PAULA LAVIGNE: Previously on Murder at the U.

 

MALE VOICE: Man, y’all need to look at the goddamn school.

 

MALE VOICE: Pata had a lotta enemies.

 

MALE VOICE: We’re sure that, like, kinda rubbed some people the wrong way.

 

MALE VOICE: Everybody was lookin’ for him.

 

MALE VOICE: Where’s Rashaun?

 

Female Voice: If you ask me point blank do I think that he did it, the answer is, no.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: The Pata family had a lot of reasons to believe Rashaun Jones killed Bryan. One of the reasons, it turns out, was that in those early years, the Patas had an informant who was working the case. He’d tell them what the police knew in confidence. As Bryan’s brother, Edwin Pata, told producer Dan Arruda just a few months after Bryan’s death, this informant told him that the police thought they knew who killed Bryan.

 

EDWIN PATA: He always used to tell me, “Listen, this is what happened. Rashaun Jones.” Wasn’t sure. He was like, “Listen.”

 

DAN ARRUDA: He would say the words, “Rashaun Jones?”

 

EDWIN PATA: He would say, “This is–” he said, “He did it.” And I said that there are certain protocols and rules you gotta follow. And you gotta obviously, you know, prove you’re on– you know, you gotta have all this evidence, and witness, and all that stuff. He was like, “Listen.”

 

DAN ARRUDA: What would he tell you why he thought it was Rashaun? Did he give you any specific reasons?

 

EDWIN PATA: He did. He’s the guy that has the motive. And after Bryan died, he was the only player that was not there. So, you know.

 

DAN ARRUDA: And why would he tell you that they couldn’t arrest?

 

EDWIN PATA: Circumstantial evidence. No gun. No witness.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: For about a decade, the family held onto that information. They believed the police would eventually uncover more evidence. Edrick Pata said the family would visit Rashaun’s Facebook and Instagram, looking through his photos.

 

DAN ARRUDA: Is it worse that you guys believe you know who did it and still that person hasn’t been brought to justice?

 

EDRICK PATA: Frustrated. Yup. Because when they say that, you know, person don’t really don’t get rest until, you know, the case is solved, that’s true. We experience it. You– this stuff is in the back of your head every damn day. You think about this stuff every day. It’s just, goddamn, you– it’s, like, you look– you look in this guy’s page, you see he’s livin’ his life.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: If the Pata’s informant was telling the truth, it meant the police had kept Rashaun in their sights for more than a decade. But somehow, they never made an arrest. It also meant the police had been keeping the truth from us this whole time. They’d had a prime suspect all along.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: But the truth would eventually come out. And it would require us to confront the police in a way none of us could’ve seen coming. I’m Paula Lavigne. From 30 for 30 Podcasts, this is Murder at the U. Episode five, Open and Active. Once we learned of this tip about a potential suspect, we had to bring it up with the police.

 

DAN ARRUDA: Who is Rashaun Jones?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Another teammate of his.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: This is an interview from 2018 with Miami Detective Miguel Dominguez, the lead investigator on Bryan’s case, the one who sported a horseshoe mustache.

 

DAN ARRUDA: And was he interviewed by Miami PD?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Yes.

 

DAN ARRUDA: Was he ever a person of interest?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: At the time, everybody was a person of interest.

 

DAN ARRUDA: But he was no more or less than anyone else at the time?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: No.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: This answer from Detective Dominguez directly contradicted what we had heard from the Patas and their source, which was confusing to us, since their source was coming from inside the police department. So Dan tried to push Dominguez for answers.

 

DAN ARRUDA: Why do you feel the family has such a strong sense that someone on the team may have been involved?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: I don’t know. That’s a question you’re gonna have to direct to them.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Over the next two years, we would continue to wonder exactly what the police knew about Rashaun Jones. And Dominguez and the other detectives would continue to deflect when we asked whether Jones was a suspect.

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Honestly, everybody was a suspect at that time.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: In fact, they insisted over, and over, and over that they didn’t have a prime suspect or even anyone they would call a suspect. They were looking at everyone.

