They Say He Drowned but Evidence Suggests Otherwise… the Death of Jelani Day (Revisited)
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back. I'm so happy to have you here today to discuss yet another case. Actually, today we're going to be revisiting a case that I covered back in 2021. And if you're new, then welcome. Glad to have you and be sure to subscribe.

Today, we're going to be talking about and revisiting the Jelani Day case, except for this time, I had the opportunity to fly out Carmen, his mother, and his brother, Seve, to help tell his story. We did their interviews in person in my office, so the quality is really good, and you're going to see those interview clips today. I also wanted to mention we did a

almost four hour episode of Mile Higher with them. And I will have that linked below if you didn't catch it and you want to hear even more detail than we will be going over today and much more of their thoughts and opinions as well. And it was so helpful to have them involved in this process to go over the case because there has been

a huge amount of information and also lack of reporting since the beginning, really, but especially since interest in his case has started to dwindle over the years when it comes to the media. And it's really important that we continue to fight for justice for Jelani. There is still no justice, really no answers for this family and what it has put them through is

is horrific. Seeing their pain in person, listening to them was, I mean, listening to any family is just overwhelmingly difficult, but hearing how much this has changed and affected their lives

Just was heartbreaking. And I really hope you guys take the time today to listen to their story. Before we get into things, there are many ways that you can help support this family and we'll go over all of that. But one thing I specifically wanted to shout out before we get started is

is we have created Jelani Day Foundation merchandise in collaboration with their family. And all the profit from that collection will go to the Jelani Day Foundation, which I think is so admirable that in their time of pain and need, they decided to do something in Jelani's honor to help

others. And that just says so much about them. The Jelani Day Foundation was created to provide vital resources to help families of color who do not receive the same treatment and resources that non-people of color do. Their main goal is to bridge the gap between these extreme disparities in how missing persons cases are treated. So my team and I have helped create two Justice for Jelani Day t-shirts that can be purchased online.

both a short sleeve and a long sleeve and the proceeds from this t-shirt will go directly to the foundation also if you want to make a monetary donation but not purchase a t-shirt you can go directly to their GoFundMe which will be listed below and I completely understand that not everyone is in the position to make a donation at this time so there are other ways that you can help as well there's a petition you can sign that will be linked below that is just asking investigators to see through all of this until justice is served there will

be a list of government and law enforcement officials that you can contact to demand action as well. But let's go ahead and jump in here. There's a lot to go over, and I want to start out by talking about Jelani and who he was. Jelani Jesse Javante Day was born on June 15th, 1996, in Danville, Illinois, to his parents, Carmen and Seve. He was the second youngest of

five kids in the family with two older brothers, DeAndre and Seve, and two sisters, Dakara and Zayna. After spending so much time with and talking to Carmen and Seve, I feel like I have a much better grasp of who Jelani was. And he was such a special person and

his death is truly a loss to the world. He was curious, he was kind, smart, deeply devoted to his family and his faith. Carmen was very involved in their local church and did a great job of getting her kids involved as well. Not just Jelani, but all of her kids participated in the youth group, choir, drill team, and more. But it was especially important to Jelani to be involved and stay involved as he got older. Even when no one was making him go to church, he still did.

His relationship with God was very important to him, and that's something that Carmen is very proud of. From a young age, Jelani had an energy about him that kept him very active and busy. He was never not doing the most, whether that meant messing around with his siblings or

getting involved in his community and there's no doubt he was a little bit of a troublemaker growing up and liked to mess with his brothers and sisters it was really nice to hear save a talk about those memories with him and even though he would goof around it was all in good fun he never meant any harm jelani was always busy he's busy since he was born he was a busy little baby he was greedy oh he was so greedy as he was growing up he was

He just loved to have fun. He loved to eat, loved to have fun. My father-in-law used to always tell me that Jelani moved off the lap too fast because Zayna came right behind Jelani. So Jelani, he would always, I would hold Zayna and Jelani would always just be right there on my lap too. So I had to share my lap with him and Zayna. My father-in-law used to go all the time. Jelani, mad he had to give up his lap. Laughter

When Jelani grew up and went to school, he was just always that kid that was curious and so smart. He would get his stuff done, get his work done, and the teacher always wanted to call me and say, well, Jelani, he's a good student, good kid, but he just doesn't want to stop talking. He's always playing. He was loud. He was the loudest one here.

