PAULA LAVIGNE: Previously on Murder at The U.
MALE VOICE: The word swagger, which you hear The U more than other places–
MALE VOICE: All the time. Yeah.
MALE VOICE: And what swagger connotes to some people is something akin to violence.
ALI ADAM: People’ll kill you about anything. Yeah. People get pissed enough from a fight that they’ll come back and kill you.
MALE VOICE: I’ve seen ’em on the floor. I remember saying, “All right. It ain’t funny. Why you laying on the ground for?”
FEMALE VOICE: Did you not hear? Bryan is dead.
HERBERT WALKER: There’s more to this than meets the eye.
PAULA LAVIGNE: The night of Bryan Pata’s murder, calls and text messages pinged among the Hurricanes. No one knew for sure what had happened, just that it was bad. Once the coaching staff learned about it, head coach Larry Coker called the whole team back to the Hecht Athletic Center for a mandatory meeting. As more than 100 players, coaches, and staff members made their way into the team meeting room, rumors began to swirl.
JOSH HOLMES: You know, everybody has their own two cents of what they heard or what they didn’t hear. There was one I remember saying it was like a drive by kind of. And I was like, “What?”
PAULA LAVIGNE: Josh Holmes was a few months into his freshman year. Bryan had driven him home earlier that night.
JOSH HOLMES: I remember just it was a lot of different opinions at the time of what exactly had happened.
PAULA LAVIGNE: That’s when Dwayne Hendricks arrived. Dwayne and Bryan were roommates and close friends. Bryan had given him his nickname, Cat. Dwayne got home minutes after the shooting and found Bryan’s body on the ground. Police brought him from the crime scene to the athletic center.
JOSH HOLMES: Yeah. I had to walk in, you know, covered in– I believe it was a white shirt with, like, blood stains on it and what not. And– I– I just remember– Cat himself is a really big guy. And I just remember him breaking down, and just– you know, at that point, that’s when everybody just realized that it was the worst, and that unfortunately he was gone.
PAULA LAVIGNE: A police officer briefed the team on the facts as police knew them. As Bryan’s close friend, Eric Moncur listened, the reality began to sink in.
ERIC MONCUR: They were saying that we don’t– you know, we don’t know exactly what happened. We don’t know this, we don’t that. But what we do know is that Bryan Pata is dead. After he said that, I just– I lost it again, man. It was– it was rough.
CLINT HURTT: Guys were really upset. I mean– upset is honestly– you know, furious, full of rage.
DAN ARRUDA: Clint Hurtt was Bryan’s defensive line coach. It was still his birthday. And Bryan had pranked him just that afternoon.
CLINT HURTT: At that moment, I was not a coach in the (UNINTEL). I was not in a mental state to be a guy to pull guys together. I gotta be honest. In my– in my heart and soul, I wanted vengeance. I was so upset and distraught at that time. I couldn’t stay in the meeting. I had to walk out. I remember I punched a hole in the wall in the hallway, and basically wrecked my office, ’cause I just– I totally lost it, totally lost it.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Looking around that room, everyone on the team was painfully aware of Bryan’s absence. But they noticed another player was missing that night, too. That absence would eventually become central to the investigation into Bryan’s death. I’m Paula Lavigne. From 30 for 30 podcasts, this is Murder at The U, episode three, Everybody’s a Suspect.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Memory is an imperfect record of the past. Neuroscience tells us that every time we recall a memory, we write over the previous version. So our recollection of past events is always a patchwork of stories we’ve told and retold. And the more time passes, the harder it can be to get at the truth of what happened.
PAULA LAVIGNE: When we started reporting this story, more than a decade had passed since Bryan’s murder. So every time we interviewed someone, we had to consider the question: How accurate are these memories? In the first year of our reporting, producer Dan Arruda was doing most of those interviews. Dan, tell me about the first big break you had in your reporting.
DAN ARRUDA: Okay. So in 2018, I had been trying to sit down and speak with as many of Bryan’s teammates as possible. At some point, Chris Zellner’s name was mentioned. And I was able to sit down with him. Try it one more time.
CHRIS ZELLNER: Testing. One, two. Testing. Testing. One, two.
DAN ARRUDA: Perfect. Start with this. Zellner was a teammate of Bryan’s. They had met when Bryan hosted him on his initial recruiting trip to Miami.
PAULA LAVIGNE: What did Chris tell you about the night of the murder?
DAN ARRUDA: Chris remembers getting ready to go to class. He had a night class at the time. And he was just about to leave. And he gets a call that the entire team is being summoned back to the Hecht Center, which is the football facility.
CHRIS ZELLNER: I didn’t know what it was. But they were like, “No. It’s important. Get here now. Get here now.” And– and that’s when they– they broke the news, like, “Yo, Bryan’s been shot. He didn’t make it.” You know, and I’m just like, “What the fuck? Like, I just saw him.”
DAN ARRUDA: Once Chris hears the news, he immediately remembers something that happened earlier that afternoon in the locker room, and tells his coaches he wants to speak to the police.
PAULA LAVIGNE: So what was it that he remembered?
DAN ARRUDA: He remembers being in the locker room after practice, and for some reason, he and Bryan are some of the last players left in there. And Bryan gets a phone call.
PAULA LAVIGNE: This would’ve been how long before Bryan’s shot?
DAN ARRUDA: About an hour, maybe 90 minutes before the murder.
PAULA LAVIGNE: What did he overhear from that phone call?
DAN ARRUDA: Chris overheard Bryan get in a very heated conversation with someone on the other end of the line.
CHRIS ZELLNER: I have never seen him get that annoyed or that pissed off, unless it was on the football field. But I just remember him, like, you know, talking about, like– like, if you wanna, man, come see me then.
DAN ARRUDA: You took it as– “come see me then” as if you wanna fight, come and see–
CHRIS ZELLNER: Right. I– I did–
DAN ARRUDA: –come find me–
CHRIS ZELLNER: –take it like that. I did take it like, you know, it’s kinda one of those things like, “Yo. If you wanna keep talking shit, like, yo, come see”– like, it was one of those things.
PAULA LAVIGNE: And what did Bryan do after getting that phone call?
DAN ARRUDA: According to Chris, he just shook it off like nothing ever happened.
CHRIS ZELLNER: He literally just started smiling again. That’s who he was. Like, he– he literally didn’t let– like, even when he was hurt, like, he didn’t let that shit phase him.
DAN ARRUDA: He immediately realizes that he’s go information that needs to be out. So he remembers talking to Coach Mario Cristobal, who at the time was an offensive line coach, that he needed to talk to the police.
