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What made me think that everything was, um,
a coverup was, for me,
as an experienced homicide detective,
was just that first meeting with the medical examiner.
Um, for you to relate to me
the way you ruled it and why you ruled it,
a red flag goes up, something is wrong.
Body parts are missing.
Evidence is missing.
That's another red flag.
In homicide cases,
even though everything is not perfect,
but stuff just ain't missing like that, that's evidence.
This is the first case I can recall
where as we were, um,
on the task force to work with the federal government
in a case that far away from D.C.
Why do you think that they did that?
Well, to my understanding, um,
they recused all of the federal agencies
from being involved in the cases,
therefore, an outside agency like ourselves,
with homicide experience,
was perfect for investigating the case.
Why would they recuse themselves?
Because, in this particular case,
the two persons who were listed as persons of interest,
their father was an FBI agent.
It was just something about that case
that just made me feel as though,
because of who was involved,
you have a star athlete,
he was one of the Vale boys,
star athlete,
and the father's a decorated FBI agent.
Um, something just wasn't right.
Snotty-nosed smiling.
Just busy.
He was smilin', always doing something.
I rememember this one right here,
when he lost his teeth that time.
Didn't have no hair.
There goes those ears.
♪
There's him doing what he do best.
♪
There's him running the ball.
♪
-Here. -Long time.
Time to take it in the goal line.
♪
Well, the body of a Lowndes County High School student
still has investigators putting together the pieces
of what took place.
♪
The body was found in the gym
at Lowndes County High School early Friday morning.
Now, Lowndes County Sheriff Chris Prine
officially released the name
of the deceased individual today
as 17-year-old sophomore Kendrick L. Johnson.
Johnson was reportedly found in the gym
next to several rolled-up mats,
and suffered no gunshots or trauma to his body.
Sheriff Prine says the incident is slightly puzzling
but one the department is working hard
to find answers for.
[directional clicking]
KJ is all--
my husband and all my children,
all their initials start with K and a J.
I have three Kenneths for now.
That's my husband, my oldest son,
and my grandson is K-- we call him K3.
And my daughter, she's Kenyetta.
So that's Kenneth Senior, Kenneth Junior, um,
Kenyetta, Kendrick, and Kenya,
and my other granddaughter, Kennedy.
All of them start with-- all of them are KJs.
And we use his initials,
we say that that means King Jesus.
We are here at the school.
♪
This is the story of Kendrick Johnson.
After a four-year undercover investigation
into the facts of this case,
our team has still not found the evidence
to point the finger at a killer.
So at this time, we don't know who killed KJ.
However, we have collected
a lot of facts and pieces of evidence,
and we wanted to show the public what we found
and let them make up their own minds.
This is Kendrick's dad, Kenneth,
and his mom, Jackie Johnson.
They got married and have lived
in Valdosta, Georgia, their entire lives.
Kenneth is a truck driver.
Together, he and Jackie have raised a family
and an extended family of many loved ones.
This is their oldest daughter, Kenyetta Johnson.
This is Jackie's mother and Kendrick's grandma.
And these are Kendrick's aunts, Lydia and Stephanie.
They are the people closest to Kendrick.
So to try to put a human face on this situation,
we wanted to give them a chance
to finally tell their story.
Yeah, I'm a truck driver,
and I was coming out of New York at the time.
And he called me the day before that.
He said, uh, "Dad," uh,
he knew I was going to get a truck.
He said, "Daddy, uh, you got a truck?"
I said, "I'm on my way to get it now."
I said, "I'll be home on Saturday morning."
then that was the last conversation
that I talked to him, it was about a truck.
Then, the next day,
that's when everything started to happen, you know,
we can't get in touch with Kendrick.
And after school was out,
I asked his bus driver where was Kendrick.
And she was like, "Um, he didn't ride home with me."
Once I got home, um, I asked, um, my daughter.
They was asking, like, did he call me or something.
They'd say, like, "Was he stayin'?"
For a basketball game or somethin' at the school.
And I was just like, "No."
So I called my husband.
You know, she said, "Have you heard from Kendrick?"
And I said, "Not heard from him today,"
which I normally do, you know,
by the end of the school day he'll call me.
By then, we're worried.
So she came and got me and we rode back to the school
and, like, rode back around looking for him again.
And it got dark.
"Have you heard from Kendrick yet?"
"No, I still ain't heard from him."
And he said, "Yeah, go on and call the police
because something ain't right."
So the sheriff's department came and he--
the first thing he said, um,
"He's probably just somewhere laid up
with some fast-tailed girl."
And I was like, "No, my children know better.
On a school night, you be in this house by 10:00.
Not 10:01, not 10:02, at 10:00."
And so he just took the report and said,
"Well, I'll ride around to the school
and around the blocks to see if I see him anywhere."
So then I get in my truck
and I ride out to the school house
and circle through the school parking lot.
Still no Kendrick.
But by then, I know something is terribly wrong
because it's, like, almost 12:00.
12:00, I knew he was dead.
♪
I got where I couldn't drive
because it started to bother me so much.
So I pulled over and I laid in my bed.
♪
I said, "My son dead."
♪
-I knew it. -Down deep in my heart,
I knew Kendrick was dead somewhere,
but I never would have thought in a million years
at the school house and in the manner that he was.
♪
I didn't sleep at all.
That morning, she said, "What do you want me to do?"
I said, "You go to that school house."
I was at the school house at 8:00 seeing what happened,
had anybody seen Kendrick.
It was a lot of people that were in and out of the gym.
So I went to the front door,
whatever, but they wouldn't let me in.
One of the other resource officers,
she comes up to me.
And I asked her, I said,
"Is that my son that they just found in the gym?"
And she was like, "Yes."
And I just lost it.
Then, all of a sudden, she start hollerin'
and screamin' and cryin'.
And it just went downhill from there.
♪
They pulled down the mat and his legs and feet
were hanging out of the mat.
He wasn't moving.
And the smell, it was-- it smelled bad.
You could smell it.
The shock had, you know, left us all,
and we'd realized that one of our classmates
had died in our school right beneath us.
I'm in the middle of traffic driving, um, across town.
So, she say, "They found a body at the school
and it's Kendrick, you need to get to Jackie."
So I said, "Where's my sister?"
What I didn't--oh, uh-uh.
I can't do this.
I can't--I cannot do this.
♪
After they told us that, I was just empty.
I didn't really feel nothing at the time.
♪
I stopped in the middle of the road
and I just screamed.
And I--I talked to this detective
and I said, "What happened?"
She said, "Something is on Kendrick's head."
That's all she told me.
And then she hung the phone up.
Police told us that it was him.
And all the kids was steady changing classes.
And I guess, by then, it hit the news or Facebook.
All these kids were just mulling around the building.
It was basically a crime scene.
-Oh yeah. -And they hadn't treated it
like that, and they were telling you that he was dead.
And everyone was still at the school walking around.
Mm-hm, they were switching classes and everything
as my mom was out there, like, screaming and crying.
And one sheriff even came in there,
resource officer from the sheriff's department,
and he was like, "What are you screaming for?
We don't even know if that's KJ."
And I was like, "Has anybody else reported their child dead?
Do he have dreads?" And he was like, "Yes."
I said, "So you know that's my child."
Did they take you to him?
No, they never let us see him at all.
I saw my sister sitting in a wheelchair.
My sister looked like she was out of it.
My sister looked like somebody had drugged her.
Looked like somebody--
looked like life was just taken out of her.
They tried to show my daughter a picture of a tennis shoe
of a way of identifying him.
♪
Well, they let me identify him by a shoe.
They didn't let my mama identify him.
It was like the orange-- yeah, it was his orange shoe
and one of the black shoes, they both was clean.
Not long after that, the sheriff came in.
"Well, we don't--we don't find any foul play."
Well, that was real quick for me.
-The day of. -The day of.
Just within the last 15 minutes,
we saw several vehicles with investigators inside
coming on and leaving the campus.
The information surrounding their classmate's death
stopped the school in its tracks.
Everybody was quiet.
We went to lunch and there was not a word said.
You could walk outside and hear a pin drop.
I'm not sure if it's hit me yet.
We're all going through this and we'll get through it.
I'm very thankful.
I'm thankful it wasn't my son.
Not knowing what happened,
you just wonder, you know,
how people might retaliate or...
It's just scary.
The sheriff's office and Lowndes County Schools
had this to say:
"Nothing has been discovered
to indicate foul play was involved."
When I tell ya, I remember this like it--
just, like, vivid, like it happened just yesterday.
My sister let out a cry.
She said, "Y'all killed my son.
Y'all killed my son."
I was up on--
up there on 81.
I think it was in their master plans
not to have me here.
Because if I was here,
it wouldn't have went down like that.
I would have viewed my son's body.
There wasn't nothing they could have done
that they could've kept me out of that gym.
♪
Investigators say on Thursday
Johnson didn't show up to his fourth period class.
