murder and
violence involves a certain level of anger and hate and you can obviously see that this man
has some hate in him yes he has a motive the other thing that points to him being a racist
is and this again is from his social media stuff was another picture this is of a black
dog and the words i had a black dog once i named him food stamps yeah so these all appear to be
memes constructed by other people and and maybe wade reposted these but it's clear that he endorses
the racist sentiments that they express and we don't know if durante knew but hey this house that
we're going to this party not only is there a guy that might show up that i don't want anything to do with
but her this girl's dad is a known racist and maybe that would be another reason you wouldn't want to
go to this party as for who killed darante james wade said in one of several interviews i know that i didn't
do it and i tried to help him but nobody's talking about that so i guess he's looking for praise
for calling 9-1-1 but there's more after darate's death wade posted the following
image on his facebook page a photo of a white man a middle-class dad looking type of dude
with a large handgun pointing at something off camera he's standing in a home shielding a wife and baby behind him the
caption says don't get it twisted i believe all lives matter regardless of color however that belief
is null and voided if you invade my home and endanger my family i don't know exactly what message
he's trying to put out with that but at the very least when you're being talked about
and you have someone who dies from a gun related incident inside your home not only are you racist and i i know
that this these words go hand in hand and are often in the same sentence so i'm no
genius here but not only do you come off as racist you come off very incredibly ignorant at the same time no
and the thing too is we we're supposed to applaud you we're supposed to give you praise
because you called 911 go [ __ ] yourself now many people online saw this statement as some type of
confession particularly because his daughter carrie posted that there wasn't a party and
durante was not supposed to be there her posts are clearly trying to divert blame from her family
here's one of the posts on facebook quote there was no alcohol there wasn't even a party my sister's celebration was
over before midnight he wasn't even there or invited to our family [ __ ] he was there with his friend zach
so so that's where you i sit there go well which is it you know he's there he wasn't there he was there
there was a party there wasn't a party it's almost like she's trying to imply well he wasn't there and then so he was
trespassing but publicly so if you're stating that this individual is trespassing
your father is now posting uh a picture stating hey i'll shoot anybody that's threatening my family or trespassing on
my property so are you saying that you killed this guy and now you're you're stating it's a
suicide well james wade publicly has stuck to his story uh regardless of what his daughter's
posted online he said that he was downstairs and durante suddenly shot himself upstairs
he has not tried to portray darante as an intruder at any time or site the stand
your ground defense instead he's saying that darante did this to himself let's get into some more of the
family's questions that they have in in greater detail here uh we have darante's mom erica who
has not been happy with the information or lack thereof that the family has been
getting or not getting from the madison county sheriff's office okay here but here's my question
if they ruled it a suicide then the case is closed and they would have every opportunity to receive the whole
case file have they been able to do this yet yes they have and that's where we end up with more so they're
saying we got the case i don't think they don't jump blanks no they don't have the case file
they don't have the case file but that we have some more information that is coming from his family rather than the
sheriff's office and she is saying that his mother has said publicly that she never spoke with anyone
from the sheriff's department until a month after her son died and she told a reporter that she never received
official word of darante's death she heard about it from someone else you know they didn't show
up with officers on her doorstep to inform her what happened further she was never given any details
or explanations of the circumstances from the sheriff's department erica recorded a conversation she had
with sheriff katie mccutchen when she finally got her on the phone this was in may
of 2021. the sheriff would not discuss things like the caliber of the gun that killed durante or where the gun came
from which that's a big deal because there's nobody saying that it was darante's gun that he
showed up at the scene with the gun that he had a gun that he owned a gun yeah and that's they're not even telling you
that they have evidence that he shot a gun and then on so then on top of that you have this
racist known at least low-level drug dealer that might have weapons in the house
possible and if it comes from you know [ __ ] bag wade if it's his gun well there's more questions
well in the recording it can be heard that um sheriff katie mccutchen says that she
could not discuss the ongoing investigation with the the victim's mother she put erica in touch with the madison
county sheriff's a sheriff deputy named nick adams who also gave her virtually no information and refused to
discuss the gun part of the case nbc 5 news got a hold of that recorded conversation
so you can find that if you do a little bit of digging here's a piece from it that i found
