- 6 hours ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00:03The shooting happened right down Southwest 77th Avenue here in the parking lot of Pata's apartment building and tonight Miami
00:00:12-Dade police are searching for his killer.
00:00:18Yeah, Brian Pata was a defensive star in the Miami Hurricanes.
00:00:22He was going to be in the NFL in just a few months.
00:00:27I said, what do you mean they killed him? Like, why? Why would somebody do this?
00:00:35I was just coming home. I had just gotten home from work. And as I answered the phone, it was
00:00:41my mom.
00:00:42And my mom shared with me, you haven't heard? Sydney is dead.
00:00:50I just paused. And, um, started screaming.
00:01:04When Brian Pata's mother got to the scene and she was told that her son had been killed, I mean,
00:01:10it was devastating.
00:01:10It looked like one of those scenes you'd see in a movie of a mother just wailing, and it was
00:01:17heartbreaking.
00:01:18Give me my baby! Give me my baby! Give me my baby!
00:01:23It was a scream of pain that was just coming from her soul, her gut. And I was like, oh
00:01:30my God, this is real.
00:01:31She hugged me, Andrew. Sydney is gone. Sydney is gone. I was like, oh my, I started to cry so
00:01:37bad.
00:01:38My son, very good son, never have a problem with nobody. You know, oh my God, it's gone!
00:01:45You're watching the rawest of emotions. You're watching someone deal with a tragedy in real time.
00:01:54This is a very private emotional moment, but it's being broadcast on live TV.
00:02:00And little did we know in that moment how much more devastating it would become.
00:02:17Life has always been a challenge and obstacles of test of who I am and what I will become.
00:02:26My name is Brian Pata, and this is my story.
00:02:36We're headed to the stadium right now. It's game time.
00:02:44Brian Pata was larger than life.
00:02:46What's up, y'all?
00:02:47His aura, it just stuck out. He always gets everybody to kind of gravitate towards him.
00:02:53Feel me? Check my biceps out.
00:02:55We got those cameras like the year before.
00:02:58Come here, dawg. See what's up to the camera, dawg.
00:03:00As soon as he got it, everybody was walking around with him.
00:03:03Everybody always taking videos.
00:03:09It's a true encapsulation of who this person was at that age, living in Miami, being a star football player.
00:03:17Take off that shirt.
00:03:18Take off that shirt.
00:03:19Brian was always filming.
00:03:21He had to be in front of the cameras. He had to be recording him dancing.
00:03:29If you look at him, you know it may be a little intimidating, but...
00:03:33He was a great person. He had a great heart. Great spirit.
00:03:37His smile could just light up room when he came in.
00:03:41He made everybody laugh.
00:03:42It was just, he had a soft heart. I really loved people.
00:03:46You could see this huge guy that looks, you know, this football player.
00:03:49But for me, I looked past that. I knew the soft side of him.
00:03:53That's the brother I remember.
00:04:03Brian Pata came from a big family.
00:04:05He had an even larger extended family.
00:04:08When you consider the football team, the people in his life and community who looked up to him.
00:04:17My mom, she's from Haiti.
00:04:21Like most parents, to be successful in this country, you know, you have the dream,
00:04:25the American dream, to come in and work hard.
00:04:29It was quite a struggle for my mom, you know, a single parent home, you know,
00:04:33to try to make ends meet.
00:04:35It's a total of nine children.
00:04:37Um, so there were six boys and three girls.
00:04:41Brian was the last of the nine.
00:04:44You never called Brian at home.
00:04:45You never called him Brian.
00:04:47Everybody outside knew of him as Brian, but we knew him as Sidney.
00:04:51That's Sidney.
00:04:58Brian Pata, like a lot of people in Miami, didn't have it easy.
00:05:02They moved around a lot, spent a lot of time in Little Haiti and the north of Miami.
00:05:06Brian and his brothers, they were sports crazy.
00:05:09For them, it was a way to get away from some of the troubles in the neighborhoods that they lived
00:05:14in.
00:05:14Sports was, for us, pretty much our only way to get to college.
00:05:18To afford college.
00:05:20That's part of the reason why we worked so hard at it.
00:05:25When I first met Brian, I was just like, wow, this guy is unbelievable talent.
00:05:31Brian physically was so gifted in high school.
00:05:34You knew this was somebody who could play at a high level in college.
00:05:37Brian was heavily recruited out of high school.
00:05:40But he knew he wanted to stay in this region and he wanted to stay in this area.
00:05:43But it ultimately came down to being close to his mom.
00:05:48There was only one school for Brian, and that was the University of Miami.
00:05:51He swarmed and brought down Brian Pata.
00:05:54He has a motor that will not stop.
00:05:56Miami Hurricanes in the early 2000s, hands down, is the best team of all time.
00:06:01Brian Pata was a high-performing player on a team that was highly regarded.
00:06:07A lot of people think he would have had a long, substantial career in the NFL.
00:06:10With Brian, his biggest hope was to make it to the NFL, be as successful as it possibly can be,
00:06:16in order for him to take care of his family.
00:06:26He was a big baby.
00:06:28He would be sitting in the locker, and he would just be laughing.
00:06:33Like, what are you laughing at? What are you laughing at?
00:06:35And he would be listening to a message.
00:06:37His mom just left for him, and she would be like,
00:06:41Brian, I dream of you today.
00:06:44It used to make me laugh, too.
00:06:50She babied him. I mean, she loved him so much.
00:06:53And we all did.
00:06:55Brian would be on the phone with his mom.
00:06:57Every single day they talked, he always made sure he checked in with her.
00:07:04This trajectory that Brian Pata was on was not his alone.
00:07:09His mother.
00:07:10She was on this journey with him.
00:07:13What are you making?
00:07:14Oh, man, I'm talking a little fish.
00:07:17What?
00:07:25Fish.
00:07:25Fish.
00:07:27He was going to experience the American dream, which is to have a better life than your parents had, and
00:07:34to share that with them.
00:07:39And that whole trajectory was just derailed.
00:08:04When police arrive, they start cordoning off the area.
00:08:08At some point, Miami-Dade police realizes that they need an assistant state's attorney's office representative to be there.
00:08:16They phoned Herbert Walker, who was on call that night.
00:08:25By the time I got to the scene, you could already see people beginning to gather around it.
00:08:34The night of the shooting, there was just a lot of police lights, people in the area, everybody wanting to
00:08:39find out what happened.
00:08:42And everybody sort of calling each other, what's going on, what happened.
00:08:53After the initial incident, I remember meeting with friends and family members just to gather information.
00:09:00My experience as a prosecutor, time is of the essence, and the clock is ticking.
00:09:07In the hours after Brian's murder, the Miami football team didn't know if this was an attack on Brian, or
00:09:14if this was going to be an attack on multiple players.
00:09:17That summer, another teammate got shot a couple months prior to Brian Patterson. Ambush coming out of his house.
00:09:25I was scared myself, and nobody knows what happened.
00:09:30I thought somebody was trying to kill me, too.
00:09:49This is Murder at the U.
00:09:53I'm Paula Levine.
00:09:55I got started on this in the spring of 2018.
00:09:59We were just gathering sound.
00:10:01At some point, we realized we had enough sound and enough of a story to make it a true podcast.
00:10:06The podcast itself didn't really come to fruition until the story seemed a little more complete.
00:10:14From 30 for 30 Podcasts.
00:10:17We had a killer amongst us.
00:10:19Murder at the U.
00:10:21The podcast is the result of eight years of investigative reporting by ESPN.
00:10:26I would say we've interviewed more than 100 people.
00:10:29We've gathered more than 5,000 police documents.
00:10:33Anything we've been able to get our hands on has helped us in our investigation to this point.
00:10:39A star player on a major college football team.
00:10:43Murdered near campus, just a few months shy of the NFL draft.
00:10:49Brian Patta was an outstanding defensive lineman with U.M.
00:10:53And was being talked about as an NFL prospect.
00:10:56Until about 7.30 tonight, when he was shot and killed in the parking lot of his apartment building.
00:11:02Give me my bitch! Give me my bitch! Give me my bitch!
00:11:05A woman believed to be Patta's mother wearing a U.M. jersey with his number on it collapsed as she
00:11:11rushed to the scene.
00:11:12Other family and friends were overcome by the news.
00:11:19In the weeks leading up to Brian Patta's death, his family had noticed some things that made them think that
00:11:25Brian thought something bad was going to happen to him.
00:11:28I last saw Brian that Sunday on the 4th.