Friday morning, he was found dead
inside a rolled-up gym mat.
These mats, to describe 'em just a little bit,
they're actually very large floormats,
but when you roll 'em up,
of course, it creates a circle
and leaves an opening in the middle
that's approximately two foot wide.
Investigators say it appears Johnson was on top of mats
that were standing upright when he possibly fell
or reached inside the hole of the mat
to get a shoe and got stuck.
From the evidence that we found,
this is not a murder.
It appears just to be a terrible, terrible tragedy
that resulted in a young man losing his life.
All I can say is that until an autopsy is done
we cannot determine the cause of death.
There does not appear to be, uh,
any trauma to the body.
How can you fall over in a wrapped-up mat?
Still overcome with grief and anger,
these distraught family members
are now asking the community for prayers and support.
Everything was different.
In what way?
We had--we usually would post up,
like, right in front of, uh,
in front of E Wing,
where all the kids would be there
in between classes.
We all post up there normally.
Okay, so after KJ passed away,
we started having two officers post up.
So KJ dies and then they send officers
-to your spots. -Yeah, they start--
start doing a lot of crazy stuff, man.
Let's do a quick breakdown of the early key facts.
Kendrick was found upside down,
rolled in a gym mat around 10:30 AM on January 11th.
He went missing the day before
at approximately 1:20 PM on video cameras in this gym.
Kendrick is 5'10",
and the gym mat he supposedly went into head first
is six feet tall.
Kendrick's shoulders measured 19 inches,
and according to the police's own incident report,
the opening of the mat measured 14 inches.
But the sheriff's office is somehow saying
he fit his body into the mat and got stuck
while trying to retrieve a shoe
at the bottom of the mat.
There was a pool of blood under Kendrick's head
when they moved the mat,
but somehow the shoe they claimed he was going for
is perfectly clean and doesn't have a thing on it.
I knew it was, you know, something shady was going on
from the very beginning.
From the very beginning.
And so that's when it came down to the rally.
We had a rally downtown at the courthouse.
A lot of people showed up.
News media showed up.
And we demanded that Kendrick's body
do not leave Lowndes County
till me or his mother identified his body.
Hour and a half later, um, I get a phone call.
He said, "Well, come down to the crime lab."
We walked in, first thing I said on my mind,
"Damn, it's kind of hot in here."
Then I thought to myself, I said,
"Well, maybe I'm a little nervous
about what I'm finna see."
When they pulled the drawer out,
instead of a gush of cool air come out,
a gush of hot air come out.
♪
And I'm like, "Damn, what the hell going on here?"
I didn't say nothin'.
They took the bag, unzipped the bag.
All the way-- all the way down to his foot.
♪
And I looked at my son.
♪
I looked at the detective, I said, "Clearly," I said,
"You can see clearly that he was in a fight."
I said, "Man, look at his face."
I said, "Look at one side of his face swole up."
How they had Kendrick arm,
is he was like this.
In the bag?
Yeah, in the bag.
They wouldn't even put his arms down?
No, no, he was-- he had his arm like this.
When they opened the bag up?
When they opened the bag up,
he was lying just like this,
and he had one arm here.
♪
When I seen Kendrick in the crime lab,
I thought they picked Kendrick up off the floor
like that, right?
Until I--till later on,
we started getting the crime scene--
we got the crime scene photo.
We were called over to the house to see, um,
a picture of Kendrick.
When the lady went to put it,
we seen that picture of KJ on the end there.
That was the worst day of my life, like, oh my Lord.
♪
It felt like I was losing my mind
when I seen KJ disfigured like that,
but I had to think
that was just something they put out there
and it just made me push a little bit harder
for Kendrick.
Yeah, you gave me this, and this is what I'm gonna do,
I'm gonna give it back to y'all.
And every chance I get,
I share that photo of what they did.
I'll never let them forget that's my child right there.
♪
When the images of KJ were released to the public
and his mother shared them over and over,
many people connected what was happening
to the story of Emmett Till.
It was August 1955
when the 14-year-old was sent to the South for the summer.
One day on the street,
a white woman created a terrible rumor about Emmett
that he had touched her and tried to rape her.
That night, the woman's husband and his friend
went to Emmett's house in the middle of the night,
dragged him out of bed, and then murdered him
and left him for dead.
Emmett's mother bravely decided to have an open casket
and show the world what these two men did to her son.
The two men were put on a very public trial
and found not guilty by an all-white jury.
The clear injustice and grotesque images
of Emmett seen around the world
became a tipping point for civil rights.
White America could no longer ignore
the ongoing terror of Black America.
The release of Emmett's photos even today
is seen as one of the most important moments
in American history.
And here's the sad kicker.
Sixty years later, the lady finally admitted
that Emmett didn't touch her and did nothing wrong.
We've all heard the gory details,
that he whistled at her,
that he made a sexual advance towards her.
And all these years later, she says what to you?
She said, uh, with respect to the, um,
it had been a physical assault on her
or anything menacing or sexual,
that that part isn't true.
Lynchings in the South were such a regular
and accepted part of the culture
that they became public entertainment.
Crowds would gather as if it were a parade
or social gathering.
They would bring their blankets and picnic lunches.
As the gruesome event played out in front of them,
the lynchers would make sure they put on a good show
so the public wouldn't leave.
They would drag out the torture
to the crowd's delight.
Once dead, the body would normally be burned,
swinging over the children and dogs
as they played below.
♪
And to capture the moment,
souvenirs and postcards were created and sold.
And these postcards can still be found
in the homes of Southerners today.
Some of the postcards tell you where to write
and the discount you'll get
if you buy one, 10, or a hundred.
That man made 50,000 prints of that photo
and sold them for 50 cents apiece
before the governor of the state, uh,
got him to stop printing.
To illustrate how common and widely accepted
youth lynching was in America before Emmett Till,
all we need to do is look at the murder
of Ernest Green and Charlie Lang.
In 1942, the lynching of these two Black youths
made big news because of the image of their bodies
with the noose still around their necks.
Just like Emmett,
these two teens were also falsely accused
of interactions with a white girl.
They were thrown in jail,
then taken from their cells by a white mob,
then brought to a bridge nearby
that was used so often for lynchings
the town called it The Hanging Bridge.
The New York Times was sent the images and the report,
and they buried the story,
refused to run the photo,
and put it on page 24.
This is a part of American history
that most Americans still haven't dealt with.
Its legacy lives on today
with the nearly daily documentation
of Black people killed for seemingly minor events,
like selling cigarettes, walking in the street,
playing with a toy gun, or wearing a hoodie.
♪
So when a 17-year-old is found dead,
rolled up in a gym mat,
with his death going unanswered by law enforcement,
we have to remember that this incident
didn't just happen in a bubble.
It is connected to a long and ongoing history
of devaluing Black lives in this country.
They said, "We heading down to the corner."
I said, "Well, what corner we going down to?"
"Down to the corner, downtown."
And from that day,
my sister stayed down there on that corner.
Sun up, sun down.
Rain, hail, sleet, and snow.
-No justice! -Supporters of Johnson's family
have held rallies, alleging a coverup.
They've demanded a federal investigation.
Our family would get together every day
and we went down to Lowndes County Courthouse
and stood there and we asked, "What if this was your child?
Who killed Kendrick?"
-We're fired up! -Ready to go!
Supporters for Kendrick's family
are calling for a Department of Justice investigation.
-What do you want? -Justice!
The Johnsons and their supporters
now hope the FBI will get an answer to their question.
What happened to Kendrick Johnson?
There was a major coverup going on
and we want to expose that coverup.
For four days, Malika Mahogany
and a dozen members of the community
walked 17 miles a day from Atlanta to Valdosta
to symbolize the 17 years of Kendrick Johnson's life.
I actually wanted to come here
and present them with demands.
They won't allow us to.
When protestors got to Lowndes High School,
they were greeted by the Lowndes County Sherriff's Department,
-including the sheriff. -If they want to address
anything to do with Kendrick Johnson,
in this case, they can address it by U.S. mail.
According to the sheriff,
the school did not want any letters from the protestors
and asked that they be kept off school property.
How would you feel if your son went to school
and never came home, never returned home?
And then the next day you found out
he was rolled up in a gym mat.
My thing is to let people know that they have a voice.
They don't have to be silent.
They don't have to be scared to fight no more.
They can speak out.
One lady said, "You guys need to get a job."
I said, "I got two!"
Yeah, we got a job,
but this is also our job too,
so don't get it twisted.
On Facebook, Johnson's father posted this picture of himself,
wondering how anyone could squeeze into a gym mat.
Supporters from around the world writing,
"I smell a cover up,"
and, "This case makes no sense."
I've never met anybody as strong as she is in my life.
I have never met someone like her.
It's just unbelievable.
I mean...
♪
[exhales]
♪
They killed the wrong child this time.
We ain't goin' nowhere.
Nowhere.
My baby's life matter.
