Kylie Lowe (9:49)
Sources indicate that John was known to buy and sell small quantities of pot to friends and Yale students. However, as the investigation would reveal, John was making plans for a bigger buy and other individuals had put money on the line with him, too. The details of this deal and other potentially volatile situations John was involved in came to light as police began to interview John's friends and acquaintances. John's sister Jocelyn has obtained over 100 pages of the original 1990 NHPD case file for John's case via FOIA request. She questions why it was released. If the case had always been considered open and active, there would have been qualified exemptions to reject her request. But nonetheless, she has the documents and she shared them with me. Everything from incident reports, witness statements and interview transcripts, and the autopsy findings. According to incident reports contained in the case file, John's body was found lying on his stomach on the carpeted floor of room 208, with his right forearm underneath his lower abdomen area and his left arm above his head. His head was slightly sideways, with extensive visible trauma to the left of his forehead, eye and nose. The mostly unfurnished space had only a wooden chair and a stepladder off to one side. There were sections of blood spattered cardboard on the carpeted floor, a pile of clothing, a pair of sneakers, and a backpack, the contents of which appeared to be dumped onto the floor around it. Among the items, investigators found a key ring with two small keys, a separate single key in the pile near the backpack, and another key ring with 17 keys on it. An officer observed that room 208 was adjoined by a smaller room which had shelving, some large speakers and crates with music stands inside, among some other items. The exterior windows in this smaller room were couldn't be secured because the locks appeared to be broken, and an officer writes in one incident report that it was easy to climb in and out of the Windows onto the roof, which led to a fire escape and down into an alley. About five feet from John's head was a piece of cardboard with what appeared to be partial footprints from the sole of a shoe, maybe even three different shoes. A music stand in the adjoining room had partial latent fingerprints on it. A check for prints on the windows into the adjoining room also revealed more latent prints. Based on the location of blood spatters, spots, swipes, prints, and apparent transfer blood stains. An officer theorized that most, if not all of the trauma occurred in the main room where John's body was found. But there was also reason to believe that John's body had been moved within the space after his death. There's no mention in the incident reports of any drugs found at the scene, although an officer describes an empty small plastic narcotics vial found near John's body with blood on it, but not in blood. There were several additional items photographed as potential evidence that also had blood on them, but they were not necessarily resting in blood. After the local medical examiner and an associate state medical examiner arrived, they discovered that John also had trauma to the back of his skull. In his left back pocket, they found $200 in cash, ten $20 bills, along with his driver's license, a piece of paper with a handwritten name and phone number, and a guitar pick. John's body was transported from the scene for an official autopsy. That same day, Associate Medical Examiner Dr. Melka Shaw determined that John died as the result of craniocerebral injuries. He had multiple skull fractures, likely caused by blows to the head with a blunt object. The ME Theorized that the murder weapon was an object shaped like a baseball bat. But investigators did not find anything resembling a potential murder weapon at the scene. The state of decomposition indicated that John was likely killed sometime on Monday, March 12th. Back at the loft, with the investigation well underway, a detective intercepted a man who had shown up at the scene looking for John. The man who all call by the fake name Patrick, said that he was trying to find John because he was supposed to be renting room 208 from him, and he had paid hundreds of dollars in back rent for the studio on John's behalf. It's great when you can get someone a gift they wouldn't necessarily get for themselves. That little bit of luxury that they didn't know they're missing. For quality gifts at an affordable price, there's quince. Quince lets you treat your loved ones and yourself to everyday luxury at an affordable price. From 14 karat gold jewelry to Italian leather handbags. 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Sign up for greenlight today@greenlight.com downeast that's greenlight.com downeast to try greenlight today greenlight.com downeast after showing up to the scene of the murder looking for the man who had just been found dead, Patrick was escorted to the detective division to give a statement. He told a New Haven detective that the last time he saw John was the past Friday, March 9th at a restaurant where they met up to chat about the loft. John had been locked out by the management company for non payment, so Patrick had agreed to pay the $330 of back rent and in return, Patrick said John promised to turn the loft over to him to use for his computer business, but that hadn't happened yet. He received the new keys to the loft from the management company, but Patrick says he immediately gave them to John. Patrick said they talked about something else that day, too. John needed a check in the amount of $660, which seems like it was separate from the back rent payment. As Patrick explained it, John said he needed to prove to somebody that he had money coming in soon. Patrick told John he didn't have that much in his account and the check would likely bounce if he tried to cash it. But John said it didn't matter. It was basically just for show. Patrick told the detective he agreed to this and later wrote a check payable to cash and left it under his apartment door for John to pick up. When Patrick left his apartment on Saturday morning, March 10, around 8am the check was there and it was gone by the time he came back around 11. Patrick claimed he never saw or heard from John again after that, but not for lack of trying. Over the next few days, Patrick called the number he had for John's previous apartment, but John's