CHRIS ZELLNER: I knew– like, when they told us what happened, man, like, that’s the first thing I said, “Let me tell the cops.” ‘Cause maybe they can look at who called or something, because that conversation was one of those conversations where it was like if that person was in front of ’em, I think they would be fighting. I know that had to be– I felt it had to be somebody a part of it.
PAULA LAVIGNE: What was your reaction when Chris told you about this phone call?
DAN ARRUDA: Well, while it was still fresh in my mind, I wanted to call the team and debrief them with everything that I had just heard. I think it’s clear that Chris thought that was an extremely important phone call. Because he says the first thing he did when he heard Bryan was killed was he hearkened back to that call, and made sure when he got back to the Hecht Center, he found Coach Cristobal and told him, “I wanna talk to the police.”
DAN ARRUDA: So I– you know, I think it’s clear that he told the police. And he said he only talked to them once, but there’s no doubt in my mind that whoever was on the other end of that phone call had something to do with Bryan’s murder. I mean, I’m– you can’t convince me otherwise. It’s just too much of a coincidence that he’s effing somebody and telling them, “Come and get it,” and an hour later, he’s dead, and there’s no connection.
PAULA LAVIGNE: In the end, this overheard call would turn out to be important, and in ways none of us expected. In the weeks following the murder, Bryan’s teammates and family said their final goodbyes.
RONETTE PATA: Bryan was in the casket like– like a beige– ’cause his– that was his favorite color. He loved the color beige.
PAULA LAVIGNE: His sister Ronette remembered Bryan’s funeral at the New Birth Baptist Church in Miami.
RONETTE PATA: The suit was– beige suit. Bryan said that he wanted to wear this suit for draft day. So that was the suit that we put on him. Able to touch him. I was able to kiss him. He looked sharp. Very nice. Still in disbelief, though, every time I looked at him.
PAULA LAVIGNE: After Bryan’s death, the team’s next home game fell on Thanksgiving.
MALE REPORTER: Hurricane’s make their entrance. What a long, excruciating, and embarrassing season for these guys. A bunch of proud players, trying to win one for the memory of their slain teammate, Bryan Pata, who was just remembered with a moment of silence here. It’s been that kind of–
PAULA LAVIGNE: After the game, the players laid a banner with Bryan’s portrait on the field. The whole team took a knee around it, while reporters snapped photos.
MALE REPORTER: Look at this moment here. Bryan Pata’s image, the slain Hurricane teammate, and a banner that fans made, and the team gathering around it at midfield. What a moment. Miami fights from behind–
PAULA LAVIGNE: In the photo of that moment, the players are circled up around the banner with Bryan’s face and number on it. They’re holding hands, heads down. Most of them have their eyes closed. That image seemed to show a team united, honoring their teammate, praying for answers, answers we hoped to find 12 years later.
DAN ARRUDA: So in 2018, I drove down to the Homicide Bureau in Doral, Florida. And I met with the original lead detective on the case, Miguel Dominguez.
PAULA LAVIGNE: What was your impression of Dominguez, and– and his demeanor during the interview?
DAN ARRUDA: I’d say he was stoic, friendly, but he felt like he kept his guard up. I’m not sure he understood what we were doing. He definitely didn’t wanna go into any details of the case. To the crime scene, was there any physical evidence left there?
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: We do have evidence– but I’m really not privy to get into that. It’s– sensitive.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Why do you think Dominguez and the rest of the detectives were so reticent to really give you the details of things that you wanted?
DAN ARRUDA: I can only guess that because they said it was an open investigation, they were still very guarded about any information getting out which might eventually affect the prosecution.
PAULA LAVIGNE: At the end, like, what did you expect to get out of that initial interview? Like, if there was something that moved the ball forward, what was it?
DAN ARRUDA: The one thing I really wanted was to get Detective Dominguez out to visit the crime scene, kind of walk it through with me, get his theory on how he thinks the shooting took place
PAULA LAVIGNE: When did you go to the crime scene with Dominguez?
DAN ARRUDA: It was literally a few days later. I think we’re rolling here.
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Any trick questions this time, or?
DAN ARRUDA: Were there trick questions last time?
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: One.
DAN ARRUDA: Okay. No trick questions this time I hope.
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Okay.
DAN ARRUDA: And if there are– I’m still not sure what Detective Dominguez thought was a trick question. What do you remember about arriving here the night of November 7th?
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Bryan’s vehicle was parked backwards into the parking space.
DAN ARRUDA: He backed into a spot.
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Yes.
DAN ARRUDA: So his driver door was facing the road.
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: The roadway, yes–
DAN ARRUDA: Okay.
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: And then somewhere directly behind Bryan’s– SUV, he ended up– being killed where the concrete sidewalk is that provides access to the stairwell. Because Bryan used to live on the second floor in that corner apartment.
DAN ARRUDA: So as– as he exited the vehicle, he– he’s about, what, 25 to 30 feet from a staircase which would have led him up to his apartment?
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Absolutely.
DAN ARRUDA: Were any lead gathered or– or given to you that night that were in some way promising?
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: That’s hard to answer. ‘Cause– you know, every lead that we have, we believe it’s promising, or we’re hopeful that it is. But unfortunately, obviously we’re here doing this interview, and none of those leads have come to fruition.
PAULA LAVIGNE: That sounds like a pretty pat answer that a police officer would typically give. But– and it sounds like he didn’t really want to give you any details about their investigation.
DAN ARRUDA: Yes. It felt like any time I’d ask a question, he’d pause, and then deflect. It felt like he wanted to keep the information very general and not get into any specifics at all.
PAULA LAVIGNE: What were you thinking at the time? Like, what was your response to their deflection?
DAN ARRUDA: It was surprising and frustrating. Again, they had asked us to help them bring attention to this case. So here we are trying to help them do that. And the only way we can do that is by asking questions, questions which they did not seem to wanna answer. So what are we doing here? But it made me want answers more than ever, because it felt like, “Why are they hiding things from us?”
PAULA LAVIGNE: So we put in a request to get a copy of the police report, which under Florida law, police have to release on cases that are no longer active. But the department turned us down. They said the case was still open and active. Eventually, we did manage to get our hands on that police report.
PAULA LAVIGNE: But there was one major problem. The nearly 200-page document was heavily redacted. Thick black boxes, one after another, often blacking out entire pages, due to the fact that police still claimed the case was open and active. We weren’t going to accept that.
PAULA LAVIGNE: And we’ll get into that story later. In the meantime, the report, even with its redactions, did provide us with start valuable, clues, snippets of what the police had looked into, breadcrumbs for us to follow. If we wanted to figure out who killed Bryan, we realized that we would need to pursue some questions of our own, questions like: Where did Bryan’s money come from?
