The Tragic and Mysterious Death of Kendrick Johnson

[Grifman]

Many of you have probably hear of this case where a African- American high school student, Kendrick Johnson was found dead, wedged in a rolled up gym mat. The initial rather perfunctory investigation came to the conclusion it was an accident, but the family was convinced it was murder. Two further more in depth investigations were made including one by the FBI found no instance of foul play. The family sued the school, the sheriff, the two individuals that they believed committed the alleged murder and others for $100 million. The case was dismissed due to a total lack of evidence (some lawyer really gave them bad advice) and now they are owe $300,00 to the defendants for legal costs. Well, the new sheriff agreed to look further into the case, gaining access to the FBI files, and his investigation came to the same conclusion - no evidence of foul play:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/27/us/k ... ation.html

The young man's parents and many in the community are still very upset and believe that someone killed their son.

There are a number of issues here. The incident occurred in Valdosta, GA, not exactly a hotbed of racial harmony. The first investigation by the sheriff was pretty perfunctory, they did not consider it a crime scene so there were issues there in terms of evidence collection. The coroner concluded that the young man had suffocated due to being wedged in the rolled mat and being upside down for so long (apparently this is a real thing). A second autopsy paid for by the family revealed that the internal organs had been removed and replace with either sawdust or newspapers (the coroner said that they had decomposed so this was done, apparently this is not uncommon) but it fed suspicion of a cover up. The second autopsy said he suffered from blunt force trauma to the neck and jaw. Other things that fed suspicion was that the victim supposedly had a beef with two white brothers from the prior year (over a girl?) and the two brothers were sons of an FBI agent (reason for cover up). A shoe the victim was apparently reaching for at the bottom of the mat had no blood on top of it, though it was resting in a pool of blood (apparently if you are dead and hanging up side down the blood will pool in the head and start to drip out). In addition, strangely his shoes on his feet were removed and inside the mat next to his feet. And apparently there was a hour missing from the CCTV at the time he died from the gym.

On the other hand, it was a well known fact that kids oftentimes hid their stuff in the rolled up gym mats to avoid using the lockers. Usually they can just tip them over and retrieve their stuff. But in this case the mats were bunched up, and victim apparently crawled over the tops of the other mats to get this one and either accidentally fell inside or intentionally tried to get inside to get his shoes. A CCTV did see him and him alone entering the gym. The camera that covered that part of the gym where the mats were was angled away (another part of the conspiracy, but it was later determined that it has been hit during a basketball game and the angle was changed due to that). As for the alleged murderers they were never seen encountering Kendrick that day via CCTV and one of the was on a wrestling team trip at the time of the alleged murder. The FBI investigation got the phones of the two white boys and their parents but found nothing there. The FBI autopsy first came up with the same cause of death as the first autopsy but then for some unknown reason was changed to "unknown".

All in all, there is something here for everyone - murder, coverup, tragic accident? I don't think we will ever know for sure. Amazon has a documentary on this (actually it's Starzz), I haven't watch it yet, but apparently it assumes murder and coverup so YMMV:

https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Kendrick ... B09B8MS2HS

[hepcat]

I’m not a fan of documentaries that cover topics like this with an obvious intent on making up the viewer’s mind for them. It seems to me that Netflix’s Making a Murderer was one of the first to really make it a popular approach. Although I actually came away from Making a Murderer convinced that the guy was guilty.

But it feels like they try to substitute sensationalism for facts too often in these things.

[YellowKing]

It's definitely an intriguing case, and I've listened to various podcast episodes and read various articles about it.

From those limited sources I have always been inclined to believe that the talks of a murder/coverup are borne out of the understandable grief that someone could die in such a freak accident way. But freak accidents do happen.

[Grifman]

I just listened to a couple of podcasts and they shed some additional light and confusion on the topic. There are definitely some anomalies and unusual things going on, but I just can’t see a murder. The two brothers who were accused can be accounted for at the time of the alleged murder - one was on a wrestling team trip, the other was seen on CCTV at that time.

The other problem I see is when could this have been done? We know when Kendrick walked into the gym and we know he missed his next class. I don’t see that there was enough time to kill him, unroll a mat, roll him up, move a bunch of these mats (they weighed over 100 pounds), and place the mat contains his body (which now would have been extremely heavy) in the middle of the group of mats, and the move the other mats back - all the while anyone could have just walked in on them. It just doesn’t make any sense.

I should also add that both the NAACP and SCLC originally supported the family and even supplied an investigator but even they eventually came to believe that there was no murder. In fact they found the attorney for the family and the family lying to people about certain things and then fundraising off of those comments.

I just think that past racial history, an initial sloppy investigation, and the family’s grief prevents them from moving on.

[Grifman]

Good interview with the NAACP investigator:

https://rollingout.com/2015/01/14/kendr ... laims/amp/