-We want justice! -Hundreds have rallied
for a federal investigation and the Department of Justice
is reviewing the case.
No matter who you are,
how much money your parents have,
the color of your skin,
everyone deserves justice. Everyone.
Seven of us even took it upon ourselves
to get--bring more awareness, and we went to jail,
we stood and blocked the courthouse doors
and would not let anybody in.
♪
This is the mother and the father
of Kendrick Johnson.
They are marching to...
♪ Turn me 'round, turn me 'round ♪
...Lowndes County Judicial Building.
♪ Turn me 'round ♪
This is not a game, this is serious business.
♪ Keep on walkin', walkin' on a freedom walk ♪
I was thinking, I was like, "I could lose my job.
Um, people will be upset with me about this."
But then I thought about it.
This is my sister, this is my nephew.
So we had to make some noise.
So, civil disobedience.
We went there with a sole purpose
of bringing some attention to what was really going on,
some national attention.
Went right up to the front of the courthouse door
with locked arms.
Wouldn't let nobody in.
And, uh, they're trying to get out,
you know, and try to break us apart.
Then you see people trying to go in,
trying to go in the building,
and they couldn't go in because Jackie wouldn't move.
Nobody would move.
And that thing just did something to me,
and I was like, "Okay."
So then I saw the police officers,
the sheriffs, the deputies come out.
They was pullin' and tuggin'
and just bein' real rough.
[chanting]
Okay, you understand you can let go
or you're gonna be arrested, Jackie.
Is that what you're wanting to do?
♪ Keep on walkin', walkin' to freedom land ♪
[chanting continues]
Cameras are watchin', cameras are watchin'.
[chanting continues]
You can't drag his mother.
You cannot drag his mother and father, sir.
Let him off, let him off, let him off.
Go willingly, go willingly,
-go willingly. -Let him off, let him off.
-Thank you. -Come on in, please.
[chanting continues]
♪
They got Keisha, then they got me.
And they told me,
"You want everybody to go to jail out there?"
They are taking them into custody,
they are taking 'em away from my sight.
They have not put 'em in handcuffs,
but they're taking them to the back.
I said, "Man, y'all gotta do what y'all gotta do today
because we ain't goin' nowhere."
But my sister was standing up there by herself
and I was standing right down on the steps watching her.
'Cause I was saying, "If anything pop off,
then, yep, I'm going to jail for that."
But then I thought about it.
Somebody fought for us back in the days,
back in the '50s, '60s, you know,
so somebody fought for us.
Somebody stood up.
If we don't stand up for ourselves
then nobody else will.
I said, "I don't know what--"
I said, "I don't know what I'm doin'," I said,
"but I'm finna go, I'm gonna go up there."
I said, "I gotta stand up there with her.
I can't leave her hanging by herself."
And I went up there and I stood with her.
So, um, they moved us from the outside to the inside
and we blocked the scanners.
I want everybody to see you taking his mother.
Yes, the mother of the man that was slain
at Lowndes County High School.
And waiting for answers.
[indistinct remarks]
♪
A mother!
♪
A mother!
♪
[indistinct remarks]
This is serious.
-A grandmother! -This is not a game.
[shouting]
And we took, I think, about three steps.
And when we took that last step,
that one deputy,
he pulled my sister and twisted her arm.
And it was like chaos.
They took us and they rushed us to the back.
Don't--no resist, no resist!
Drop! Drop! Drop! Drop!
Drop to the floor!
No justice! No peace!
This is Lowndes County, Georgia,
Valdosta,
Title Town, USA.
Home of Moody Air Force Base,
Cypress Lake.
This is where we live.
Yesterday, the family and friends of Kendrick Johnson
protested in front of the Lowndes County Courthouse,
and they were protesting because there was no information
about Kendrick Johnson.
Now, the protesters were arrested,
and the protesters who were arrested
were Kendrick's father and mother,
Jacqueline and Kenneth Johnson.
Now they have all been charged with misdemeanor interference
with government property.
And tonight, Jackie Johnson is out on bail.
The white man is running everything here.
As long as it's not a white person
getting killed or shot up,
they do not care in this city.
Well, the history of Valdosta,
it's always been this racist town.
Two people, Black and the white person do the same thing.
White person goes, gets sent home.
Black person in jail.
Every time you want to say something,
they snatch that chain.
That means be quiet.
And what do a lot of them do
here in this town that I know of?
A lot of them be quiet.
People can't say what they want to say.
Customers not wanting, you know, Black people to wait on 'em.
I've experienced that several times over the years
and still experience it today.
And it's just sad,
but that's just the way it is here in Valdosta.
♪
When the news broke of this death from Atlanta,
like many in America, we thought it was near Atlanta.
But after doing some research,
we quickly realized that Valdosta and Atlanta
are two separate worlds.
Valdosta is the Deep South,
very close to the Florida Panhandle,
a place where Confederate flags still fly high and proud
alongside statues of Confederate leaders.
The roots of racism run deep here.
Lowndes County, where Valdosta is,
became famous in the early 1900s
for one of the most heinous acts of lynching
in the history of our country.
Mary Turner's baby was cut out her stomach,
the white man cut it out her stomach,
and the baby fell to the ground while she was hanging
and he stomped her.
In 1918, Mary Turner and her baby
were brutally killed here in Lowndes County,
and their story became worldwide news.
Mary's husband had been lynched
and she had spoken out against it.
For speaking her truth,
an angry, racist mob tracked her down.
They tied her up, cut her stomach out,
ripped her baby out, and stomped on the baby's head.
Then they lynched Mary.
These are the stories of this region,
and when you look closely
you find the history of Valdosta
and the history of racism in this country go hand-in-hand.
Valdosta was originally created because the railroad company
was building across Southern Georgia.
There was no city where the stop would be,
so they put one there and named it
after the governor's plantation where he kept all his slaves.
Due to the railroad stop,
Valdosta became a central hub of commerce
to trading food, goods, services,
and, of course, slaves.
Shortly after the Civil War,
an event called The Clift Affair made big news.
A republican politician by the name of Clift
was garnering support of freed slaves
by speaking out against white supremacy.
This angered the whites of Valdosta.
So on the day of the event,
the local KKK chapter set five bombs
to go off in the crowd,
but one went off.
No one was hurt,
but the news of the attempted bombing
reached far and wide,
and Valdosta was at the center of it.
Valdosta made worldwide news once again
because of their horrible killing in 1918 of Mary Turner.
In 1922, this now famous group shot
of the Valdosta KKK chapter was released.
And in 2018, workers at the local Jimmy John's
made news when a video surfaced online
of them playing with a KKK outfit inside the store.
And on the anniversary of Mary Turner's death,
her memorial was shot up with bullets.
Although Black Americans are the majority of the town,
making up more than 50% of the population,
political power is still concentrated
in the hands of the whites.
This minority wills its control with a vice-like grip
that keeps the Black majority
under a constant state of terror.
They did what we wanted them to do,
arrested us.
That was gonna bring a lot of attention
to what was going on, and it did.
We got what we wanted.
We got the attention that we wanted.
♪
Part of the problem the family had
with the sheriff's department
was the way they actually investigated the crime,
or rather the way they didn't investigate.
The coroner even said that,
"If y'all unrolled him,
why did you all re-roll him up again in the mat?"
Trying to position him in the way
they wanted him to be positioned.
-For the photograph. -For the photograph.
But always--you're gonna always miss something.
Coroner Bill Watson was called to the scene
five hours after detectives had arrived,
although Georgia law requires investigators
to call the coroner as soon as a body is found.
The body had been moved.
The scene, in my opinion, had been compromised.
It's a very time-consuming process
to basically work your way from the outside in.
Once our investigators got to the deceased,
the coroner was contacted immediately.
We also received an email from him
a few days after our interview on camera
in which he told us that.
I want to put up part of the email, Anderson.
And he writes in that email:
Several key pieces of evidence at the scene
have a number of strange inconsistencies.
The first pieces of evidence that don't make sense
are all the sneakers in the gym,
specifically three pairs catch our attention.
The first pair,
black sneakers with orange laces that were found,
were not even KJ's.
However, they appeared to have blood on them.
They found another pair of tennis shoes
at the crime scene, they didn't take 'em.
They found blood on the wall in the gym,
-they didn't test it. -Orange and black gym shoes
investigators found just yards from Kendrick's body.
But investigators say tests show the stains
are something other than blood,
so the shoes were not collected as potential evidence.
If you were on this scene,
would this have been something you would have left?
No, bag and tag.
The second two pairs of sneakers in the gym were KJ's,
but their placement and condition
tell a story that is very different
than the official cause of death given.
The shoes that were under his head
was the shoes that he always changed in.
But the shoes that were threw in behind him
were the tennis shoes that he had on,
the Griffin tennis shoes that were his,
what he wore in the gym.
Kendrick had vomited and everything.
They got pictures and everything
of the vomit and the blood.
But where's the blood on the tennis shoe?
