Since I have started writing for Odyssey, I've been touched and honored after being contacted by several grieving families. I cannot express how thankful I am for their support, or how deeply affected I am by their stories. I wish I could write about every single case, but sadly there just isn't enough time in a day. I try my best to review and consider every case sent my way, but sometimes the evidence simply isn't there. However, at times, something about a story doesn't sit right with me. Some cases stay with me longer than others, even when my attempts to conduct interviews and gather multiple reports and statements fail. The case I want to share with you today is such a case.
On February 16th, 2006, twenty-year-old Joshua Robinson was found dead in McGregor, Texas at 5:15 am. His body was discovered in Amsler Park, with the chain from a swing wrapped around his neck. The police immediately ruled his death a suicide by hanging, despite the fact that he had never demonstrated suicidal tendencies to those closest to him. The police tried to use the fact that he had recently quarreled with his girlfriend's family as a motivation for taking his own life.
According to Josh's mother, Cynthia, she has never been provided with any evidence that indicates her son committed suicide--or that he even died by hanging. Though a police report alleged that Joshua was a drug user, the official toxicology report came back negative for both drugs and alcohol. The coroner found no evidence of strangulation and only superficial bruising to the neck, presumably from the chain. A study done by the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Science revealed that Joshua's neck was not broken. Crime scene photos corroborate this fact, illustrating that his "routine suicide" was anything but routine. Joshua can be observed on his knees in the dirt, with the swing chain looped around his neck. According to the coroner, there was bruising on the fingertips of Joshua's left hand and the inside of his right forearm--his mother believes this is evidence that Joshua made attempts to free himself of the chain. Joshua could have avoided death if he had simply stood up and relieved the tension of the chain--but something or someone kept him from doing so.
When Cynthia contacted me, she provided me with a lot of intriguing questions and inconsistencies on the part of the McGregor Police Department. Officer W. Kirby alleges that he was the first officer on the scene that fateful morning. However, according to dispatch logs, his car wasn't even dispatched to the park until 6:48 am. As previously stated, Joshua was found at 5:15 am--a separate report states that the first responding officers arrived at 5:36 am--so how could Officer Kirby have been the first?
This was not the only, nor the most concerning, inconsistency. Officer Jared Norris stated in his report that he did not recognize Joshua, yet he also alleges that a "wants and warrants check" was run at 5:44 am that morning, just eight minutes after arriving at the scene. Joshua had no identification with him at the time of his death, so how could a check be run on a supposedly unknown subject? Cynthia has raised question after question to the McGregor PD, and they have all fallen on deaf ears. When she demanded to know why she had not been questioned concerning her son's death, a detective informed her that the PD had learned all they needed to know after questioning Joshua's girlfriend Kayla, his brother, and a family friend, Bill Holt. When Cynthia approached Kayla and Bill about their police interview, they both denied having ever been contacted.
The park where Joshua died has a 10 pm curfew. It is a well-documented fact that the McGregor PD patrols the park on an hourly basis to make sure that it's unoccupied. However, the MPD alleges that on the night of Joshua's death, they were too busy to perform their regular checks. Cynthia was able to learn that was blatantly untrue. On a recorded phone call between Cynthia and Kelly L. Amecuzca of the Southwest Medical Center in Dallas, Amecuzca revealed that there was a report stating that Joshua was last seen at 1 am by a patrol officer in the park. Why would the police lie about that fact? And if they did in fact encounter Joshua at 1 am that morning, why would they allege that they didn't recognize the victim after the discovery of his body?
Cynthia believes that Joshua was killed by the police when they tried to force him to leave the park. Joshua often walked around the park to calm down and clear his thoughts, and his mother believes that he would not have taken kindly to being kicked out--possibly causing an altercation that spiraled out of control. Joshua's death may have been what is called an "overlay death," caused by placing a knee or elbow in the back of someone lying prostrate on the ground. This prevents the diaphragm from moving, meaning the lungs cannot inhale or exhale. Cynthia suspects that once the officers realized that Joshua was dead or nearly so, they panicked and attempted to stage a suicide. The crime scene photos seem to show drag marks in the dirt near the swing set, perhaps proving that Joshua was incapacitated and dragged to the scene where he was discovered. Though the MPD has tried to discredit Cynthia at every turn, in June of 2006, four officers that had responded to Joshua's scene were asked to resign for unpublicized reasons.
For reasons I can't entirely explain, I don't believe Joshua Robinson killed himself. Maybe it's the inconsistencies in the police reports. Maybe it's the earnestness of his long-suffering mother. Maybe it's my deeply-rooted distrust of law enforcement, or maybe I'm just a sucker for a good case. I think there are too many unanswered questions, inconsistencies, and medical evidence to the contrary for Joshua's death to have been definitively ruled as a suicide. If more evidence becomes available to me regarding his case, you, dear reader, will be the first to hear about it. In the meantime, question everything. Nothing is ever exactly as it seems.
