True Crime in the Great Outdoors
The most shocking crimes from national parks, camping trips, backpacker murders, and hiking incidents
The mysterious death of Alonzo Brooks
Alonzo Tyree Brooks, disappeared April 3, 2004, Body Found May 1, 2004, La Cygne, Kansas.
Revised November 2024
On April 3, 2004, Alonzo Brooks attended a party at a farmhouse on the outskirts of La Cygne in Kansas, approximately 50 miles (80 km) south of Gardner. It was to be the last day that Alonzo was seen alive.
What followed was depicted in an episode of Unsolved Mysteries, produced by Netflix, called “No Ride Home”, and has caused a social media frenzy and countless possible leads for law enforcement. The circumstances of Brooks’ death are mysterious and remain unexplained.
Alonzo was born on May 19, 1980, to Billy Brooks Sr. and Maria Ramirez and was of African American and Mexican descent. He was 23 years old and working as a custodian for Countryside Maintenance in Gardner.
Justin Sprague
His friend, Justin Sprague, drove him to the party in La Cygne, which was around 45 minutes from his home in Topeka, Kansas. Justin left the party, saying he needed to buy a pack of cigarettes and reportedly got lost (turning right instead of left) and failed to return. He says he phoned Alonzo and told him to grab a lift back home with someone called Alex, and he said that he seemed to be enjoying himself. Other friends aged 16-18 also accompanied Justin and Alonzo to the party.
La Cygne (pronounced luh SEEN) is a city along the Marais des Cygnes River in the northeast part of Linn County, located in East Central Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 1,149. The city is named after the Marais des Cygnes River, a French translation of an Osage appellation meaning "marsh of the swans".
On the morning of April 4th, Brooks’ mother discovered her son was missing from the house and hadn’t returned from the party. She phoned friends, but no one had heard from Alonzo since the previous evening.
The Brooks family traveled to La Cygne to search for their son and contact the local authorities. The Police were reluctant initially to initiate a search as they believed he was likely to have just wandered off. A member of the family found Alonzo’s boots and hat scattered near a road leading from the party venue, making them convinced he had been attacked and abducted by persons unknown.
Eventually, the Linn County Police Department turned the case over to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) after failing to locate Brooks. Unusually, the FBI became involved, though this was likely because they believed it could have been a race-related crime. Many people, including Brooks’ mother, Maria Ramirez, think Brooks was the victim of a racist attack.
The case was closed after a fruitless search by the KBI and FBI.
Maria Ramirez
On May 1, 2004, the Brooks family was allowed to search the property for their son after the official search had turned up nothing. Incredibly, on the first day of their search effort, within the first hour, Alonzo’s body was found on the banks of Middle Creek, close to the house where he was last seen a month earlier on a bed of sticks. The creek was very close to the home where the party had occurred. At the time of Alonzo’s disappearance, the water level in the creek was shallow, so it was impossible that he had been washed to this spot or submerged underwater.
Law enforcement searched six times around the house, including in the creek, but they never found his body.
The creek in relation to the party house
No one at the party offered up any information on Brooks’ case. No one saw him leave.
Alonzo Brooks Autopsy
The autopsy done on Brooks was undertaken by medical examiner Dr. Erik Mitchell. In the Netflix episode, he said, “If he’s been beaten, it has not left anything identifiable. I do not know his cause of death.”
Mitchell said that the soft tissue around his neck wasn’t recognizable, so he could not determine if he was strangled. There was no evidence of broken bones, no signs of blunt force trauma, or injury. The coroner also indicated that there were no signs of drowning in his lungs.
Consequently, the pathologist could not determine the cause of death.
Confusingly, there is some debate on the condition of Alonzo’s body as his brother said he didn't look to be long dead and that his face colour looked normal.
The Department of Justice and the FBI re-examined Brooks’ case in 2019. “His death certainly was suspicious, and someone, likely multiple people, know(s) what happened that night in April 2004,” wrote U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister at the time. “It is past time for the truth to come out. The code of silence must be broken. Alonzo's family deserves to know the truth, and it is time for justice to be served.” The FBI Department of Justice officially reopened the case on June 11, 2020, following the Netflix documentary.
Location of body in creek
Recent developments
In July 2020, Unsolved Mysteries executive producer Terry Dunn Meurer said the FBI had started to look at the case again and reopen it, announcing a $100,000 reward for any partygoer with more information.
On July 21st, the authorities exhumed the body from a cemetery in Topeka, Kansas.
What happened to Brooks?
Foul play
From the beginning, rumors persisted that Brooks was a victim of foul play. "Some said Brooks may have flirted with a girl, some said drunken white men wanted to fight an African-American male, and some said racist whites simply resented Brooks' presence," the FBI said.
He was one of just three Black men out of approximately 100 guests.
Brooks' mother, Maria Ramirez, believes her son was targeted for his race. "I'm Mexican, and his father is Black," Ramirez told NBC Dateline in June. "So he's mixed. They didn't just target one race. Or kill one race. They killed two. He was targeted because of the color of his skin."
Brooks’ friends claim he was the target of several racial slurs during the party. Plus, they also claim he was angrily approached by a white man, which they speculate could be down to Brooks flirting with a white woman. Tiffany Boone (now Tiffany VanNorman) is rumoured to be the girl that Alonzo Brooks had an interaction with that night, which is allegedly the inciting event of the murder. Several “brawls” broke out the night, but it is unclear if Brooks was involved in any of these, with no witnesses stepping forward during the initial investigation.
One of the biggest remaining mysteries is how long Brooks’ body was left at the creek. An entomologist looked at the photos of Alonzo’s clothing, and there were maggots on that clothing. She said those maggots often can tell a story of how long that body had been exposed. There was some speculation that Brooks was hidden in a freezer for the month he was missing and then placed in the creek just before he was found.
Was Justin somehow involved? It seems suspicious that he stayed at the party briefly and then conveniently “got lost”. Were the friends somehow implicated?
Other causes
Other causes like suicide or exposure can be dismissed as the creek water level was low, and Alonzo’s boots were found well away from the body.
The fact that the body was somehow missed after so many searches appears to indicate that Alonzo was moved to the scene some weeks after his disappearance.
The only other explanation is that something more supernatural occurred if it wasn’t foul play. However, an attack by other party guests seems to be the obvious conclusion.
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Sources
"Unsolved Mysteries" Netflix No Ride Home
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alonzo_Brooks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cygne,_Kansas
https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2020/07/9927849/unsolved-mysteries-alonzo-brooks-fbi-body-exhumed
https://www.tmz.com/2020/07/25/alonzo-brooks-mom-believes-netflix-unsolved-mysteries-crack-case-arrest/
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/22/us/alonzo-brooks-exhumed-unsolved-mysteries-trnd/index.html
https://www.radiotimes.com/news/on-demand/2020-07-22/alonzo-brooks-unsolved-mysteries/
https://www.reddit.com/r/UnsolvedMysteries/comments/hm2p45/ive_been_following_the_alonzo_brooks_case_for/