PAULA LAVIGNE: Remember, on the night of the murder, Bryan had $900 in cash in his wallet. He drove an Infinity with a $500 monthly payment. And he still had money to pursue an expensive hobby, buying old Chevys, giving them custom paint jobs and rims, and flipping them. He called those cars his babies.
BRYAN PATA: So this is my baby right here. (UNINTEL) These are both my babies.
PAULA LAVIGNE: And they fit right into the Miami backdrop. He painted an Impala bright orange, and a Tahoe glossy blue.
BRYAN PATA: (UNINTEL) blue. (UNINTEL) blue. (UNINTEL).
EDWIN PATA: I used to ask him, “Where you getting all this fucking money from?” Excuse my French.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Bryan’s brother, Edwin, was as intrigued by the money as we were. Some of this explains itself. If you’re buying and selling cars, you should be turning a profit. But Bryan seemed to regularly have thousands of dollars on hand. And D1 football players don’t have part time jobs. Bryan worked on the cars with his brother, Fednol. But even Fednol didn’t know where Bryan’s money was coming from. Near the start of Bryan’s senior year, Fednol remembered seeing him in a new car.
FEDNOL PATA: He had $14,000 cash in the car. And I said, “Something ain’t right.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: I’ve been an investigative reporter for almost 30 years. Any time there’s a murder and there’s large sums of money attached, the next logical question is: Did the money have anything to do with it? Fednol told us someone was paying for Bryan’s nights out. But Bryan didn’t want to tell Fednol who that was. He’d always refer to that person as Uncle, or Unc, or my guy. And here’s how Fednol remembers those conversations.
FEDNOL PATA: We used to go out to the club and stuff like that. He’d be like, “Oh. I gotta call my guy.” He never said the name. He said, “I gotta call my guy.” And– and the guy would send him– Western Union him some money on a different name.
DAN ARRUDA: And he never said who this guy was?
FEDNOL PATA: Never. He’d always say my guy. He said, “I’m gonna tell you one day about my guy.”
BRYAN PATA: We just came from Magic City, right?
WILLIE WILLIAMS: Magic Fuckin’ City.
BRYAN PATA: Hey. Look at, man.
PAULA LAVIGNE: That’s Bryan and his teammate Willie Williams on one of Bryan’s home videos. They’re in a hotel room in Atlanta around the time the team played in the Peach Bowl, during Bryan’s junior year.
BRYAN PATA: Look at man. We just bought a condo. We just bought, like, eight condos. That’s like $3,000. We spend money. We winning that shit.
WILLIE WILLIAMS: Who we gonna give our money back? Unc?
BRYAN PATA: Uncle? (LAUGHTER)
WILLIE WILLIAMS: We straight. We straight.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Our team was drawn to this mysterious source of money. Bryan’s brother, Fednol, was too. In fact, he was worried.
DAN ARRUDA: Did you ever worry that whoever was giving him money–
FEDNOL PATA: Played a role in it?
DAN ARRUDA: Yes. Because he owed him–
FEDNOL PATA: Yeah.
PAULA LAVIGNE: So we took our questions to the Miami-Dade police. Dan asked Detective Dominguez how far police had followed Bryan’s money trail, and whether they ever found out who my guy or Uncle was.
DAN ARRUDA: Did Miami-Dade PD know that according to Bryan’s brothers, he was receiving money from someone during his time at the university?
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: There was– that information, I did hear, that he was allegedly receiving– money from somebody.
DAN ARRUDA: Was it investigated to try to find out who that person was?
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Yes. And we weren’t able to confirm that.
DAN ARRUDA: Bryan referred to that person as my guy or Uncle. Does that name come across– or that moniker come across anywhere in the investigation?
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: My guy or Uncle? That doesn’t ring a bell.
DAN ARRUDA: Were you able to find out when he was receiving money or how much money he was receiving?
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: No.
DAN ARRUDA: We’ve been told it was in the tens of thousands. What’s your reaction to that?
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: I don’t know if that’s true or not. I– I did– I wasn’t able to uncover that.
DAN ARRUDA: Would that piece of information be useful?
MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: It’s important. It– it shows– a lifestyle.
PAULA LAVIGNE: A lifestyle that it appeared the police didn’t look into very much, but one we would come to learn all about over our years of reporting. For starters, money was absolutely swirling around University of Miami athletes at the time. A few years after Bryan’s death, all that money led to a major scandal that dominated college sports news.
PAULA LAVIGNE: See. Before 2021, the NCAA forbade players from getting any extra benefits. Even a free pizza could get a guy in trouble. Yet, that didn’t stop the boosters. They were often wealthy fans who would shower gifts and money on players. One of those boosters at Miami was a man named Nevin Shapiro.
FEMALE REPORTER: The story I am about to share with you could turn out to be the biggest scandal in the history of college sports. It’s unfolding right now at the University of Miami.
PAULA LAVIGNE: According to the NCAA, Shapiro provided $170,000 in impermissible benefits to Hurricanes players between 2002 and 2010. Shapiro told us the amounts were much higher than that.
FEMALE REPORTER: Among other things, he says six Miami coaches were aware of his activities. And he said that he did it because, quote, “Nobody stepped in to stop me.”
NEVIN SHAPIRO: I was worth over $200,000,000 by the time I was 34 years old. I was loaded. Loaded.
PAULA LAVIGNE: In 2011, Shapiro was convicted of securities fraud and money laundering for an alleged Ponzi scheme, defrauding investors of more than $900,000,000. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, though he still disputes the facts of the case, and insists that his money mostly came from real estate investments.
NEVIN SHAPIRO: As South Beach blew up, so did I. That’s where my money was made.
PAULA LAVIGNE: After trying to interview him for six years, Dan and I finally sat down with Shapiro in 2024, after his sentence was commuted. Shapiro told us he had started following the Hurricanes in the late ’70s, shortly after moving to Miami from Brooklyn.
NEVIN SHAPIRO: I became– I would guess a fanatic psycho fan, like most of South Florida, when Jimmy Johnson came and took the reins, and we became, like, the most hated team in America.
PAULA LAVIGNE: But you did not attend the university, right?
NEVIN SHAPIRO: I couldn’t afford it. (LAUGH)
PAULA LAVIGNE: Well, I wanna get into it. I mean, I’m assuming you wanted to, right? You wanted to go there–
NEVIN SHAPIRO: I– I would’ve loved to. It was– it’s a private university. I went to the University of South Florida. But I was back every Saturday during football season, whenever they were in the Orange Bowl. I don’t think I missed a game my whole college life.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Shapiro didn’t graduate college. But that didn’t stop him from building a business empire that the Feds say was partly based on a fraudulent investment scheme. What made you decide to get involved with helping the program? Like, do you remember your first donation–
NEVIN SHAPIRO: To the minute. To the minute. Here we go. 2001 season, prior to us winning the title, I think I donated $12,500. And– that was it. I was a booster, just like that.