He didn't have an inside voice. He was just loud. He was one of my best friends because those five, that's my clique. And I love being with my kids. All of them bring something different. Jelani's outspoken. He's going to let you know what he know or how he feel. He loves to play. He loves to play. He mess with Seva. He mess with DeAndre.

He make up names for everybody. He was just special.

It's very special. They told me that Jelani was the type of person who was always going to do what he wanted to do. He didn't want to listen to anyone. He just kind of marched to the beat of his own drum. They told me that he had a competitive nature about him, that he was always trying to be the smartest or best, and that really all his siblings would push each other to be the best they could be, to always improve and grow in the ways they needed to.

I know Carmen is extremely proud of her kids and how much they lean on each other, how much they support each other. She always encourages them to be there for each other no matter what. And that's exactly what they did and continue to do.

He just felt like nobody had authority over him, so he didn't have to listen to anybody. And so, regardless of what he tried to say, he was going to do what he wanted to do anyway. He was very outspoken, for sure, because he would look things up on his own without listening to us or whatever and try to be like, okay, I know more about this than you because this is what happened then or that, whether it was music, movies, shows, whatever.

He would definitely try to act like he know more about it than we do, no matter what it was. Very competitive because we always had little contests, no matter what it was, whether it was from playing a sport to cooking to eating something. Very competitive at all that.

And we just all pushed each other in that kind of way, even though we never really like, oh, you're doing good at that. We'd be like, oh, you're trash. You're not doing good or whatever. But it would just help each one of us like just feed off each other and get better at whatever it was.

As they were growing up, it was extremely important to Jelani's dad, save a senior, that they all be very involved in sports. I mean, he knew sending five kids to college was going to be tough. And so he wanted all of them to have something that they'd be good enough at that they could get a scholarship. And

And they are such an active family. They tried every sport. And if they didn't like one thing, they just move on to the next. Jelani definitely tried a little bit of everything, but he really excelled at track and field as well as swimming. He joined the swim team to help build endurance for track. This is something important to note. And he ended up getting a scholarship for track and also for academics at Alabama A&M University.

So their dad was big on them. Their dad loves sports. They love sports. I don't care what it was. Hockey, soccer. He loved all kinds of sports. Me, I was like, oh my God, he signed him up for something else we got to go to. But since they were little, when they were able to walk, he signed them up. They were in soccer. They did track. They did cross country.

baseball, softball, football. And he told me one day, he said, "Carmen, they're gonna try everything until they find something that fits them." Because we don't got no money to send them to school. So that was his plan since they were little. So Jelani, he plays soccer. He liked that. He ran track. His dad made him run track. He ran cross country.

Then he went and he did swimming because his day was like that'll build up his endurance. So, Jelaine joined the swim team at the high school. He wasn't on there that long because I think Jelaine didn't like to be told what to do, but he could swim, you know. He did the swim meets and everything. So, that one year that he was on the swim team. And then after that, he would swim on his own. He taught himself how to do a lot of stuff.

When he went to college, he got a scholarship for track in his academics. And he ran track at Alabama A&M until he

To his meniscus. He studied speech pathology, and like I said, he stayed busy. Not only did he join a fraternity, but he also was part of a dance team called House Arrest and an organization called 100 Black Men and so much more. I honestly don't know how he juggled it all, but if anyone could juggle it all, it was Johnny. From what I understand, he was just...

And he ended up graduating at the top of his class at Alabama A&M and was given the opportunity to speak at the ceremony and say a prayer on graduation day. And he didn't want his education to stop there. Jelani's long-term goal was to become a speech pathologist, mainly because he wanted to help people. And so the next step for him was grad school. He had originally been accepted into school in Michigan, but when the pandemic hit, he

the program was canceled and that left him having to figure out a new plan. Carmen explained that he struggled a bit trying to figure out what to do next, but after some convincing, he decided to apply to Illinois State University, which was a school that was much closer to his family's.