old roommate said he wasn't there. Patrick tried to find John at the studio on the 13th, but there was no answer when he knocked on the door to room 208, so he left. Patrick said he didn't have anything else to say that might be helpful to the investigation, but agreed to take a polygraph test. A little over a week later. As Patrick answered the polygraph examiner's questions, he appeared more and more nervous until finally, Patrick said he did have more information about John's murder than he shared. In his first statement, he agreed to tell investigators what he Knew. In his second statement, taken on March 23, 1990, Patrick said he'd actually seen John as recently as Monday the 12th. According to Patrick, John had been working on getting money together to buy several pounds of pot. The plan was to buy it from two guys who all called by the fake names, Cody and Hank. Patrick himself had contributed $400 cash to the buy, which John picked up from Patrick's apartment around 12:30pm on the 12th. Patrick said that to his knowledge, John was supposed to close the deal around 1:30 the same afternoon. Patrick said that when he hadn't heard from John hours later, possibly between 6 and 7pm he he went to the loft where he believed the deal was happening between John and Cody and Hank. As far as he could tell, room 208 was empty, so he left and went back to his apartment. Patrick said that on his Way out, he noticed a white car parked outside at the corner of Temple and Crown, and a man was standing next to it. He thought it looked like Cody, but wasn't 100% sure. A little later, maybe an hour or an hour and a half, Patrick. Patrick says he went back to the loft. This time, as Patrick was going up the stairs, he heard voices. He stopped a few feet shy of the door to the studio and listened. What he heard was bad. It sounded like John was in the studio with someone else. It sounded like Hank. He'd never been formally introduced to Hank, but he'd heard Hank's voice before and believed it was him. The voice was saying, where is it? And John was saying no. Then Patrick says he heard loud thumps and a crash of what he thought could be drums. Patrick told the detective he thought John was, quote, about to be shot, and so he got out of there fast. Patrick said he worried about John all night, but thought maybe he just got beat up and would be fine. The next day, he and a friend went over to the loft to see if they could find John. Patrick said they noticed an odor as they got closer to the door of room 208. And when they knocked, no one answered. Patrick said in his statement, at that point, I knew for sure John was dead. End quote. Patrick explained that he didn't call the police after what he heard because he was scared and he didn't want to get involved. And he didn't disclose this part of his story during his first statement because he was afraid he'd have to testify and he didn't want his parents to know he was involved with drugs. Patrick submitted to fingerprinting and photos, and he turned over either one or two pairs of his sneakers for analysis. Investigators followed up with Patrick's friend, who he said went with him to look for John on the morning of the 13th. The friend told an NHPD detective that he was hanging out at Patrick's place with him on the night of March 12, according to a summary of the friend's statement contained in the case file. The friend says he got to Patrick's house around 6 or 7 that night, and Patrick had left the apartment twice, just as Patrick said he did. The friend said Patrick told him he was going to the loft to get some pot. The friend had been to the loft with Patrick before half a dozen times, and had even entered through the window before. So when Patrick said the loft, his friend knew the place he referenced. When Patrick got back the second time, he seemed very upset. The friend could hear Patrick in the bathroom crying. And at one point Patrick asked for the phone and a phone number for the police department and then a number for the anonymous tip line. But Patrick didn't end up making any calls. At the end of the interview, the friend agreed to give his fingerprints and shoe prints. Now, Patrick wasn't the only witness who saw John on March 12, and he's not believed to be the last person with John before he was killed. One witness told police that around 1:25pm on that Monday, John asked to borrow $200, and the witness agreed. He told John to meet him at an ATM on Broadway. When John arrived, he was in the passenger seat of a tan colored car. The witness couldn't be sure, but he thought the driver might be someone named Cody, who police knew to be one of the men. Patrick told them John was supposedly planning to buy pot. From that day, detectives tracked Kody down to ask him a few questions and he confirmed that around 1:30pm on Monday the 12th, he was driving down the street when he spotted John in a gas station parking lot. Flagging him down, John asked Kody for a ride and Cody drove him to an ATM where he got cash from that other witness. Kody says he then dropped John off downtown on the corner of Temple street and Crown street, just down the street from the loft. As far as the case file documents and interview statements from 1990 show, at this point, Cody was the last person to have physical contact with John. And the person we're calling Cody appears again and again in witness statements within the 1990 case file documents, often paired with Hank, whose voice Patrick claimed he heard inside the studio at room 208 on the last day John was known to be alive. Police learned through interviews with John's former roommate that these individuals, Hank and Cody, had called the apartment where John once lived several times since Sunday, looking for John and asking where he was. The roommate said the calls were threatening in tone. They told the roommate that John owed them money. On March 25, 1990, New Haven Police obtained search warrants for the apartments of Hank and Cody. At Hank's apartment, police seized several pairs of shoes and a set of keys. During a search of Cody's apartment, police collected several pairs of sneakers there, as well as a 12 inch pipe wrapped with black tape. It is clear from the incident reports and witness statements that NHPD detectives were investigating this alleged deal between John, Hank and Cody as a potential motive for John's murder. But it wouldn't be the only threat that detectives had to follow.