And where's the vomit on the tennis shoe?
♪
-Why didn't he have shoes on? -It was like Kendrick
was lying down flat somewhere, the mat was--
as they rolled him up, they threw those shoes
and then they rolled the mat on up,
because Kendrick's legs are twisted.
You go down in a mat trying to get something,
you're not gonna twist your legs up in a mat going down.
If he was reaching for the shoe,
why is it on top of him if he's reaching for it?
In statements released
by Lowndes County Sherriff's Office,
students wrote, "We always leave our shoes
inside the mats during class,
but to retrieve the shoes we tilt the mats over
and get the shoes from the bottom."
The shoes are never actually inside the mat.
When you put your shoes in there,
you toss 'em over the mats, because there's like,
probably, like, I wanna say six or seven other mats.
And there's a whole area behind it where there's no mat.
You don't climb over the mats.
All you do is move this mat out of the way,
you go and get your shoes, and you come back around.
That's how everybody does it.
When they said he climbed inside the mat to get the shoes,
I already knew that was a lie.
You can't get inside the mat
because it's wrapped tight and the hole is but so big.
The medical examiner explained that more than likely
he threw the shoe-- the shoes down in the mat,
more than likely he tried to retrieve his shoes
in the mat and got stuck.
The mat is--is most definitely deeper than--than my height,
so how am I gonna get back out?
Why I just can't knock the mat over to get my shoes?
And what did she say?
She said, "Well, based on--"
based on what was told to her on what kids would normally do,
that they would throw their shoes in the mat
and they would go down in the mat while the mats are up
to get--to retrieve the shoes.
Well, I'm like, "Well, how many other kids
have died doing that?"
And I told her, I said, "You have not given me
one fact yet about how he died."
Because once--once you make a ruling accidental,
then all investigative purposes basically stop
because you done made your ruling this was an accident,
so therefore nothing else is gonna be done.
Based on my experience and all the doctors I've worked with,
they made their decisions based on facts, no theories.
Had you ever experienced that before in your career?
No, never, and I've been--
I've investigated homicides for 23 years.
I've never had a doctor tell me
based on their theory they gonna make a ruling.
Just for me to hear her say "theory"
sort of got to me
because I've been to a lot of autopsies,
and, um, if they were not facts, a ruling was not made.
Because if doctors are not sure,
they normally leave it undetermined.
Cases can be left undetermined for years.
They also found a hoodie that was not KJ's
but appeared to maybe have blood on it as well.
Look real close,
there's something on this particular cuff.
And then the question is: Was it blood? Did you test it?
According to the crime lab report: no.
The last piece of evidence that is glaring
is all the blood found on the wall.
Here's what Lowndes County Lieutenant Stryde Jones
told CNN about that wall in May.
And we tested it and it was blood.
And then we did DNA testing and it was not the blood
of Kendrick Johnson.
If it wasn't Kendrick's blood, whose blood was it?
Did you ever find out who it was or any involved--
No, as of now, we haven't, no,
but it doesn't appear to be related to our crime
-in any way. -There's one, two,
three, four, five six.
Six impacts.
But beyond all this evidence,
the shoes, the blood, the position of the body,
there's still one bit of evidence
that was unquestionable.
The closed-circuit TV cameras.
At least they should have been unquestionable,
but as with most evidence in this case,
there seems to be issues.
FBI agents will be at Lowndes High School, likely today,
to seize the hard drives from the surveillance system
-at Lowndes High School. -I saw...
Kendrick walking in the gym.
Then, all of a sudden, he's gone.
There is hole of time where none of the cameras
provide any record that--that I've been provided.
But there was, like, seconds missing from the tape.
And that really sort of--
sort of got me thinking like,
"Hold on for a minute.
Am I the only one that noticed this?"
And I was just disturbed on
why is there seconds missing?
There are four cameras in the gym that records motion
from when the lights turn on in the morning
until when the lights are turned off at night,
except for the area of interest.
The moments before Kendrick Johnson enters the gym.
Look at what happens to the recordings
from these four cameras in the gym.
The time is recorded with the video.
The first camera captures images
from the start of the day until 12:04 PM.
Then, nothing.
And picks up again at 1:09 PM.
There's consistent surveillance
from the second camera until 11:05 AM,
then it stops and picks up again
more than two hours later at 1:15 PM.
The third camera also drops at 11:05 AM.
It picks up again at 1:16 PM.
And from the final camera,
there's surveillance until 12:04 PM,
no recording for more than an hour,
then it picks up again at 1:09 PM.
Here's why Fredericks would have expected
the motion-activated system to record during that time.
During that hour and five minutes,
several students are seen
walking into and out of the old gym,
from the surveillance camera just outside the gym door.
We count seven male students,
and three of them walk into the gym
within three minutes prior to Kendrick Johnson walking in.
When surveillance in the gym resumes at 1:09,
we see just these few frames
of Kendrick Johnson running in the gym.
Here's that moment from all of the cameras
in the gym, although there's a record from only two,
and the camera just outside the door.
Notice the hall camera timestamp
appears to be 10 minutes behind
and there's no confirmation
either time matches the exact time of day.
It is the last time his image is captured on video.
We got people in the gym playing basketball
on one of the cameras,
but over there where the mats were,
when that part appeared on the camera,
no one is over there.
And I'm like, "Where did Kendrick go?"
So people were trying to explain to us that it's their system,
it's the old system, it's just how it works.
To go there and to find out that they have
all of these different cameras working,
and everything is not working,
but there are a lot of cameras that are working,
but the parts that we need to work are not working.
For the next hour, there are multiple gaps
in the video surveillance in the gym,
and there's no videos showing the initial discovery
of a body in the gym.
The next time we see Kendrick Johnson
is the following day when he's being wheeled out
of the gym in a body bag.
I used to work at that high school.
I used to be a substitute teacher.
And I did that for about 12 years.
There's a camera everywhere you go
from every angle.
They caught me one day, you know,
roaming the halls during planning period.
Yes, I was.
Uh, so I know it could have caught--
it could have caught something.
But when we see the tapes,
it's kids playing basketball,
it's kids horseplaying.
Can you tell me why
nobody there see Kendrick go get in the mat
when there's a gym full of kids?
Can you tell me why?
It's just so obvious.
It's the second time Jacqueline Johnson cried
next to her son Kendrick's grave.
The first time, he was being lowered into the ground.
[chain grates]
In June, Kendrick's body was sent to Florida.
The Johnsons hired Dr. Bill Anderson
to conduct an independent second autopsy.
I'm a forensic pathologist.
I've been actually practicing over 40 years
in the field of forensic pathology
and pathology in general.
And one of the things that immediately stuck out was, uh,
the findings in the lungs.
Now, in a positional asphyxia,
where someone is trapped
in something where they can't breathe,
they fight for breath, so forth,
and over a period of time,
their muscles begin to wear out, essentially,
so they're not breathing as well.
And this causes, basically, the heart to start failing
and fluid to build up in the lungs,
and get more and more fluid,
and this basically suffocates them.
Well, in Kendrick Johnson's case,
the lungs not only had no fluid in them
but they were basically normal.
The diagnosis of positional asphyxia,
if you're gonna make that diagnosis,
when you look at the lungs under the microscope,
you can see the fluid in the lungs.
When you look at the weights of the lungs,
which are normally around 250 grams and 280 grams,
they will be much heavier, three to four times that weight.
Well, Kendrick's were actually normal weight.
So, according to the state's own documents,
-which you have, right? -Correct.
His lungs weighed the normal weight.
Absolutely, that was-- in fact,
that was the first red flag
that was there that caught my attention.
So if you find this dichotomy, basically,
then you have to figure out, well, what was it?
Was it something else that was going on?
But in the absence of the lungs being heavy,
you cannot make the diagnosis of positional asphyxia.
So, because of that, then we decided,
"Well, all right, we don't have any information."
So we decided we would go ahead
and exhume the body and do a second autopsy.
Digging him up...
It's just unexplainable to stand there and watch,
you know, your child coming back out of the ground again.
Well, we opened the body, in this particular case,
and the organs were not there.
Uh, the body had--basically, paper had been stuffed
into the cavity to fill it up,
and so the organs actually were not in the body at all.
Every organ from the top of Kendrick's head
-to his pelvis, gone. -When I found out
the organs were missing, um,
I was like, "How is that possible?"
Because I've sat through many autopsies
and the organs are taken out, examined,
and they're placed in a bag.
Everything--everything you take out
you put inside of a bag.
Then once it's back inside of the bag,
the body is sewed up.
So everything is put back inside the victim.
Have you ever opened a body in 40 years
and had that happen to you?
It was unexpected for a medical examiner case.
President of the National Association of Medical Examiners
who told CNN he's, "Never heard of this practice."
You see cuts there by his nails.
Yeah, I see those cuts right.
You see these cuts.
This goes in line with the family's theory
that there was a fight.
This is indicative of something that is fresh.