00:11:33I cooked a huge meal for him, my mom and I.
00:11:36He came over, and he just seemed kind of just really mellow, quiet.
00:11:41He just spaced out.
00:11:43And his head was down the whole time, kept rubbing his hair, and his hair was in front of his
00:11:46face, just kept rubbing his head like this.
00:11:48His spirit was awful. He don't know. He couldn't explain it.
00:11:51And I remember him leaving, and he said, thank you, sis, and gave me a big hug.
00:11:55It seemed like he was so far away from me, but he was literally right there.
00:11:59And I was like, okay, I love you. I'll see you soon.
00:12:03And not knowing that would be my last conversation with him.
00:12:11November 7th, 2006, pretty average day for Brian. He and his teammate, Eric Moncour, decide that they're going to go
00:12:20register for spring classes.
00:12:22We went over, we registered for classes, and then we went over and got something to eat.
00:12:29After that, we went back to the HEC athletic facility.
00:12:34We had a great day of practice.
00:12:37After practice, we were told by one of Brian's teammates, Chris Zellner, that he was in the locker room.
00:12:44There was a call that Chris Zellner overheard where it seemed like somebody was threatening Brian.
00:12:49It just happened to be just me and Brian left in the locker room, and then he received a phone
00:12:54call.
00:12:54It started off as a normal call, and then it started getting heated.
00:12:58Brian started to say, like, you. If you want to come see me, come see me. You know where the
00:13:03I'm at.
00:13:05You. They hung up. I looked over. I didn't want to be too nosy. And I was just like, hey,
00:13:10man, are you good? Like, you straight?
00:13:12So that was the angriest I've ever seen Brian powder. Like, ever.
00:13:17After practice is done, Brian gets in his car. He's heading home. He sees some of the younger teammates. He
00:13:24offers them a ride home and drops them off.
00:13:28Brian arrives home around 6.57. He's on the phone with his brother, Fednal, and he says to him, I'm
00:13:35going to let you go now. I just pulled in.
00:13:38Brian pulls into the parking lot in front of his apartment complex and exits his car. Within, police estimate, probably
00:13:49two minutes of that, he gets shot in the head.
00:13:55Brian's girlfriend, Jada Brody, says she heard a bang and people arguing. Jada goes outside to investigate. She sees Brian
00:14:03Pata laying face down on a sidewalk, feet from his car.
00:14:08She thinks he's joking because he's his jokester and realizes that there's a pool of blood around his head.
00:14:27There's police cars, fire rescue everywhere. They basically gave me the quick overview of what had happened and told me
00:14:35that Mr. Pata was found face down on the sidewalk.
00:14:42I saw a large black male just about 20 feet from the entrance to his apartment.
00:14:49There appeared to be an entrance wound to the back of the head, and it was a single shot.
00:14:53Based upon the fact that we didn't find any shell casings, it was suspected that it would have been a
00:15:00smaller caliber revolver-style handgun.
00:15:02It was clearly not done as a robbery. They found Brian's wallet. There were nine $100 bills still in it,
00:15:11his cell phone. Like, no one had stolen anything.
00:15:15To me, this might have been more in the line of a hit, a targeted assassination, if you will.
00:15:22All through the night, the police canvassed the colony apartments, knocking on every door. But they turned up no eyewitnesses.
00:15:30There was no security camera footage.
00:15:32There was no obvious trace of the killer other than the bullet that had pierced Brian's skull.
00:15:39It was the worst feeling I ever had in my whole life. As an older brother, you always want to
00:15:44protect your younger brothers. And I felt like I wasn't there to protect them. It was awful. Awful.
00:15:55Who could have wanted a rising football star with a promising future dead? Detectives began asking questions that night.
00:16:03Asking Brian's family and teammates if he had any enemies. If he'd been in any fights. If he was worried
00:16:09for his safety.
00:16:11Turns out, the answer to all of those questions was yes.
00:16:27The University of Miami.
00:16:33This is Miami. There is a dangerous, sexy, cool reputation in this town.
00:16:43And if you are a college football player at the University of Miami.
00:16:47Game time. I'm serious.
00:16:49You are going to get caught up in that fast living lifestyle very quickly.
00:16:55But you know this shit boy.
00:16:57The container.
00:16:58Big pattern.
00:16:59You know what I'm saying? Just showing y'all my cards or what not.
00:17:02Just don't baby.
00:17:03That was Brian.
00:17:04Yeah.
00:17:05He was that flashy.
00:17:07Check you out on my inside. He checked me out.
00:17:09He was very flashy.
00:17:19Back in the days I used to do all the U.M. players' cards.
00:17:21Dave Brown.
00:17:23This DJ don't.
00:17:26Brian came to the shop.
00:17:27This is what he wanted right here. This is his favorite color right here.
00:17:30Candy apple gold. The syrup look. He loved that.
00:17:34Brian's love of cars came during a time when a lot of kids his age were doing a lot of
00:17:38the same thing.
00:17:42He had a great joy of buying old classic cars, fixing them up, and then flipping them on the internet.
00:17:50Just showing y'all my work, what I can do to my cars.
00:17:53Boy ain't that good.
00:17:56He enjoyed that aspect of taking something, making it beautiful, and then trying to get a buck off of it.
00:18:03That was one of the things that Brian wanted to do once he got successful and got paid in the
00:18:08pros is opening up a car truck.
00:18:11Jabbing to that Rick Ross.
00:18:14Going that way to my apartment now.
00:18:16U.S. 1 going south.
00:18:19In 2006 MTV Cribs was a show that was still popular.
00:18:23On this episode of MTV Cribs NFL edition.
00:18:27Welcome MTV Cribs.
00:18:29I thought well this would be really cool if we could start doing this with local athletes and sort of
00:18:34make it a local story.
00:18:35I was working for the Miami Herald. I was a high school slash college football writer.
00:18:40And because of my long relationship with Brian Pata, I just felt like he was the perfect candidate.
00:18:45Because he was one of those top ranked players who didn't feel like he was too big for you.
00:18:50He wanted to help tell his story.
00:18:54I attached a microphone with a tape recorder to Brian's shirt and we recorded it.
00:19:00What up y'all? This is my crib. I'm Brian Pata.
00:19:03University of Miami, Diva's Chicago.
00:19:06What's up?
00:19:07If you walk in, this is a townhouse. Two bedroom, two and a half bathroom.
00:19:14This is a living room. You know we got not that much stuff but it's decent for athletes.
00:19:20I broke the TV. I kind of spilled juice on it.
00:19:23So no TV there but a cable box. Check it out in the kitchen.
00:19:27You know we keep it clean. You know probably got one dish in here, one cup.
00:19:33Going upstairs to the room. This is my room.
00:19:39You know it's a height. It's not you know spectacular or nothing like that but this is a little collage
00:19:46of me and my girl.
00:19:50Jada Brody was at the time of Brian's death his girlfriend.
00:19:54They had been together for exactly a year. She had moved into his apartment earlier that summer.
00:20:01I introduced Brian to his girlfriend Jada. My name is Dave Howell and I was friends and teammates with Brian
00:20:06Pata.
00:20:07We were at an on campus party and he ended up noticing her from like afar.
00:20:14And he was just like you know who is that? I was like oh I know her. I went to
00:20:19high school with her. Her name is Jada.
00:20:22He was just like you know can you hook us up? And I introduced them.
00:20:26That's Jada? Yeah.
00:20:28Brian was not you know some serial dater and all that. He was a typical college student.
00:20:34And I think at that point he just kind of settled down a little bit. Wanted to take this relationship
00:20:39a little more serious with Jada.
00:20:40They had their fights. They had their love. They were just a typical college couple.
00:20:49The day that he was killed. The night before they were celebrating their one year anniversary.
00:20:56So it seemed like they were you know they were they were on cloud nine to me.
00:21:02According to what she told detectives Jada was in the apartment cleaning out her dog's kennel.
00:21:07She told police that she heard an argument outside possibly Brian's voice and went to see what was going on.
00:21:13She saw Brian lying on the ground. At first she thought he was playing a prank.
00:21:19Then she saw blood around his head. Jada said she ran back upstairs to call 9-1-1.
00:21:32You never know who might be a possible suspect and at that point everybody's a suspect.
00:21:40One of the things that police looked into and that we looked into as well were some conflicts that Brian
00:21:46apparently had with Jada's family.
00:21:48The police found that in the spring of 2006 Jada told her father Jerry that Brian had broken up with
00:21:54her because he suspected her of cheating on him.