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: The bottom line is we– at the end of the day, we don’t know who killed Bryan Pata.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: We even offered to talk off-the-record in case they wanted us to know something, but didn’t want it to get back to them publicly, something reporters and cops do often. But they said, “No.” We were going around in circles. The suspect or no suspect thing was just one of many questions that we had for the police.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: We were also looking into other motives and theories that may or may not have had anything to do with Rashaun like the nightclub fight with supposed gang members, the threats from Jada’s family, and the locker room call overheard by teammate Chris Zellner.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: We knew that Bryan’s computer, phone calls, and text messages could provide clues to move this investigation forward. But it hadn’t been clear to us exactly how the detectives had approached this part of the case. So in early 2019, Dan and I sat down with Detective Dominguez and the supervisor on the case, Rudy Gonzalez, to see what they could tell us.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: The perpetual question in our mind, aside from who killed Bryan Pata, was what did the police know? And it was this interview that revealed a few things. “What computers did you seize that had belonged to Bryan? And what can you tell us about that?”

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: We did not seize any computers.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Why not?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: We deemed it wasn’t necessary for the investigation.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Why did you feel that that wasn’t necessary?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: There was nothing to indicate that the computer, you know, had any trace or involvement with Bryan’s murder.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Apparently, the police didn’t know what was on Bryan’s computer, because they never collected it. And they didn’t seem to think the online activity of a college student in his 20s would lead them anywhere.

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: I don’t think there was social media back then.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Right.

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Where the– the email was at (UNINTEL).

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: So social media did exist in 2006. And Bryan was on it. He had Facebook and MySpace pages. Someone even posted a tip there about a potential murder suspect shortly after he was killed. And I found this pretty odd, because even in much lower profile cases I’ve reported on, computer forensics and online activity were typically put under the microscope.

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: We did have his phone though. And we did– an analysis of– of his cellular telephone. So.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: “So then– yeah, so that leads to my next question. I mean…” Then I ask about phone records. If someone was on the other end of a heated phone conversation with Bryan just an hour before he was murdered, phone records could reveal who it was. “How can you tell us about how in depth you went on pulling the phone records, looking at the phones? And what if anything came of that?”

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: We pulled about three months’ worth of phone records. The phone records basically just show connectivity between cellular telephones back and forth, incoming and outgoing.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: So there wasn’t content from text messages?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: No. No. Those are things that– you have to have probable cause to get warrants for. And there was no– like we said, there was no indication– I mean, I don’t believe that in 2006 there was even– text message was even in use.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Like social media, text messages were definitely a thing in 2006. And Bryan’s friends and family members told us their remembered texting with him. At the time, I was genuinely surprised by what the detectives were telling us. It felt like a significant oversight in this investigation.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Later, we found out they did pursue records from MySpace and got at least some of Bryan’s text messages. But it’s not clear what information they received or what they did with it. And we’re not sure why detectives didn’t seem to know about all the evidence they had in the case.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: By this time, we’d been reporting on this story for more than two years. We’d interviewed over 50 people and had several conversations with police and other investigators. None of those conversations led us to believe Dominguez, Gonzalez, and the Miami PD were making progress. So we eventually ask Gonzalez what they had done more recently.

 

RUDY GONZALEZ: One of the things that we did, starting about two or three years ago– on the ten year anniversary was that we started kinda looking through the f– case file. So just a fresh set of eyes on the case file to go over and look at, okay, what’s been done? Is there anything glaring that should be done? Did we miss something? Is there something that we should– that they didn’t do that needs to be followed up on? And that process continues today.

 

DAN ARRUDA: How has a fresh pair of eyes helped in this case?

 

RUDY GONZALEZ: As of right now, I would tell you it hasn’t helped much. They did a very, very thorough job from what I’ve seen so far. And looking through the reports and the– and the people that they interviewed in the– it seems like they did a very thorough job.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: So just before the Miami Police had reached out to us for help, they said they’d applied quote, “A fresh set of eyes,” on the case. And what they’d found was that their work, which involved never looking at Bryan’s email, not seizing his computer, was up to their standards.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: On that day, we talked to the police for about two hours. And at the end of our interview, I asked them if there were any threads of this story that we had missed. Detective Dominguez said, “No.” And just then, a press officer named Alvaro Zabaleta piped up. He said something that explained a lot about how the police saw us in this situation.

 

ALVARO ZABALETA: You guys are gonna have a lot more flexibility than us. A, you don’t have the guidelines.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: We– we have guidelines.