These are not healing insults or injuries that he has.
These little areas right here are--
So that'd be close to time of death?
Yeah, absolutely, and I'm finding it very interesting
that these are what we refer to as curvilinear.
These could be consistent with fingernail marks.
The attorney for the funeral home who says, yes,
those clothes did make it to the funeral home,
a couple of days later I got an email saying,
"No, we never received the clothes."
A spokeswoman for the state tells CNN after its autopsy,
"The organs were placed in Johnson's body,
the body was closed,
then the body was released to the funeral home."
State investigators say
it's their normal practice.
It's a Black Friday ad,
JC Penny ad.
Yes.
Stuffin' that newspaper in like he was a garbage can.
From what was left,
what could you derive?
So, what we did, we still had the rest of the body,
so we looked for other injuries
that might have been overlooked
or not dissected
during the first autopsy,
something that might conceivably result in
an explanation for why this child,
who has supposedly died of positional asphyxia
had normal lungs.
So, what we did, we continued,
basically, to look up near the angle of the jaw,
underneath the jaw.
At that point, we found an area of bleeding,
hemorrhage,
which had not been described.
This particular area happens to be very close,
in fact, involving,
a nerve structure
called the carotid sinus.
And the carotid sinus, basically,
controls blood pressure.
And the idea is if blood pressure goes too high,
the carotid sinus will, basically, sense that
and slow the heart rate.
Well, one of the other ways you can slow the heart rate is
severe compression of the area around the carotid sinus,
and that has even resulted in people dying suddenly.
And this was distinctly different
from all the other tissue around it,
so it appeared to be
due to blunt force trauma to the area.
So, we basically had absolute proof that this was
a hemorrhage in that area,
in an area that if pressure is applied,
could result in sudden death.
Well, this would make things a little more reasonable
as far as explaining why
you have the lungs
having no fluid
because, obviously, it would mean he was dead
when he was put in the gym mat.
♪
According to the paramedics' report,
there was bruising noted to right side jaw.
The parents hired their own medical examiner,
who said this was a killing,
blunt force trauma to the neck.
A major victory for a mother and father
desperate for answers about their son.
For ten months,
those parents have searched for answers.
And tonight, two major developments.
Federal prosecutors now saying they will investigate.
A federal prosecutor in Georgia said today
he will conduct a formal review into the death of a teenager
whose body was found in his high school gym.
First, what was the cause
of Mr. Johnson's death?
Second, was Mr. Johnson's death the result of a crime?
Third, if Mr. Johnson's death was the result of a crime,
who committed that crime?
I will follow the facts wherever,
wherever they lead.
Huddled around a portable television
on the South Georgia street corner,
where they've staged an eight-month sit-in,
the family of Kendrick Johnson watched the announcement
-they've been waiting for. -Hallelujah!
-Thank you, Jesus! -Thank you, Jesus!
Justice for KJ is coming!
Kendrick's family is grateful for the investigation,
but they call it a stepping stone.
They say their push for answers will continue.
Got to continue to fight on
'till justice is done for KJ.
As the investigation heated up
and students began to be subpoenaed,
the story of KJ and the Bell brothers
started circulating the community.
There had definitely been some problems.
A brief fight between Brian and Kendrick on a team bus.
A year before, I mean,
-we were still friends. -What was it about, anyway?
I can't even remember.
I mean, it was so, it was so small to us.
I remember the fight.
He called me at the school.
We was on a bus trip
for a playoff game,
and Brian, you know, the kind of person he is,
he jokin' around, he playin'.
But when he's playin', he's playin' rough.
You know what I'm saying?
Kinda almost like a bully.
So, him and KJ are sittin' together in the back seat,
and he grabbed his dreads,
and he hold his head down with his dreads,
and he's laughin',
and he's pickin' at him.
So, when KJ get up,
and he get his hands off of his dreads,
they start fightin'.
I was in the seat right in front of them.
Seen the whole thing.
Anybody, anybody in that situation is gonna fight.
So, they got to fightin'.
He got the best of him.
-KJ? -Brian, yeah, Brian.
Brian ain't like that too much.
After that fight,
they made KJ go and ride in the,
in the deputy's car.
But they let Brian sit in the stand with his parents
and watch the game.
Kendrick came home one day, he said, "Dad."
I said, "Yeah?"
He said, "You know how you can be standin' up,
you know, you can be standin' up doin' somethin',
and you just feel somebody lookin' at you?"
I said, "Yeah."
He said, "Well, I turned around
and seen Brandon starin' at me.
Just standin' there starin' at me.
And I been hearin' he's tellin' people at school
that it's not over."
He said, "But I ain't worried about it."
[indistinct]
He said, "I wish he would say somethin' to me!"
So, one other day,
Kendrick came home, he said, "You know Rick Bell,
Brian's daddy,
came up to me at school?
He said, he told me that the fight was on the bus
wasn't a fair fight.
That I should come over to their house
and re-fight Brian."
So, I said, "Kendrick, what'd you say?"
He said, "I looked at him like he was crazy,
and I turned around and walked off."
But you're an FBI agent,
you're supposed to make sure stuff goin' right every day,
but you want kids to come fight again.
And he, of course, denies
-this conversation? -Of course, you know,
of course, of course.
And then, we come back to school,
and Brian is actin' funny.
Usually, he'd stop by and he'd speak to us
when he walked past,
walked past the wall that we sittin' on
in-between classes.
But after this happened,
he takes a different route.
He don't come through there no more.
And this before anybody even thinkin' it's him.
He just took it upon hisself
to go a different route to his classes.
Why, after this happened,
do you start takin' different routes around the school?
That was like, you know, that's like a no-brainer.
You're movin' different.
-Why? -When all this happened,
Kendrick didn't have no beef with nobody else.
Kendrick wasn't into it with nobody else.
They were the only ones.
And then, we come to find out,
they were the only ones
didn't get interviewed,
didn't wanna get questioned.
They were the only ones at the time lawyered up.
When it was clear to us
that if we couldn't make the case,
as far as what happened to Kendrick,
'cause of all this missin' evidence,
missin' body parts, all that, witnesses,
I mean, just all of that, when we realized
it was gonna be difficult to make the case,
we started concentrating on
obstruction.
So, we started lookin' at
the Bells' father,
who's an FBI agent,
for some of the things that
he was doin'.
Every time we would talk to someone,
a witness,
they would tell us how
Bell father met with them.
And we were like,
"You can't interfere with a grand jury investigation.
You have to leave it alone, but for somehow,
he kept meetin' with the witnesses
who we were tryin' to talk to.
And we finally talked to the witness,
we find out that they done talked to,
to the Bell, the Bell father.
They said they were not threatened directly.
They just felt that way.
They were always, they felt as though--
Some said they always felt as though they were being followed.
I remember interviewing a young lady
who told us how Rick Bell would visit
her job,
or she would see him outside
of her job,
and that used to make her nervous.
And I felt as though
we were very close
to gettin' enough information,
whereas we can say he committed obstruction,
an FBI agent committed obstruction of justice.
The mornin' we did the raids,
plenty of agencies were involved,
and we went to a lot of different locations.
An FBI agent's home was raided last month
in connection with the investigation
into the death of a Valdosta teenager.
Karen Bell says her husband, Rick Bell,
is an agent in good standing with the FBI,
an arm of the US Justice Department,
but that the swarm of heavily-armed men and a woman,
most in full tactical gear, that rushed toward her house
about 5:16 AM, July 21st
came from an arm of the US Justice Department too,
-the US Marshall Service. -This is
where they knocked the morning of
around 5:00 AM.
I was layin' in bed,
I got a bang on my door.
-Tactical gear? -Yes, sir, to the nth degree.
They were just like, "It's about the Kendrick Johnson case,
the ongoing Kendrick Johnson investigation."
In order for a judge
to sign
search warrants,
meaning several, for several locations,
therefore, evidence
was submitted that he believed we were onto somethin'.
So these search warrants, several, were signed.
Deputy US Marshal serving search warrants
in connection with the mysterious death
of Kendrick Johnson
at Lowndes High School in 2013.
-I was just really shocked. -I broke down and cried.
I really had no reason in my head why they would be here.
It just keeps on gettin' worse.
Documents provided by the Bells' legal team
indicate property seized with the search warrant included
smart phones, thumb drives, laptops,
discs, and the like.
Deals with obstructing investigations,
destroying evidence, witness tampering.
I'm gonna ask my photographer to
push in tight on your face.
Okay.
Our viewers can read your expression.
Did you have anything to do
with the death of Kendrick Johnson?
No.
He was like one of my good friends.
Even at the time of his death?
-Even at the time of his death. -And I want everybody to
know the truth, and, I mean,
they can ridicule me, and they can,
they can say whatever they want,
but in the end, the truth will prevail,
and everybody will find that me and my brother
have been innocent, and always will be innocent.
But both Bells maintain the have rock-solid alibies.
Did you see Kendrick Johnson?