00:21:57Jerry told police that he then called Brian to warn him not to speak disrespectfully about his daughter.
00:22:03The conversation with Jerry led detectives to Jada's twin brother Jerome.
00:22:07Jerome Brody had been in and out of jail for various offenses and his father said that Jerome would have
00:22:13killed anyone who messed with the family.
00:22:15You might have a situation where a brother a sibling might feel strongly enough that he might take matters into
00:22:22his own hands.
00:22:26About a month after Brian's murder Jada Brody's brother Jerome Brody ends up getting arrested in Boston and as part
00:22:34of the arrest police find some guns in a vehicle.
00:22:39Miami-Dade gets this information that they have those guns tested to see if they're a match to the bullet
00:22:45found in Brian's skull.
00:22:51Miami-Dade police flew up to Boston, tried to speak with Jerome.
00:22:56He was unwilling to speak but those guns that Jerome had didn't match any possibility to Brian.
00:23:02We did our due diligence and we couldn't place him in the area.
00:23:09Jada's twin brother and other members of her family were deemed not to be involved.
00:23:15The police started going down all of these different rabbit holes but they actually were starting to look at someone
00:23:21much closer to Brian.
00:23:23Hello?
00:23:24Whether Brian got mixed up with the wrong girl is one of the questions that certainly the investigative team looked
00:23:32into.
00:23:32Is there an ex-boyfriend that is upset that she left him? Crimes of passion cause passionate action.
00:23:48Brian Pata, a defensive lineman for the Miami Hurricanes.
00:23:51Brian Pata was shot and killed.
00:23:54Brian Pata was a great leader.
00:23:57A team leader.
00:23:58A selfless, fun-loving kid. Teachers loved him.
00:24:01A tragedy, we missed Brian Pata.
00:24:03Brian was laid to rest at the New Birth Baptist Church in Miami.
00:24:15The amount of people that was coming in, I think it was like over 2,000 people.
00:24:26I remember my mom passing out, crying.
00:24:30Passed out completely.
00:24:32Yeah, completely passed out.
00:24:33A lot of our teammates was there. You know, it was a sad day, man.
00:24:42It was a hard day. Seeing a lot of teammates break down and start crying. It was a really tough
00:24:49day for the University of Miami.
00:24:50Look at this moment here.
00:24:52At the first game after Brian's murder, the team kneeled for a moment of prayer and silent reflection midfield with
00:24:59this big banner.
00:25:01Brian Pata's image, the slain Hurricane teammate, a banner that fans made and the team gathering around it at midfield.
00:25:10That was rough. We were just, like, numb. You know, like, you didn't feel like playing no football. You know
00:25:18what I mean? Like, teammates just got killed.
00:25:21Months before Brian was murdered, one of his friends had purchased for him a suit to wear to draft day.
00:25:34Brian had picked us out to wear this draft. And they had it all out. And that's when it hit
00:25:39me then, just looking at that. It's supposed to be the best night of his life.
00:25:42And this is the worst. You got to bury him in it.
00:25:47There's an alternate universe in which this tragedy doesn't occur.
00:25:52There's an alternate universe where Brian Pata goes on to the NFL, and he would have been a multimillionaire. It
00:26:00would have been another Miami Hurricanes American dream story.
00:26:08Everybody wanted to find out what happened. Just a lot of questions. Who did this? Who would have wanted to
00:26:13kill Brian Pata?
00:26:17In the hours after Brian's murder, the Miami football team decided to bring all of the players back to the
00:26:23Athletic Center, the HEC Center, to brief them all on what had happened.
00:26:28The one glaring thing that people noticed was that there was one player not there.
00:26:34Brian had an issue with one player on the team, and that was Rashawn Jones. He didn't like him. He
00:26:38didn't get along. He's not a good person.
00:26:40Brian Pata's name was buzzing at that time. There was a lot of talk about his future, a lot of
00:26:46hype about him going into the NFL draft.
00:26:48Rashawn Jones was more of a background player. You didn't hear his name a whole lot.
00:26:53Rashawn Jones was a safety on the football team, a defensive back. Really didn't play very much.
00:26:58I looked at him as like a cool young guy, jokester. You could tell by the way he worked on
00:27:03the field. He was somebody who was passionate about the game.
00:27:06He was a ladies man. I mean, I knew every time I seen him, he was trying to, you know,
00:27:11get at the girls.
00:27:13In the early days of the investigation, police came across a specific beef that Brian had with Rashawn, and it
00:27:22was largely over Jada Brody, Brian's girlfriend.
00:27:26Prior to Brian and Jada being in a relationship, it was rumored that Rashawn and Jada had some form of
00:27:34relationship.
00:27:36That is what the friction that was there between Brian and Rashawn.
00:27:42According to some of Brian's teammates, there would be taunting about, you know, she's my girl.
00:27:48There was definite jealousy and factors there that put those two at odds over who she liked, who she was
00:27:56dating, and what her history was with both guys.
00:28:01He just said that the guy kept trying to fight him, and so they kept getting to these little fights.
00:28:09In 2004, there was an incident between Rashawn and Brian that had happened on campus in one of their dorm
00:28:15rooms.
00:28:16The dorm fight, me, Brian, and Eric were walking up to Eric's room, and at that time we saw Rashawn
00:28:26leaving out of the room.
00:28:28We were just kind of confused, like, why is he in there?
00:28:31I don't know. He said he was looking for DVDs.
00:28:33He was trying to apologize to me, but, you know, I really didn't want to, like, hear it, you know?
00:28:40I was just tired. I was ready to go to sleep because I had to be up in a few
00:28:45hours.
00:28:46Rashawn ends up trying to, you know, leave out of the room, and then Brian ended up punching Rashawn.
00:28:54And me and Eric kind of looked at each other like, did this really just escalate, like, that fast?
00:28:59I broke it up. When Rashawn was walking out, he told Brian he might as well go ahead and clip
00:29:04up.
00:29:05They heard Rashawn say to Brian, you better clip up, meaning that he better get a gun.
00:29:12I was like, y'all about to shoot each other right now? Get the out of my room.
00:29:17Like, you know what I mean? I'm about to go to sleep. Like, you know, I'll holler at you.
00:29:21Rashawn Jones threatened Brian, so you never take anybody who threatened your life lightly like that.
00:29:28I don't think that he looked at that as, like, a threat.
00:29:33I mean, he never really mentioned it after. You know what I mean?
00:29:39Here's what we had learned about Rashawn. Rashawn had conflicts with Brian.
00:29:43He would have known the hurricane's practice schedule and what time Brian would arrive home.
00:29:48According to the police report, there were no eyewitnesses to the shooting.
00:29:53No murder weapon was ever found. And there was no record of any physical evidence linking Rashawn to the crime.
00:30:00Clearly, the name Rashawn Jones came up, but it was on a list of many names that we were looking
00:30:08at.
00:30:08Initially, police looked into a broad string of incidents involving the Miami football team, but they weren't able to make
00:30:14any connection to Brian's shooting.
00:30:17As the investigation continued and police widened their search, they realized there was a long list of people who may
00:30:24have wanted to harm Brian.
00:30:26At one point, the police had been alerted by a jailhouse snitch that his cellmate had allegedly confessed to him
00:30:33one night.
00:30:34As part of vetting, the police had the informant take a polygraph.
00:30:49No arrests as of yet as police in Miami continue their investigation.
00:30:53Brian Pata, senior defensive lineman from Miami, gunned down at the age of 22.
00:30:59The murder of Brian Pata took on mythological proportions.
00:31:03In this town, it was like everybody had a different theory.
00:31:08What about you?
00:31:09We learned that Brian had a busy life.
00:31:11It wasn't just football and his girlfriend.
00:31:14He was involved in a lot of things.
00:31:16The investigation at the start went in so many different directions.
00:31:20There were so many different angles they were trying to go with.
00:31:24I felt like the police just didn't know which leads to really, truly go for.
00:31:29It wasn't a limited field of suspects.
00:31:32You need to follow the evidence.
00:31:34One of the tips that came in to the Miami-Dade police was that if they wanted to find Brian
00:31:39Pata's killer, they needed to look for ties with the Zopound gang.
00:31:46Zopound's a well-known gang in the Miami area.
00:31:51They were notorious for doing crimes of great violence.
00:31:55Zopound was featured as one of the bad guys in one of the Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Bad Boys movies.
00:32:02Yo, dry off, sweetheart. That's Ice Pick.