And I loved hearing this from his family, but Jelani was actually interested in speech pathology because when he was growing up, he had a friend named Paul who had a speech impediment and he was always bullied for it. And that was something that really bothered Jelani. He always stood up for him. He would help him try to articulate his words. And so it only made sense that he wanted to do this later in life. And I can't help but think about all the people he could have helped and how amazing he would have been at this.

if he had only been given a chance now jelani started his grad program in the summer of 2021 by taking online classes but in july he got word that classes would resume in person and he ended up getting an apartment off campus in bloomington at the time he didn't have any furniture or anything yet in his apartment carmen was going to eventually give him some older furniture but

During this time, he was actually just sleeping on a blow-up mattress and making it work. So everything in July and August was completely normal. Jelani was keeping up with his school schedule. He was keeping up with his friends and family. Everything was fine. In fact, the weekend before he went missing, he went down to Texas with Seve.

because they were going to help his sister move into grad school, but something got messed up with her housing, so she and her mother Carmen didn't end up going, but Jelani and Seve did. And Seve said that everything was fine, they had a good time down there, and that Sunday that Jelani left was the last time that he'd see him or speak to him. Carmen actually spoke to him a few more times afterwards,

after this. She spoke to him that Sunday night that he got back. He called to let her know that he had made it back fine and, you know, fill her in on details of the trip. And that was a very Jelani thing to do. He,

He definitely was a mama's boy and called his mom all the time, sometimes multiple times a day. And I thought this was really funny, but Carmen would actually call him her bill collector because he would call so often. And when they had their last call, there was no indication that anything was wrong. For the most part, everyone seemed to be doing really well.

Except for there was one exception. His father, Seve, was sick. He had been diagnosed with cancer and all three boys went to see if they'd be a match to donate bone marrow. And Jelani ended up being the closest match for his father. So he decided that he would be the one to go through the donation process. When it came to time for him to find him to go through that study and find who was his matches, all three of them.

went and got tested. They didn't hesitate to do it. Jelani discovered that he was, when they got the results back, and I think they said that Jelani was the closest match. There wasn't nothing that Jelani wasn't going to do to help his dad because they wanted their dad here. I mean, we had too much stuff. We had no grandchildren. Jelani became a doctor. He wanted to be Zayna's

and became the doctor she wanted to be. Saved Andy, Andre, and Dakar still had things and goals that they were going to accomplish. He wanted to do everything in his power if that meant that he was going to have to give his dad something from him so his dad could have a longer life. He was going to do that.

And it's reasons like this and the fact that Jelani had so many big plans for his future that make what happened to him even more devastating, but also confusing. So that brings us to Tuesday, August 21st, 2021.

the director of clinical education at isu a woman named kara boster became concerned after she noticed that he didn't show up for his one o'clock class and it wasn't just that he missed this class they also had a meeting scheduled that morning and jelani didn't

didn't show up. And Kara had literally been texting with Jelani the night before, and he confirmed that he would be there. It was very unlike Jelani to just not show up somewhere where he was supposed to be. And I mean, not showing up for class is a huge red flag. It's expensive to be in grad school, and it's so important to be at every class, unless obviously something comes up

But as far as anyone knew, Jelani was fine. And Kara had just spoken to him the night before, like I said. So she knew that something had to be wrong. And that day she reported Jelani missing to a group on campus that is responsible for taking reports from teachers who are concerned about their students.

But the thing is, though, they had a response time of up to 24 hours. So Kara called them at 5 p.m., and they told her that they had 24 hours to respond. So at that point, Kara enlisted the help of another director, and the two of them went directly to the police. Jelani's brother, DeAndre, was the first to get word of his disappearance when police showed up at his door.

And I can't imagine how confused and worried he must have been. He immediately calls Carmen to see if they had spoken that day. And because Carmen talked to him so often, she was confused and thought that they had spoken that morning. So she told DeAndre that she would give him a call and knew that he would pick up at least for her. I was getting my hair done and I was sitting in the chair and my phone rang and it was DeAndre and I answered it.

And he said, Mom, have you talked to Jelani today? And I said, yeah, I talked to him earlier. Why? He said, because the police are here and they said Jelani is missing. And I said, missing from where? DeAndre, let me call you back. And I hung up from DeAndre and I called Jelani. He didn't answer his phone and called him again. He didn't answer his phone. Then I text him and I said, Jelani, call me ASAP because normally I'm

If I call Jelani, he have his phone and do not disturb. You know, it goes to the voicemail like that. If I text him, he'll call me right back. And I'm sitting there. I didn't call me back.