PAULA LAVIGNE: And what did being a booster get Shapiro?
NEVIN SHAPIRO: You know, you get to go the events, you know, the banquets and things like that you get afforded. And as I made the next large donation, I negotiated my own deal. And part of that was running out of the tunnel, which nobody does.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Shapiro said he got to run onto the field with the players before two games. How much did that cost you?
NEVIN SHAPIRO: Well, I made a $250,000 donation. And I gave a list of specifics of what I wanted to do.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Shapiro used his status as a booster to get closer to Hurricanes players. He said he hosted house parties for them at his South Beach home. And Bryan was a regular at Shapiro’s house.
NEVIN SHAPIRO: I was a very close– friend of Bryan Pata’s. And– sort of like a little brother to me in many regards.
PAULA LAVIGNE: One night, he had Bryan and some other teammates over for a barbecue. Bryan was playing with Shapiro’s puppy, Teddy. But sometime later, Shapiro realized he’d lost track of Bryan and the puppy.
NEVIN SHAPIRO: Bryan was a big dude, you know? I mean, he was– he was a D-lineman. And I walk in the room, and Bryan’s sleeping on my couch with my little– with my Ted– my puppy on his chest, like just– and– and he– my puppy’s passed out, sleeping.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Shapiro also took Bryan and other players out on his yacht. What was the yacht like?
NEVIN SHAPIRO: The love boat. It was whatever you could think of. It was just the best. I mean, I look back and think to myself what a schmuck I was. But it was a lot of fun I guess for everyone else, you know? Pumping condoms out of the yacht bathroom cost me like $1,500 every time these guys went in there. It was insane. I mean, it was just– it was– it was a floating Playboy mansion. It was wild.
PAULA LAVIGNE: When you would have these house parties or– or the– the parties on the yacht, would the guys bring their girlfriends? Or they were just there–
NEVIN SHAPIRO: No way.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Okay.
NEVIN SHAPIRO: No way. Why would they?
DAN ARRUDA: Would you have– (LAUGHTER) would you ever provide girls?
NEVIN SHAPIRO: No. I would provide harems. I was Jew Heffner.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Shapiro said he wasn’t just cutting big checks to the university. He also paid players individually.
NEVIN SHAPIRO: And it came from a place of goodness in my heart. These kids were broke. Like, they were broke. Like, McDonald’s was like five star to these guys. I– I couldn’t believe it. And they– the university, you know, they’re making tons of money, the– the– the conference, they’re making tons, and tons. And they’ve been pimping these kids for years, making tons of– I mean, just so much money for– for everyone else but them.
PAULA LAVIGNE: When detectives spoke with Shapiro a few months after Bryan’s murder, he denied ever having given Bryan money. But that was before his conviction. When we spoke to him, he told us a different story.
NEVIN SHAPIRO: He was one of my guys. Like, he was one of my brood. That was it. I was there on call if he ever needed me. And if I was available, I’d be around.
PAULA LAVIGNE: There were several people who told us that Bryan referred to someone who was paying him as my guy or Uncle. Would that have been you?
NEVIN SHAPIRO: I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know. I– I honestly, I don’t know. I would look after him in very spot duty. And when I tell you look after him, I’m talking a couple hundred. It was never anything more than $200, $300 bucks. I can tell you that for certain.
PAULA LAVIGNE: If Shapiro was giving Bryan only a couple hundred bucks, then it’s unlikely he would’ve been the person Bryan called my guy or Unc, who was bankrolling Bryan’s life. Our big break in the search for Uncle came while we were looking into a different motive for Bryan’s murder. It had to do with a fight he was involved in at a nightclub, a few months before he was killed. Nightlife in Miami Beach and Coconut Grove was one of the big draw for students at the University of Miami.
SHAWN SHAHNAZI: Students in general were hanging out in Coconut Grove every Thursday night. So all the athletes from University of Miami were hanging out there.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Shawn Shahnazi ran several clubs and restaurants in Miami around this time. He says the Hurricanes were so popular in Miami that they were treated no differently from pro athletes at his clubs.
SHAWN SHAHNAZI: We would make sure they skipped the line. They go in. And we put ’em in the VIP area, so they’re not mixed in with the general public. We comped them a bottle. And they hang out.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Shahnazi followed Hurricanes football like everyone else in Miami. And he would get to know the players who were regulars.
SHAWN SHAHNAZI: I got to know them personally. They called me Unc. And, you know, I’d hang out with them.
DAN ARRUDA: They would call you Unc?
SHAWN SHAHNAZI: Unc. Yeah. A lot of them, yeah.
PAULA LAVIGNE: We’d spent eight years trying to figure out who Uncle was. Shahnazi offered this up without even being asked. And it wasn’t just Bryan. Unc was a nickname that lots of players called him.
SHAWN SHAHNAZI: But I think, you know, when it’s just– club talk, nightlife talk, BS talk, (SNAP) it’s fast talk. With Bryan, it was real. With everybody else, it was kinda like a club talk. With him, when he called me Uncle Shawn, it meant something.
DAN ARRUDA: Were you on the sly kind of giving Bryan a little money every month to kind of– help him get by?
SHAWN SHAHNAZI: Okay. I guess, yeah. You know what I mean? If he was short, you know, it’s me. If he was, “Listen. I’m– I’m going shopping. I’m going on a date.” And quite frankly, at the restaurants and all that, he would just come to the restaurant and eat, you know what I mean?
SHAWN SHAHNAZI: And it had nothing to do with him being a football player. It was just somebody that I cared about. And I was in a position to do it. If we went and bought some clothes, I would just buy it. And he would go with me to the place that I shop. Hey, listen. The store I shopped at had nothing his size. So for him, he had to go to, you know, a big and tall store.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Shahnazi remembered one particular shopping trip he made with Bryan near the end of his life.
SHAWN SHAHNAZI: All he wanted was to get NFL and take care of his mom. That was it. You know, and– before the draft– we went shopping. And I bought him a suit. You know, we were talking about how it was gonna go in the draft. And he got buried in that suit, instead of walking the draft.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Shahnazi also helped cover Bryan’s funeral expenses, about $12,000 in total. So Shahnazi was Uncle. He was almost like family to Bryan, giving Bryan money, but not in the amounts he would have needed to buy cars. That meant there was someone who we still hadn’t found yet.