00:32:05He said the Haitian Zopound's about to do a rip. Let's move.
00:32:08There is no indication that Brian was a member of this gang.
00:32:12But there were members of the Zopound gang who told us that they were aware of Brian, that they knew
00:32:17him.
00:32:17The homicide detectives weren't able to bring back anything that would tie a specific action of the Zopound to this
00:32:26incident.
00:32:26There was a lot of talk about Brian getting into fights with some pretty potentially dangerous characters.
00:32:33Oh, boy.
00:32:34It is not uncommon at all to see bad blood lead to fists being thrown in a nightclub in Miami.
00:32:42A few months before Brian is killed, Brian and some of his teammates are at a club called Club Life.
00:32:50And they get into an altercation with some guys there who belong to a gang.
00:32:56There was definitely a physical confrontation.
00:33:00Brian's throwing punches and he's clearly involved in the fight.
00:33:04And as they are leaving, members of this gang are telling them, we're going to come after you for this.
00:33:10And one of the teammates with Brian at the time is calling Brian and telling him that, you know, someone's
00:33:16got a hit out on us.
00:33:19At first, Brian was definitely worried about these guys.
00:33:22His girlfriend found him sleeping in the closet where he kept his shotgun.
00:33:26And I think that that was certainly a reasonable indication of concern or fear or paranoia on Brian's part.
00:33:36The Club Life investigation didn't seem to go anywhere.
00:33:39But then a few months later, the police got another promising lead, an alleged jailhouse confession.
00:33:46There was a jailhouse informant. His name was Bernard Brinson.
00:33:50And he claimed that he was having a conversation with another inmate by the name of Emanuel Jones.
00:33:57And Emanuel Jones would end up telling him that he got paid to do a hit and that he believed
00:34:06that the person he got paid to do the hit on was Brian Pata.
00:34:10They went and actually administered a lie detector test and the jailhouse snitched past the lie detector test.
00:34:17Back in 2007, police had quickly ruled Emanuel Jones out as a suspect.
00:34:23There is evidence in the police records that that man had an alibi because he was in jail on November
00:34:307th, 2006.
00:34:32But we discovered the police had the timeline of his arrest all wrong.
00:34:39That robbery took place in August 2006.
00:34:43But Jones wasn't actually arrested until December, a month after Brian's murder.
00:34:50Miami police did not respond to our request for comment.
00:34:55Years later, I was able to actually track down the alleged confessor, Emanuel Jones.
00:35:01And I got him on the phone and I was trying to bring him back to that time period in
00:35:062006.
00:35:07If someone were to say, hey, you confessed to this murder, do you remember where you were in November?
00:35:16I was nowhere around no murder. I don't know anything about no murder.
00:35:19They wrote he had an alibi. He was in jail for stealing a dirt bike in an armed robbery.
00:35:25There was all this talk of jailhouse confessions and tales of professional hits.
00:35:32All of this just swirled because there was just this emptiness that the police couldn't fill.
00:35:41You hear this person is the lead person and next week someone else is the lead person.
00:35:46When it took longer than six months, all of a sudden you're like, what's going on?
00:35:52Now a tragedy that has no closure, no conclusion and no answers.
00:35:57The murder of Brian Potter.
00:35:58It takes too long to know who killed him. I don't know what to say anymore.
00:36:04Every day I'm talking, we try to call a detective to ask them questions.
00:36:09They don't want to pick up the phone. We leave them a message. They don't call back.
00:36:14It feels like Miami-Dade needed to do something new.
00:36:17Their hand was almost forced into doing something creative.
00:36:20As a reporter, I try to stay out of the story.
00:36:24But sometimes the work you do to get the story and what you uncover changes it.
00:36:29That's exactly what happened here.
00:36:31To my knowledge, this is the first time a police entity has ever reached out to ESPN for help with
00:36:38a case like this.
00:36:48Welcome inside Radio City Music Hall.
00:36:52The 2007 NFL Draft is now open.
00:36:56In April of 2007, the NFL Draft was held at Radio City Music Hall.
00:37:01The Chicago Bears take Greg Olson, tight end, Miami.
00:37:06Seeing those guys that he knew and get picked, it was real sad to watch.
00:37:12Introduce yourself, eh?
00:37:14Greg Olson and Brian were good friends on the team.
00:37:22After Brian's death, Greg Olson went on to have an incredible NFL career and a long broadcast career after.
00:37:28It reminds you of what could have been for Brian, the life that he could have lived.
00:37:34It isn't entirely clear to us how this case ended up becoming a cold case.
00:37:40There was a ton of media attention at the time, but fell off.
00:37:43The family reached a point that they were very frustrated with the police efforts to finding answers.
00:37:50When you look at the police file, you see very, very little new inserts from 2010 to 2016.
00:38:00It was almost like nothing had been done.
00:38:04It's March of 2017.
00:38:09And the family is holding a joint press conference with the Miami-Dade PD.
00:38:13It's hurt. It's hurt.
00:38:17Ten years ago, we don't hear nothing from my son.
00:38:21Brian's mother turns very accusatory towards Miami-Dade police.
00:38:34I think it was the pressure from the family that finally prompted the Miami-Dade Police Department to reach out
00:38:40to the media to see, OK, look, the family wants us to do something.
00:38:44Let's at least make the effort to put the word out there again and see if we can generate some
00:38:49leads.
00:38:49Maybe now, ten years later, somebody who might have information might be an adult now.
00:38:56Maybe they'll do the right thing and make that one phone call that we need.
00:39:00So in the summer of 2017, Miami-Dade police reached out to ESPN in the hopes that we would produce
00:39:09a feature, hoping that it might trigger something in somebody watching it.
00:39:14We discussed it internally and thought, let's see if there's something more to this story than just a college game
00:39:19day piece.
00:39:20You know, we're ready to kind of jump in with both feet and then see what we can do to
00:39:25move the case forward, if you will.
00:39:27That sounds great to me. Yeah, that sounds awesome.
00:39:29We would ask lots of questions. A lot of them they couldn't answer, but a lot of them they did.
00:39:35What do you know, if anything, about maybe what led up to it or if there was an argument or
00:39:40anything?
00:39:41We don't know if he had bad blood with anybody. As of right now, we really don't have a motive.
00:39:46One of the things that really drives me in an investigation is looking at, okay, the people who were supposed
00:39:52to be doing a good job at this, what did they do?
00:39:55I wanted to dig further into this.
00:39:59Once we started putting in requests for actual police evidence and police files, it quickly became a little bit adversarial.
00:40:08There are a lot of questions we have about witness interviews, phone records, and any other possible leads that you
00:40:17guys have gone down that we would love for you to share with us.
00:40:20That's stuff that is, since it's still active, we can't disclose.
00:40:24They did start to provide some documents, but the problem was giant sections of them were blacked out.
00:40:31If we didn't get the information, we couldn't tell a complete story.
00:40:35Greg Cooper and Dean Jackson are members of a cold case unit in Utah.
00:40:41We realized we needed some out-of-house guidance on how we had perceived Miami-Days police work.
00:40:48They're former investigators, law enforcement, and when they looked at this, they agreed.
00:40:53There were some of these angles that the police hadn't ruled out.
00:40:57There was some redaction to those reports, so without having that information, it created questions about the investigation and how
00:41:07far it went, how thorough it was.
00:41:10One of the things that I just can't get over with this is that there were some just basic omissions
00:41:15and errors in this that you would not think that a police department of that size would be making.
00:41:20Like, you know, in 2006, there weren't text messages.
00:41:23Did you guys look through Brian's texts from what was available on the physical phone?
00:41:29I don't believe there was text messaging back then.
00:41:31That was the old-style flip phones, you know, those push-to-top phones were the old things that I
00:41:38don't believe there was texting.
00:41:40By the time we went back to them a year later, we had learned a lot about Brian's life.
00:41:44And at that point, we were asking them questions which they didn't even have answers to.
00:41:48We were told by Chris Zellner, Brian's teammate, that in the locker room after practice, the day of the shooting,
00:41:54Brian was engaged in a very heated phone call.
00:41:56Was that call investigated?
00:41:58I don't remember that individual's name. I don't think I personally interviewed him.
00:42:03Obviously, that's somebody that I would like to speak to also.
00:42:07After we all got the news that Brian passed away, I immediately told the police officers, and they just kind
00:42:15of like, okay, thank you, we'll take that into consideration.
00:42:19And that was it. No follow-up questions, no like, do you think you heard anything, do you think you
00:42:24heard a name, nothing like that.