 

ALVARO ZABALETA: Well, (LAUGHTER) no– no. You– you do– you do and you don’t. You know?

 

RUDY GONZALEZ: In the sense of you’re not gonna go talk to a child unless they get parent permission and all that type of stuff. But as far as the legal guidelines, you guys can go to anybody on that roster and talk to ’em wherever you want. And they may speak to you. And it’s, “Hey, cool, it’s ESPN. Lemme tell you what I know.”

 

RUDY GONZALEZ: Boom. And they just let it all out. Where the detective will bring ’em in now. Soon as you tell ’em, “Can I get that formal statement from you,” and you hear the word, “Formal,” and, “Statement,” together in one sentence, they go vroop, “Nope. I don’t– (LAUGH) I don’t wanna deal with this. Call my attorney.”

 

ALVARO ZABALETA: And then, of course, the attorney’s gonna say, “You’re not talking to him, because he has nothin’ to do with this.” And then there goes that door. It gets shut down.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: In this moment, it seemed like the Miami Police were implying that we’d have an easier time uncovering Bryan’s killer than they would or at least talking to people central to his case. But even if some people are more inclined to talk to us, there’s one big difference.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Courts can force people to tell the truth under oath. We don’t have that power. People can lie to us. People like the police. We started this story trying to figure out who killed Bryan Pata. But now we’d found ourselves on a different trajectory.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: When Miami-Dade reached out to us in 2017, it probably wasn’t to invite a team of reporters to check their work. For two years we asked the police to share a copy of the police report for the case. But they refused. So we decided to submit a request for the documents under the state’s open records law.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: In November 2019, the police finally released a copy of the report. Remember, it was nearly 200 pages and heavily redacted, blacking out any information that the police considered pertinent to an active investigation. But it did reveal something the police never told us in interviews.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: A lead involving an entirely different suspect and a jailhouse confession. Here’s what the report told us. Less than a year after Bryan’s murder, the police received a tip. A man named Emanuel Jones (PH) had allegedly confessed to Bryan’s murder while in a Florida state prison.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: He’d told his cellmate he’d killed Bryan in a murder-for-hire. So I wrote a letter to Emanuel Jones and asked if he would speak with me. And a couple months later, I got a phone call. “Okay, is that better? This is better for me. Okay. Hey, so (LAUGH) this is kind of an out-of-the-blue context, I’m sure, but you’re still in Broward County there in the jail. Right?”

 

EMANUEL JONES: Yes.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Then I asked Jones about the night Bryan was killed. “Bryan Pata was shot November 7th of 2006. Do you remember–

 

EMANUEL JONES: Okay, that–

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: –all where you were November 7th of two thou– I know it’s a long time ago. But, I mean, obviously, this came up at some point. So do you remember–

 

EMANUEL JONES: Definitely.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: –where you were?”

 

EMANUEL JONES: None of that has anything to do with me. I’m just askin’ if you with the (UNINTEL), or do I need a lawyer present while you’re askin’ me these questions, or, like, what’s goin’ on? You told me to reach out to you. And it’s like you interrogatin’ me. Like.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Well, I told you in the letter I sent that I work for ESPN. And we’re looking into Bryan Pata and what happened to him. And–

 

EMANUEL JONES: Oh.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: –right. If someone were to say, “Hey, you confessed to this murder,” do you remember where you were in November–

 

EMANUEL JONES: I was nowhere around no murder. That’s not even my– that’s not– that’s not my MO. Like– that’s not me. I was nowhere around no murder. I don’t know anything about no murder.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Obviously, I didn’t expect Jones to confess to a murder on a recorded phone line. But I was also asking that question for another reason entirely. Back in 2007, police had quickly ruled Emanuel Jones out as a suspect. They wrote he had an alibi.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: He was in jail for stealing a dirt bike in an armed robbery. But we discovered the police had the timeline of his arrest all wrong. “Did you get taken into custody right at the time the guy reported you guys stealin’ the bike from him? Did you get taken into custody at that time?”

 

EMANUEL JONES: Nah. Nah. Nah, I didn’t. I was arrested later on. I didn’t get arrested that day.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: That robbery took place in August 2006. But Jones wasn’t actually arrested until December, a month after Bryan’s murder. And we found no record, local, state, or federal, showing he was incarcerated in November when Bryan was killed. “You were not arrested in August of 2006, correct?”

