Kendrick Johnson /// Part 2 /// 196 | Forensic Files

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true [Music] crime all right Captain where we left off yesterday was with the second
autopsy that was performed on Kendrick Johnson's body his body had been sent to pathologist Dr will William Anderson for
this second autopsy that was paid for by the family and supporters of the family
and their cause Dr Anderson's autopsy report directly contradicted the original autopsy findings of an
accidental death Anderson's report stated that there was physical evidence of blunt force trauma to the right neck
and soft tissues consistent with inflicted injury Anderson went on to state that the injury was likely
inflicted by someone else and that the death should be investigated as a homicide so the Johnson submitted the
report to the loun County coroner's office the gbi and the United States Department of Justice the family began
calling for a Coroner's inquest a process similar to an investigative grand jury whereby the jury listens to
all the evidence and then rules on the cause of death now in October of 2013 one thing that we're the the main
focus of today's show Captain the main reason why you and I got together tonight in the garage is to drink beer
over cies MH is to discuss the questionable items that surround this mysterious death of this young man yeah
we we have this is this is a highly debated case this is a very controversial case and as you will see
today we're going to try to go through these things line by line maybe clear the air a little bit on some of them and
see what we can find yeah just so we're clear so we're all on the same page the first investigation the first autopsy
they claimed that this is accidental death that he was going into this mat after shoes he got stuck in there he
then suffocated and then we found Kendrick the second autopsy and the second investigation is kind of saying
hey that's not what happened we think that somebody hit him and then rolled him up in one of these mats to cover
that up and not only did the person that attacked Kendrick try to cover this up but law enforcement and the sheriff and
the school and the coroner and everybody was trying to cover this up well and probably the strangest thing for me was
this report that came out in October of 2013 this is a report that stems from the second autopsy that they discovered
that Kendrick's body that had been stuffed with newspapers before it was closed up and
prepared for burial yeah so Kendrick's internal organs this this included his brain heart lungs and liver these items
were nowhere to be found and protocol is that the organs are sealed up in a in plastic placed inside the body cavity
and disposed of with the body right now a gbi spokesperson told CNN that after kend 's initial autopsy the organs were
placed in the body the body was closed up and then it was sent off to the Herington funeral home now Harrington's
owner says that the the funeral home never received the organs at all uh Harrington states that he was told that
the organs had been destroyed by the quote natural processes end quote right so decomposition and that the the organs
had been discarded by the person who had opened up the body at the pathologist's
office so this is this is I do want to point out something here so this is one this is a very strange thing to hear
that the this young man's body you know the the organs have gone missing sometime between the first
autopsy and the second autopsy right right it starts smelling like a cover up so we have we have a couple of issues
here Captain this is the second time that we are presented with evidence that something has gone missing
between the transportation of the body from gbi right to the funeral home so I think we I think we need to really go
through this one because there's there's some interesting stuff within this whole
statement so first of all for those of you panicking and freaking out out there I guess it's you know it's not uncommon
that they do in fact stuff the body with something right and from my understanding I've never witnessed this
hope never to witness it or really hope that I never knew anything about it to begin with was that typically they use
sawdust or cotton do I have that right right and I guess that it might have been kind of an old practice for funeral
homes to stuff a body with newspaper it's something that has gone fallen out of practice since I don't
know sometime in the 70s maybe the' 60s but it but we're not talking about something it sounds something that's
like something that's so incredibly unbelievable and then we learn that this is actually somewhat of a common thing
the problem here though which is pointed out to us by the man that conducted the
second autopsy is that when we do not have these organs that prevents them from further
testing those those items now they did have slides uh they did they created different slides and they
would x-ray the different organs so they did have those to make their opinions or
their findings of the second autopsy the other thing though too is isn't it strange that we've now we've
we've had clothing that magically disappeared between the transportation of this young man's body from the gbi to
the funeral home and now we have these organs because we have gbi stating no we we followed protocol we put these organs
in plastic we sealed them up we put them back in the body we transported the body
to the funeral home now a little background on the funeral home because people you know it's it's looking like
these people are very bad people the funeral home it's my understanding that they provided the Johnson family with a
service with funeral services for Kendrick at no cost right just the cost of the organs right yeah well uh that
they were they were trying to do a good thing for the family that had suffered a
terrible tragedy right and they wanted to do something good for these people now they may here's Here's my
thought you know I I I just got done seeing how good and how nice they probably were is there a chance that
they may have cut some Corners cost right because they're giving you a free service it's very
possible I mean first of all the clothes let's not put any blame on the uh gbi because the clothes were with Kendrick
and whoever transported Kendrick messed that up so no fault of the gbi no sense of cover up there there's conflicting
stories the there's one story that the funeral home said well we never got the organs they were not there they said
they never got the clothing as well right but again it it's it's on the report so then you start wondering where
the if the clothes were misplaced in the transportation where the organs misplaced or was there something where
they go again I also heard reports that the funeral hom said well we actually received those but we discarded them now