00:42:26I've never heard from him ever again.
00:42:28The caller that Chris Zellner had overheard is a cause for concern in that it was never identified who the
00:42:37caller was or what the nature of the conversation was that should have been tracked down, identified and interviewed.
00:42:44When the police department was being reticent with us about information, that really made me curious because you wanted us
00:42:52to do this, like you wanted this exposure.
00:42:54What is it that you don't want to tell us?
00:42:58It appeared as though the Miami Dade police turned on the very people that they had recruited into this effort
00:43:06to help solve this cold case.
00:43:09ESPN decided that the only way to try to get an unredacted copy of the files was to sue Miami
00:43:16Dade police.
00:43:17So we're here on the case of ESPN Inc. versus Miami Dade County at all, case number 2020-5029C-01.
00:43:25Eventually we were ruled against, but while on the stands, we were able to get several officers of Miami Dade
00:43:32to admit.
00:43:33Does MCPD know who killed Brian Potter?
00:43:37Yeah, we have a strong belief that he was responsible for his death.
00:43:42And that revelation confirmed what was previously released to us by accident in the heavily redacted police reports.
00:43:50In some of the initial batches of records that they gave us, they included dossiers on a lot of the
00:43:57people they looked into.
00:43:58The only cover page that had the word suspect on it was the cover page for Rashawn Jones.
00:44:05We knew that was important. They forgot to redact it.
00:44:08That was the first indication that they were not being truthful with us.
00:44:13Do you have a specific suspect in mind?
00:44:16No. I mean, anybody, we didn't have a specific suspect.
00:44:21The police are not required to be truthful to reporters.
00:44:26However, in denying they ever had a main suspect, they made us even more skeptical of their information.
00:44:35They had considered Rashawn Jones a suspect from the beginning.
00:44:39In November of 2020, our investigative team decided that it was ready to publish something with everything that we had
00:44:47learned.
00:44:48That photo that was featured so prominently of all the players on the field kneeling by that banner of Brian's
00:44:56face will look very different based on the players who are pictured in it.
00:45:02Close your hands, won't you back for me.
00:45:04To be a place under arrest.
00:45:27My mom, she still talks to him and we help her clean the grave site.
00:45:33The heartbreak of not knowing, there's not a day that my mom did not wake up.
00:45:40She's in tears.
00:45:41She'll never be the same.
00:45:43I remember my son every day.
00:45:48It's sad.
00:45:51While interviewing the family, we learned that every year they held a vigil on the anniversary
00:45:56of Brian's murder at his gravestone.
00:46:01We tried to keep this case active as much as we can.
00:46:06Thirteen years later, you realize nothing's been really done.
00:46:10Somebody just kill him like this.
00:46:13It's not why.
00:46:15One day, two gonna come out.
00:46:28From the outside looking in, it was the kind of case that police should have been motivated
00:46:32to solve quickly.
00:46:33But that is not what happened.
00:46:36Instead, weeks turned into months, which eventually turned into years.
00:46:40And Brian's murder remained unsolved.
00:46:47In November of 2020, our investigative team decided that we'd probably taken the case as far
00:46:53as we could to that point.
00:46:54That's when the digital story came out.
00:47:10The family was so appreciative that Brian's name was finally being talked about again.
00:47:15And some pressure, it seemed, would be put back on Miami-Dade police.
00:47:19You may remember this case because Pata was a star football player for the University of Miami.
00:47:24It's been over a decade and the murder of Brian Pata is still unsolved.
00:47:28In one of South Florida's most infamous unsolved murders, the shooting of a University of Miami lineman.
00:47:33And it remains unsolved to this day.
00:47:35It felt like that got the ball rolling again.
00:47:38It opened it up big time.
00:47:40Our story was the very first time that the public had been told that Rashaun Jones,
00:47:45a former teammate of Brian Pata's, was the person that police were considering most likely to have killed him.
00:47:52One of the theories of Brian's murder definitely revolved around his teammate Rashaun Jones.
00:47:58There was pretty open conflict between the two of them.
00:48:01After reading the ESPN article and then just kind of putting this piece and this piece together to kind of
00:48:07make it make sense,
00:48:08I started to believe that there was definitely a capability of this being Rashaun.
00:48:14I received a voicemail from Edric, Brian's older brother.
00:48:19Hey, Dan. Good morning. It's heating up really good.
00:48:22I think they're about to make an arrest soon.
00:48:28Nine months after our story comes out, we get word that the Miami-Dade Police Department is moving to arrest
00:48:35Rashaun Jones.
00:48:36I believe one of the catalysts was the ESPN article that came out.
00:48:40I think also the state prosecutor also getting a little more aggressive in his approach towards arresting someone.
00:48:46They show up at a Dollar Tree warehouse in Ocala, Florida where he's working and they're waiting for him when
00:48:52he leaves work.
00:48:53And he's arrested.
00:48:55A big place under arrest.
00:48:57Another exclusive tonight, the wife of a former U.M. football player coming to his defense after he was arrested
00:49:02for murder.
00:49:02I heard them say, Rashaun Jones, put your phone down, you're under arrest.
00:49:05Rashaun Jones' wife says he knows nothing about that night and doesn't know who killed Brian Pata.
00:49:12He's not this person that they're trying to portray.
00:49:14She says even though Jones and Pata had a history, it was resolved before his death.
00:49:19He said it wasn't even at odds when Brian got killed.
00:49:23He's not a murderer.
00:49:24He's not.
00:49:25An arrest in the 15-year-old cold case, the murder of a University of Miami football player.
00:49:30Brian Pata was fatally shot outside his apartment back in November of 2006.
00:49:35And now police have arrested his former teammate, 35-year-old Rashaun Jones, and charged him with Pata's death.
00:49:42I said to myself, it's about, it's about time.
00:49:47It's about time.
00:49:48My mom was, she got up and she started to dance and she started to praise God and say thank
00:49:54you.
00:49:55I kept trying to say it can't be true, wait till it's all proven.
00:49:59But like, at that moment, I'm not gonna lie, I was really upset.
00:50:10Look at this moment here, Brian Pata's image, the slain Hurricane teammate.
00:50:15A banner that fans made and the team gathering around it at midfield.
00:50:21Initially, the photo of this moment looked to us like a team united, grieving one of their own.
00:50:27But now, one player sticks out, Rashaun Jones.
00:50:32Somehow, he's made it to the front row.
00:50:34He's on one knee, looking down at Brian's face on the banner.
00:50:39Knowing the rumors that were swirling around the team at that time, that photo started to look very different to
00:50:44us.
00:50:45When I see that photo, I just be like, wow. You know what I'm saying?
00:50:52It just gave you chills, man. You know what I mean? It's a little scary.
00:50:56So the question now is, looking at that image, are we seeing a man who is praying for his teammate?
00:51:06Or who is praying for forgiveness?
00:51:12After Rashaun Jones was arrested, we were really waiting around to see what was the tipping point.
00:51:19What was that missing piece of the puzzle that you said you needed to make an arrest?
00:51:22Were you anywhere near the scene where Brian was killed that night?
00:51:26I wasn't in the area.
00:51:27What if I told you there was an outwitness that saw you leaving the scene right after?
00:51:4035-year-old Rashaun Jones, a former defensive back for the Canes, was arrested in Lake City in Marion County
00:51:46earlier today with the help of U.S. Marshals.
00:51:52After Brian is killed, Rashaun had gone on to marry his high school sweetheart, Ashenda.
00:51:58He has five children and he's doing some coaching stuff.
00:52:03He's somewhat so involved in football, but seems to be living a pretty average life.
00:52:09In August of 2021, Rashaun Jones was arrested and was subsequently interviewed and interrogated for this crime.
00:52:17Have you already patted him down?
00:52:18Mm-hmm.
00:52:19Yeah, we've gone through everything, pockets and stuff.
00:52:21And in walks Miami-Dade police detective Juan Segovia, who took over this investigation from Miguel Dominguez, who retired right
00:52:30after our lawsuit.
00:52:32How many hours did you sleep last night?
00:52:35I don't know.
00:52:36I don't know.
00:52:37About 10.
00:52:39Okay.
00:52:40The approach that the detective is using at this point really is non-accusatory.
00:52:45It's just an interview approach to begin with.
00:52:48What can you tell anybody about your relationship, Brian?
00:52:52I mean, we had an up-and-down relationship.
00:52:54Okay.
00:52:55What happened?
00:52:56What does that mean, up-and-down?