 

EMANUEL JONES: I was arrested– I was arrested later, later on down the line.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: The police had definitely made a mistake. And Jones had just confirmed it. The funny thing is, we’d figured out all of this from the detective’s own case file. But when we asked police about this discrepancy, they declined to comment. In fact, Dominguez would later testify that he couldn’t rule out Emanuel Jones as a suspect.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: The more familiar we became with the police report and Miami-Dade’s investigation as a whole, the more mistakes we encountered. Not only that, we discovered discrepancies between what police said to us in our interviews and what they actually had documented. Remember that first trip to the crime scene? Detective Dominguez told Dan that Bryan had backed into his parking spot.

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Bryan’s vehicle was parked backwards into the parking space.

 

DAN ARRUDA: He backed into a spot?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: Yes.

 

DAN ARRUDA: So his driver door was facing the road?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: The roadway, yes, sir.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Dominguez sounds confident here. But he’s wrong. Crime scene photos clearly depict Bryan’s Infiniti parked nose in. In fact, Dominguez admitted in Dan’s first interview that he hadn’t studied the case file before speaking to us about Bryan’s killing. That made us wonder what other details Dominguez just plain got wrong. There was a question we asked Dominguez about whether Rashaun had been interviewed more than once.

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: He hasn’t been interviewed a second time.

 

DAN ARRUDA: He has not?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: But– but neither have any of– the former– players either.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: But, in fact, they did interview Rashaun at least twice and other former players more than once as well. Out of all of this, what shocked us the most though was what we realized almost immediately after getting the police report. There were no substantive entries in the case file after 2009.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: There were no entries noting interviews, tips, or newly gathered evidence for ten years. What had the police been doing all of this time? And how could they, given all of this, claim this investigation was still active? We had tried to get the unredacted police report, tried and failed. Because Florida public records law allows police to withhold investigative details of a case if it is still active. But nothing about this case seemed active. In fact, it seemed very cold.

 

DAN ARRUDA: Testing. One, two, three.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Greg Cooper is a former FBI profiler. If you’re familiar with the show, Criminal Minds, that’s a dramatization of the role.

 

GREG COOPER: Much of that is– very accurate in terms of the substance of the types of cases that are worked by profilers. Usually, it takes longer than an hour, however, to solve a case.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: In 2014, Cooper co-founded an organization called the Cold Case Foundation.

 

DAN ARRUDA: What exactly is a cold case? And when do you believe active investigations end and cold cases begin?

 

GREG COOPER: There– there is no generic definition for a cold case. It depends on the department. It really becomes cold if they’re no longer working it. So you may say, well, it’s any unsolved case that’s no longer being worked. That’s cold. But most police departments don’t like to categorize any case as so cold that it’s no longer being worked. In fact, you’ll probably find it difficult to find a police department that’s gonna tell ya, “We’re not working that case.”

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: We gave the Cold Case Foundation transcripts from all of our interviews up to that point and the files we had received from the police, including the redacted police report. They reviewed all of the documents as if it were a case they were working on. And they came to some conclusions about Miami-Dade’s investigation.

 

GREG COOPER: I don’t have the sense that it was excessive, it’s excellent, or that it’s exhaustive and thorough. I wouldn’t go that far with it.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: What are the major shortcomings?

 

GREG COOPER: Well, think there’s more people that need to be interviewed. There’s a list of people that we i– identified that need to be interviewed or re-interviewed as a result of reviewing the case. The key to the case is the relationship between the victim and the offender. This individual wanted Bryan dead. The key is trying to identify the motive for it.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Taking into account what Miami-Dade Police have done, but then also taking into account some of the shortcomings you guys have identified (THROAT CLEARING), back when this happened, how solvable should this have been?

 

GREG COOPER: At the time (THROAT CLEARING), I think the possibilities of– of solvability were high, above average. Now, it’s much more difficult because of the passage of time, obviously.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Cooper and his team went through all the different suspects who might have killed Bryan. He wasn’t satisfied with Miami-Dade’s efforts to cross those people off the list.

 

GREG COOPER: I don’t think that any of them have been adequately vetted to eliminate them completely.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Who do you think killed Bryan Pata?