PAULA LAVIGNE: But the whole reason we had gone to Shahnazi, why he was so interesting to us, had nothing to do with Bryan’s money. It was because of a fight that Bryan got into at one of his clubs in the spring of 2006. Bryan liked going to clubs with Willie Williams. That was the friend with Bryan in the home video from Atlanta.
BRYAN PATA: We just came from Magic City, right?
WILLIE WILLIAMS: Magic fucking city.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Willie had been a star linebacker in high school with a clear route to the NFL. When he arrived at UM, he became notorious for being a hard partier.
MALE VOICE: Willie was Mr. Miami, man.
PAULA LAVIGNE: By all accounts, Willie was cocky. All through high school, he had scrapes with the law. He resisted authority. And when he was out at the club, Willie was not one to back down from a fight, and neither was Bryan. On May 13th, six months before the murder, Willie and Bryan were out at a club Shahnazi owned in Coconut Grove. Bryan’s brother Edwin told us he got a call from Bryan the next morning.
EDWIN PATA: It was early in the morning, which is rare for him to call at morning like that. And I said, “You all right?” He said, “Edwin, man, I just– we had– we had a bad fight, bad fight. And I don’t feel good about it.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: Bryan told Edwin about how he had gone to the club with Willie and some of Willie’s friends. And one thing led to another.
EDWIN PATA: And they got into a fight with some street people that they thought was like real gangsters.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Bryan’s brother Edrick told police that Bryan beat someone up. And someone else in the fight got stabbed or cut with a razor blade. Here Edwin refers to Bryan by his middle name, Sidney.
EDWIN PATA: And Sidney said that he remembered fighting. And he just sees blood everywhere.
PAULA LAVIGNE: After everyone got kicked out of the club, police reportedly came to break up the fight in the parking lot. As Bryan and Willie were leaving, someone called out after them, “We’re going to get you.” Bryan’s brother, Fednol, was in the club that night.
PAULA LAVIGNE: He told the cops that the guys they fought belonged to a gang called the Westside Boys. Could someone from this fight come back to kill Bryan for revenge six months later? We asked Bryan’s teammates if he’d seemed nervous after that. Quarterback Kyle Wright said he’d heard the story of the fight from Bryan.
KYLE WRIGHT: He had told me a story about an altercation he had gotten into with some guys and some other teammates in Coconut Grove. And then he had seen those same guys a few weeks later at a park back where he was from. And they didn’t do anything. And he said, “If those guys were killers, they would’ve got me then.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: So after Bryan’s murder, Kyle thought back to that story.
KYLE WRIGHT: I had never– I didn’t really think much of it until that night. And, of course, your mind goes to that place of, “Who knows? Maybe it was those guys.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: Bryan’s girlfriend, Jada Brody, told police about this fight on the night of the murder. Investigators seemed to take this lead seriously. Remember. At the scene of the murder, former prosecutor Herbert Walker thought it might be a targeted killing.
HERBERT WALKER: It seemed more along the lines of some kinda– you know, like a gangland style assassination if you will.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Detectives talked to Uncle, Shawn Shahnazi about that fight too. He wasn’t at the club that night. But he had heard about it from his manager. He told police he didn’t think the fight would have led to Bryan’s killing.
SHAWN SHAHNAZI: Bryan was not the guy who started the fight. Bryan was in the group.
PAULA LAVIGNE: If anything, he said the other guys might wanna get the person who started the fight.
SHAWN SHAHNAZI: If I was gonna ask who started the fight, Willie Willie.
PAULA LAVIGNE: But by the time of the murder, Willie Williams wasn’t in Miami anymore. Two months after the fight, and only a month before the football season started, he transferred to a community college in Los Angeles. Detectives interviewed Willie about the fight.
PAULA LAVIGNE: They wrote about their conversation in the police report. He told them he’d been scared. He said over the course of that fall, he had heard from three different sources that the guys they’d fought with had ordered a hit on him and Bryan. The month before the murder, Willie called Bryan from California to tell him that he was in danger.
PAULA LAVIGNE: When Bryan picked up his cellphone, he was out with his girlfriend, Jada, at a movie. Bryan told Willie, “I will handle it. My people know their people.” The next day, Bryan called back and told him, “I took care of it. We are good.” But according to Jada’s interview with Detective Dominguez, Bryan was nervous after that.
PAULA LAVIGNE: She told Dominguez that he taped over the vanity plate for his SUV, because the plate spelled out Pata. And as we know, by this time, Bryan was sleeping in his closet with his guns. Police did try to figure out who Bryan fought with that night, but they don’t seem to have followed up on the tip about the Westside Boys.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Although we tried many times over the past eight years to arrange an interview, Willie would not speak with us for this series. But based on Willie’s account in the police report, Bryan had called his people to try to get the beef squashed. Who had he called? Possibly this guy.
ALI ADAM: My name Ali Adam.
PAULA LAVIGNE: In the mid-90s, Ali Adam cofounded a street gang based in Little Haiti called Zoe Pound. The word Zoe comes from the Haitian Creole word for bone.
ALI ADAM: But it really came from fighting. They said, “Man. Your bones is hard.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: Adam says Zoe Pound got into the drug trade when he and a friend stole a shipment of drugs coming into the Port of Miami.
ALI ADAM: Our first one was 482 kilos off a boat. And did it like five times. 400 kilos, 600 kilos. So we’re known, Zoe Pound.
PAULA LAVIGNE: From boosting drugs meant for Cuban gangs, Zoe Pound moved on to flying in their own shipments of cocaine from Colombia to Haiti, and then bringing them to Miami. That brought Zoe Pound into conflict with other Miami drug gangs.
ALI ADAM: We were making– every– it was so much money, you know? I got $4,000,000 stashed, $5,000,000. I had all these girls in these cars just– on my block just in the cars, just sitting in there, you know? It was like a dream come true. It was like something you– a rap video might do, you know?
PAULA LAVIGNE: The Feds eventually caught up with Adam. He served nearly 18 years in federal custody, before his release in 2024. We spoke to him after he got out. Adam remained plugged in to Miami’s Haitian community, even as his business expanded. He said he first met Bryan at a high school football game.
ALI ADAM: You going to them high school games. Super Bowl ain’t got more people than a Miami high school game.
PAULA LAVIGNE: At the time, Adam was promoting a record label he called House of Fire, giving label swag to the players.
ALI ADAM: I gave out House of Fire t-shirts, House of Fire cups, House of Fire hats to the kids. I wanted them to wear ’em. I’m promoting. They know the– the rapper’s songs. So I’d give Bryan– boom. “Man, I need– man, I need a 5X.” I’m like, “I’m gonna get you a 5X, man.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: Adam said he kept an eye on Bryan’s rise from Central High to the University of Miami. After he went to UM, Bryan stayed in touch with Adam. Bryan told Adam that he was majoring in criminology.