00:52:57With his teammates, I guess, females got involved.
00:53:04So it was, I don't know, I guess, jealousy over females.
00:53:09I think Rashaun wants to find out how much information, what the detail is, what it is eventually that the
00:53:17detective has to share with him.
00:53:20He doesn't seem to be concerned about admitting that, you know, they've had some ups and downs.
00:53:24Not yet, yeah.
00:53:25Not yet, because they haven't put it into that, into a context for him to have concerns about that.
00:53:31Rashaun had somewhat of a history of getting into altercations, and there was another player that would tell police that
00:53:37Rashaun actually pulled a gun on him.
00:53:39Did you own a firearm back when you were at University of Miami?
00:53:42No.
00:53:43You never had carried?
00:53:44Never.
00:53:44Did you ever make it sound like you carried a firearm?
00:53:49I don't know.
00:53:51That was a lot going on back then.
00:53:53I mean, I don't remember if I said I don't.
00:53:56I didn't know what to say I carried a firearm.
00:53:59Most likely the realization is they're trying to connect me to a weapon, a weapon that's connected to the homicide.
00:54:06And all of a sudden he starts stammering.
00:54:08And you can see that he's thinking about that.
00:54:10Yeah.
00:54:11He's trying to go back through the files in his memory.
00:54:15On the morning of Brian's murder, Rashaun is called into the coach's office.
00:54:20And he's told that he's failed his drug test, which is going to lead to a suspension.
00:54:26He goes for marijuana.
00:54:27He goes for marijuana, so I don't go to practice that day.
00:54:30Okay.
00:54:31When I leave out his office, I go home.
00:54:33Miami-Dade pulled phone records for Rashaun Jones, which show that at 3 p.m. on the day of the
00:54:40murder,
00:54:42Rashaun activated a new phone number.
00:54:44What was the reason we changed your number?
00:54:46Explain to me.
00:54:49I don't know.
00:54:50At the time, I felt like I was going to get a lot of backlash for my second marijuana.
00:54:55I mean, for my drug test.
00:54:56From who?
00:54:57From friends, family.
00:54:59I know I left my family down, mother them, grandmother them.
00:55:03One thing that stood out when we finally got to look at his phone records was that there were 56
00:55:08calls,
00:55:10but there was a gap between about 6.40 and 7.40.
00:55:15And police believe Brian was shot around 7 o'clock.
00:55:18So when you got home, you turned off your phone?
00:55:20Yeah.
00:55:20Why'd you do that?
00:55:21I just didn't want to be from the outside world.
00:55:24Okay.
00:55:25First player was for seven.
00:55:28At the time of the shooting, police are contacted by someone who lives at the colony apartment complex by the
00:55:34name of Paul Conner.
00:55:35Paul Conner was a writing instructor at the University of Miami.
00:55:39On the night of the murder, Paul Conner was about to make a turn into the parking lot.
00:55:44He hears a pop.
00:55:46And seconds later, he walks by a young African-American male going in the opposite direction.
00:55:56Police later showed Conner a photo lineup.
00:55:59And Conner identified Rashawn Jones as the man he saw that night.
00:56:07What if I told you there was an eyewitness I saw you leaving the scene right after?
00:56:11You remember that old man that you crossed with in the sidewalk there?
00:56:15I wasn't there.
00:56:16He can't eyewitness me.
00:56:18You identified him leaving the scene.
00:56:21How when I wasn't there?
00:56:22He was showing six photographs.
00:56:25He was showing six photographs.
00:56:27And you were one of them.
00:56:29And he immediately identified you.
00:56:32I can't explain to you.
00:56:34I don't know.
00:56:35Just really bad luck?
00:56:37Really bad luck.
00:56:38I'm telling you, I have nothing to do with this guy murder.
00:56:42Nothing.
00:56:42Ain't no 15 years of telling myself I didn't do it.
00:56:46Ain't no trying to convince myself I didn't.
00:56:50Nothing.
00:56:51His concurrence that, yeah, it's just bad luck.
00:56:56This is just bad luck, really bad luck for me.
00:56:58That's a lot more than bad luck.
00:57:01It's either fact or it's being trumped up against him.
00:57:06Why would all these people lie about Rashawn Jones?
00:57:08I just said from the, I guess from the, I used to live, I mean I used to be young
00:57:13and wild.
00:57:14So I guess I just didn't project that they got on me of how it was.
00:57:20But that ain't got nothing to do with picking up a gun, trying to kill nobody, on nobody.
00:57:24That's, that's not in me.
00:57:26Ashenda is brought into the interrogation area as well.
00:57:30And she comes to talk to Rashawn after they've interviewed him.
00:57:36They said they got the eyewitness and people still didn't know they shot me with a gun when I was
00:57:40in Miami.
00:57:40Oh, I threatened Brian when I was in Miami.
00:57:43People heard me threaten him.
00:57:44That's all they got?
00:57:46People heard me.
00:57:47They ain't got no DNA.
00:57:50You can't make me take my husband as a killer.
00:57:51I said, listen, you have to literally show me him standing over the body for me to believe that he
00:57:57cured this man.
00:58:00I love you.
00:58:01I love you too.
00:58:03You got a star witness involved here, identifying Rashawn as the individual responsible.
00:58:11And it behooves the prosecution to ensure that that individual is safe and willing to participate and capable of it.
00:58:20In the lead up to the trial, the prosecution had been telling the court that they had been issues with
00:58:26tracking down Mr. Conner.
00:58:28They tried his phone number.
00:58:30They tried his address.
00:58:32He was nowhere to be found.
00:58:33They just presumed that he was dead.
00:58:35But something here just didn't seem right.
00:58:37I fined people for a living.
00:58:39I just didn't believe he was dead.
00:58:42Mr. Conner?
00:58:53Mommy kept all of these.
00:58:58Mommy was so happy when she got this jersey.
00:59:00Yeah.
00:59:02My son.
00:59:03She said, my son.
00:59:07That's him holding it.
00:59:09That was the first jersey.
00:59:10Mommy.
00:59:11Mommy.
00:59:13Mommy.
00:59:13This just tells me right here how much of a jokester he was.
00:59:16Oh, my God.
00:59:17Oh, my God.
00:59:20I missed his boy.
00:59:21Yeah.
00:59:24You hear stories or you watch a documentary, you see something like this, to think that one
00:59:30day that you'd be that same family wanting justice, wanting closure, and you're sitting
00:59:37there just waiting, waiting, waiting.
00:59:42This is him as a baby.
00:59:44It's been a rollercoaster ride for all of us.
00:59:47We're preparing.
00:59:48We talk about it.
00:59:50Then all of a sudden it gets pushed.
00:59:52You know, then it gets pushed and it's pushed.
00:59:54It's been a rollercoaster ride.
00:59:57If the family hadn't pushed, if there was no 2017 press conference with Jeanette Padeff,
01:00:03there was no involvement of ESPN, would we even be at this point?
01:00:06The former U.N. football player accused of killing a teammate charged with second-degree
01:00:11murder at his arraignment today, Jones has pleaded not guilty.
01:00:16The first substantive thing that happens in his case is a bond hearing, which is in 2022.
01:00:22Please come forward to the witness stand right up here.
01:00:24One of the most interesting things about the bond hearing was that we finally got to see,
01:00:29for the first time, Paul Conner, the writing instructor from Miami who claimed that he saw
01:00:34someone matching the description of Vershawn Jones leaving the apartment complex after the shooting.
01:00:39How would you describe the person that you saw, Mr. Conner?
01:00:43A young African-American, six feet to six foot one tall, approaching the gate.
01:00:52What did you notice about the man and his facial features?
01:00:57Well, he smiled at me. He had a clean set of white teeth, no gold teeth.
01:01:07The bond hearing lasted a few days. And at the end of it, the judge set Vershawn's bail at $850
01:01:13,000.
01:01:13But his family couldn't come up with the portion needed for bail.
01:01:18So he remained in the Metro West Detention Center in Miami.
01:01:22Time passed. And four years after his arrest,
01:01:25Vershawn was still in jail waiting for a trial.
01:01:32I got contacted by Vershawn because another client referred him.
01:01:36I went to see him at the jail and he told me a little bit about his case,
01:01:40about the fact that it had taken 15 years.
01:01:42The case did not sit right with me and I decided that I was going to represent him.
01:01:47Vershawn Jones has a fiercely passionate and dedicated defense team in his corner.
01:01:52Sarah Alvarez is 30 years old. This is her first murder case ever.
