On April 3rd, 2004, 23-year-old Alonzo Brooks left his home in Gardner, Kansas, and told his mother, Maria, he was headed to a party with friends. That was the last time she’d see her son alive. Less than 24 hours later, Maria tried to file a missing persons report on her son in La Cygne, Kansas, about an hour away from their home. Alonzo’s friends who’d given him a ride to the party somehow left without him, at a party in a small town, where he was one of only three people of color in attendance. 27 days after Alonzo went missing, his family found his body on a creekbed, not far from the farmhouse where the party had been. Strangely enough, his body wasn’t hidden, and the area had been searched multiple times before, with no signs of Alonzo. His manner of death was initially ruled as “undetermined” and closed by the KBI, stating there was no evidence of a homicide. Alonzo’s family has continued to fight to prove that he was the victim of a hate crime and that his murderers are still walking free.
Who was Alonzo?
Alonzo Tyree Brooks was born on May 19, 1980 to Billy Brooks Sr. and Maria Ramirez. Alonzo, who friends often referred to as ‘Zo,’ grew up in Topeka, Kansas with his mother, Maria and his 4 siblings, one brother and three sisters. Alonzo was the baby of the group and was often left out due to being younger. His mother said that he used to get upset that he couldn’t go places or do things that his siblings could do because he was so young. Despite wanting to be like his big brother and sisters, Alonzo’s jealousy never lasted long. He was a kind, sweet, and playful young man, who got along with everybody. His sister, Demetria, described him as a loving brother. He loved to play football, basketball, and ride bikes. He and his best friend, Rodney English, would build bike ramps in the middle of the road and jump off them on their bicycles. They would play games in the front yard, one of their favorites being ‘king of the hill,’ where one person would stand on top of a mound of dirt or debris and the others would try to knock them off. Whoever stayed on top without falling off was the king of the hill.
Alonzo’s sister, Felicia, said that her brother was a neat freak. He always had to be clean, with his clothes ironed and put together. His favorite color was red and he was often wearing red and black. His friends said that he usually had on big boots and a beanie pulled down so low that you could just see his eyes peeking out underneath. Billy Jr., Alonzo’s older brother would tease him and wrestle with him. Billy said that he wanted to toughen up his baby brother and make sure that he was able to take care of himself so that people didn’t take advantage of him and his kindness.
When Billy Jr. turned 18, he left the family home in Topeka, and Alonzo and his mother moved to nearby Gardner, Kansas, which was about an hour southeast. Alonzo graduated from Topeka High school and began working for Countryside Maintenance in Gardner as a custodian. Gardner was different from Topeka. Topeka was more of an urban area, while Gardner was slower and filled with suburban areas. It was a big adjustment for the Brooks family, but Alonzo had no problem making friends.
The Day of the Party
On Saturday, April 3, 2004, Alonzo told his mother that he was going to a party. His mother asked him what party he was going to. Despite Alonzo being 23-years-old, he was still Maria’s baby and she wanted to know where her son was going to be. Alonzo told her that a guy was leaving for the service and they were all going out there.
Later that evening, Alonzo’s friend, Justin Sprague, arrived at his home to pick him up. Justin said he doesn’t remember exactly how he heard about the party, but another friend, Daniel Fune, said that someone called him and told him about it, so they decided to go. Daniel said that he didn’t remember Alonzo going to a lot of parties, that he typically hung with his friends in small groups. Daniel wasn’t super close with Alonzo, but his brother was good friends with Alonzo’s brother. He knew that Alonzo was a very talented football player and that he was just an easy guy to get along with.
Justin said that he remembered Alonzo putting on two pairs of socks before they left, which his mother stated was for support because he’d hurt his ankle recently playing basketball. Dressed in blue jeans, a t-shirt, sweater, a beanie, and boots, Alonzo said bye to his mother and left the house, with Justin driving. The party was 47 miles away in the town of La Cygne, about an hour away from Gardner. La Cygne was a tiny town in the middle of the country, with a few gas stations and not much else.