interesting we have erica the mother saying do you have anybody a suspect are you going to arrest anybody
and the deputy adam's replying i can't really discuss any of that but i can tell you i've talked to
everyone that was there that night i've taken statements from everybody and the investigation is ongoing
erica can you tell me where the gun came from adams responds i cannot ma'am here's the
other difficult thing here we have within a few days of them saying publicly on their facebook page we've
done a partial autopsy it's not finalized yet we have some preliminary evidence they don't say what that is exactly but
we've ruled this to be a suicide and here you have a recorded conversation that is taking place
after that information is released on the sheriff's department on their facebook page to where the
deputy is clearly telling the victim's mother we cannot discuss an open investigation
that's them confirming it's an open investigation and if it's not then don't use those
words and and that is that's always the wall that some of these officers stand behind
when they don't want to be it's not just about being forthcoming it's they are aware they're being looked
at under a lens of suspicion and so their best answer is no answer at all in another odd and
concerning twist erica says she never recovered durante's personal item she has never
like his clothing he was wearing his shoes his wallet have never been returned to her the
madison county coroner scott follis has told lotz uh his mother all of her son's belongings went with
him to the mortuary which handled the funeral and the representatives from the mortuary
said that they never received the any personal belongings of durantes from the coroner so it's uh
one person pointing the finger at another and then there's a finger pointing right back at them
now this is odd we have a situation where she does end up receiving maybe something that could provide
some evidence in this case and that is durante's phone and this is a few days after his death
one of the teens who picked up darante from erica's house came over to her home a few days after the death and brought
darante's cell phone to erica and erica told nbc news through tears all of his contacts
were gone his text messages were gone yeah that's shady i would like to know more about this phone and
this is where look durante's mother and grandmother and family are doing everything that
they should be doing in my opinion in this case they're getting answers that don't make
sense that don't add up that they don't like so they are going to the public and
saying look there's a problem here we don't know or understand exactly what the problem is
but there's a problem so i applaud them for that and i want to push a little further can
we learn some more information about this phone about darante's phone could it be
as simple as someone was trying to access the phone in it and it cleared itself off you know after too
many tries of the wrong password or that's not what would happen you know lock your phone out but it's not going
to delete your contacts and i'd i'd also want to know what was the call history do we have
do we have call history do we have text message history if all that stuff is cleared
you have a very suspicious item well i would believe that you could obtain some of that information from the
service provider yeah possibly or if it was backed up in some way but again we don't know
the make in the model of the phone but still that's very suspicious that all the
contacts and everything but they cleared yeah the service provider would have a call log of incoming and outcoming calls
and probably incoming and outgoing text not the actual messages themselves but who the numbers
were going to right and so that's what i'm saying i i would like if if his family is looking for a public
outcry then i urge them to do what the sheriff's department is not willing to do for them
put out some more information let's let's really try to stir the pot with some some more information because is this
there are phones that are are easily wiped clean more than others [Music] and it can be done unintentionally
is this something that someone actually had to physically go through and and clear everything out i would
like a little more information on that i would also especially if if mom or the next of kin
could contact the service provider and try to get some information from them and
i encourage them to do that because you know who's not doing it is the sheriff's
department well they're probably doing it they're just not releasing any of that
information because they want to only release things that fit their narrative and i i think the
other thing too is with this they didn't even yeah the night when they retrieved the
body from the home so i and i'm i wasn't there i don't know if they were asking about the phone and
and searching for it themselves but it seems like when you show up and somebody dies from
uh a gunshot suicide at a party which is very odd a suicide atta at a party at a house that there has already been
another suicide well and the thing here too is i wrote down you know some questions i had about
the case and and the the night the the scene um and some of the the things that could
result in evidence and one of the questions i wrote down here is now that durante's family has the phone
in their possession uh we know that they received it a few days after after he passed away but
did they at any time attempt to give it to the authorities to turn it over to law
enforcement and yeah but why would you turn over anything to the example already don't do that
because again it doesn't seem that the sheriff's department is overly concerned with anything