ALI ADAM: You know, my mind is like wicked. Like– so he studied criminology. I’m like, “For real?” So I always looked at them dudes like, “You know, I’ll need you in the future. I might need you, because that’s my field.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: Adam said that Bryan would drive back through the old neighborhood in his tricked out cars. And according to Adam, he was the one who helped Bryan pay for those cars.
ALI ADAM: He lived the life where, you know, those old school cars cost.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Did you ever give Bryan money?
ALI ADAM: All the time.
PAULA LAVIGNE: So how much do you think you gave him?
ALI ADAM: I don’t know. Like, here you go, $3,000, $4,000, $4,000. “I’m gonna flip this. I’m about to do this, man. I’m telling you I can flip this. I’m gonna do the (UNINTEL) and bring you back money.” He ain’t bring nothing back. Oh, man. (CLAP)
PAULA LAVIGNE: Through all of our reporting, we were trying to track down the source of Bryan’s money. We asked Nevin Shapiro and Shawn Shahnazi. But they said they only gave Bryan small amounts. Here, Adam was telling us that he provided bigger amounts, the kind of money Bryan would’ve needed to buy cars and rims.
PAULA LAVIGNE: We can’t confirm Ali Adam’s account of his relationship with Bryan. Bryan’s brothers weren’t aware of any connection he might have had with Adam. Neither was his roommate Dwayne Hendricks. But if a drug kingpin really was bankrolling Bryan, that would certainly help explain why he wouldn’t tell his family about it.
PAULA LAVIGNE: His mom did everything she could to keep Bryan and his brothers out of trouble. The Patas hoped Bryan’s chance at the NFL would help them escape Little Haiti. Getting money from Zoe Pound would never have fit into the family’s picture of Bryan.
PAULA LAVIGNE: It took us eight years of reporting to track down the source of Bryan’s money. To us, the possibility that Bryan was getting money from a founder of Zoe Pound certainly seems significant. But there is no indication that the police ever interviewed Adam about Bryan. In 2019, I interviewed Rudy Gonzalez, the supervisor on the case. And I asked him whether they ever looked into Bryan’s cash flow. Did you look through Bryan’s bank records? And if so, did you find anything worthwhile?
RUDY GONZALEZ: No we did not.
PAULA LAVIGNE: You did not look through them–
RUDY GONZALEZ: We did not look up his bank records.
PAULA LAVIGNE: There was another big reason we thought the police should’ve wanted to talk to Ali Adam. That’s because he’s connected to Bryan’s fight at the nightclub. Adam said Bryan never sold drugs for Zoe Pound, or as far as he knew, for other gangs. He wasn’t a member of Zoe Pound. But Adam said Bryan would let on that he was connected to Zoe Pound, especially when he got into fights.
ALI ADAM: So if I look, he’s using Zoe Pound as a face.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Do you think that he was representing himself as a member of Zoe Pound?
ALI ADAM: It should be natural for him to, because it would be beneficial for him in every way of life.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Adam told me that he remembered Bryan asking him for help with some gang members who were posing some kind of problem for him. It struck Adam at the time, because as far as he knew, Bryan wasn’t involved in street life.
ALI ADAM: Be like, “Do you know blah, blah, blah?” That might shock me. ‘Cause he shouldn’t know a deep street dude.
PAULA LAVIGNE: When you say deep names, you’re talking about people who are, like, deep in Zoe Pound?
ALI ADAM: Nah. Deep in other crews.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Could these have been the guy that he and Willie fought with at the club? And when Bryan told Willie, “My people know their people, could he have been talking about Ali Adam?” Adam said he didn’t remember when this happened, or what the specifics of Bryan’s problem were. Nor does he remember exactly who Bryan was asking about, just that they were bad dudes, who someone like Bryan shouldn’t have any reason to be involved with.
ALI ADAM: He was asking for protection. But I won’t ever deal with him in protection.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Adam did confirm something about Bryan, though. He said Bryan would get into fights. He remembered seeing Bryan go after someone at a club.
ALI ADAM: He was just whooping him. By the time, I see him, he was– it was over. But this is–
PAULA LAVIGNE: And did you–
ALI ADAM: –not just this. This is like three, four times. This is– he’s a fighter. Like, you know? Like, “Oh. Shoot. There he go again.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: As far as Adam was concerned, a fight at a club could definitely have led to Bryan’s murder. Those threats from the guys they fought with, “We’re going to get you,” he would’ve taken that seriously.
ALI ADAM: Yes. I would. Me, personally, yes.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Adam wasn’t the only person connecting Bryan to Zoe Pound. Back in 2006, Omar Kelly was a sportswriter for the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
OMAR KELLY: I started digging into it many, many years ago, just because I knew Bryan. I was covering that team. I had people and knew people who were in the police department.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Kelly said he did some reporting early on to try to figure out who the killer was, until a source inside the Miami PD told him to knock it off.
OMAR KELLY: When I stopped looking into it, it was because I was warned that these people will literally come up in your house and kill your family if you address this, write about it, talk about it, deal with it, like, say anything about it.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Kelly said according to his source inside the police department, Bryan was targeted because he was beloved by the Haitian community in Miami.
OMAR KELLY: Bryan was a star in that community. He was pop– he was like a celebrity in that community, therefore a celebrity of the Zoe Pounds. And you send messages. If you’re killing somebody’s family, they sent a message. It was loud and clear.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Kelly thought Bryan’s murder could’ve been retribution for some other gang killing. So I asked Ali Adam whether some of the gangs might have been sending a message to Zoe Pound by killing Bryan.
ALI ADAM: Nah. You don’t do that. Yeah. We don’t do that. Yeah. They don’t send messages to Zoe Pound. Nah. And they don’t do that. You know, we was– we’d send a message. But– you know, Bryan was just– you know, not to say– we’re not perfect, we is not, you know, we cannot win ’em all. We done lost too many down there. But Bryan– in Bryan’s case, that wasn’t the case in my lens, you know? In my lens, nah.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Adam went to prison a little more than a year after Bryan’s death. He says he thought a lot about Bryan’s murder while inside. He had his own theory of the case. And maybe he was just trying to draw attention away from Zoe Pound. But Adam’s theory revolved around a different figure in Bryan’s story, his girlfriend, Jada Brody.
ALI ADAM: It was Bryan and the girl, man. It’s Bryan and the girl.
OPERATOR: (RINGING) Your call has been forwarded to an automatic voice message system. At the tone, please record your message. When you have finished recording, you may hang up or press one for more options.
