In the end, the U.S. Department of Justice hid behind a prepared statement to end the travesty that was the Kendrick Johnson death investigation.
Johnson was the 17-year-old high school student in Valdosta who suffocated in a rolled-up gym mat. The teen was trying to reach a pair of sneakers and died a horrible death in January 2013. A freakish, random, lonely death. But accidental.
The youth's parents didn't want to believe their son died in such a manner. And, so, out of their grief grew a wide-ranging, fantastic and utterly unbelievable conspiracy: A couple classmates killed him and then a host of school and law enforcement officials rushed in to cover it up because one of the murderers was a football star and they were also the sons of an FBI agent.
Also, race metastasized it — Kendrick was black and his “killers” were white.
"After extensive investigation into this tragic event, federal investigators determined that there is insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone or some group of people willfully violated Kendrick Johnson's civil rights," the DOJ announced Monday.
There’s no proof that a couple students — who, incidentally, had rock-solid alibis — committed a murder for racial reasons. And there’s no evidence that adults swooped in to cover it up.
No fooling. It’s comforting to know the feds can grasp the obvious.
It took more than two-and-a-half years, 100-plus interviews, the review of tens of thousands of text messages and hours of school surveillance videos by FBI agents, federal prosecutors and U.S. marshals to conclude this was an accident.
No, the feds don’t have the decency to say that. They just say there’s not enough evidence to prosecute anyone “beyond a reasonable doubt.” The way they leave it, conspiracy theorists can now say the killers got away with murder.
Count on it.
Karen Bell is the mother of Branden and Brian Bell, the students accused of murder by the Johnsons, their legal team and the whispering army of intermediaries.
You’d think she’d be relieved the feds weren’t charging them with anything. FBI agents knew early on no murder occurred, but there was a worry that prosecutors wanted to “Al Capone them,” meaning they’d stick the Bells with some lesser charge like obstruction of justice in order to save face.
Karen Bell is not relieved. She’s spitting mad. Last summer, an armored car and a couple dozen combat-dressed marshals converged on her home in the middle of the night to serve a search warrant seeking computers and phones. At the time, Bell’s husband, Rick, was an FBI agent in good standing. He still is.
What allowed the searchers to perform this effrontery is unknown. The affidavit to obtain the search warrant is still sealed.
“What reasonable cause did they have to search our house?” she asked. “This was an illegal search and seizure, an abuse of power.”
The Bells’ attorneys will push to gain everything the feds turned up in their investigation that began in October 2013.
Earlier that year, the Lowndes County sheriff’s office — with the aid of the GBI’s medical examiner — determined the death was an accident. But the Johnson family had the body exhumed and an autopsy performed by a private pathologist, who determined Kendrick died of blunt force trauma.
Michael Moore, a former state legislator who was then U.S. Attorney for the region, said his office was looking into the matter “to discover the truth.”
Soon, agents were calling anyone who knew the Bells. The family told the FBI that their sons would not talk to investigators. Soon, Moore’s office sent the Bell brothers and their dad “target letters,” which are sent to those who prosecutors have “substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime,” according to the U.S. Attorneys Manual.
In the fall of 2014, FBI agents told Moore the Bells were not involved. One brother was on a bus with the wrestling team when Kendrick died, the other was captured on camera in another part of the school.
Instead of pulling back, the DOJ doubled down, bringing in investigators from D.C. to handle the case. This decision occurred during the firestorm surrounding the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, and I surmise prosecutors were not going to drop the Kendrick Johnson case in that atmosphere.
Moore, now in private practice, did not respond to a request for a comment. Nor did the DOJ, the Johnsons’ attorney, or their spokesman.
The Bells are counter-suing the Johnsons, charging defamation of character.
I spoke with Rev. Floyd Rose, who embraced the Johnsons early on and even brought Al Sharpton to his church for a fund-raiser. He has long since disavowed the Johnsons’ conspiracy theories, concluding they are far-fetched and malicious.
“I’m a person of truth,” he said. “And truth is more important than race.”
Asked about the feds’ announcement, he said. “They could have said that two years go. But they wanted to find something.”
But ultimately, “You can’t make a murder out of an accident.”
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