The house where the party was taking place was off of a country road, down a very long driveway. Behind the house was a small creek. There were a few people standing outside when the boys pulled up. As soon as Alonzo got out of the car, he yelled out, “who wants a beer?” It was clear that Alonzo was ready to have some fun and didn’t have any reservations about not knowing many people at the party. Alonzo’s friends said later that everyone at the party seemed to be a bit younger than Alonzo, mostly between 16 and 21 years old. The party was full, some people playing flip cup and other drinking games, while others danced or just hung out. Justin remembered that Alonzo seemed to be having a lot of fun and had immediately jumped into some of the games.
When their other friend, Daniel, arrived, he saw a few people from Gardner, but mostly people he didn’t recognize. It seemed to be more of a country-type group there. Another friend, Tyler Broughard, said that their group of friends just wasn’t really like that. Despite the different atmosphere and crowd, all of Alonzo’s friends said that he looked like he was having a great time. Tyler sat down with Alonzo for a bit and took a few shots. He then walked away to talk to someone else, but turned back around to see Alonzo arguing with another guy. Tyler said that Alonzo and the guy were right up in each other’s faces shouting. Tyler quickly ran over and was able to diffuse the situation. The town that the party was in was a heavily white populated area. Some of the partygoers had a problem with people of color and, being that Alonzo was half Mexican and half black, he seemed to be a target of anger. Tyler said he thought that Alonzo might’ve been the only black person there, although later reports said he was one of three. Still, Alonzo remained unbothered and continued to enjoy his night.
After being at the party for about an hour and a half, Tyler got a call about another party. He and Daniel decided to leave the La Cygne party and head to the other one. They said goodbye to Alonzo and left around 11PM. Justin was still there and they assumed that since Alonzo rode to the party with him, he’d also be taking him home. Outside, Justin had smoked his last cigarette and came inside to find Alonzo to bum a cigarette off of. Alonzo told him that he was out too, and said that if Justin was leaving to go get some, if he could grab him a pack too. Justin, reportedly both drunk and high, left the party, driving his vehicle with a friend, and turned right out of the driveway, when he should’ve gone left. He said that he got lost and ended up driving about 30 minutes north of where he was supposed to be. He said that he then got his car stuck, so he called a friend who was at the party he’d just left, named Adam. He told Adam that he’d gotten lost and was trying to get his car out of a ditch. Justin said that he could hear Alonzo in the background of the phone call, talking shit and laughing about Justin having gotten stuck. Justin said that he asked Adam if he could give Alonzo a ride home and Adam agreed. After taking about a half hour to get his car out of the ditch, Justin and the friend reportedly decided not to return to the La Cygne party. Surveillance videos at a gas station corroborated his story, along with the ATM where Justin withdrew $200. He and his friend headed to a strip club, where they were eventually kicked out, then went home.
Where’s Alonzo?
The next morning, Sunday, April 4th, Maria got a phone call at home asking for Alonzo. She went to look in his bedroom and found that his bed hadn’t been slept in and it didn’t appear that he’d been home. She began yelling his name, wondering if he was in another room or down in the basement, but she couldn’t find him. The friend on the phone said that maybe Alonzo stayed at a friend’s house. Maria said that her son always came home, that this wasn’t right. She asked him to call everyone he knew to see if they knew where Alonzo was. Soon after, all of the guys who’d gone to the party with Alonzo last night were made aware that he wasn’t at home. They were calling other friends, trying to figure out who’d seen him last and where he might be. Justin heard that Adam thought that Alonzo had already left, or just missed him, so he left without Alonzo.
Back in Topeka, Alonzo’s best friend, Rodney, got a call from Maria. She told him what was going on and that they couldn’t find Alonzo. Rodney made his way to Gardner, where he and some of the Brooks family met up with Alonzo’s friends from the night before, and they made their way to La Cygne. Rodney had never met those friends before, but was already distrusting of them since they’d left his friend alone at a party in a different town.