I've heard both reports so is it possible you know I heard some crazy conspiracy from some Pastor saying well
uh these young black people are being killed to sell their organs because that black market is so hot so you're going
to tell me that this high school kid was killed in school when there's hundreds of people in the school so you can sell
harvest the organs well well well let me here's the question I would like to pose
to that that Pastor look I went to school for computer I don't know anything about you know pathology here's
my guess the poor young man whether he was murdered or tragic accident he laid in in a mat upside down
for close to 24 hours right you can't use those you can't Harvest those organs and use them for anything can you I I I
would they're not working at this point don't don't they try to like like me I'm
a donor so if something were to happen to me aren't they trying to harvest those organs as fast as possible so that
they they are usable for lack of better term I don't know the answer uh to that but I would assume that some organs
would be salvageable more so than the other ones like depending on temperature and some
some probably have to be transferred right away and other ones maybe not so much well I'm only pointing out Captain
the conflicting stories between the gbi and the funeral home for one simple reason we're looking at each of these
items today because there is questions around did they get this investigation right was he murdered right was there a
cover up okay so a couple couple items with the missing clothing and with the missing missing
organs we have gbi saying we sent those items to the funeral home we have the funeral home saying we never received
them so what I'm getting at here is if if gbi is right if gbi is right in saying that we sent these items to the
funeral home there's no cover up as far as the missing clothing or organs go right
because then that means they got to the funeral home and the funeral home chose to dispose of these items in a different
manner than what was expected and instead they might be passing the buck and saying I don't think we ever
received them however so one key thing here when we talk about coverups the funeral home's not going to cover up for
gbi the funeral home's not going to cover up for the sheriff's department or for the people that actually murdered
this young man they don't they don't have a stake in the in in the in the claim they don't have a they don't have
a dog in the fight they're just people that are trying to do something nice for the Johnson family something nice for
Kendrick and give him proper services and I understand that but the the other thing with the gbi is if they claim that
they sent the clothes and they claimed that they sent the organs were with him and the organs weren't found on him when
they when they dug him back up right mhm well then they have reason to cover their own ass and again we got another
another step so if gbi is telling the truth and the funeral hes telling the truth the person you need to look at is
who was transporting his body agreed and here's where I have an issue with it because the organs might be the organs
might be a bigger deal you know who knows what evidential value the organs could have or the clothing one could
argue one over the other right right the the the issue I have is that in one instance regarding the clothing we have
the Transport company saying that we signed for clothing when we picked up this young man's body we signed for
clothing right you can't sign for organs because according to the gbi they were inside the body itself right okay so now
we have the funeral director or the funeral home owner stating we never received the clothing right right what
what how does that work why is there why is there a sign why is there a list of what we are picking up and it's signed
for when we pick it up but when we do the drop off to the funeral home there's no list that that we go over with
someone at the funeral home that signs off on that I'm sure there is but again this but then why are we this is what I
get mad about with some of these um with some of these potential coverup stories
right you almost feel like you don't get to hear the entire story because it would only make sense if there's this if
I'm signing for a list of items that I'm picking up you when I'm delivering to you you should be signing for the items
that I'm dropping off to you right that would that would straighten out the whole Jazz with the with the clothing
again I I'm I'm guessing that there is some kind of protocol and we don't know we don't have that evidence that's why
it's as simple as gbi says one thing and the funeral H says a different thing and
we don't know what the truth is the other issue though too Captain is if in fact gbi disposed of the clothing or the
organs or both mhm then fishy then there could be a cover up but at the very least again we see protocol not being
followed right definitely so we talked about the missing organs we talked about the missing clothing well there's some
others there's some other missing things as well so let's talk about the video footage that was from the loun high
school this is the video surveillance system that they have there yeah so just a little bit of this background so all
these cameras are most these cameras are motion uh sensored so they only turn on
when somebody actually enters the room and they stay on as long as there's motion there what's interesting is if
you start diving into the video footage right away is that most of the cameras themselves are not synced up so for
example you might have Kendrick going down a hall and it says Tim stamp you know let's say 120 but they know that
that period would have been like 115 or whatever right then he walks into the gym Gym's camera turns on but now all of
a sudden it's uh you know 1:30 right right and you go he just walked through a doorway did he hang out
in that doorway for 15 minutes my point is that their time codes are not synced at all yeah not only are they not synced
with each other but they're not sync with the actual time now again if this is true
it's why would you have this system set up like this uh and why would you have the time codes off either way because of
that there becomes a lot of issues which lean more towards the conspiracy side well and yeah so there's there's several
issues that I have with this somebody that's very as someone that's very familiar with these types of systems
right what I can tell you is that they do they're they're set up they installed professionally they are set up
professionally everything is usually tight as a drum tiptop shape ready to rock and roll when these cameras are set
up over time there will start to be glitches in the system things will get off sync like you had just said things
will start to not work properly M the problem with that is you have school administrators that are not they're not
