Mysterious Death of Kendrick Johnson

On Thursday, January 10, 2013, 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson never returned home after a day at school. The following day, his body was found wedged in the middle of a large wrestling mat in the corner of his Valdosta, Georgia high school’s gym. Kendrick’s death was ruled a tragic accident and the investigation was closed after four months. However, the Johnson family was adamant that their son was the victim of foul play and his death was being covered up by law enforcement and school officials. Was Kendrick Johnson murdered by other students at school or did he fall into the mat while trying to retrieve his shoes, causing him to suffocate to death?

Who was Kendrick Johnson?

Kendrick Lamar Johnson was born on October 10, 1995 to Kenneth Johnson and Jacquelyn “Jackie” Johnson in Lowndes County, Georgia. Kendrick, affectionately known to his friends and family as “KJ,” was the youngest child of 4 in the Johnson family. His father was a long haul truck driver and his mother was a school bus driver. Kendrick was quiet and smart, and his family said he was really good with numbers. He saved most of his money and kept it hidden away in his room.

At the time of his death, Kendrick was 17-years-old and a junior at Lowndes High School. He was very involved in athletics, and had participated in his high school’s football, basketball, and track teams. There isn’t very much public information about Kendrick’s personal life, but it’s clear from his family that he was a young man with a very bright future.

The Day in Question

On Thursday, January 10, 2013, students had just returned back to school at Lowndes High School after Christmas break the previous day. The high school had two gyms on its campus, one that was referred to as the “old gym” and one referred to as the “new gym.” In the far corner of the old gym, several large wrestling mats were stored. Most of these mats were stored rolled and upright. The mats were about 6 feet tall and approximately 3 feet wide.

Many students, including Kendrick, used these mats to store items on top of, or possibly inside of, to avoid paying the school’s locker fees. There were gym lockers available to use at the school, however some students couldn’t afford the fee. The student who shared the shoes with Kendrick said that after they finished using the shoes, they would “go to the mats, jump up and toss the shoes inside the middle of the hole.” During Christmas break, several more wrestling mats were added to the grouping, which left their mat in the middle.

Around 1:30PM, surveillance videos in the corner of the old gym captured Kendrick walking in and towards the area of the wrestling mats. There were four other students playing basketball on the half court at the time. The court they were playing on looked to be the furthest side from the gym mats. There is no more known video footage of Kendrick after this. Kendrick was marked absent from his next class, a weightlifting class. Kendrick’s mother expected him home later that evening following a school basketball game, however he never returned home. Jackie reported her son missing around midnight that night.

The following morning, January 11th, Jackie went to the high school to let them know that her son was missing. The staff at the school helped her print out missing person flyers. Jackie was very worried, especially considering how out of character this was for her son. Kendrick was a good kid and didn’t just disappear.

Around 10:30 AM, a group of students entered the old gym to begin their class. The students were reportedly filling out surveys while sitting on the bleachers by the wrestling mats, when a student saw a pair of white socked-feet sticking out from one of the mats. They initially thought it was a prank until they stood up on the bleachers and saw a body. The school’s gym coach, Philip Pieplow, immediately tipped the mat over while a student called 911. When he got the mat to the floor and attempted to pull the body out, he saw that the person was obviously deceased. There was blood and vomit on the floor and the person’s face was extremely swollen. There was also a strong smell of decomposition.

Mr. Pieplow didn’t believe there was anything that could be done for the person, so he left him inside of the mat and quickly moved all of the students out. When law enforcement and medical personnel arrived on scene, the school was immediately locked down. His mother was informed that a body had been found in the gym and it was quickly discovered that the body found lifeless in the mat was Kendrick Johnson.

The Investigation

The police immediately began their investigation into what happened to Kendrick. There were two cameras in the old gym, both which captured Kendrick entering the gym and walking towards the gym mats. Unfortunately, there were no cameras pointed towards the area where the mats were. There was no footage showing Kendrick leaving the gym. Police began interviewing students, particularly focusing on those who had been in the old gym within the last 24 hours. They weren’t able to gain much information, except that no one recalled seeing anyone in distress or hearing anyone calling for help. No one recalled seeing Kendrick at the basketball game that he was supposed to attend the prior evening.

Investigators made a video of the scene, capturing everything prior to Kendrick’s body being moved. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary in the gym, until police approached the corner with the wrestling mats. Several were tipped over, reportedly by students and the coach as they attempted to reach Kendrick. Near the mats, they found a yellow school folder and a Physical Science textbook that belonged to Kendrick. In the wrestling mat, Kendrick had been wedged upside down.