But Jelani didn't answer any of her calls or any of her texts. And when she heard from Dakara that she wasn't sure when she had last spoken to him either, she decided to check her phone and see when the last time they spoke was. And this is when she realized that she hadn't spoke to him that morning. And the last time that they had spoke was Monday the 23rd. And Jelani kept me busy. I used to tell them all the time.

Oh, my God. Every day, one of y'all are doing something. But Jelani did something all the time. I don't care what it was. He needed something. He needed some money. He was missing something. He lost something. It was always something. Up until August 24th, he was still doing stuff. I just got on him that day, that Monday before the 24th.

And he was supposed to, I said, this year, Jelani, you are getting from under the umbrella. He was like, mom, I'm never leaving the umbrella. I'm not getting from a mom. I'll wait till I get a good job. And I was like, so Jelani, you got to pay your part. At Thanksgiving, we were going to Florida and I was making all of them pay their part because I wasn't going to pay their part. So that morning, me and Jelani on the phone, I'm like, Jelani, you got to pay your money. He's like, mom, okay, I'm going to pay it. Put the money in my account and then call me back when you pay it.

He called me back. He said, Mom, I paid $150. I said, Jelani, you owe $300. He was like, I'm going to pay it next week, Mom. I promise. Okay, JJ, pay it next week. Then he called me back again. Mom, what you doing? Jelani, I'm not doing nothing. I'm working. Then he wasn't saying nothing. Jelani, okay, I'm about to let you go. No, Mom, you ain't even doing nothing. Want me to tell you about this show I'm watching? I'm like, Jelani, no. He would just do all kinds of stuff.

And then if I'm at work and I hang up from him, he'll call me right back. And so I would push on there. I had an automatic message for him that says, Jelani, I will call you back. He didn't care. He just kept calling. He'd keep calling me until I answered. I'd be like, Jelani, what do you want? What are you doing now? Jelani, that's all you wanted.

So that's what, I called him my bill collector because I don't care where I was at. If I did not answer my phone, Jelani would call me and call me and call me. He didn't care. And then he'd text me and be like, okay. I said, Jelani, I'm in a meeting or I'm doing something. He'd be like, okay, I'm sorry. Just call me back. But that's what he did. He's the only one of them that did that. He called me and he said, mom, I just wanted to hear your voice. I was like, okay, JJ. And that was what he did that night when

I talked to him. I got off of work late that night. I got out of the shower and he called me. He wanted the password for the cable. I said, you're going to get you a job. I gave him the password. He said, okay, mom, I'm going to finish up my homework. I didn't want to. I just wanted to hear your voice. That was my last time talking to him.

It became clear in the next few hours that no one had heard from Jelani. And over a day, he wasn't at his apartment and no one knew where his car was either. And at first, it seemed like the police wanted to believe that Jelani ran away because nothing seemed to be missing from his apartment besides his car. And so they thought he left at his own accord. But Carmen pushed back right away. She could not have been more clear about

that under no circumstances would Jelani just leave without telling somebody first. Jelani wasn't going out of town without letting me know that they were going to. My kids, I would tell them all the time, you got to let somebody know where you're at. They did that. They all did that. Even in dinner, they didn't do it. And I found out within like one of their siblings, they talking to one of them, they talking to each other.

So then they'd call, Mama, did you know that Seve was here? Or did you know? I'm calling them. I'm like, okay, so when y'all was going to tell me you went there. So him just going somewhere and not letting anybody know, not even if he didn't tell me, he didn't tell them. He didn't tell his daddy. That wasn't, that's not how we operated. With everything he had going on, he would always tell me.

How he was going to be the first one to take care of me and to buy me a house and introduce me to people. And he was going to be rich and his brothers and his sisters, they're going to be bums and he was going to take care of them. He make all these jokes about what his life was going to be like versus, you know, him doing something before his siblings. None of that included him not being here. None of that. He had big dreams, big dreams.