 

GREG COOPER: There are some persons of interest. They need to be eliminated. But I think Rashaun is probably at the top of that person of interest list.

 

DAN ARRUDA: What puts him so firmly at the top of your list?

 

GREG COOPER: His relationship with Bryan and Jada. She’s in the middle of it. At one time, I think they’d had a relationship with one another. You’ve got the pre-offense behavior and the post-offense behavior. That is questionable. The fight that he was involved in. Rashaun gets kicked off the team that day. And we know that Rashaun–

 

DAN ARRUDA: Did not go to practice that day.

 

GREG COOPER: –doesn’t show up to practice. But, now, did he get kicked off the team before–

 

DAN ARRUDA: Yes.

 

GREG COOPER: –the practice? So he would not na– naturally have gone to practice then–

 

DAN ARRUDA: That’s correct.

 

GREG COOPER: –obviously, right?

 

DAN ARRUDA: Right.

 

GREG COOPER: So that now doesn’t become significant, the fact that he doesn’t show up. But when everybody was called in after Bryan’s death that night, he’s the only one that doesn’t show up.

 

DAN ARRUDA: That’s correct.

 

GREG COOPER: So he could have the legitimate excuse, “Well, I was kicked off the team.”

 

DAN ARRUDA: That is correct.

 

GREG COOPER: On the other hand, “I was kicked off the team, but, hey, this guy’s a former teammate.” Why wouldn’t he show up?

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: At this point, one of our producers, Scott Frankel, read back a summary of the detective’s first interview with Rashaun.

 

SCOTT FRANKEL: Mr. Jones, Rashaun told Detective Pat Diaz that when he learned of the victim’s demise, he responded to the University of Miami Hecht Center.

 

GREG COOPER: And he never did. So we know that he lied.

 

SCOTT FRANKEL: Yes.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: So right there (THROAT CLEARING) in that moment that evening, what would his motive be for killing Bryan?

 

GREG COOPER: Some perceived or actual conflict between he and Bryan has developed over a period of time. And it could be proximate. My sense in– in crime like this is not that there is a long period of time between the decision to kill Bryan and the killing itself. It’s a short period of time.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Cooper and his team at the Cold Case Foundation had reached two clear conclusions. One, Miami-Dade’s investigation had fallen short. They’d missed opportunities to interview people who might have known important information. So what could’ve been a more solvable case in 2006 had dragged out into a 15 year ordeal.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Two, based on all of the evidence we’d provided, the Cold Case guys thought Rashaun Jones looked like the strongest suspect. But we were still left with questions, questions we hoped to answer before we published anything related to the case, questions only the Miami-Dade Police could answer like, why hadn’t they interviewed Rashaun since 2007, why had they seemingly not interviewed anybody since 2009, and, maybe most of all, why had so many years gone by without an arrest?

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: The Miami-Dade Police said this case was open and active. And so the details of the investigation protected by Florida state law had stayed hidden to us. But we had come to believe this wasn’t true. And so, in March 2020, ESPN sued the Miami-Dade Police.

 

JUDGE OSCAR RODRIGUEZ FONTS: Just to let you know what’s going on, we may run into some problems today.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: ESPN versus Miami-Dade County kicked off in July 2020, right at the height of the pandemic lockdowns. Judge Oscar Rodriguez Fonts presided over the case.

 

JUDGE OSCAR RODRIGUEZ FONTS: I have lost my internet already a couple of times. I’ve had to reboot. So I’m having problems.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: It’s– working in this pandemic. We all have to (UNINTEL). Right?

 

JUDGE OSCAR RODRIGUEZ FONTS: Well, I apologize in advance for any interruptions (INAUDIBLE).

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Everyone on our team logged onto Zoom to follow along. And Dan recorded the trial from his home. We had filed a lawsuit against the Miami-Dade Police alleging unlawful withholding of open records. So, to start, a lawyer for the police department laid out the case for why those redacted portions should remain confidential.

 

MDPD LAWYER: The record and testimonial evidence presented to the court today will demonstrate that there are key details of the crime that the Miami-Dade Police Department…The court orders these key points of information be produced and, no doubt, broadcast all over the world by ESPN or other media outlets, so Bryan Pata’s killer may never be brought to justice.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: In order to justify their redacted reports, the police had to prove that the case was still active. To do that, they needed to show that they were making progress toward an arrest. So they called a witness, a lieutenant overseeing the Homicide Bureau named Joseph Zanconato.