The sneakers that he’d been wearing were off of his feet and beside his legs in the mat. The sneakers that he shared with his friend, that were often stored in the mat, were on the floor at the bottom of the mat. There was a small pool of blood on the floor beneath the mat where it had been standing, with one of the shoes on top. The shoe did not have any blood on top of it.

Other reported findings on the scene included another sneaker nearby the bleachers that had red spots on it, a sweatshirt with a small red stain on it, red spots on a nearby wall, and bloody tissues in the girls’ locker room. The spare shoe and sweatshirt were reportedly never tested, nor taken into evidence. The red spots on the wall appeared to be old and it was reportedly tested and found to not be Kendrick’s. The bloody tissues in the girls’ bathroom were tested and found to not be Kendrick’s blood. A female from one of the school’s sports teams said the tissues were hers from a recent bloody nose.

Approximately six hours after the discovery of Kendrick’s body, the coroner was finally called. Sheriff Chris Prine said that coroners are required to declare the cause of death as soon as possible. Prine said that their reason for delay was that the coroner wouldn’t have been able to access the body until investigators had finished processing the entire scene. He also insisted that no law enforcement touched the body until the coroner was able to examine it. However, there are crime scene photos that show the photographer’s shoes, NOT covered in protective booties that are usually worn on crime scenes in order not to contaminate the area. In his initial report, the coroner wrote that the scene “had been compromised and that there was no cooperation from law enforcement on the scene.” He also said that the body itself was compromised on January 13th when the sealed body bag was opened to show the body to his father.

On January 14th, Dr. Maryanne Gaffney-Kraft conducted the autopsy of Kendrick’s body at the GBI state crime lab in Macon, Georgia. In the report, she noted “congestive-decomposition changes of the head, neck, torso and upper extremities” and no injuries other than “superficial abrasions” on the right wrist and the “left distal fourth finger.” Her ultimate ruling for cause of death was positional asphyxia and that the manner of death was accidental.

Investigators believed that Kendrick went to the gym on Thursday afternoon to collect his gym shoes for his weightlifting class. When he arrived, he found that the mat they were in was surrounded by the new ones. Instead of being able to tip the mat over and grab his shoes, Kendrick was forced to climb on top of the mats. It would’ve been difficult and time-consuming for him to move all of the new mats out of the way. When Kendrick reached down to grab his shoes, they had fallen further down. As he reached with one arm and held himself up with another, police believed his arm either slipped from the top of the mat or he found himself too constricted to be able to pull himself back up.

As he slid further into the mat, he struggled more, which caused his sneakers to fall off. Though the hole in the center of the mats was smaller than the width of Kendrick’s shoulder, the mats were soft and likely had some give as he slid down. Once Kendrick was fully inside of the mat, he would’ve been unable to get out. The mats were 6 feet tall and Kendrick was about 5’10. The hole was constricting Kendrick’s movement, including his ability to take a full breath. Eventually, he would’ve been unable to breathe and suffocated. The blood found on the floor had likely come from Kendrick’s nose and mouth as his body’s blood pooled in his head and upper torso. It likely dripped from his face onto his arms and onto the floor, which would explain why there was no blood on top of the shoe found on the floor by his head. It’s believed that he was inside of the mat for about 21 hours.

The day after Kendrick’s body was found, his family reached out to Reverend Floyd Rose of the Valdosta Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and asked him to run an independent investigation into Kendrick’s death. He agreed and began working with the family, as well as the NAACP and a member of their legal team, Leigh Touchton.

The family and friends of Kendrick Johnson held multiple rallies and marches, protesting the declaration that Kendrick’s death was accidental. They felt STRONGLY that he had been murdered. In April, during a public rally at the Lowndes County courthouse, several family members held hands and blocked the entrance to the courthouse. This resulted in their arrests. Rev. Rose reportedly put up his own house as collateral to bail Jackie Johnson out of jail.

In June, with the help of Rev. Rose and the NAACP, the Johnson’s were granted permission to exhume their son’s body for a second autopsy performed by a private pathologist Dr. William Anderson. During this autopsy, it was discovered that Kendrick’s body had been stuffed with newspaper. This was very shocking to his family and the family made this finding VERY public. However, despite it being poor practice and a very outdated procedure, stuffing bodies with newspaper after removing the organs was not illegal.