Justin took them to the old farmhouse in La Cygne, where they all began walking around, looking for any sign of Alonzo. They checked the woodline to see if Alonzo was passed out somewhere, still sleeping off the alcohol, or had fallen and gotten hurt. Rodney crossed the street from the farmhouse’s driveway and, just off the side of the road, spotted a boot and a hat. It was Alonzo’s beanie hat and one of his boots. Not too far down the road was his other boot. Rodney said none of the items appeared to have been hidden, that they looked like they had maybe been thrown out of a car window. Reports vary on whether the belongings were found this way, or that the boots were found together, with the hat just down the road. As they were looking at their friend’s boots and hat, wondering where he might be without them, a guy rolled up to them on a four-wheeler and told them they needed to get out of there. Immediately, Rodney said that they knew something was wrong. Even during the filming of the UM episode, you can tell how uncomfortable Rodney is being out on the street in that town.
La Cygne was a city that was not exactly known for their diversity and acceptance of other races. Justin kept telling Rodney that Alonzo was having a great time when he left and he didn’t know of any race issues going on that night. Rodney still couldn’t understand why Justin left him. Maria went to the police station in La Cygne to file a missing persons report. They told her that she had to wait 48 hours. Of course. Maria got in touch with her other children to let them know that they couldn’t find Alonzo. They all said that as soon as she told them he was missing, they knew something was very wrong. This wasn’t like their brother at all.
Billy Jr., Alonzo’s brother, and his wife, Cindy, immediately drove down to La Cygne. These two obviously don’t put up with any bullshit and I want them looking for me if I go missing. They were able to get in touch with the owner of the house, who said it was a rental house. I can’t understand who was living there or if anyone actually was. Looking from the road, the farmhouse was surrounded by fields. To the left and back was a creek that was lined with trees on both sides. Cindy said that she looked through the windows of the farmhouse, but it looked to be completely empty. She said it didn’t look at all like a place where there’d been a big party the night before. As the couple drove through the town, people stared at them, giving them the stink eye. When they arrived at the Linn County Sheriff’s Office to meet with Sheriff Marvin Stites, he told them that Alonzo was probably just doing what kids do, that he’d be back soon.
One of the deputies, Paul Filla, said that he was told to go to the farmhouse because there was a report of a missing person. He didn’t see any sign of Alonzo in the house, then he and a few other deputies walked the creekbed, but didn’t find anything suspicious. At the end of the day on April 4th, Deputy Filla reported back that he had negative contact with the missing individual. Three days later, on April 7th, Alonzo’s case was turned over to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation aka the KBI, with the Linn County Sheriff’s Office assisting.
The Search
Within a few days of Alonzo having been reported missing, the KBI brought an evidence recovery team, search dogs, and a lot of people to look for any sign of Alonzo. An extensive search of the area yielded nothing. No signs of the 23-year-old. Investigators brought helicopters out to search the area from above, but they found nothing. Police were conducting hundreds of interviews, trying to figure out exactly what happened on the night of the party. Many witnesses said that Alonzo was definitely the target of racial slurs that night and that many of the partygoers had problems with him because of what he looked like. Investigators were becoming increasingly concerned that Alonzo had been the victim of a hate crime.
On April 12th, the Lee’s Summit Underwater Rescue from Missouri traveled to La Cygne to search the creek near the farmhouse. The team was dispatched at noon that day and reported that the creek water was only three feet deep at the deepest area. They searched with three men walking in the creek, and three on each side of the creek to clear the debris. At the end of the search, the crew reported that there was no evidence to indicate that there was a body in the creek. They told the sheriff that they’d be happy to come back out to search again. They were not invited to do so.
On April 15th, Alonzo had officially been missing for 11 days. Nobody was able to find anything and no one was providing any information to indicate where he might be. In addition to the countless interviews being done, investigators were also conducting polygraph tests. Alonzo’s friends who’d been at the party were said to be giving the police all of the information they had, including everyone they remembered being at the party. Police continued to tell Alonzo’s family and friends that he probably got drunk, took off his boots, and started walking. Justin said that there was no way that his friend did that, that Alonzo’s ankle was injured, so he wouldn’t go walking, and even if he wasn’t hurt, it was completely out of character for Alonzo to do something like that.
