It’s been three weeks since three Kansas City fans joined friends to watch the Chiefs play the Los Angeles Chargers in the final game of the regular season. Two days later, their bodies were found in a friend’s backyard. Police have not yet said how the men died, but confirmed on Saturday amid intense public speculation that there was still no evidence of foul play.
It is common for police to refuse to comment on many investigations before they are complete. So here’s a look at what’s known and unknown in a mystery that has garnered widespread attention on social media and the Internet despite — or perhaps because of — the lack of solid information.
What happened?
Police accounts say Ricky Johnson, 38; Clayton McGeeney, 36; and David Harrington, 37; went to a friend’s house in Kansas City, Missouri to watch the Chiefs game on January 7th. None of them made it home. Two nights later, McGeeney’s fiance went to the home looking for him.
“When the door did not open, she entered the basement of the residence and discovered an unknown body on the back porch. Officers responded to the back porch and confirmed there was a body. Upon further investigation, officers located two other dead bodies in the backyard,” the initial police report on the incident said. “There were no obvious signs of foul play observed at or near the crime scene.”
Police say there are no signs of foul play yet.
“This still remains a death investigation and nothing more,” Officer Alaina Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for the Kansas City Police Department, said in an email Saturday to The Associated Press. “We still have no evidence or indication of foul play, no one is in police custody.”
How did they die?
Investigators say they don’t know yet. They have not said publicly whether they believe drugs or alcohol were involved in what may have been three relatively sudden and simultaneous deaths, although it is clear that is a possibility they are considering. Weather data shows that the low temperature that night was around 33 degrees (1 degree Celsius).
“This incident has received significant media attention and we (KCPD) would like answers to the cause of death as much as anyone else,” Gonzalez wrote.
The department is still awaiting a cause of death determination from Frontier Forensics, Gonzalez said. It is a privately held company that provides autopsy services for multiple counties in Kansas and Missouri. Once police recover the cause of death, she said, they will be able to provide additional information for the investigation.
“They are a completely separate entity from the police department, so we have no influence over the timeline of their medical findings,” Gonzalez wrote. reports.”
Has the homeowner been investigated?
One factor fueling the speculation is that the homeowner says he didn’t know the bodies of his three longtime friends were on his back porch and in his backyard two days before they were found.
But Gonzalez confirmed that the homeowner was cooperating with the investigation, a claim his attorney, John Picerno, also made.
Piccherno did not immediately return a call from the AP on Saturday. He said in a statement to the media in Kansas City earlier this month that his client was devastated by the death of his friends and that he did not know they were still in his backyard or that they needed medical attention until the police did not show up. Picerno said the last time the homeowner saw them was when they left and he went to bed, and that he didn’t know how they died.
The lawyer said his client was “looking forward to the results of the autopsy and toxicology report” and that they both wanted to “express our deepest sympathies to the friends and family members of these young men and our thoughts and prayers are with them. “
The reaction
Among the questions raging on social media are, “Why hasn’t the owner been named a suspect?” and “What’s taking so long to determine the cause of death?” The mystery has gone viral on TikTok and other social platforms for its true-crime shades. And family members of the three men took their frustrations to the media in the Kansas City area.
“My son and these other men were wonderful people. They deserve justice,” Jennifer Marquez, Harrington’s mother, told WDAF-TV. “The story, the whole story needs to come out.”
But police statements suggest it could still be weeks before they can provide definitive answers.