Most bodies are filled with sawdust or cotton. The Johnson’s eventually sued the funeral home for this. They alleged that the funeral company destroyed their son’s organs as a part of a cover-up. Dr. Anderson’s autopsy concluded that Kendrick’s cause of death was blunt force trauma. He observed a small discoloration on the right side of his neck and said that this was consistent with a non-accidental death. It’s also noted on the responding paramedic crew’s report that they noticed a small bruise in the same area. Dr. Anderson said that his findings were not consistent with death from positional asphyxia.

With this finding, the Johnsons, along with the help of the NAACP and SCLC felt even more confident that Kendrick was the victim of foul play. Four months after Kendrick’s death, the Valdosta Police closed his death investigation, ruling it a tragic accident.

Rumors and Theories and All Sorts of Shit

Though the police felt there were no unanswered questions left about Kendrick’s death, his family continued their own investigation. They believed that Kendrick was attacked by several boys at school in the gym, beaten to death, then rolled into the gym mat. The two boys they believed to be behind it were brothers Brian and Branden Bell. Both boys were very involved in athletics at Lowndes High and knew Kendrick well.

Kendrick’s father said that the younger brother, Brian, got into a small fight with Kendrick while being bussed to a football game over a year ago. Despite this, friends of the two reported that Kendrick and Brian reconciled quickly and were good friends, and had even recently worked on a partner project together voluntarily. Brian, however, had a solid alibi. Surveillance cameras, his teacher, and his classmates confirmed that he was in class in a different area of the school when Kendrick entered the gym.

His older brother, Branden, was en route to a school wrestling match on a school bus with the rest of his teammates and coaches. There has been quite a bit of controversy surrounding Branden’s alibi. Prior to the wrestling trip, his coach filled out a form stating that the team would be departing at 4PM. If this was true, Branden would’ve been on campus when Kendrick entered the gym. However, Branden’s coach said that when he filled out the form, he misunderstood and wrote the time that the team was intended to be at the competition.

It is confirmed that the wrestling team attended the school’s first lunch session from 11:32 AM to 12:02 PM. The team and the coaches then boarded a bus headed to Macon, Georgia, about 150 miles north of Lowndes High. The coach’s cell phone records indicate that the team was at least 85 miles north of the school at 1:53 PM. In a video released to the family, it shows Kendrick waiting in line for lunch in the school’s cafeteria. The Johnson family’s attorney said that the video shows another student in line that was part of the wrestling team. This has not been confirmed.

In addition to the Johnsons questioning the Bell brothers’ alibis, they also felt it was extremely suspicious that their father, Rick Bell, was an FBI agent. They believed that he aided in the cover up of their son’s murder. While over a hundred students were interviewed and cooperated with police and their investigation, the Bell brothers were reported to be the only students who refused to talk to police. Rick Bell referred police to his family’s attorney, who told them that the boys wouldn’t be speaking to police. The Bell brothers were never considered suspects by police, but that didn’t deter Florida State University from revoking a football scholarship that they’d offered to Brian.

Throughout the years following Kendrick’s death, the Johnson family filed multiple lawsuits against 40+ defendants, alleging that they’d been involved in the death and/or cover-up. In a 2015 deposition regarding one of these lawsuits, both Kendrick’s mother and father admitted MULTIPLE times that they had no evidence to indicate that the Bell family was involved in their son’s death.

As the Johnson’s continued to protest the police declaring their son’s death an accident, they brought forward more of what they felt were inconsistencies. In an effort to grab attention with signs they held at protests and rallies, they posted large photos of Kendrick’s face after his death. The picture is VERY unsettling and caused a lot of people to believe that Kendrick had, in fact, been beaten. They indicated that this was how Kendrick looked after he’d been pulled from the wrestling mat. His face looks extremely swollen and disfigured.

However, in the same deposition mentioned earlier, Kendrick’s father admitted that he’d taken the photo of his son when his body was brought to the funeral home following the state’s autopsy. During an autopsy, the subject’s facial skin is peeled back to perform the exam. This is why this particular picture looks so gruesome. There is another photo of Kendrick’s face after he was pulled from the mat. His face is very swollen and he has dried blood coming from his nose. Kendrick also appeared to have some small abrasions (kinda look like carpet burn) across his nose and forehead.

Many people say that this photo also looks as though Kendrick suffered head and face trauma. It’s important to keep in mind that Kendrick was stuck upside down, which caused all of the blood in his body to pool in his head and upper body. This would cause significant swelling and decomposition in that area (similar to someone who had hung themself and had really swollen legs).