Jelani was not the type of person to just get up and walk away from his life. And honestly, the fact that the police pushed that so hard at first was very harmful. I said this the first time I covered this case, and I'm going to say it again now. The role that race played in the investigation into Jelani's disappearance and his death is

just cannot be ignored. The way that the police just brushed off this family's concerns and suggested that it was all nothing to worry about was a huge contrast to the way they reacted to and the way the media reacted to Gabby Petito's disappearance. Gabby was also reported missing

at this time. And by no means am I saying that Gabby didn't deserve that intention. I just think Jelani should have gotten more. And this is the case with so many other missing people out there that just do not get that same attention. And it's really frustrating. And I know it was frustrating for the Day family. The lack of attention and urgency when it comes to Jelani's case is

huge reason why I'm still talking about it today. Carmen and her family have had to lead the way when it comes to getting answers from the start. For example, Carmen was doing the work that police should have done. She immediately was calling the credit union to see when he last used his credit card, which was at Starbucks, and she drove out to Bloomington herself to meet up with Kara to see what else she could find out. By the

by the time carmen got to isu kara already had someone from the i.t department pull information regarding tajilani's activity on campus that morning and this information in addition to the information police uncovered

would be critical. On August 24th at 7:20 a.m., Jelani was captured on surveillance footage at the Bone Student Center on ISU's campus. He was wearing a blue button-up collared shirt, black pants, a black belt, black dress shoes, and a blue mask. He's seen shortly after walking across campus, going to the medical center where he's seen briefly talking with someone, but then turning around and leaving not long after that.

Jelani is then seen sitting on a bench. He's on his phone. He's texting someone. And then about 10 minutes later, he gets up and then is seen driving off campus. Then the next confirmed sighting of Jelani was at 9.12 that same morning. And this time he is seen walking into the Beyond Hello dispensary on Veterans Parkway and General Electric Road in Bloomington. And this time he is seen in a completely different atmosphere.

outfit. He is now wearing a blue Detroit Lions baseball cap, a Jimi Hendrix band tee, light colored shorts, and black shoes with white soles. In the footage, you can see his 2010 white Chrysler 300 that had also been reported missing. And really at this point, that is all anyone knew for certain about what happened on the 24th. Because after Jelani leaves the dispensary at 9 21 a.m.,

his cell phone is shut off and he has never seen or heard from again it wasn't until two days later on august 26th that any other sort of clue would be discovered that day while driving into work at the ymca in lasalle county a teenager noticed a vehicle located in a wooded area that seemed extremely misplaced

And he'd actually seen it the day before. And when it was still there the next day, he decided to tell a coworker who actually reported the abandoned vehicle. And I'm sure it won't come as a shock to you that this vehicle belonged to Jelani. And even though this seemed like a huge,

huge lead, there was still so much that was unknown. I mean, most importantly, if his car was there, where was he? And why were his license plates missing? Yes, you heard that right. His license plates were missing and they still have not been found to this day. Another big question was, why was his car in Peru? Carmen had never even heard of Peru and

Peru, Illinois is an hour north of Bloomington and is known as a sundown town, meaning it's an all-white area where, according to Carmen, Jelani would not have gone on his own accord, let alone abandon his car in such a weird way and remove the plates. Now, something I didn't know when I covered this case before was the fact that police didn't even tell Carmen that the car had been found. That day, she'd even spoken to Detective Paul Jones, who

who had asked her if Jelani had ever been to Peru or knew anyone there, but gave her no context as to why he was asking. And it turns out he was asking because his car was found there, but he didn't tell Carmen that. She actually found out when Kara sent her a text with a link to a news article that reported on the car being found.

And it was only after she already had hopped in the car and started driving to Peru that police called her to let her know. And when she came to my office and we were talking, she explained to me that a year after all of this happened, she got a call asking if she wanted Jelani's car back. Well, when she went to go see the car herself and pick it up, it became incredibly clear that the car had not been properly processed at all.

There were still items inside the car that hadn't been touched, items that could have had someone's DNA on them. And they were just left exactly as they were when the car was first found. And this really makes it seem like police had their own theory about what happened to Jelani and didn't look for evidence to prove otherwise. Now, another big thing that she shared with me was...

was that she was allowed to see footage of Jelani leaving the dispensary, which has never been released to the public. And she told me that in the back of the car, she could see a shadow that she thinks is a person. Now, the police have said this is just a shadow, but Carmen disagrees. And if you want to hear more about the car from them, I highly recommend listening to the Mile Higher episode as well that we did with Seve and Carmen, because they were able to go into much more detail.