No, sir, not at any point during that day.
Where were you?
I was in class.
I was in class first block, second block, third block,
and fourth block.
Close to the gym?
-No. -Did you see Kendrick that day?
No.
I did not.
Have you prayed for the Johnsons?
Yes, sir, I have.
I hope that they found justice,
and I hope they do find out the truth about their son.
And now, WJCL News,
working for you.
New developments in the Kendrick Johnson death investigation.
We have uncovered an email whose sender claims
to know who killed Johnson.
And tonight, I have been lookin' through these 22 pages
that we requested
that could possibly answer the question,
what happened to Kendrick Johnson?
Some of the kids that know scared,
but they should never be scared.
This week, WJCL learned US Attorney, Michael Moore,
subpoenaed more than 120 students and parents at Valdosta
to testify in front of a grand jury.
What happened to Kendrick last January
is a question the family has been asking
for more than a year now,
and this week, that question may have an answer.
WJCL learned deputies in Lowndes county
received an anonymous email.
Because those mentioned in the email are minors,
their names have been changed to Jane and Joe.
Here's what the email says,
My best friend was at a party Saturday night with Jane,
and she was upset about something
that Joe had said to her.
She said that about a little over a year ago,
she had sexual intercourse with Kendrick Johnson
while she was dating Joe.
Joe found out and threatened KJ.
KJ told Joe to meet him in the old gym after third block
and he would have his knife ready.
Joe and Joe's friend met KJ
and killed him.
Joe has also been heard admitting to killing KJ
more than once over the phone.
His brother also got drunk at a party on the 4th of July
and told many people that Joe killed KJ,
and that Joe's brother was tired of keeping it a secret.
And my sources told me one of the boys in the email
is the son of an FBI agent.
His father originally told him not to talk to investigators,
but is now forced to talk because of the subpoena.
There's been several people that has come forth
with the truth.
But then, you got them goin' to jail,
bein' locked up, bein' silenced
if you say anything, bein' threatened.
A supposed lead in the Kendrick Johnson investigation
has fizzled.
We identified the source of the email yesterday.
We went and interviewed that person last night,
and what we found was
they admitted they had sent the email,
but they did it out of a genuine interest in the case.
That this is information they had heard,
nothing first-hand,
all rumors and speculation.
And the other little guy, he was tellin' people about
what happened to Kendrick,
and they found out, and they got him
and then kept him for so many months.
Nobody could get him out.
And then when he got out,
he recanted his whole story,
he said he wasn't tellin' the truth.
When it comes to justice in this county,
it's more about who you know.
In this case,
you have Lowndes County High School,
the superintendent's office,
the GBI, the FBI, and the DOJ.
The cover-up started with
one of their own
GBI agents
and his children.
When they found out it was him, the cover-up started there,
and then it trickled on down to the medical examiner,
then on over to the funeral home.
All that just, it was just,
all this just goin' on and on, and I'm like,
"But y'all will go through all this
just to cover
for these children?"
I think lots of people know
just coverin' it up
'cause they work together.
But Stroud was the main one that we were talkin' to,
and so he would just keep comin' and give us
different little lies.
And every time he would come back with a story,
we would come back and tell him, "You know, that's not so."
Then, in November 2015,
the US attorney in charge of this case,
Michael Moore, suddenly resigned.
This was astonishing because this was the attorney
who put the Bell boys as the target
of the investigation.
Michael Moore, I don't know,
I know he ran scared.
These people here scared him out of his job,
I know that
because how do you come out and say you're gonna
take this case and look at it at every angle,
but soon as it gets hot, soon as you're gettin' threats,
you go run and take cover?
When Michael Moore resigned,
his cases went to his successor, except Kendrick.
For some reason, KJ's case was moved
from Georgia to Ohio.
Goin' to Ohio with this case was mind-boggling to me.
There had to have been discussions in Washington
as to how you're gonna have a change in venue
from one state to another state?
You know, I think that your prosecutors are really
the gatekeeper for the court system
and for the justice system.
And if you're not willin' to keep the gate,
then that means nothing.
How the US attorney for the middle district of Georgia
all of a sudden just abruptly quit his position
and joined a law firm in Atlanta?
At Pope McGlamry,
we represent people who find and report
the waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money.
We handle these cases, sometimes called whistleblower
or false claims cases
for all kinds of individuals.
-I mean, why? -Why?
-Yeah, why, the question is why? -But why?
You have to ask the question, why all of these whys?
We got to the point where we really thought
either we were gonna make an arrest of him,
of he may have been getting indicted.
But for us to get a notification
that we were no longer goin' back to Georgia,
I was like,
"Huh?"
That's impossible.
"No, you're not goin' back, you have work to do in D.C."
I'm like, "What work?"
A very disappointing day for the parents of Kendrick Johnson,
three and a half years after the 17 year old was found dead
in his high school gym.
Kendrick Johnson's parents say they're not giving up
on either civil or criminal charges in his 2013 death.
They say federal prosecutors told them
there was not enough evidence to pursue a criminal case,
but they still believe he was murdered by schoolmates.
And Monday, the Johnsons said federal prosecutors
didn't entirely rule out that possibility.
They simply concluded there was not enough evidence to prove it.
And they all but came out and said
they know he was murdered,
but nothin' to be done about it.
The jury has just come back and has returned a verdict of
not guilty,
thus the defendants, Milam and Bryant,
are free men in this community
of Sumner, Mississippi.
How do you folks feel now that it's all over?
Roy, how 'bout you?
I'm just glad it's over with.
-J.W.? -I am too.
-And Mrs. Bryant, uh-- -Yes, sir.
♪
We, law enforcement,
justice department,
we let them down.
We let them down, man.
And that's just not-- We're not supposed to,
we're not supposed to let families down.
We sat in a room, it's probably about
seven or eight of them.
It was all DOJ representatives?
Yeah, so they basically said,
they said they didn't have enough evidence
to prove a reasonable doubt.
They didn't say they didn't have no evidence.
They said they didn't have enough to prove it.
You know what they said?
The shoe was planted there.
-So, what's that tell you? -The DOJ said that?
They said right there in the meeting
that the shoe was planted there.
"Mr. Johnson, you're right, the shoe was planted there."
You would sit in the room with us and tell us
you know that somebody planted that shoe under Kendrick's head,
but, yet, y'all still can't call this a murder?
She said, "We know, Mr. Johnson,
we know something happened,
but we just don't know who did it."
She said, "Dr. Anderson's report
is the most accurate report."
I just felt like we still wasn't gonna stop.
Regardless of them droppin' it, whatever,
we still gotta keep goin'.
They can drop it, but we're not gonna drop it.
♪
This town feels like they really run the world.
Seven judges recused themselves, how?
Seven.
How? When this is your job,
I don't care 'cause that's your friend.
If it wasn't an FBI agent's kids,
would seven judges
-have recused themselves? -Right.
Would Michael Moore have gave up his position?
To fully understand
the FBI's actions towards KJ,
we first need to go back to the roots of the organization.
A man named J. Edgar Hoover
first created the FBI.
The FBI will continue to be objective
in its investigations
and will stay within the bounds of its authorized jurisdiction.
He ran it with unparalleled control
for nearly 50 years.
He served through eight presidents.
He collected counter intelligence
on every presidential candidate
before they were elected
so he could control them while they were in office.
He was literally the most famous man in Washington,
and one of the most powerful men in the world for half a century.
Once you realize this,
it's impossible to ignore the impacts
of his tyrannical work still lingering
throughout our system today.
During his reign, Hoover would say
he was protecting America from Communists
and domestic hate groups.
But a closer look at his actions
reveals a very different story.
What Hoover actually did
was create a clandestine domestic terrorism unit
named Cointelpro
and ran it with no Congressional oversight
or even knowledge that it existed.
It was designed specifically to destruct and destroy
Black America's Civil Rights Movement.
It was not until 1971
that the nation heard
the name of this program.
It took eight brave activists
to break into the FBI building
and steal documents proving
their illegal operations.
In the stolen documents released to the press,
was a detailed program
of hate, intimidation,
and harassment.
Cointelpro was so far-reaching
that there were 50,000 pages
finally released about Hoover's dirty work
and a Congressional hearing on the matter in 1975.
What came out were horror stories
of the FBI's racism and bullying tactics.
I've been told for years
by, among others,
some of my own family
that this is exactly what the bureau was doing
all the time.
And in my great wisdom,
and high office,
I assured them they were
on pot,
that this just wasn't true.
What you've described is a series of illegal actions
intended squarely to deny first amendment rights
to some Americans.
That's what my children have told me is going on.
Documents also revealed
a bonus payment of $175
to an undercover FBI agent
inside the KKK for beating up a Black man.
Hoover would later tell the agent,
"You're one of the greatest Americans
this country has ever had."
Another shocking page
was an anonymous letter to Martin Luther King,
which the bureau wrote and sent to him
one month before he received the Nobel Peace Prize.