Maria said that by then, they knew Alonzo wasn’t just staying at a friend’s house. They knew that something had happened to him. She and the rest of her family continued to ask the sheriff if they could come out to the farmhouse and conduct their own search, and he continued to tell them no, that they were searching. Cindy said that they called the sheriff’s office daily, trying to get an update on what was being done in the search, until finally, the sheriff essentially told them to “calm down with the calls,” and that they’d let them know if they found anything.
Finding Alonzo
On May 1st, 27 days after the party, the sheriff’s department finally gave Maria the go ahead for her and the family to conduct their own search of the area. The Brooks family gathered friends and neighbors who volunteered to help them search. A volunteer said that there was a white shed back further on the property that hadn’t been searched yet. After they split into groups, one group headed towards the shed, digging through brush. When they looked up, they saw the body of Alonzo Brooks laying on the creek bank, on top of debris and brush. His body wasn’t hidden, and he was still completely clothed. The group called the police who arrived on scene, along with investigators from the KBI and the FBI to process the scene.
Alonzo’s body was examined by Dr. Erik Mitchell, a forensic pathologist. He said that the body was decomposing, but still completely clothed. Personal items were still on the body, including his ring and the contents of his pockets. Dr. Mitchell reported that he couldn’t find any evidence of penetrating injuries, new fractures, gunshot wounds, or evidence of sharp force injury. He said that Alonzo could have drowned, but there were no specific anatomic signs to make that determination. He also speculated that he could’ve been strangled, but the soft tissue from the neck area was unable to be analyzed, due to insect and animal activity. There were no foreign bodies found in the remains. Dr. Mitchell said he was unable to determine cause of death or manner of death.
As interviews with partygoers and witnesses continued, investigators learned that there were reportedly four men living in the house at the time, but they had been evicted. Justin said that he heard from police that there were several fights that night. Cindy said that there was a rumor that Alonzo had been flirting with a white girl at the party and that some of the guys there didn’t like that.
Another big issue that the family couldn’t understand, was how Alonzo’s body wasn’t seen when the area was searched before. The sheriff’s department insisted that they’d searched the exact area multiple times, but his body hadn’t been there. The family had found him within 30 minutes of beginning their search and his body wasn’t hidden. The searchers from the water rescue and recovery group said that if there’d been a body there that night, they’d have found it because of how low the water was. Police theorized that Alonzo’s body may have been trapped in debris or floated to that area after a rainstorm.
Billy said that his brother’s body didn’t appear to have been stuck in the water for a significant amount of time. Unfortunately, he’d seen his brother’s body at the scene, and said that it didn’t look bloated, that his complexion looked normal and he still had his color. He said that he didn’t really look dead. Maria was given her son’s belongings that had been on his body at the time. Everything was still intact. His wallet and bandana looked to be in decent shape, and there were even folded up pieces of paper that had been in his pockets that did not look like they’d gotten wet. None of it appeared to have been sitting in water for a month.
Billy believed that his brother’s body was placed there. He thought that after his family was given the go ahead to conduct their own search, word spread that police were done looking, so someone decided to leave the body there for them to find. With this thought, they wondered where Alonzo had been from April 4th until May 1st. Since his body didn’t appear to be badly decomposed, they believed he might’ve been kept in some sort of meat freezer until his murderer/murderers were ready to move him. Dr. Mitchell said that because of the decomposition, he couldn’t tell if the body had been frozen.
In March of 2019, the KBI released a statement about Alonzo’s death. They said there was no evidence gained throughout their investigation to indicate that Alonzo was the victim of a crime. For this reason, they were closing his case. Maria and the rest of Alonzo’s family and friends were stunned. To them, it seemed very obvious that Alonzo had been the victim of a homicide. They couldn’t understand how this could possibly be considered an accidental death or suicide.