trained in these are they're not trained to fix these things they're not trained
to fix to to realign everything so it's working and functioning properly so again that it's tight as a drum ready to
rock and roll that's when a phone call has to be made to those installers to those software Engineers to people that
know how to do this stuff right I have witnessed and we've talked about it here on the show as well you know hotels uh
street corners bars we've talked about glitches and questions within their surveillance systems that what tends to
happen I think in these situations is you have a little glitch that either goes unnoticed or it's noticed and it's
always thought of I'll make that call tomorrow right and then tomorrow turns into next week and the next week turns
into next month and before you know it you've gone through four months and the time stamps wrong or the time stamps are
off now the problem with that though is these are in a sense they're government officials
aren't they School administrators they're paid for by the local taxes and with the with the expectation that our
children are going to be safe that that during these hours they are at the school and the school is supposed to be
a safe place run by people that that are looking out for our children's best interest right so the first problem is
gbi goes to the school administrators and they say that we need all video evidence related to Kendrick's to this
incident yeah that's the first problem I see because I think you should just say
hey give me all the the video footage you have for the last 48 hours or the last 3 days yeah so just to jump in here
real quick Captain it's estimated that there was approximately 1,00 hours of footage that would have been taken from
the 36 cameras that should have been recording on January 10th and 11th so the day that Kendrick Johnson died and
then the day after which would have shown portions of the investigation right the problem I have with this is
that people claim or they're suspect to claim that there's missing footage and if gbi would have went in and said give
us all the footage and there was missing footage well then the problem lies with
the school administrators right mhm but you didn't do that so now all these people suspect that there are gaps in
time that nobody can account for so it makes it look very suspicious of a conspiracy and you have no way to defend
yourself other than saying well we we looked at all the footage they gave us well okay then why is this part missing
is it coming from your end or is it the ministrators end there's several several
problems that people bring up regarding this camera footage the first being that
the Sheriff's Office had released some still images that were taken from the videos themselves this is portions of
the video that showed Kendrick walking into the gym and heading toward the mats right okay so the issue being there is
there's there's some concern like we talked about with the timestamps later what's going to happen and this was made
possible I believe through CNN who started making open records requests to the school for them to release the
actual footage and then later a judge ordered that some small portions of the surveillance footage be released well
when they release that the the videos that were released they do not appear to be timestamped so now people are
wondering why does why did the images coming from the Sheriff's Office have a timestamp on them that are still images
and now the actual video footage comes out and there's no timestamp on it right and it could be as simple as the fact
that we know that that time stamp was not reality that that time stamp was off you know actual time by 15 minutes or
whatever and and that would be a reasonable explanation or just have the wrong Tim stamp on there another fishy
thing that starts making you think that there's some kind of conspiracy here here's the other thing with these
security systems so if you are the sheriff and you're reviewing the security footage with me the Security
administrator let's say in my off office and we're looking at the monitors together you can take a camera and you
can take a picture of that monitor and that monitor may have the Tim stamp on it right but if somebody gives me a
court order and says hey we need you to give us this information well what I'm going to have to do is actually go in to
the database and I'm going to have to transfer that information transfer that surveillance footage to something else
you know Zip drive or something and and hand it off to them by the time that I do that that time stamp may not
accompany that actual footage right because it it's only going to be transferred in the manner that I tell it
to unless there's certain default settings set up for that that method of transer of of transferring it now the
other thing that people called into question is that we have images that seem to jump around we also it seems
like the cameras that were focused on the mat area in the old gym that they only captured blurry images and they
don't appear to have videoed anything around the time of Kendrick's death people speculate stuff like okay we see
uh somebody walk into frame and then all of a sudden the next frame somebody disappears out of nowhere yeah they
appear and disappear out of nowhere which again could just be glitches in the system because they're motion
censored systems and so it might not have picked up the first motion of of that individual and then all of a sudden
they pop up like they're you know teleporting well CNN took it the extra mile they they had filed suit to access
the video footage and then they hired a forensic video analysis uh analyst I'm sorry to analyze the 290 hours of
material that were received from all of the cameras the video footage analysis was this there was jumpiness present on
the video there was blurriness present uh there were timestamp issues this is all confirmed by a a third party that
doesn't have a dog in the fight right well but they are being paid by CNN to do the investigation so well yeah paid
by CNN to do the investigation but what I mean by that is their loyalty lies with CNN it doesn't lie with the gbi or
with the Johnson family you know that's they they're only beholden to CNN now the analyst states that there was
jumpiness there's blurriness there's timestamp issues however he says that this is all pretty
easily explainable um you can explain it by erratic motion sensors unfocused or outdated lenses on the cameras right or
dirty lenses the analyst also said that the nonsequential footage this is the footage where it will appear that people
are appearing or disappearing out of nowhere is the result of lost information and or corrupted files now
whether the data was corrupted just via system malfunction or processing error or whether it was the result of