 

MDPD LAWYER: And can you explain briefly what the ten year anniversary of Bryan Pata’s death meant for your investigation?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: Well, that was an opportunity for us to– kind of, you know, like, renew the investigation. It gave us an opportunity to review all the reports, the case file. And– you know, we were trying to develop– come up with ideas as to how we could put this case back in the limelight in order to try and– develop leads.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Then the county’s attorney switched gears.

 

MDPD LAWYER: I’d like to now turn to the investigation that MDPD is conducting and talk a little bit about that. Does MDPD know who killed Bryan Pata?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: Yes, we have a strong– belief as to who was responsible for his death.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: All of us watching this Zoom were shocked. We had been asking the police this question for three years. And for three years they had said, “It could be anyone.”

 

MDPD LAWYER: Is there a main person of interest?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: Yes.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Now, under oath, Zanconato had made a statement that directly contradicted what police had been saying to us.

 

MDPD LAWYER: Going back to the years closer to the– date of Bryan Pata’s death, so this would be 2006, 2007, was MDPD close to making an arrest in this case?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: Yes, we were.

 

DAN ARRUDA: What?

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: You can hear Dan’s reaction to this on his recording from home. The police not only had a main suspect, but they had been close to making an arrest way back in 2007. Then the lawyer asked Zanconato to make a prediction.

 

MDPD LAWYER: Will you make an arrest in the foreseeable future?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: Yes.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: The phrase, “Foreseeable future,” is really important. It comes from the Florida open records law which says a case is active if there is quote, “A reasonable, good faith anticipation of securing an arrest or prosecution in the foreseeable future.”

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: But it doesn’t offer a definition of what foreseeable future means. The police had a main suspect since 2007, but they still hadn’t made an arrest. So why did they expect that an arrest was going to happen anytime soon? What, if anything, had changed? That’s what Dana McElroy, the lawyer representing ESPN, asked Zanconato on cross-examination.

 

DANA MCELROY: How is it that an arrest wasn’t made in the last 12 years?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: Because we were still missing a piece of the puzzle.

 

DANA MCELROY: And is that piece of the puzzle still missing?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: Yes. However, based on our– the fact that we are actively working with this case, we believe that an arrest will be– in the foreseeable future.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: There is the foreseeable future again. But ESPN’s lawyer had another card to play. In a recent document dump, the Miami-Dade Police Department had given us background files on people named in the police report. Each file had a handwritten cover letter with the person’s name on it. And on one of those documents, the police left in one key word they probably meant to redact, “Suspect.” So, McElroy started by asking Zanconato about the names of a few potential suspects.

 

DANA MCELROY: And I’d like to bring up plaintiff’s composite exhibit 21. Do you know who Jerome Brody is?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: Heard the name, yes.

 

DANA MCELROY: Are you aware he’s Jada Brody’s brother?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: Yes.

 

DANA MCELROY: Are you familiar with the name Emanuel Jones?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: I’ve heard that name, yes.

 

DANA MCELROY: Okay. And is he a person of interest?

 

MDPD LAWYER: Objection. Confidential information.

 

JUDGE OSCAR RODRIGUEZ FONTS: Sustained.

 

DANA MCELROY: How ’bout Rashaun Jones? Is he–

 

MDPD LAWYER: Objection. Confidential information. She’s essentially asking him who is–

 

JUDGE OSCAR RODRIGUEZ FONTS: Sustained. Sustained. Sustained. Sustained.

 

DANA MCELROY: Okay. If you could– we could please pull up plaintiff’s composite exhibit two. Scroll down to the bottom. This document identifies Rashaun Jones as a suspect, does it not, lieutenant?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: It says, “Suspect,” yes.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Out of more than 100 cover letters, the one with the name Rashaun Travon Jones (PH) was the only one with the word, “Suspect,” on it.

 

DANA MCELROY: Okay. Is he a suspect or not?

 

MDPD LAWYER: Objection. Confidential information.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: The lawyer for the police objected again. But this time, the judge overruled.