DAN ARRUDA: Hi. This is a message for Jada. Hi, Jada. My name is Dan Arruda. I am a producer with ESPN. I’m calling because we’re working on a story about Bryan Pata. I was hoping you might be willing to sit down with me and give me your thoughts and memories about Bryan, and– help bring our story to life. If you get a chance, and– you can give me a call back, I’d appreciate your time. My number is–
PAULA LAVIGNE: Dan left that voicemail in 2019. We contacted Jada Brody multiple times. Over the years, we called, texted, sent direct messages, and tried to work through her friends and relatives. But Jada declined to talk with us. So did her relatives.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Still, as we interviewed Bryan’s family, coaches, and teammates, the picture that started to form of his relationship with Jada was complicated. According to the police report, it was abusive. As far as we know, there’s no evidence connecting Jada Brody to Bryan’s murder. Still, Jada was one of the first people former prosecutor Herbert Walker looked at closely.
HERBERT WALKER: Everybody’s a suspect when somebody dies. So, you know, even though the girlfriend is the first person that called, you know, whenever you have– a homicide and you have a domestic situation, the first thing you’re gonna do if you’re– I mean, if we’re honest, we wanna– is to think, “Well, you know, domestic relations, that’s something people kill people over. That’s something people get upset about.” So you’re kinda wanting to look at everything.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Jada grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida, about 90 minutes north of Miami. She had plans of becoming an obstetrician. In high school, she was a member of the Future Business Leaders of America, and won a scholarship from the McDonald’s Black History Makers of Tomorrow. She arrived at the University of Miami as a freshman in 2005. Bryan’s teammate, Dave Howell went to high school with Jada. He remembers the first time Bryan saw her.
DAVE HOWELL: When, you know, Bryan finally like– I guess laid eyes on her, he was just like, “Man. You know, she’s beautiful.” And I told him. I said, “I know her.” And I said, you know, “You want me to try to introduce you guys? Then I can do that.” And he kinda, you know, asked me about her and everything. And I told him. I said, man, she’s passing it all with flying colors. Like, she’s a good girl.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Dave brought the pair together at a party in the Rathskeller, an on-campus restaurant.
DAVE HOWELL: I wouldn’t say that at first they just clicked right off the bat. It was more of– you had to work to get with her, or to actually be in a relationship with her, so–
DAN ARRUDA: He had to win her over.
DAVE HOWELL: He had to win her over. Correct.
PAULA LAVIGNE: To most of Bryan’s teammates, his relationship with Jada seemed like a happy one. But those closest to Bryan told us in reality it was toxic. Jada spent a lot of time around the team. Coach Hurtt witnessed the relationship at close range.
CLINT HURTT: It was, you know, hot and cold. It was– there was days that– where they were very close, and they, you know, really got along. And, you know, you could see– care and affection for one another. But there was other days where they did not get along. And it could be– a little bit of a volatile relationship from time to time. But that’s not anything against Jada. You know, I just didn’t always agree that that was– the best compatible relationship for him.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Bryan’s family and mentors had concerns about the relationship. Several of Bryan’s teammates said that he cheated on Jada. While club-owner Shawn Shahnazi cast doubt on Jada’s intentions with Bryan.
SHAWN SHAHNAZI: Bryan was– innocent. He had this innocence of a kid. Innocence that he didn’t even see ulterior motives. And me, being my age, and my background, I always look for ulterior motives first. And I’m like, “Okay. But just be careful.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: Bryan’s brothers Edwin and Edrick remember talking to Bryan about Jada.
EDWIN PATA: Well, I just told him, “She’s bad news, man. She’s toxic, man.” He was like, “Don’t worry about it. I’m gonna leave her anyway.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: They said Bryan planned to end the relationship once he started training in Jacksonville for the NFL Draft.
EDWIN PATA: Yeah. “I’m gonna go to Jacksonville. I’m gonna leave anyway. I’m gonna leave her. But I gotta do it at the”– he was trying to do it at the right time. But he didn’t know how to do it.
PAULA LAVIGNE: This would’ve happened a few months after the end of Miami’s season. At the memorial service that the university held for Bryan, Jada read a text message. She said it was from Bryan. It read, “Good morning, baby. I’m sorry I couldn’t get you a car for our one-year anniversary. I know we argue. But that makes us grow stronger.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: “At the beginning of our relationship, I never apologized, but now I apologize all the time, because I don’t want to lose you. In a few years, we’re getting married. So you better be ready when I ask you. I love you so much.” Former prosecutor Herbert Walker remembered asking Jada about whether Bryan seemed ready to end their relationship.
HERBERT WALKER: I seem to remember her trying to convince me that, “Oh, no. We were solid. He wasn’t gonna leave me. He wasn’t gonna leave me,” and getting the impression from the mom, “Yeah. He was gonna leave her for sure. And she was on her way out the door.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: Multiple people we spoke to told us that Bryan and Jada fought often, including his brother Fednol.
FEDNOL PATA: During the end, like they was always arguing. They was always arguing over something petty or something like that. But she used to piss him off for some reason.
DAN ARRUDA: She could push his buttons?
FEDNOL PATA: Yeah. I remember he– I remember one time, he took all her stuff, he threw it out, and said, “Get out, out of the (UNINTEL)”–
DAN ARRUDA: Do you ever think it got physical?
FEDNOL PATA: Did it? I think he put his hands on her probably before.
DAN ARRUDA: Yeah?
FEDNOL PATA: I think so. Yeah.
DAN ARRUDA: Did you ever see it?
FEDNOL PATA: No. I never seen it.
DAN ARRUDA: But you’re sure that towards the end he was telling you that he was gonna end it?
FEDNOL PATA: Yeah. He said it more than one time.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Bryan’s family didn’t approve of Jada. And it seems that Jada’s family didn’t approve of Bryan either. Fednol told us that at one point in the spring of 2006, Bryan received a threatening phone call from a member of Jada’s family.
FEDNOL PATA: Somebody– a relative of hers, threatening him. And he said, “Yeah. F you too. Blasé, blasé, blasé.” And he like, “You got a gun? I got a gun too.” I remember like it was yesterday.
DAN ARRUDA: Do you think he started looking over his shoulder a little bit?
FEDNOL PATA: More? Yeah.
RONETTE PATA: I had never, you know, seen him that way. But he was upset.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Bryan’s sister, Ronette remembered Bryan didn’t want to sleep at his apartment after getting that call. So he spent the night at her house and he brought his guns.
RONETTE PATA: I don’t think he slept that night, because I just felt like he was just watching.