deliberate tampering could not be determined so the analyst is saying this is occurring on the video footage right
however I cannot in my expert opinion tell you why it occurred it could have just been some kind of glitch or error
or it could have been a person going in there and manipulating the file correct which again either way it starts making
you think well hey this is somebody covering their tracks now where it gets weird though is you have to remember
people could be covering their tracks just because they did a shitty job of the initial investigation so if you're
covering up the shitty initial investigation that doesn't mean you're covering up a murder yeah well of more
concern was this the the analyst said he determined that at least an hour was missing there was there was missing
footage that that would make up about an hour this is coming from a long time well it seems like a long time but it is
a long time well I don't think I don't necessarily think we're actually talking about a real hour as you and I know an
hour okay they're not talking about a consecutive time right they they're not clear on this statement what they're
stating is that there is at least an hour missing from the video footage from all four cameras around the gym so
meaning that what I believe this to mean and I could be wrong they're not outwardly stating one way or the other I
believe this to mean that collectively when we take all four of these cameras when we collected all that information
together that adds up to about an hour of missing footage well but that could also be like the one camera where you
see Kendrick walk in mhm the camera doesn't start back up for another 15 minutes because there's nobody in frame
so could they be talking about 15 minute if you times that by four that gives you
your hour oh good job so furthermore the analyst told investigators that they needed to subpoena the actual
surveillance servers in order to determine where the missing footage went as opposed to just relying on what was
given to them by the school and quote those files are not original files they're not something investigators
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welcome back and cheers Captain you had a few items on your laundry list that you wanted to speak about well if we
don't talk about them I think people will bring them up so let's talk about the blood that was found it wasn't found
that far from where Kendrick was found it was in about six droplets of blood that was on a wall it's very dark it
looks almost like Black smudge right mhm now they did collect this and they did test it and it wasn't Kendrick's blood
now that's fine and it probably was left there I believe it probably was a lot of
people on the side that say it's such a conspiracy say hey blood is not just left on walls and High School like we
talked about before high schools are just not that clean and if this is in the area that they would have put the
mats up in it's possibility that when they put the mats up a janitor couldn't get to this and clean it so you have
that evidence you have that sample so you can at least find out who that that belongs to and that might take a lot of
work and time but you could do that to rule that out and cover your own ass the other piece of item is this hoodie that
people bring up all the time it's I think it's a structure hoodie well before we move on to the hoodie I think
you know what the biggest part of the argument for the blood evidence that's found approximately 50 feet from the mat
that that Kendrick was later found in is that you know just because you rule out
that it's Kendrick's blood does not mean that it doesn't have anything to do with
this situation I mean it could be the offender's blood how many times have we talked about an
ATT that go down and the offender injures themselves or the person that they are attacking defends themselves
and injures the offender so I think that's the big concern there that it's not just okay well thanks for letting us
know that it's not Kendrick's blood however we would like to know who it belongs to right
especially I think where you run into the trouble here with a lot of this investigation and I think specifically
with the blood evidence is that most of the people at this school they're minors
they're not they're not adults and that makes it a little trickier when you're talking about the privacy of these
children they children you know and I think that's that's where they ran into some issues regarding the surveillance
footage too because the school's like well look we can't just willy-nilly release all this surveillance footage
it's camera it's camera footage of children walking around right you know whose identities need to remain
anonymous that that we can't they need to be it's their job to protect them right and so they're in fact I think
with the the blood we we're looking at pretty much the same problem so that's why they're like you know what well
let's at least rule out Kendrick right uh to put this in the right direction where I take where I have a problem with
this is that there were some people some some people that were named as suspects now in their defense they
were only named by Kendrick's parents they were never named by by law enforcement officials but these persons
I would have loved to have seen the opportunity for somebody to say look we're going to test this Blood we'd like
to compare it to yours right you have the opportunity here to come forward and say and and prove to us that this is not
your blood I one potential problem though captain is the way that you've described
the the blood that was found there m it sounds like this is a a poor sample um possibly contaminated but I
guess it was strong enough to to determine that it was not Kendrick's right so so yeah I think that's all an
issue and and you wanted to move on to the sweatshirt we mentioned that one of the amongst the other items that were
found at the scene we already explained away the textbook and the folder that was located those were Kendrick's there
was a sweatshirt a hooded um a hooded Hollister brand sweatshirt that was found at the scene again again I think
they should have tagged and bagged they didn't but they did give back this hoodie supposedly to Kendrick's family
so they're the ones that are saying or they're the ones that came out and said hey we don't think this was accidental
death we think somebody um hit him or murdered him and then put him in the the mat and then and then put the mat back
up they're the ones saying that so you do have that piece of evidence so if you want anything done to that shirt I'm
going to then put that on you again like I said they should tagged and bagged it
and kept it in evidence they didn't but they did give it back to the family that's my thoughts on that piece of
evidence well and I think before we move too far away from the surveillance footage that we that we