 

JUDGE OSCAR RODRIGUEZ FONTS: You guys turned it over. And it’s in evidence. I don’t know how it’s confidential anymore. So without going into any further detail, I guess he can answer the question.

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: There were a lot of individuals who were interviewed and who were looked at regarding this case. There was a lot of pieces of paper that were written on. That piece of paper right there is– is not necessarily evidence– to our– to our case.

 

DANA MCELROY: I’m– I’m not sure you answered the question. I asked if he was a suspect.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: The police’s attorney again objected. But the judge allowed our lawyer to press on.

 

DANA MCELROY: Was he a suspect?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: Rashaun Jones is– is one of– a number of people who we’ve looked at in this investigation.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Is he a current suspect?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: I’m not gonna– answer that question based on confidentiality or the exemption, rather.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: After the day’s hearing, the reporting team got on a call to debrief. “At the end of the day, regardless of what happens, I am glad that we brought this, because it revealed a couple things, the biggest of which is that they were lying to us.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: “And– and then, I’m glad we went through this process, because had we gone with what we had, I think we would’ve been putting forward a story that was disingenuous and, frankly, not true, not through any fault of ours, but just from the fact that the police department clearly lied to us. And I’m assuming that they were telling the truth to the judge. That meant they had been lying to us.”

 

DAN ARRUDA: And, to be clear, you think they’re lying was that the fact that Rashaun has been their number one suspect this entire time and it hasn’t been a, “Oh, we have lots of leads and lots of things to look into?”

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Well, when they talked about the prime suspect and they talked about the evidence, they (UNINTEL) material that we know, based on the context, pertains to Rashaun.

 

DAN ARRUDA: Yeah. And the fact that his– his is the only cover letter that had, “Suspect,” on it.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: “Yeah, that was a big gaff. Because they talked about some of the slip-ups that they made and the stuff that they should’ve redacted. That was– that was a big one.” Two months later, the judge handed down his decision. He took police at their word that they were continuing to work this case and that there would be an arrest in the foreseeable future.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: It felt like a gut punch. But the judge’s ruling came with a condition. In it he wrote, “A time will come when it will no longer be proper for the MDPD to keep the redactions at issue confidential. However, this court finds that now is not that time.”

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: In other words, that undefinable clock of foreseeable future, it was ticking. We knew it. Miami-Dade new it too. Which is why what happened next felt unbelievable. In the weeks after the judge’s ruling, major changes hit Miami-Dade’s homicide team. Commander Rudy Gonzalez?

 

RUDY GONZALEZ: Now believe that in 2006 there wasn’t even– text messages weren’t even in use.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Two months after he testified, we learned that Gonzalez was no longer working Bryan’s case. Lieutenant Joseph Zanconato?

 

JOSEPH ZANCONATO: We believe that an arrest will be– the foreseeable future.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: Three days after this testimony, police records show that Zanconato was reassigned out of homicide. And as for Miguel Dominguez, the lead detective on this case since day one?

 

DETECTIVE MIGUEL DOMINGUEZ: We have a multitude of leads that we’re following. And we are most definitely working this actively.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: One week after the judge’s ruling, we learned that Dominguez had retired. I found all of this terribly disingenuous. All these people who swore to actively pursue an arrest had just hightailed it off the case. We asked Miami-Dade about these departures, whether investigators had lied to the judge.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: A police department spokesperson told us Zanconato had not known ahead of time that he would be reassigned and Dominguez’s retirement was last minute. After the lawsuit ended, we decided to run a story with the information we had.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: It included everything we knew about the case, details of Bryan’s last day, the Zellner call, the various theories, Miami-Dade’s misstep with Emanuel Jones, our lawsuit, and its aftermath. The story was also the first time that the public learned police suspected Bryan Pata may have been killed by his teammate, Rashaun Jones.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: It ran in November 2020. Our team had no idea how long Miami-Dade would stretch out the limits of a foreseeable future. We were expecting years at least. But it turned out to be much sooner than we thought. Less than a year after our story ran, we got a phone call.

 

MALE VOICE: Hey, Dan. Good mornin’. Just now turning on my phone. It’s get– it’s heating up really good. I think they’re about to make– an arrest soon. I’m not quite sure when. They didn’t say anything.

 

PAULA LAVIGNE: That’s next time on, Murder at the U.