Kendrick’s father also said that evidence was intentionally destroyed at the Valdosta Crime Lab. He said that when he went to identify his son’s body, that the temperature inside the area was extremely hot and that the drawer his son’s body was in was heated. He said that this was done in order to destroy evidence on his son’s body. Leigh Touchton, the family’s representative from the NAACP denied these allegations. She said that she toured the crime lab and verified that there were appropriate alarms working in order to go off if the temperature rose too high. There were also emergency generators should there be a further emergency.

Another piece of the investigation that has been argued as being part of a cover-up is involving the school’s surveillance footage from the day of Kendrick’s death. At the time, there were 59 cameras in and around the school. This camera footage was immediately downloaded and given to investigators on a hard drive. The footage was eventually made available to the Johnson family later that year. There are six different servers that these cameras feed to.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that servers’ times did not always sync up, there were conflicting time stamps on the surveillance videos. Each server has its own time clock, and these did not always reflect the accurate time. The Johnson family’s attorney argued that due to these conflicting time stamps, there was no way to make sense of what they were watching.

Despite these arguments, investigators and video technicians felt confident that they were able to piece together an accurate timeline based on the cameras that they were certain had a correct timestamp, as well as the times that classes let out. At 1:25 PM, cameras show Kendrick walking down the school’s hallway, near the school’s foreign language classrooms. He is carrying the yellow folder that was later found near his body. Another camera shows Kendrick at 1:27 PM opening the doors to the hallway that leads to the old gym.

There is then footage that shows Kendrick entering the old gym at 1:09PM, however this time stamp has been reported as inaccurate and corrected to be at 1:28 PM. There are then two motion sensing cameras that capture Kendrick inside of the old gym, walking from the entrance towards the corner of the gym where the wrestling mats were stored. Kendrick smiles at one point in the video and doesn’t appear to be following anyone. He is walking by himself and there is no sign of anyone following him.

The Johnson family argued that there appeared to be missing chunks of time from the videos, particularly after he walked into the old gym. They raised the concern that it appears that people seem to disappear from frames suddenly. The attorney for the sheriff’s department released a statement saying that the surveillance videos in the old gym did not record video, but were motion detected and recorded still frames at the rate of one frame per second. The cameras were activated when they detected a change in light. This doesn’t always happen when a person moves across the area. They deny that any of the footage had been altered.

Another concern was, if Kendrick did accidentally become lodged inside of the wrestling mat, why did no one hear him yelling for help. In a YouTube video, several people perform an experiment by having one person scoot into the center of a very similar wrestling mat. The mat is rolled up and turned on its side, exactly how the mat that Kendrick was in was. The person inside yelled for help, while struggling to free himself. There is no sound heard and the mat barely moves. It seems unlikely that anyone would’ve heard Kendrick yelling unless they’d been directly by the mats. It likely would’ve been impossible for him to knock down the mat once he slid inside, if that is indeed what happened.

Well…

After Lowndes County ended their investigation, the Johnson’s continued their own investigation with the assistance of the NAACP and SCLC. Eventually the SCLC and Leigh Touchton of the NAACP came to the same conclusion that the police department did: Kendrick’s death was a tragic accident. Both Rev. Rose and Touchton said that there is reason to believe that the Johnson family’s lawyers weren’t entirely truthful about information they did or did not receive from law enforcement and school officials.

The Johnson’s attorney said that they believe that Kendrick was killed in another part of the school, then brought to the old gym, and that surveillance video will prove it. He said that the school and law enforcement were “stonewalling” them in their attempt to see the videos. The attorney for the Lowndes County Schools said that he has offered for the Johnson family to view the surveillance videos multiple times, but their lawyer has declined every offer. Touchton said that the family reported being stonewalled on multiple occasions about receiving documents and information from law enforcement and the school, when she personally had received the documents. Touchton eventually resigned from the NAACP due to what she reported were “matters of conscience” regarding the investigation. Both Touchton and Rev. Rose felt the continued accusations of a cover-up were unfounded.

In April of 2021, Jackie Johnson brought forth a recording that she purchased for $1000 from an anonymous tipster. This recording is the voice of an assumed caucasian male confessing to be involved in the murder of Kendrick Johnson. The recording says, “[They’re] gonna catch me anyways … should’ve never done that…I was young and stupid, man, Kendrick didn’t deserve that … they’re going to catch me.” The case investigating Kendrick’s mysterious death has been reopened by Valdosta Police.