discussed it sounds to me like that there was an opportunity for the Johnson's to view this surveillance
footage at the school within days of the death and they didn't do that for whatever reason and actually I believe
that they were encouraged through I don't know if it was their attorneys but there we had already mentioned the
NAACP the uh SCC those group at the very least were encouraging them to go and view that footage and for
whatever reason they did not at that time but I I think we should push on forward Captain because in
2014 things are going to start to heat up a bit this is when the Johnson's and their attorneys are becoming
increasingly aggressive in their pursuit of Justice they had even gone so far as
to mention by name the two boys who they declared had a reason to hurt Kendrick right this is Brian and Brandon Bell so
it's not only these are brothers Brian and Brandon Bell the Johnson's alleged that the Bell Brothers had used an
unnamed female to lure Kendrick into the old gym where they had killed him and stuffed his body into the mat they
further claimed that the crime had been a cover up with the aid of the Bell brother brother's father right because
he was a FBI agent yes that's like when you start reading about this case and you hear that you go what what
FBI agent all of these allegations were laid out in a lawsuit filed by the Johnson's against more than 30
defendants that claim were complicit MH separately in July 2014 they sued the school system and the superintendent for
the wrongful death of their son the lawsuit alleged that a white student had a history of provoking and attack in
Kendrick at school now yeah I believe that they got into some kind of fight and I don't know what that fight was one
of the B brothers and Kendrick supposedly they were somewhat friends now this is what the Bell family says uh
but the Johnson family says we we don't know him never heard of him they weren't
friends the first issue I have with this is led him lured Kendrick in the old gym
by using a female decoy boy right mhm my first problem with that is we do know that he had weight training class and
that's the reason why he was in the gym right yeah and they don't back that up with saying hey we see a young female
going into the gym before he does right so that's just my first problem with this yeah well okay so let's talk about
that incident that that you had mentioned between one of the Bell Brothers and Kendrick Okay so when this
first comes out Captain it's Kenneth and Jackie they're claiming you know Kendrick's parents are claiming that the
bell boys th this whole thing stemmed from an incident that had took place between
Kendrick and Brian Bell that this had occurred this incident occurred just before Kendrick had died mhm there are
people that looked into this and what the the result of their investigations are this that that incident there was an
incident but but in fact it actually took place 18 months earlier this would be in 2011
when the two boys were freshman members of the Vikings football team okay so picture this they it's after a football
game they're riding home on the bus okay and what the report States is that Brian
and Kendrick were in some kind of they're trading mama jokes you know your mama's so fat like that kind of thing
don't give your mama so F when she sits around the house she really sits around the house yeah so they're trading these
mama jokes and for whatever reason it gets out of hand and the two ended up getting in a fight yeah one was better
than the other at mama jokes is what it comes down to yeah well but we've we've been in school we've seen where these
things start off as some kind of friendly tug ofwar let's say and it does turn into a fight yeah and they just had
a football game so you got adrenaline going and they're probably just coming down from that adrenaline High they're
actually on the bus with with an older team from the same school from the Vikings football team uh I think it's
the varsity team maybe the JV I don't know so we have two teams on this on this bus they're heading home this fight
breaks out between Brian and Kendrick regarding these mother jokes so what ends up happening is the boys are
separated very quickly once this fight breaks out when the school bus arrived back at the school Brian is then with
his brother because his brother played football as well he he was a junior he was on the older Team all right so the
two Bell Brothers they go home they're picked up by their parents the complaint is regarding Kendrick is this that
Kendrick was sent home in the school resource officer's car so what what you have here and this
is according to Kendrick's Father Kenneth that the white kids get to go home with their parents but the black
kid was put in a police cruiser yeah which is bull around [ __ ] you know well is they should be treated
the same exactly right if if if putting if putting Kendrick in a police cruiser and taking him home is a form of
punishment then Brian Bell should have been escorted home by the police officer as well and told what had happened what
had occurred on the bus correct but if your son is taken back to your house and a quote unquote pretty much a police
cruiser then you should probably remember when this happened and you should probably not say that it happened
just before um you know your son was found dead and that it happened 18 months beforehand well there in lies a
big problem with this story so when you initially hear the story and the way that k Johnson tells the story it sounds
like there's a fight shortly before his son is killed right and his son Not only
was in a fight with the one of the people we think killed him but the result was my son was punished and the
white kid was not punished right the truth of the matter that we end up learning once you once you dig through
once you dig nothing that that that Johnson says is completely wrong Kendrick absolutely was driven home by
the the school's resource officer but let's keep in mind that's that's a police officer that's working at the
school it's not like they called the police right and a cruiser came in and picked up Kendrick and took him home mhm
the way that this story works is it's exactly like I started off with this is an old fight this was not a fight that
started right before Kendrick ended up dead in the match MH this was almost 18 months beforehand and then what we do
learn is that yeah yes the the Bell Brothers did go home with their parents Kendrick didn't go home with his parents
because his parents were not at the school to pick him up right when he arrived back at the school he has no
ride home the school resource officer that was already there who would later tell the media I considered myself to be
a family friend of the of the Johnson family right so I took him home right I knew Kendrick I knew Kendrick outside of