New Eyes
In 2019, Kansas’ District Attorney, Stephen McAllister, decided to take another look at Alonzo’s case. He said that when the television show, Unsolved Mysteries, made an inquiry at their office about the case, he started reading up on it. Seems like he just didn’t want to get caught with his pants down…Not long after, McAllister requested that the FBI reopen the case. In regards to the initial investigation, McAllister said, “It just led to, kind of, I think, throwing up their hands when they didn’t end up with an obvious suspect.”
In addition to issues with the initial investigation, questions had recently been raised regarding the practices of Dr. Erik Mitchell, who performed Alonzo’s autopsy. There were stories from before he worked in Kansas that Dr. Mitchell, while working in New York, routinely removed organs from corpses and improperly stored them in his office, all without the consent of the person’s families.
The FBI agreed to reopen the case, even offering a $100,000 reward for information that led to a conviction in Alonzo’s case. In July of 2020, the FBI exhumed Alonzo’s body from the Mt. Calvary Cemetery in Topeka to perform a second autopsy. In April of 2021, a federal forensic examiner performed the autopsy and determined that injuries to parts of the body were “inconsistent with normal patterns of decomposition.” Alonzo’s death was officially reclassified as a homicide. These exact findings have not yet been made public.
Theories
It seems pretty clear to Alonzo’s friends and family and, now, to the FBI, that Alonzo was the victim of a hate crime. Soon after his body was discovered, rumors began to circulate regarding the events of the night of the party. The first consideration was that Alonzo’s friends may have known more than they let on. Though most people don’t believe that they had anything to do with their friend’s murder, they think that they may have noticed a significant amount of racial tension at the party, with aggression that was directed towards Alonzo. It’s even been suggested that perhaps his friend didn’t actually get lost or stuck, that he may have left the party because he was scared of what might happen to him if he stuck around.
Most of the widely accepted rumors have been posted to blog sites by anonymous users, then confirmed by others. These are the following pieces of information that are often brought up, but have not been confirmed by investigators:
- Alonzo was flirting with a white girl at the party that night. Witnesses said that while there was already some tension at the party, that this is what sent some of the guys over the edge and essentially gave them the fuel they needed to attack and ultimately murder Alonzo.
- There was a second party going on nearby. At this second party, there was an altercation, which led some of those party goers to the party at the farmhouse. Some reported that the people who joined the party just fueled the fire that was already going on between Alonzo and other party goers.
- The fight that Tyler recalled seeing, where Alonzo and another guy were yelling and in each other’s face, was not the only fight that night. Witnesses said that racial slurs were being thrown around throughout the night, often directed right at Alonzo. His friends said that Alonzo wasn’t really letting anything like that bother him that night, but his best friend Rodney said that didn’t sound like Alonzo.
- The biggest belief, though there is not any public proof, is that a La Cygne family is behind Alonzo’s murder. This family is well-known throughout the town and is reportedly connected to law enforcement. Some of the family members were said to have been at the party that night, attacked and murdered Alonzo, then stored his body in a freezer until they moved it. Many people who are supposed residents of La Cygne said that members of this family have bragged amount their involvement in the murder.
Despite the enormous amount of anonymous posts and theories posted on blogs, it does not seem that anyone has come forward to investigators with any concrete evidence as to who is responsible for Alonzo’s murder. Many say that this is because witnesses were told to keep quiet, or they’d be next. Alonzo’s friends and family are active on these blogs in hopes of gathering more information and encouraging those who claim to know anything to come forward, either to them, or to the authorities. With the reward posted and the re-classification of Alonzo’s manner of death from “undetermined” to “homicide,” Alonzo’s loved ones remain hopeful that they’ll see the people responsible for his death brought to justice.
If you have any information regarding the murder of Alonzo Brooks, please contact the Kansas Bureau of Investigation or Alonzo’s family directly on the “Justice for Alonzo Brooks” Facebook page.