So the public announcement of the car's discovery came from John Furman with the Bloomington Police Department, who led a press conference on Friday the 27th. And in that same press conference, he also asked if there was anyone in the Peru area between the 24th and 26th

who had seen anything worth reporting. Now, something did come from this, but it was incredibly misleading and poorly handled. On August 25th, a house with security cameras captured footage of a black male knocking on their front door and walking away after nobody answered. And you'd think this would be information they'd want to share immediately with the public because if it was Jelani, it would be major evidence. But the police didn't make this public for 30 days. 30 days were every minute counts.

counts

Yet the police were just holding onto it. Now, Carmen says she was asked on the 27th to look at the footage and confirmed it wasn't Jelani, but I still don't understand why they didn't release it because it could have been someone who knew something. And Carmen says they even had tips about possible white suspects, but they only released that specific piece of evidence. And looking back, she said that she wished she had been more demanding with them from the beginning. For them,

They would have loved for this to be. She can accept whatever we give her so we can close these books and she can go away. He's just another dead person, black boy. We don't know what happened. We don't got to work to find out what happened to him. He's gone now. What are we going to do? Do you think it would be different if he was white? I do. I absolutely do, Kendall. I do. I think that

There wasn't been a lot of hesitation on looking for him versus trying to find out what type of person he was. I think that there wouldn't have been a lot of, they probably would have had more urgency. You know, Jelani had too many things that they questioned. His car was nice. He lived in a nice apartment where they wanted to bring up how much his rent was. None of that had anything to do with him.

What did they expect that I was supposed to, he was just supposed to be somebody, quote unquote, some little ghetto boy that came from nothing. And he was just going to school because I read somewhere a person wrote about, wrote about me. He just tried to get away from his mom. He was tired of trying to pull them up out the ghetto, you know, which is so far from the truth. Jelani didn't know nothing about a ghetto. He didn't grow up in the ghetto. He grew up in a two parent home in a house.

in a nice neighborhood where his mom and dad was very active in his life, where he's surrounded by family, grandmother, grandfather, aunts, uncles, cousins. We were never rich, but we made things work for us. His dad worked. I worked. We wanted our kids to have better. So we strived that for them. We instilled that in them. But according to the police,

How they looked at it, he was just, to them, he was nobody. That's how they come across to me. I mean, the frustration turns into anger. And then you really got to watch, you know, carry out or do certain things because then they're going to try to pinpoint you or say, oh, you're being another angry black person. Or we're not going to talk to you because you're not being cooperative with us or X, Y, Z. The police, to me, have been very neglectful.

like a daisical, not professional at all. She told me she didn't want to be portrayed as the angry black woman. So she sat back and trusted that the police were doing their jobs. But now looking back, it's incredibly clear that they never had any urgency when it came to finding Jelani. That same Friday when Carmen talked to Detective Paul Jones, he told her that he was

going home for the weekend and would let her know if he heard anything. Her son is missing and his car was just found in a very strange area and he's just going home for the weekend and knowing that she wasn't going to get the help that she needed and deserved,

She decided to take action herself. That same Friday, she posted on Facebook asking for people to help her in a search effort, and people really came together. Friends and family from all over showed up the following day to help their family look for Jelani and was the first of many search efforts. Now, none of these search efforts, I should mention, were they ever given police assistance or presence. And that says a whole lot, if you ask me. Now, jumping forward a little bit, I want to talk about Jelani's work.

wallet. When Jelani's car was found, many items were not found, including his phone, his wallet, and his ID. Well, his wallet ended up actually being found a few days later in someone's yard about a half a mile away. And this has been a really...

difficult point because there has been a lot of conflicting reporting on the wallet. And even Carmen told me that she has been told multiple things by the police when it comes to the wallet. In one version of events, she was told a man saw a black male throw the wallet into the yard and that's how it was found. And in another version of events, she was told that a kid and his father had lost their drone and they found the wallet when looking for it.

And it's this type of conflicting information that there's still no clarification on that makes this case so difficult. So they really turned to the public to ask for help, to try and make sense of any of it. Posters were hung across ISU's campus and the surrounding area, and people were encouraged to come forward with any information. A Facebook page was also started to post about Jelani's disappearance and information regarding the case, and search efforts were shared that way.

A GoFundMe was also started, which I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, and that was created to help with the cost of hiring a private investigator, and a $25,000 reward for information was posted as well. At this time, Carmen strongly felt that Jelani was still alive. She knew that her son was tough, and if someone had tried to hurt him, he would have defended himself, but without knowing where he was...