my job of being a resour ource officer at the actual High School just offered him a ride home it was not a form of
punishment I was just trying to help them out right yeah but again sometimes people only see what they want to see M
and it seems like that happens a lot with u Mr Johnson well I I don't even think it's see what you want to see I
mean it might be see what you want to see but could it also be tell what you want to tell right I mean because
control your narrative right when we hear the story from him it's a it it sounds very damning mhm and then when
you really start digging through it you're like well it's not a complete lie but there's things in here that just
that they have different meaning than the way that he describes them and it's not as simple as the white kid was not
punished and the black kid was right so these B Brothers I mean I think the thing initially that jumped out me when
they say hey we got these kids that we think might be responsible for Poss possibly hitting Kendrick and then
rolling them up in a mat and you go okay well these mats are mainly used for wrestling and one of the B Brothers is a
wrestler so that seems a little fishy but that doesn't mean anything okay so let's go through these these Bell boys
together here okay well and they're Brothers but they're also Bros well but the so the sheriff investigated them and
he determined that Brandon Bell was not even on school grounds at the time that Kendrick had died right so he's on a
school athletic outing with the wrestling team um this is 25 people on the wrestling team he's one of them and
that he he couldn't have been involved because they were out of town for some kind of wrestling tournament right that
day okay so he's not even at the school the other Belle brother was in a fourth period
class and had like 20 some eyewitnesses placing him in the class I believe the whole time right they're both accounted
for in different locations making it seemingly impossible that either of them let alone both of them could be involved
this is where the sheriff points out that the boys were never considered suspects because of these reasons now
they were pretty much cleared right away yeah but the Johnson would continue to maintain that the bells were involved in
in Kendrick's murder right they even produced a and made a public video raising questions about both of the bell
boys and they also pointed out that the bells had refused to cooperate with police and they pointed out what
appeared to be a School record showing that the wrestling bus had not left the campus until 400 p.m. on January 10th
this giving Brandon plenty of time to Kill Kendrick and still make it to the bus right so then we have the school's
attorney comes out and counters that statement stating that he points to the school bus travel
log okay that J Johnson's legal team was referring to this is just a trip request that was
filled out weeks before the tournament to reserve the bus so they've not they may not actually know exactly what time
they need the bus yet it's so many weeks in advance right so actually on January
10th this is what they could prove that the wrestling team had uh School's First
lunch session which lasted from 11:32 a.m. to 12:02 p.m. then the team and the coaches boarded a school bus and left
for a 150 mile drive to the tournament the wrestling coach's cell phone records indicate the team was in Cordell Georgia
at 13 p.m. Cordell is approximately 85 M north of the school indicating that the
bus would have already have left and been on the road at the time that Kendrick was last seen alive on that
video footage right so again Mr Johnson doesn't want to listen to the actual evidence I mean look is it wrong for you
to suspect that something happened for to your son no and was there definitely some shotty police work yes but these
two individuals that you think have something to do with your son and possibly from rumors because if you look
at a lot of the police investiga um the police reports and when they're talking to students now they're talking to some
of these students s months later there was some rumors about this well when the parents of a dead child is saying hey we
think these kids had something to do with it you better believe in that High School there's going to be rumors
started so we have these rumors started but then they come back to you law enforcement comes back to you and says
hey we have their whereabouts we have their aliis that's where it gets really fishy to me though or or fishy from the
Johnson side to me is they go well okay so these guys have aliis so now not only
are the Bell Brothers responsible but the superintendent's responsible and the and the the whole school's responsible
and the sheriff's responsible and they're all covering that up because the Belle Brothers their father is a FBI
agent mhm it just seems really really far-fetched well it's stretching it so I I think I think with that Captain we can
kind of lead into that leads us into what are our thoughts what are our conclusions after reviewing the evidence
I'll let you go first my main oh man I don't even know where to start because there is a lot of this stuff that it
does bother me uh do I think the investigation would have been handled a little different if it was one of the
Bell Brothers that was found in the mat I do believe that I believe that 100% I don't think they would have been walking
around just in their shoes I think they would have collected all pieces of evidence I think they would have crossed
their teas and dotted their eyes and uh I think they went and acted like a bunch
of pieces of [ __ ] but I think what happened here was they had to see their son and because the way
he died and I lean more towards accidental that the way he died and the way he his face looked
afterwards I think that was all the proof that Johnson needed to think that something you know bad happened and it
wasn't just an accident that somebody made his face look that way that his face had to be beaten up and it wasn't
just because he was basically upside down and also dead for probably what 12 hours before he's
found and I think him looking at his son was enough for him to go down this wild
goose chase now where it makes it weirder is that because the investigation didn't cross their te's
didn't dot their eyes didn't bag and tag everything that they were supposed to didn't wear coverings for their shoes
didn't talk to students beforehand and I think assumed right when they found him
right when they found Kendrick Johnson that this was an accident and they didn't do all the things that they
should have done and then when the Johnson's are calling them out and saying hey we think there's Foul Play
here that everybody that was involved in the investigation is covering their ass
not because it was a murder but because they did such a shitty job and so you know if you would have done your job