other than what they have already found or concluded and again i don't know much about this
phone i don't i don't know the bank and model but if it has a sim card or something
like that you could you know all you'd have to do is get that sim card out and then
there'd be no information on the phone well and you could hire a forensic technician someone that
that's that has expertise in this area and they can go through but i think if that
sim card's gone that there might not be a way to retrieve any of that information
but again it's an expert it's a tidbit of uh it's a little knowledge nugget but we
don't have the whole meal there right there we don't know if we don't know why it
doesn't have any information on it is it as simple as you said that somebody removed the sim card
again if dorantes and this is me pleading with them if you are looking for a public outcry
to get the answers that you deserve us as the public we need some more information tell us everything about
that phone well the sad thing is there already should be outcry i mean the fact that
they're rolling into suicide before they collect all the evidence there's two suicide at this dirt bag at
this known racist house possible underage drinking underage drug use um you also have uh i don't know
was he a convicted felon that was there that had an issue well again i i want to make sure
that we're discussing a lot of rumors here in the garage today and i'm separating a couple of those
rumors out from the others because we don't have anything to back it up so the things that we need to
be very clear on is one we don't know if james wade deals any types of any kind of drugs or
illegal substances at all we do we do not know that we don't have anything that that really strongly points to that
other than there's local rumor that that's going on we also don't have other than people
saying that this this uh felon was there that night we don't have anything other than that where in some cases we
have like james wade himself saying there was only two suicides here so that rumor
seems to have some truth or at least enough that james wade is defending himself
on that level uh so well and it's also the the conflicting stories between him and his daughter about how many
people were there when the party took place it's you know it's very suspicious now you get his
phone back and there's no information on the phone even more suspicious the fact that cops are not even it's
almost like we're not contacting you i mean you're again you're supposed to serve
and protect you're not serving this family even if if you believe a hundred percent that it
was and the evidence shows that it's a suicide sit down with the family explain it to them take the time
that's your job serve and protect doesn't matter what color the victim is well that might be the case captain
it either they're not they're not sharing this information or doing their due diligence
because of the color of the victim's family or maybe they just don't do it at all maybe
they're just shitty at their jobs maybe they don't do it regardless of the color of anybody
that they're just bad at what they do and guess what bad sheriffs don't get reelected
now they shouldn't do like you said you have you have a community that's primarily
white and that community needs to stand up for all their citizens and say this this isn't right
and they need to start thinking what if this was my son what if this was my daughter would i
want answers yes you would and you need to stand up and when it's time to uh reelect any of these knuckleheads you
say we ain't doing it because they they play privilege and and and use a piece of [ __ ]
if you stand by and let this stuff happen this is not right what's happening to this family
and again all they want is answers all they want is some cooperation that's all they want
[Music] thank you for joining us here in the garage for everything true crime check us out at truecrimegarage.com make
sure you sign up on our mailing list and until tomorrow so much more case to get to
be good be kind and don't win [Music] [Applause] you

Derontae Martin /// Part 1 /// 505 Part 1 of 2

www.TrueCrimeGarage.com 19 year old Derontae Martin was found dead from a gunshot in the attic of another families home in the early hours of April 25. Derontae’s family wants answers and so do we. Join us in the Garage for a couple of cold ones and some of the cold hard facts of this very tragic case.

Beer of the Week - Out Here by Mast Landing Brewing Company Garage Grade - 4 out of 5 Bottle Caps

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Brief Summary

The episode covers Darante Martin's suspicious death, family disputes over suicide ruling, and investigation concerns in Fredericktown, Missouri.

Key points

The Life of Darante Martin. Darante Martin, a promising young athlete, faced challenges but was on the rise before his tragic death.
Suspicious Circumstances. The investigation into Darante's death raises more questions than answers, leading to family disputes over the suicide ruling.
The Unconfirmed Rumor. A rumor circulates about a teen's past assault and potential motive for violence.
James Wade's Suspicious History. James Wade's past and social media behavior raise questions about his character.
The Party That Wasn't. Conflicting accounts emerge about whether a party was happening at the time of the shooting.
Investigation Confusion. Sheriff's deputy refuses to discuss the investigation details, raising suspicions. "We cannot discuss an open investigation."

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

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Tension

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