01:01:58So when I came onto the case, the witness list that the state had filed was very incomplete.
01:02:04I realized that there was a lot left to do in terms of deposing these witnesses
01:02:08and also tracking down other witnesses who the state was saying they had never had contact with.
01:02:13As it turned out, one witness was extremely difficult to track down.
01:02:22In the summer of 2025, the state attorney's office comes to a hearing and says something that is pretty shocking,
01:02:29which is they can't locate their main eyewitness, which is Paul Conner.
01:02:36They couldn't find him. They said they had run him in all the records databases,
01:02:40and we kept pushing and asking for evidence of this.
01:02:45The prosecution had been telling the court that they had been issues with tracking down Mr. Conner.
01:02:49They tried his phone number. They tried his address. He was nowhere to be found.
01:02:55They just presumed that he was dead.
01:02:57As someone who does this for a living and tracks people down,
01:03:01I did not believe that Paul Conner was dead.
01:03:05Because when you die, you create a paper trail.
01:03:08Paula Levine phoned one of Mr. Conner's previous coworkers.
01:03:12She was so concerned that she called a welfare check to be done on him.
01:03:20Remember, this is a private individual just calling up the Louisville Police Department to do this.
01:03:26Are you Paul? Yeah.
01:03:28Paul, how are you? Yeah, I'm okay. Perfect.
01:03:31All right, thank you. Have a good one.
01:03:33A few weeks later, producer Dan Arruda and I made a trip to Louisville to see for ourselves.
01:03:40We arrived at the address that both we and Miami-Dade had for Conner.
01:03:48Hi. Are you Paul Conner? Yeah.
01:03:51Have you been contacted by anyone recently from the Miami State Attorney's Office at all?
01:03:59No.
01:04:01Just before the murder trial for Brian Pata is about to start,
01:04:05a key witness is found who police thought was dead.
01:04:08It wasn't the police that discovered this key witness wasn't dead.
01:04:12It was ESPN. I mean, that's just wild.
01:04:172020 reached out to the Miami police with specific questions about their investigation.
01:04:22They did not respond to our requests for comment.
01:04:26All rise.
01:04:27So as the case finally heads to trial after all these years, all eyes are on that courtroom in Miami.
01:04:35Nearly 20 years after the deadly shooting of a U.M. football player,
01:04:38it's time for trial for a teammate accused of the crime.
01:04:41This case got really personal for all of us.
01:04:44We were ready to take the gloves off and throw down.
01:04:46Everyone out. Everyone out.
01:04:48Yes. Everyone out. Including you.
01:04:50Out. Out. Under.
01:05:11So this is courtroom 4-1. It's really only used for the big trials. It's the same courtroom where Ted
01:05:20Bundy was tried.
01:05:22And they knew that the media would be interested in this case.
01:05:29The first day where testimony is scheduled to begin, here comes the Pata family in force into the courtroom.
01:05:35His brothers and sisters and his mom, Jeanette, who is in a wheelchair.
01:05:42We've been preparing for the unknown because this is the hardest thing. We've never gone through this before.
01:05:49And to see them all come in and fill up, you know, two full rows in the gallery, it was
01:05:55powerful.
01:05:56They sat down and I think they bore witness.
01:05:59That's the best way to put this to what they hope is justice.
01:06:05The inescapable feeling here is justice delayed is justice denied.
01:06:10State of Florida versus Rashawn Jones.
01:06:13State prosecutors say over the 15 or so years of this case, all evidence really pointed to the defendant.
01:06:20We are asking that you just pay close attention to each and every witness who testifies.
01:06:28Because each person will provide a piece of evidence that in the end points only to one person.
01:06:35The man sitting at that table over there, Rashawn Jones.
01:06:41So for the prosecution, this case basically comes down to the relationship between Brian, Jada and Rashawn.
01:06:49All roads did not lead to Rashawn Jones.
01:06:52Just because the government tells you that something is true does not make it so.
01:06:59Rashawn looked as he's sitting at the table very professional.
01:07:02He didn't really glance over at the family.
01:07:04He really kept his focus on his counsel.
01:07:08For 15 years, the police interviewed Rashawn along with other teammates and other students.
01:07:14But they never really treat him like a suspect.
01:07:18They don't bring him in for a sworn statement for 15 years after he's already been arrested for this horrible
01:07:27crime.
01:07:28Would you like to call your first witness?
01:07:31In an extremely emotional moment in the courtroom, you have Dwayne Hendricks, Brian's teammate, former roommate, testifying about the moment
01:07:41when he saw his friend lying motionless in front of their apartment.
01:07:49I noticed Brian on the ground, so I hopped out of the car.
01:07:56And I was like, yo, stop playing.
01:07:58He had a puddle of blood behind his head.
01:08:01That's when it hit me.
01:08:02It was, well, he wasn't playing.
01:08:04And it wasn't a game anymore.
01:08:08Did you call anyone from his hand room?
01:08:11Did you call anyone from his hand room?
01:08:12I tell people to this day, that was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life.
01:08:16It was to call that.
01:08:23To call his mom and say that her youngest is dead.
01:08:30When the prosecutor first started showing some of the photos from the crime scene and some of the photos of
01:08:36Brian's body, it was a really emotional moment for the family.
01:08:41I mean, they were leaning forward, they were grabbing tissue, some of them turned their heads away.
01:08:46It clearly had an effect on them.
01:08:53Dave Howell, Brian's teammate, testified about the hostility that he saw between Brian and Rashawn over Jada.
01:09:01Did Brian and Rashawn get in any other disputes?
01:09:08Yes.
01:09:11Did you see any of those disputes?
01:09:14Yes, I did.
01:09:14Can you tell us what you saw?
01:09:16It was in front of the cafeteria.
01:09:17It was just words between the two of them and they moved on.
01:09:20It was nothing physical.
01:09:22And former teammate Eric Moncour testified about the day that they came up to his dorm room.
01:09:29Brian ended up pushing him and he pushed him and I think he punched him, pushed him and punched him.
01:09:36And then he got on top of him and started headbutting him.
01:09:42And then I ended up grabbing Brian and pulling him off.
01:09:47And Rashawn got up and he walked out of the room.
01:09:50He was like, boy, you might as well go ahead and clip up.
01:09:53During course examination, the defense attempted to downplay the statement clip up.
01:10:00You didn't actually believe that Mr. Jones was going to shoot anybody, correct?
01:10:04No.
01:10:05You didn't take this as a serious threat?
01:10:07No.
01:10:08After this fight that happened in your dorm room in the summer of 2004, you thought that it was over
01:10:16at that point, correct?
01:10:16There was no further beef?
01:10:18Yes.
01:10:18And you never heard anybody bring this fight up again, right?
01:10:21Not to my knowledge.
01:10:24But the key testimony came from that alleged eyewitness, Paul Conner.
01:10:30I'm going to keep this very brief.
01:10:31I really just have one question for you.
01:10:33What did Rashawn's teeth look like in November of 2006?
01:10:38So if you think about it, this entire case could possibly come down to the description of someone's smile.
01:11:01He witnessed taking the stand today in the murder trial of Rashawn Jones, a former U.N. professor detailing what
01:11:06he heard and saw the night Brian Pata was shot and killed.
01:11:10The state plays for the jury a recorded testimony of Paul Conner from a hearing in 2022.
01:11:17It was treated as regular testimony.
01:11:21He smiled at me.
01:11:23He had a plain set of white teeth, no gold teeth.
01:11:31And that's about it.
01:11:32I described him to the forensic artist.
01:11:35And is this a fair and accurate representation of the sketch that was created based upon your representation?
01:11:42Yes.
01:11:43The million dollar question in this is, did the jury believe Paul Conner?
01:11:48But another witness, Bruce Johnson, who was a teammate of both Rashawn and Brian, is called to testify.
01:11:55The defense takes this as an opportunity to question him about Rashawn's teeth.
01:12:00I really just have one question for you.
01:12:03What did Rashawn's teeth look like in November of 2006?
01:12:10They just wasn't, everything went straight.
01:12:12It was jagged, kind of messed up.
01:12:14Would you describe them as a clean set of white teeth?
01:12:18No.
01:12:18Now these two statements are completely at odds with each other.
01:12:23Can you please introduce yourself to the jury and tell them where you're employed?
01:12:26Yes.
01:12:26My name is Juan Segovia.
01:12:28I'm a homicide investigator with the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office.
01:12:31One of the final witnesses that the state called was Detective Juan Segovia.