correctly at the beginning we wouldn't have all these problems and we wouldn't have all this conspiracy and wasting a
bunch of people's time well or would we that's what that's what I question because here's here's
where I stand on this on the surface and you know I I'm going to say that I I go
into every one of our cases right down the middle and I'm going to look at it I'm going to let the evidence lead me
where it should lead me into into the right direction with this one I did not because i' had already had some previous
knowledge well I thought I had previous knowledge about this case right because on the surface it does look very wrong
it looks like there's a lot of wrongdoing by a lot of people and that there was in fact a cover up it's very
fishy yeah when you start to get a better understanding of the layout of the old gym and the the setup of the
mats MH and things like that it starts to look to you or to me anyway like it was there's a chance that this was an
accident right once you hear how this this was described that this is was set up that that the children would often
place things inside of these mats for safekeeping it becomes it becomes apparent to me that we might have just
an accidental strange bizarre death and you talked about it you nailed it it's it's when when the parents saw their son
they couldn't come to the same conclusion that was already decided for them and I get that I get that it had to
been the worst thing for them to see their son in that manner now where the public becomes involved is that a the
picture is released of Kendrick after death that was taken by his father we don't know the exact point that he took
this picture and but what we do know is it was either taken on that Sunday when he went to identify the body or it was
taken after the autopsy right okay regardless the reason why he his appearance why he appeared that way was
because the amount of time that had gone by by by the injuries by the state of the body by being upside down and
potentially the autopsy having been conducted so where the public had a had an outcry for let's open up this case
again it's because we're reacting to that photo yeah and that photo is not fair to the public to Simply release it
and let the public believe the public believed when they saw this this was a picture this is what he looked like
right when they found him that's not the case man well but that's when you see his face and then you see his actual
picture you go this is a face of a man that was you know vicious viciously beaten right that's what that's what it
looks like that's what your eyes tell you it is and and for some people it's as simple as seeing is believing and
that's just it but but there's enough science to explain the reason that he appeared that way right okay now I so
we're kind of taking unpopular uh an unpopular stance on this I believe I I think that most people
look at this case and I think that there's still possibly a huge public outcry that this is an injustice that
occurred um I here's the thing it's not without question though I can't look at this and go 100% this was an this was an
accident and why because of things that you pointed out because of it being a shoty investigation because protocol was
not followed because there is some surveillance footage missing yes you know those questions are not answered
but if I had to pick a side I think this is just a tragic accidental death and I
think the Tipping Point for me what really kind of pushed me towards that conclusion was there was an outstanding
um woman and her name is Lee touchon okay so in 2015 she was an investigator with the N
NAACP MH she gave an interview to Media publication regarding Kendrick's case touchon investigated Kendrick's death
for two Years first in her role with the NAACP and then as an independent investigator working for the southern
Christian leadership conference touchon was a seasoned civil rights activist whose role required her to investigate
claims of racially motivated civil rights violations she had lobbied the doj to investigate the case and she
repeatedly contacted the US attorney's office with the same request touch conducted a thorough probe into
Kendrick's death after the Sheriff's Office had closed their investigation She interviewed numerous local public
officials including the county school superintendent the attorney for the sheriff the sheriff and one of his
deputies she talked to school board members and obtained Kendrick's case File she even toured the crime lab
several times interviewed the director visited the body cooler refrigeration unit and looked at the alarms and record
books she noted that contrary to Kendrick's father's statement and claims that the crime lab cooler was not
working that it was warm air she saw the alarm that would go off if electricity was shut off or if temperatures got too
high or too low and confirmed that there were backup generators in such a case as
a blackout right she noted that the chief forensic investigator is black he's an African-American right she spoke
with the school's attorney and gained an understanding of the lapses in the surveillance footage she tour the old
gym and was given a reenactment of how Kendrick was found touch's conclusions was that there was no
credible evidence to even claim a murder had been committed Kendrick's death had
been a tragic accident she said I think the murder theory is not only false but also ridiculous and based only on wild
speculation and outright Fabrications based on the preponderance of medical evidence the diagnosis of
propositional asfixia is the only diagnosis that fits all of the facts there is no way that the accused boys
could have been involved in Kendrick's death in fact she resigned in protest from the nwacp
because she noted that the organization continued to provide assistance and funding to the Johnson parents who were
making allegations against the bells that she said were lies well good for her after her resignation from the
NAACP she teamed up with Reverend Floyd Rose of the SCC he had been requested by the family
to look into Kendrick's death and was one of the biggest supporters early on in the quest to find Justice for
Kendrick touchon and Rose investigated the case together and came again came to the same conclusion that Kendrick's
death was an accident Reverend Rose who is an African-American man told the USA Today
you won't find a person of any reputation in this town who says that boy was murdered are there other
injustices around here you bet there are but this is not one of them and I'm not
going to be bossed around by whites or blacks he told Grant land which is a sports blog owned by ESPN that he simply
could not believe that the sheriff the detectives the forensic scientist the criminal investigators the investigators
from the gbi and the medical examiner had all colluded and risk their careers to cover