PAULA LAVIGNE: The police did look into a phone call from Jada’s family. They found that in the spring of 2006, Jada had spoken to her father, Jerry, while he was in prison. Jada told her father that Bryan had broken up with her because he suspected her of cheating on him, and that he was talking trash about her.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Jerry told police that he then called Bryan from prison to warn him not to speak disrespectfully about his daughter. The conversation with Jerry led detectives to Jada’s twin brother, Jerome. Jerome Brody had been in and out of jail for various offenses, including unlawful possession of a firearm.
PAULA LAVIGNE: And his father said that Jerome would’ve killed anyone who messed with the family. When I talked to Zoe Pound founder, Ali Adam, he told us he thought Jerome could be connected to the fight in the nightclub. Was Jerome with one of these rival gangs?
ALI ADAM: I think he was one of ’em, yeah, back then.
PAULA LAVIGNE: The police report said that the people they were fighting with might’ve been members of the Westside Boys. Would that have been the gang he would’ve been tied to?
ALI ADAM: Yeah. That would be the gang he’s tied to.
PAULA LAVIGNE: You’re sure about that?
ALI ADAM: Yeah.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Jerome was arrested several weeks after Bryan’s killing when cops found guns in a car he’d rented in Boston. In December 2006, Detective Dominguez traveled to Massachusetts to interview him in jail. Here’s what Dominguez wrote in his report, read by a voice actor.
MALE VOICE: After introductions were made, Mr. Brody reacted arrogant, appeared to be in a bad mood, and had an aggressive attitude towards this investigator. Mr. Brody stated, “I will listen to you guys. But I’m not saying shit.” Mr. Brody advised that he does not remember where he was when Bryan Pata was murdered.
MALE VOICE: This investigator asked Mr. Brody if he had ever met Bryan Pata. And he responded by stating, “I’m not answering that question.” Mr. Brody then stated, “You are all wasting your time up here. You all from Miami and come 1,800 miles to see me? Let me have your card. I will contact you through my family if I remember anything. You all are harassing my family.” Mr. Brody terminated speaking with this investigator and displayed an aggressive behavior.
PAULA LAVIGNE: We contacted Jerome too. But he wouldn’t speak to us either, except to ask how we got his number. But to Herbert Walker, the former prosecutor, this theory was credible.
HERBERT WALKER: Did Bryan beat up Jada at some point, and the brother was gonna get revenge? That resonated with me more completely as an experienced homicide prosecutor that that motive shops. And– I thought, yeah. That– that– of all the different theories I’ve heard, gangs, and the incident at the club, I thought that that made the most sense.
PAULA LAVIGNE: As I mentioned earlier, Jada wouldn’t talk with us.
PAT DIAZ: She hasn’t been the most cooperative person. But I would hope, you know, 12 years later, that she’d maybe wanna, you know, remember something that she could help us with.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Early in his reporting, Dan spoke with a former detective on the case named Pat Diaz. By this time, Diaz was a private detective working for the Pata family. He and Dan visited the crime scene together.
DAN ARRUDA: When you say uncooperative, was she unwilling to walk through the events of that night? Or she just– her memory–
PAT DIAZ: Oh. No. She gave us a statement. But it was not anything of any substance that would help us in anything.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Remember. Bryan was worried about something in the weeks before his death. He was having nightmares, sleeping in the closet with his guns, covering his license plate. After spending eight years looking into every corner of Bryan’s life, we found lots of reasons Bryan could have been worried about his safety. And any one of those suspects could have been on the other end of that phone conversation Chris Zellner remembered Bryan having right before he was killed.
CHRIS ZELLNER: “If you want it, man, come see me then.”
PAULA LAVIGNE: Chris was positive that on the night of Bryan’s murder, he told police about that phone call earlier in the day.
CHRIS ZELLNER: Let me tell the cops, ’cause maybe they can look at who called or something, because that conversation was one of those conversations where it was like–
PAULA LAVIGNE: And someone corroborated his story. Ed Hudak, the cop who ran security for the Hurricanes also said Chris told him about that call.
CHRIS HUDAK: He told me he was arguing with somebody. I passed that on to– to the detectives as well, because– I mean, at that point, I mean, I’m– I’m just gonna pass on information. So when he said that that was going on, that was given to the detectives that night.
PAULA LAVIGNE: The police conducted an interview with Christ the night of the murder. They even wrote down Bryan’s cellphone number. They would need that to access his phone records. But they didn’t document the overheard call anywhere in the police report.
DAN ARRUDA: Was that call investigated?
MALE VOICE: His– his phone– records were– investigated. And I don’t remember that individual’s name. I don’t think I personally interviewed him. Obviously, that’s somebody that I would like to speak to also. That’s– that’s important. Yes. And I– I do recall him being on the phone– having a conversation with somebody.
DAN ARRUDA: So you were able to identify who that phone call was with?
MALE VOICE: I’m not gonna confirm or deny that at this moment.
DAN ARRUDA: Can you confirm or deny–
MALE VOICE: Can I have his name?
DAN ARRUDA: Chris Zellner. Z-E-L-L-N-E-R. Can you confirm or deny whether or not that person was interviewed?
MALE VOICE: To be honest with you, I’d have to really look into that. You gotta understand. We interviewed a lot of people.
PAULA LAVIGNE: It seemed like the lead detective on the case didn’t know about this call until we told him. Now, it’s possible that Chris misremembered that phone call. Cell records provided by the police don’t show any calls on Bryan’s phone around the time Chris remembers overhearing that conversation.
PAULA LAVIGNE: But Bryan had at least two phones. And we have call logs for only one of them. And remember, Ed Hudak backs up Chris’ version. Here’s what we do know. To this day, we’ve never seen any mention of this call in any police records. Ultimately, it seemed to us that there were a number of credible theories of the case.
PAULA LAVIGNE: In each one, someone might have had a motive to kill Bryan. And there was one big piece of evidence, that overheard phone call that the detectives didn’t seem aware of. But in the end, these leads did not point to the person the Pata family believed was the killer. They would suspect someone else entirely, someone Bryan knew well, someone he saw almost every day. And they had history.
MALE VOICE: Bryan get on top of this dude and head butts him five times. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
PAULA LAVIGNE: Back on the night of Bryan’s murder, the whole Hurricanes team assembled in the Hecht Center for a mandatory meeting. Everyone got the message. And everyone showed up, all except one player.
MALE VOICE: I think that kinda started some of the speculations. It was like, “Dude, the man kinda just went missing.”
MALE VOICE: I– I don’t know if he can come to a UM function. Like, I don’t think he would do that. Because who knows what would happen from there?
DAN ARRUDA: Are there guys on the team who have told you they think he did it?
MALE VOICE: Yeah. People speculated that stuff from day one.
MALE VOICE: (UNINTEL) I don’t wanna put out there, but it was a teammate.