The letter berated King,
and in the last paragraph suggested
he commit suicide.
The bureau went so far as to mail
anonymous letters to Dr. King and his wife
and finishes with this
suggestion,
"King, there is only one thing left for you to do,
you know what it is.
you have just 34 days in which to do it.
You are done."
♪
If I can interrupt you.
that was taken by Dr. King
to mean a suggestion for suicide,
-was it not? -That's our understanding,
senator.
♪
Decades after Hoover's death,
the FBI's actions show they haven't changed.
The assault on Black America's political movements
continues to this day.
We saw it first-hand when many of the peaceful protestors
in Ferguson were investigated, tracked,
and labeled by the FBI as
Black identity extremists.
Black identity extremists
now considered a domestic terror threat by the FBI.
The bureau releasing an explosive new report.
And has the FBI and the American public denounced Hoover?
Far from it?
Even today, you can go and visit the FBI building in D.C.,
which still carries his name proudly.
And has the FBI been fighting real terrorist hate groups too?
Or, have they just been focused on the civil rights activists?
Well, a 2018 study show that
US hate groups
have reached an all-time high.
So, who is the FBI against
and who are they for?
For us to
not make an arrest,
for me to find out later
the case was dismissed,
just my personal feelin',
I felt as though somethin' had to have occurred,
and I really thought that they must have
struck a deal with Rick Bell.
He lost his job
because the DOJ
had evidence of corruption.
I said, "They actually told me that"
on the phone, we were on a phone conference.
They said, "Mr. Johnson, we're gonna tell you.
They are not gonna lock him up, and they are not gonna fire him,
but they're gonna make him resign."
They said, "We got evidence
of corruption of Rick Bell.
And what we're gonna do,
we're gonna turn it over to the FBI."
And shortly after that, he resigned.
I felt as though if we would have
continued our investigation,
not only would we have made
an arrest with Bell for obstruction,
I really believe we would have got to the bottom
of what happened to Kendrick
if Bell would have been charged with obstruction of justice.
I'm lookin' at Kendrick's father.
I'm lookin' at myself.
And I'm sayin' to myself, as I look at Kendrick's father,
is that
I'd probably be in jail for murder.
[chains clinking]
Well, the sounds of those screeching chains
echoed through the Sunset Cemetery in Valdosta today
as Kendrick Johnson's grave
was exhumed for the second time.
The Johnson family is hoping a third autopsy
will help them figure out what happened
-to their son. -We're looking at the pictures.
There was an area on the right side of the chest
that looked like hemorrhage,
so we did a third autopsy.
It turns out, we used the same techniques we did before.
It did show that there had been blunt force trauma
to the right side of the chest.
So we had two areas of trauma for sure.
So I'm fairly confident that
we pretty much have the mechanism
of how this kid died.
So, when you went and you presented your evidence,
what happened?
We contacted the medical examiner in Georgia,
and the state attorney,
and I told them that we had the,
we had the photos, we had the microscopic slides,
and so forth, and the response we got was,
"We're not interested in looking at them."
Nobody has basically requested to look at the slides
except the US Attorney's office.
Clearly, there's something on these slides
that Dr. Anderson made
the state of Georgia doesn't want you to see.
So for the first time ever,
here they are.
You can see here, this is all dried out,
embalmed tissue.
Now, when we opened this area, we see this distinct area,
which I'm gonna use the cursor to show,
of hemorrhage.
That red coloration,
distinctly different than the other area.
Now this is the area under the microscope,
and we can see all these red
areas here.
Now the question then becomes,
"Well, are these really red blood cells?"
So that's when we do the immunohistochemistry,
and that's a picture of the immunostaining, we call it.
And the areas in brown,
that's the antibody picking up
the antigen, which is the hemoglobin.
So that's basically how we prove that this is actually
hemorrhaged not artifact,
and that made our diagnosis pretty firm
that this was an area of blunt force trauma to the neck.
I sent it to two other pathologists to look at myself
before we even came up with our decision.
And everyone agreed?
Yeah.
I mean, you just can't make a murder an accident
when it's a murder.
How can you?
Whatever's left of him's tellin' a story
that they're still tryin' to cover.
Kendrick is still speakin' from the grave.
So let me get this straight,
a 5 foot 10 kid decided to go head first
into a six-foot mat,
then realized after he was stuck
that he was gonna die down there,
and then he died down there, stuck,
somehow silently, with a gym full of kids
playing basketball and changing classes around him.
Then his shoes magically appeared
on the top of his body
inside the mat, shoved into the hole.
His legs became twisted in the mat.
And all of this happened in the middle of the school day
in a gym full of kids.
Then, somehow, the video tape
from only those moments is missing.
Then, Kendrick's organs go missing.
Seven judges recuse themselves.
The US attorney working on the case resigns,
and then your case moves to Ohio.
Then, it's officially closed by the justice department,
who tells you in a meeting
the crime scene has planted objects,
your autopsy report is correct,
your child was murdered,
and there's nothing else we can do about it.
One thing we kept hearing over and over again
was about this missing FBI report
regarding the security tape hard drive
and the blacked out footage.
So, we looked into finding that report
to see if we could locate it,
and we did.
However, the report was heavily redacted.
But then, we were able to find the un-redacted FBI report,
and what we discovered blew us away.
You see, in the redacted report,
you can barely see any of the video frames.
Most of the frames are blacked out,
and the ones with KJ are barely recognizable.
In the un-redacted report,
we were able to see all the video frames in full color.
The report follows KJ, Brian, and Brandon's movement
throughout the school for the entire day
and records where they were.
Not only is this further video evidence
that the Bell boys were on campus
when KJ went missing,
we found something that the FBI clearly didn't want us to see.
Let us put them side by side
so you can see what we found.
Here they are.
Can you see something a little odd?
Look closely.
There appears to be a frame on both pages
that matches.
How could this be?
What tipped us off is KJ's yellow folder.
We were going through Brian's movements, and all of a sudden,
KJ's folder appeared on screen.
That's right, there's a frame on KJ's side
and Brian's side
that is identical.
The boys are standing seemingly right next to each other
in the hallway.
♪
Did you see Kendrick that day?
No.
I did not.
Seeing the alleged killer of KJ
standing next to him in the hallway
the day he died in school
has sent chills down our spines.
How did no one see this frame?
How did the FBI let this go?
Why did it take six years and an independent filmmaker
to find this?
These are all questions that may never go answered.
But what we do know for sure
is that we have more facts now than we ever had,
and this case needs to be re-opened
and re-examined
with a fine-tooth comb.
After finding this game-changing evidence,
our crew flew to Georgia to show Kendrick's parents
as soon as possible.
♪
Had you seen that frame?
Mm-mm.
Can you believe that?
Mm-mm.
-Hm. -They are next to each other.
That's the morning of.
And that's in their own report.
And we have their paperwork.
And they saw that.
All the adults...
authorities and school personnel,
show you to the extent that
how much they covered up.
How are you feeling right now?
It's just crazy, just to let you know
we were right all along.
What do you think's gonna happen when we release this photograph?
They gonna try to come out with some more lies.
What do you think they're gonna say about it?
Somebody photo-cropped it.
In their own report?
In their own report.
All along, we know it was bullshit.
We know it was bullshit.
They pushed a real large
social media campaign against us,
about Kendrick and Brian didn't never see each other
none that day.
And it goes to show you, we was right,
they was lyin' the whole damn while.
Go grab myself a tissue.
Yeah, that's what they done.
After KJ's mom told our crew
she thought they were gonna say
that we faked this photo,
we decided to go back into the FBI's report
to see if there was anything else
we can show to prove it.
Lo and behold!
The page after the photo was a grid
that the FBI wrote describing each picture.
In their own words,
they wrote,
"KJ observed in covered walkway
moving towards camera.
Bell observed in same location at this time."
So there you have it.
The FBI not only included the photo
of Brian and Kendrick in their report,
they included a spreadsheet explaining the photos
that back up exactly what we are seeing,
KJ and Brian standing next to each other
the morning this all happened.
After showing our new evidence to the Johnson family,
we flew to D.C. to get a third-party perspective
on this FBI report from Mitch.
KJ and Brian
standing next to each other
the morning this all happened.
♪
Hold up.
I'm stuck.
I'm--No, really, I'm stuck because
if the footage was there,
and if the footage was there,
I don't recall seeing this footage.
And I clearly remember
goin' to the FBI office in Atlanta
when I first got involved in the case.
I don't, I don't,
I've never seen this.
Ugh, hold, hold, wait.
I don't ever recall seein'
KJ standin' near Brian Bell
with a yellow folder
in his hand.
And just based on the footage,
obviously, that's here, they're near each other.
It may be ten feet or closer.
I can see the public not seein' certain things.
I can see the family not seein' certain things.
But, as an investigator,
it bothers me
because it's somethin' that I should have seen.
And why wasn't I given the opportunity to see this?