something up he went on to State maybe in 1951 but not in 2013 so I got a couple words for some
people and this case if if you don't mind mhm so first of all this Sheriff there's this video footage of some news
reporter that go in and they want to talk to him about the Kendrick Johnson case and he says I'm not talking about
that case and they say why aren't you talking about this case he says cuz I don't want to well first of all this
individual which did a pretty shoddy job I believe you you should be thankful that you worked on this case
that you made errors and blunders and that possibly that you could learn from this and learn that these blunders and
these missteps that you took and instead of following the letter of the land you
followed your own protocol and then look how much hurt that caused the Johnson family and then the Johnson family
bringing up that possibly there's a conspiracy and then how much that brought everybody else and so you should
be one just take it in and say yes I made a bunch of mistakes I wish I didn't make but I'm going to be a better
sheriff and a better better individual because I worked on this Kendrick Johnson case well and I pointed out that
the my Tipping Point for me was the final conclusion by Lee touchon and then by Reverend Floyd r R and the reason why
that was the Tipping Point for me was because just like me they went into this case thinking that there was an
injustice here thinking that there was a murder and that there was a cover up these two intelligent individuals spent
a lot of time they spent two years investigating this only to end up at the other end of this right that there was
not an injustice that this was in fact an accident so where I can't say 100% that I believe this was an accident
because of protocol being broken because of things that are missing because things that have not been explained
fully I'm going to rely on these two smart individuals that spent two years on this investigation and they didn't
work for anybody that was involved in the coverup and they went into this expecting to find a cover up mhm and it
only turned out that they ended up at the other end of it yeah and when I went into to this I mean I love a good
conspiracy as much as anybody else right I think they're fascinating cases mhm I
just don't see the evidence of that and I'd be willing to hear the evidence I think there's enough Reasonable Doubt to
go hey if you can give me some solid piece of evidence to show me that this was actually a murder and not an
accident I'd be willing to listen I just don't see that evidence out there and make sure you go to the iTunes Store
it's been requested a bunch of times I took 20 of the themes I'm going to be taking all the themes theme music theme
music of the shows and putting them together in these compilations and you can get the first volume uh of the
themes on iTunes for pre-order right now and before we wrap up Captain something
I haven't done in a few weeks a little recommended reading yeah I thought I just figured you were so into computer
that you didn't don't like books anymore well I actually had a few people email me saying hey there's been no
recommended reading for the last few weeks and that in fact has been true but if you've noticed we've recommended
movies podcast um a bunch of other things and what I por I typically don't like to recommend too many things in one
show so uh we're back at it this week and this week we are recommending a book called the undercover Edge this is by
Derek lavasier he's a former detective and TV personality uh if you could his face you would know he's on the I
believe the ID channel he has some kind of uh new new case that he's covering with another Gentleman on there he was
also uh on some OJ documentary he was at crime con last year I recommending this
book because he will be at crime conon along with us again this year which is in May of this year in Nashville yeah
he'll be the second sexiest man at crime Con well the uh so this is called the undercover Edge and it's one of these
motivational uh inspirational books it's it's teachings that you can use in your
life um so you can find your hidden stren so you can find your hidden strengths learn to adapt and build the
confidence to win life's game you can check that out by going to our website truecrime garage.com click on the
recommended page we have a bunch of books there for you all right we'll see you guys next week uh be good be kind
and don't [Music] [Applause] [Music] Litter the Angie list you know un Trust is now Angie and we're so much more than
just a list we still connect you with top local pros and show you ratings and reviews but now we also let you compare
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job done right get started at angie.com that's ngi or download the app today

Kendrick Johnson /// Part 2 /// 196

Part 2 of 2

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Episode 196 - This week we cover the very controversial and bizarre death of 17 year old Kendrick Johnson. On January 11th 2013 Kendrick Johnson was found dead in a High School gymnasium. His body had been discovered by a fellow student. The circumstances surrounding his death have been the cause of much debate since. Kendrick’s death has been ruled an accident however many including Kendrick’s parents say different. They believe he was murdered by several students. The murder then covered up by the sheriff because the alleged killers father is a F.B.I. Agent. Grab a beer and find a comfortable chair because this will be a bumpy ride. Beer of the Week - Terrapin RyeGarage Grade - 3 and 3 quarter bottle caps out of 5

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Brief Summary

The episode analyzes the Kendrick Johnson case, focusing on autopsy findings, missing evidence, and the investigation's flaws.

Key points

Consumer Cellular's Flexible Plans. Consumer Cellular offers phone plans free of contracts, emphasizing customer choice and flexibility.
Kendrick Johnson's Second Autopsy. A second autopsy contradicts the original findings, suggesting homicide rather than accidental death.
Missing Organs and Clothing. Questions arise about the missing organs and clothing in Kendrick's case, hinting at a possible cover-up.
Video Footage Issues. The video surveillance system at Kendrick's school shows significant discrepancies, raising suspicions.
Timestamp Confusion. Questions arise as to why still images have timestamps while video footage does not.
Conspiracy Theories. Discrepancies in evidence lead to speculation about a potential cover-up.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This is a highly debated case.

Introduction to the controversial nature of Kendrick Johnson's death.

5:25WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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