01:12:35And he had been assigned in 2020 to take over the case.
01:12:39And his testimony was incredibly useful for the prosecution because it took all these little pieces of testimony from all
01:12:45these other people
01:12:46and essentially tied it together in a very effective narrative as to the motive, the means, the opportunity for Rashawn
01:12:54Jones to kill Brian Padoff.
01:12:55What information did you gather that led to you getting in a report?
01:12:59It was the threats accompanied with the display or talk of the same type of firearm that killed the victim.
01:13:07It was the phone records.
01:13:09It was the identification of Mr. Conner and all the circumstantial stuff that happened the night of.
01:13:14The jury also got to hear the post-arrest interrogation interview of Rashawn Jones.
01:13:19Let's talk about Jada a little bit.
01:13:21Jada's name comes up a lot during the investigation.
01:13:23Is that the first time that you have any beef with Brian whatsoever?
01:13:27Yeah.
01:13:27That you remember?
01:13:28That it was over at Jada?
01:13:30Yeah.
01:13:31You dated Jada?
01:13:32I never dated Jada.
01:13:33Did you guys have any relations?
01:13:34Yeah, relations once.
01:13:36On cross-examination, the defense pressed Segovia on whether or not Rashawn ever owned a gun.
01:13:40You have no personal knowledge whatsoever that Mr. Jones actually owned a firearm at any point, do you?
01:13:45Not legally.
01:13:46Not legally?
01:13:47Right.
01:13:48You have never seen Mr. Jones with a firearm?
01:13:50I've never seen him.
01:13:51The prosecution ends its case on the very graphic testimony of the medical examiner.
01:13:57I do.
01:13:57Who uses a model to describe the fatal injury that takes Brian's life.
01:14:04The pathway of the bullet to Mr. Apata's body was from his left son several inches above his left ear.
01:14:12That was hard for the family.
01:14:14It was an incredibly emotional way to end those five days of testimony.
01:14:19At this time, the state rest.
01:14:22We had so many other leads, all of which were more viable than Rashawn.
01:14:28Ultimately, the court ruled that these different viable theories be excluded.
01:14:34At this time, the defense rest.
01:14:37Even without that, we felt so good about the case because they still didn't have anything.
01:14:43And we trusted that a jury would feel similarly.
01:14:49I had to ask somebody next to me, did I hear what I thought I heard?
01:14:52Mr. Jones, your attorneys have indicated after speaking to you that you do not wish to testify.
01:14:57They're not going to call any witnesses on your behalf.
01:14:59Have you had an opportunity to discuss that with them?
01:15:02Yes.
01:15:03Are you deciding not to testify in this case?
01:15:06Yes, ma'am.
01:15:07We were stunned.
01:15:08I think anybody there who was witnessing this was wondering what had happened.
01:15:12Both the state and the defendant have now arrested their case.
01:15:16The attorneys will now present their final orders.
01:15:19You'd remember one of the worst days of your life.
01:15:24You test positive.
01:15:26Your future's unsure.
01:15:27You don't have the girl.
01:15:29You're going to get kicked off the team.
01:15:30Things are not going your way.
01:15:33And then it all just boils over.
01:15:35Does this look anything like Rashawn Jones?
01:15:39Does this look anything like Rashawn Jones?
01:15:43Nothing.
01:15:45Paul Conner's selection is not reliable.
01:15:48It is not credible.
01:15:50Rashawn Jones was not at the colony apartments.
01:15:53Rashawn Jones did not shoot him.
01:15:56Rashawn Jones had nothing to do with his death.
01:16:00Rashawn Jones failed the drug test.
01:16:02He was at home at the time that Brian Paddock was killed.
01:16:10All rise in the crew.
01:16:13This family has been put through so much for so long.
01:16:16And they get so close to what they believe is finally going to be justice for them.
01:16:20I can't even imagine what they're going through.
01:16:23We are now on verdict watch as the jury evaluates the evidence in the murder of his teammate Brian Paddock.
01:16:28The only thing that is not a foregone conclusion here is what that jury is going to decide.
01:16:34All right, ladies and gentlemen, I've received your note.
01:16:55Indicating that you continue to be deadlocked and so at this time I will declare a mistrial and a hung
01:17:01jury.
01:17:02Ladies and gentlemen, I wish to thank you for your time and consideration of this case.
01:17:08The breakdown was five for not guilty and one for guilty.
01:17:12And the person who was leaning to guilty was just unmoved.
01:17:20This has to be extremely difficult for the family.
01:17:24And in particular, Jeanette, Brian's mother.
01:17:30She has called for justice for her son, her youngest child.
01:17:40Anybody who's seen the video of Jeanette running down the street, wearing Brian's jersey, yelling.
01:17:45Give me my baby! Give me my baby!
01:17:47Give me my baby!
01:17:53And then to juxtapose that with her being wheeled into an elevator because she's so frail that she can't walk
01:17:59on her own.
01:17:59She kept saying, 20 years. 20 years.
01:18:03We're coming here! We're coming here! We're only one!
01:18:09And she still has that same desperate plea in her voice.
01:18:16Just, we're frustrated, but we're also resilient.
01:18:21We're going to remain steadfast and confident that we're going to get the answers that we need.
01:18:30What do you think you would do, Jeanette?
01:18:34That's a hard question to answer.
01:18:39I'll leave that for the next one.
01:18:42There are no winners here.
01:18:44At the end of the day, we're still at the same place.
01:18:46We don't know who killed Brian.
01:18:48We don't know the truth, and I don't think we'll ever know the truth.
01:19:00The damage is done.
01:19:03The lives of multiple individuals have been completely ruined.
01:19:09This fate was really demoralizing and discouraging,
01:19:14not just for the Miami Hurricanes football program,
01:19:18that fell into a precipitous decline after that.
01:19:23It was devastating for this city,
01:19:27and particularly for the community that Brian came from,
01:19:31which is always looking towards our athletes as role models,
01:19:36as symbols of hope and opportunity.
01:19:41He did have such a love for the community that he was raised in,
01:19:46and he understood the importance of him making it.
01:19:51And when you have a young person who's from this area
01:19:54and is able to advance not only the identity of Little Haiti,
01:20:00but become somewhat of an ambassador of the culture,
01:20:05and his life is taken way before its time.
01:20:09It's heartbreaking.
01:20:12Brian's part of his life and the tragedy of his experience
01:20:15is like a candle from the dark.
01:20:18And when that light is lost, it hurts us all.
01:20:27What's going on?
01:20:30Hello?
01:20:34You know, I'll look at a picture or something.
01:20:37I get emotional, but then I'll think back
01:20:40how we used to spend our times together
01:20:43and, you know, the jokes he would crack
01:20:45and, you know, the times we would spend
01:20:47and just those memories, the positive, you know,
01:20:49all the good stuff, you know, that,
01:20:50but you think of, oh, man, he's not here anymore.
01:20:54You know, that's when the tears flow.
01:20:59A gentle giant.
01:21:01Loving individual.
01:21:02Full of life.
01:21:04Full of energy.
01:21:05Positive energy.
01:21:07Someone who's truly missed.
01:21:10It's still hard for us today.
01:21:19A little bit after his death, I dreamt about Brian.
01:21:22He was talking to people.
01:21:24He was saying he's okay.
01:21:25I'm okay.
01:21:26I wasn't supposed to die.
01:21:28But I got to go over on the other side.
01:21:30You guys won't see me anymore.
01:21:32God is letting me in the door now.
01:21:34Those were his words.
01:21:36Then a big purple door opened
01:21:37and it's bright light.
01:21:40And he walks in between.
01:21:41He looks and he waves.
01:21:44He said, I love everybody.
01:21:45I love everybody.
01:21:46Then he hugs me.
01:21:47It felt so real.
01:21:50And the door shuts behind him.
01:21:52And then he tells you.
01:21:59You know, it's a dream that keeps Brian connected to his loved ones.
01:22:02His family's journey for justice will continue as the state is expected to retry Rashaun Jones.
01:22:07So more to come, David.
01:22:08For additional information on this story, you can listen to the 3430 podcast, Murder at the U, which chronicles ESPN's
01:22:16eight year investigation into the case.
01:22:18That's our program for tonight.
01:22:20Thanks so much for watching.
01:22:21I'm Deborah Roberts.
01:22:22And I'm David Muir from all of us here at 2020 and ABC News.
01:22:26Good night.
01:22:52Good night.
01:22:52Let's get out.
01:22:54We'll see you shortly.
01:22:59Good night.
Comments