I recall being told
that Brian Bell didn't see KJ that day.
And it's obvious just by lookin' at this footage,
that came from wherever it came from,
that they had to have seen each other that day.
And--
Oh, wow, it--
Hm.
Oh, man, I mean--
Y'all got to excuse me, I'm a little messed up right now.
To know that I'm seein' something now
that I could not have seen back in 2015,
when I was involved in the investigation,
sort of kinda makes me think that--
I wonder about some other things
I did not see,
or some other things that
maybe I wasn't supposed to see.
And when you're following the evidence,
and you're steered off in another direction,
and you miss evidence,
then that's most definitely is gonna
interfere with investigations.
If I'm one of the investigators on the case,
I should have seen this particular clip,
and it shouldn't be because what a filmmaker found
that I saw this.
How was this filmmaker able to see this particular evidence,
and I'm part of the investigation
and I never saw it before?
And I think that's what's troublesome to me,
to see something new.
I'm investigatin' the case, but I don't see it,
but someone, a filmmaker-- I mean no disrespect--
but the filmmaker, he finds a piece of evidence
that I couldn't find.
It's troublesome to me,
and that's, and that's, and that's real.
Yeah, that's it, there ain't nothin' else
I can say about that.
♪
What do you think really happened?
♪
I think,
honestly,
I think it was a fight in the gym.
I wouldn't say Brian by hisself.
♪
I don't think he can beat him one on one.
You know what I'm sayin'?
I don't think he went right in the mat.
I think the mat was some shit that was done
after school hours, honestly.
I think they jumped him.
They jumped him, and they took it too far.
When you look at the investigation,
and you flip the script, you ask yourself if
one of the Bell boys
had died
and Kendrick was the suspect,
would the body parts be missing?
Would the case have been ruled an accident?
Would evidence have been missing?
Would the video--would timeline on the video tape
minutes, or whatever, would that have been missing?
Would an arrest not have been made?
They'd have found him that night
if he'd have been a white boy missin',
and then they would have done somethin' about it.
♪
Everybody in the United States
should have the protection of their rights under the law,
and this includes police officers.
There are situations where,
because of certain circumstances,
police officers who are doing their duty,
become the victims of wrongful lawsuits
or wrongful prosecutions.
Ed Meese, the US attorney general
during Regan's presidency,
is one of the leaders of a group who works behind the scenes,
paying legal costs,
and providing other forms of assistance
to law enforcement officials
accused of heinous crimes.
Even after Rick Bell lost his job,
they were helping him and his family
in their legal battles concerning KJ.
What this means is that while KJ's body
is busy being exhumed again,
Brian Bell is able to play division I football.
But this inequality suffered by KJ and his family
is nothing new to Black Americans.
It's only now with cell phone cameras
and police body cams
that we are actually able to see how this inequity plays out.
Hands on the car, I'm gonna shoot you in your ... head.
You understand me?
Don't you ... move, I'm a shoot you in your ... head,
you hear me?
Don't you ... move!
When Black men are choked for selling cigarettes,
or walking in the street,
white mass murderers
are gingerly arrested
and fed hamburgers by the police.
If KJ had been white,
we wouldn't have had to make this film.
Imagine it had been Brian Bell
wrapped up in a gym mat.
Would his organs have been replaced
by newspaper in his body?
Would security footage have gone missing?
Everyone in Valdosta knows
there's much more to this story
than what is in that official report,
but no one seems to care because to them,
kids like Kendrick
don't matter.
Their lives and stories don't matter.
And certainly, their deaths don't matter
except they do matter.
-Ugh. -What do you want?
I can't breathe!
Please, the knee in my neck.
I can't breathe, shit.
Well, get up, get in the car, man.
-I will! -Get up, get in the car!
-I can't move! -I've been watching
-the whole thing, man. -Ah!
-Get up and get in the car! -Mama!
In the summer of 2020,
a man named George Floyd
died on camera screaming,
"I can't breathe"
while a police officer kept his knee on his neck
for nine straight minutes,
an eerie throwback
to Eric Garner's last moments.
This video of George went super viral.
Around the same time, a woman named Breonna Taylor
was killed in her home
by police during a botched raid in the middle of the night.
A public already angry about the coronavirus
responded en masse to support these victims.
A wave of protests filled the streets worldwide
to support George and Breonna's justice.
Waves of peaceful protestors marched on
bigger than ever before.
No more silence!
-No justice! -No peace!
From Washington's newly named Black Lives Matter Plaza...
Justice for George Floyd!
...to San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge,
to Philadelphia...
This renewed interest
into heinous cover-ups
of Black death in this country,
led to the public once again
pushing KJ's name out into the conversation.
Jacquelyn Johnson says justice was never served
in the death of her son, Kendrick.
Now, with the help of a petitions
and big-name celebrities, she has hope.
People just don't understand how hard it is to
lose a child, but to lose one to murder,
senseless murder.
Everyone started posting about KJ,
and his story became headline news again
in the wake of this new movement happening.
A petition starting the year before
in support of KJ's justice
began to go viral.
During the summer of 2020,
over 1.7 million people signed KJ's petition.
But because we were a Black people,
a Black family,
and they thought we was this Black poor family
that wasn't gonna do nothin', they done already said,
"Yeah, we gonna get 'em a couple of dollars
and they just gonna go away."
Your dollars don't mean nothin' compared to that body.
That was mine, that's mine.
♪
[sighing]
♪
Baby boy, we're doin' it for ya.
We ain't lettin' nothin' stop us!
♪
I had to come check on ya.
I ain't been out here in a while,
since your birthday.
We gonna keep raisin' Hell
'till we get justice for ya, baby.
[rain pattering]
He used to be the happiest child
about goin' to Lowndes High School.
That child loved goin' to school.
I could call his name one time, he would get up,
even though he wasn't a morning person.
We was always close, everybody really.
But me and him was the closest 'cause we was the youngest,
and we always had to be home.
Kendrick would just go in there and dive on her back
and just make her so mad,
and she'd get up and chase him through the house,
and just--He was just the joy of our life.
You know, when I tell you we was a crazy family,
we used to wrestle through the house,
we used to have water fights.
Laughing, cuttin' jokes,
that's all we really did.
It was never a dull moment at all with Kendrick.
Respectful, loved his family, loved his daddy.
Loved his daddy, oh, my God, them two.
I said, "Boy, wake me up at such and such time."
And he'll wake me up.
That time come, he wake me up.
I miss it, I miss that little boy.
♪
For people that don't understand
what it's like to lose a sibling,
what do you say to them?
Oh, tell your sibling that you love 'em every day,
every single day.
It don't matter if y'all mad,
y'all disagreein'.
♪
Make sure you tell your whole family
that you love 'em
'cause anything can happen.
You can wake up the next day
and they gone.
You can be livin' with 'em your whole life,
and the next day,
you can't even tell 'em that you love 'em.
You can't even tell 'em that you miss 'em.
To be without Kendrick on Christmas Day
and his birthdays.
I see people every day
take their family
for granted,
and I be tryin' to tell 'em
you can't do that.
♪
'Cause you end up in my situation,
you ain't gonna know how to walk in my shoes.
You ain't gonna be able to be as strong as me and my people is.
Everybody ain't built to handle what we goin' through.
My husband said that one day he was in the bed
after Kendrick died,
and he could literally feel
Kendrick gettin' in the bed behind him and layin' down
with him because that's the stuff they use to
sit in the bed and watch football together.
I never thought that I'd have to live without my,
neither one of my brothers, so
it bein' my brother,
the one that I'm
the closest to,
that's very devastating.
Always gotta
love your people.
Can't never let nothing simple tear y'all apart.
Son, I love you,
and I know you know that.
And you left us because you knew
that you had two parents that was gonna
always fight for you,
and you knew we wasn't goin' nowhere
until we get it right,
'till you make sure somebody's held accountable.
Well, brother,
I just wanna let you know
that I love you whole lot.
That'll never change.
I miss you.
Kendrick, we miss you,
and we know that justice is gonna be done,
and we know that your spirit
is stirred up and you're not restin'.
I give my life before I let this case go.
You know, me and you was like two peas in a pod.
Nothin' can break us apart.
I hear your voice,
and I thank you for the many nights
that I would of had overslept in my truck.
Even today,
when I used to have you sittin' in the front seat,
while I was takin' a nap and you used to wake me up,
you used to always be pokin' on me, "Dad, Dad,
it's time to go, it's time to go."
I can still hear that same voice.
Thank you.
Even through goin' through all of this,
God is just still so good.
He gives us strength, He gives power to endure,
knowin' the truth gonna come for you, Kendrick.
It's comin'.
It is comin'!
Until we meet again,
I always love you, son.
And we okay down here.
You ain't gotta worry about us.
We strong
'cause we got the most
beautiful angel watchin' over us.
I love ya.
That'll never change.
♪
Your name's gonna be known all over this world.
We love you, and you rest.
We'll see you one day.
♪