All she could do was pray and try to rally the community for help. On September 3rd, Carmen attended an event coordinated by the Multicultural Center at ISU where more than 100 people gathered. She had her other children by her side and shed light on the beautiful, kind, incredible human Jelani was. And not only that, but she took time to address any rumors that Jelani was depressed or purposely left. From the beginning until now, Carmen has been Jelani's bestie.

biggest advocate. And I know she had so much hope that he would be found alive. But unfortunately, as many of you know, Jelani was not found alive. On September 4th, an unidentified body was found near the south bank of the Illinois River, approximately a quarter of a mile east of the Illinois Route 251 bridge. And because of the summer heat and the high temperatures of the water,

The body was badly decomposed, so bad, in fact, that Carmen says she couldn't believe it was her son and wouldn't believe it until DNA testing was performed. The day that they found that body, I didn't associate that body as being my son because when they found that body, they couldn't tell me that that was my son. We sat in that room with them.

All he wanted to tell me was there was a badly decomposed body. They couldn't identify him by the fingerprints because the fish and turtle activity on the skin, they couldn't do it with the fingerprints. So they were going to have to do it with dental and asked me if I could help them obtain dental records to identify him. They also told me that they were going to come and take...

DNA from me and his dad and one of his siblings so that they can use that to identify the body. I didn't feel any kind of way because I was hopeful that it wasn't him. Another thing they learned about the body was that some of the front teeth were missing. What's confusing about this, though, is they were told that the teeth had fallen out due

due to the body being in the water for so long. She wonders though if maybe his teeth were knocked out because if they had fallen out due to the water, why wouldn't they have all fallen out? I'm certainly not an expert on decomposition, so maybe there are some of you out there who are and have some thoughts on this, but I also wanted to mention that Jelani had extremely healthy teeth. With this body being found, there was so much that their family wanted to know and

And it would be three weeks until they would get some answers. Not all of the answers, but some answers. But in that time, their family and their supporters continued their own search efforts. Because of course, in the event that the body didn't belong to Jelani, they didn't want all that time to be wasted. And there was one major discovery. And then on September 22nd, Carmen received a call that Jelani's clothing was found. His shorts, socks, and shoes were uncovered on the north bank of the

Now, this is another part of this case that has been confusing because it's been reported in different ways. Many reports online claim the police found the clothing inside Jelani's car. But according to Carmen, the clothes were found by two girls who were just interested in the case and decided to go out and do some investigating of their own. They were told an unidentified body had been found and then walked the opposite direction to an area that had yet to be searched. And this is when they claimed to have found the pair of shorts

shoes, and socks. And it's just so hard to put everything together and make sense of it when there is so much conflicting information out there. And that only continues when it comes to the identification of

of his body. Based on what she had been told, Carmen was under the impression that identifying the body was going to take a long time. She had submitted Jelani's dental records, given DNA swabs, and in the course of those three weeks, she was told by the coroner, Richard Plok, that the lab didn't have the chemical to process the DNA and the dental records wouldn't be able to be used.

Now, this is confusing to me, and it was definitely confusing to her. She called, and all she was trying to do was ask some basic questions about what was being done to identify the body. All she wanted to do was understand. But rather than politely walking her through the process with empathy, he was extremely disrespectful to her. Whether or not this body was her son's,

This is a woman who has been through hell recently. Her son is missing and possibly dead. And the nerve of this guy to speak to her with disrespect...

While she was asking him questions, he stopped her and said that she was making him angry and asked her if she wanted to know if this was her son or not. Of course she wanted to know. That's why she was asking him questions about the process. It's just unbelievable to me that anyone, anyone,

Anyone, especially someone in that position, would talk to a woman whose son is presumably dead like this. And it's interesting because despite making it sound like he wasn't close to making the identification, the following day, September 23rd, the body was identified as belonging to Jelani through his dental records. Carmen, as you can imagine, says she had an extremely hard time identifying.

actually processing that this was her son. And Seve felt the same way. He couldn't believe it was actually his brother. He had a lot of questions over how they came to this conclusion. And their family was told that they shouldn't view his body, that it would be too traumatic.

And Carmen decided not to, although this is something she has really wrestled with to this day. Seve made the very difficult decision to view his body so he could actually see that it was him. They were trying to describe it to us, but didn't want to describe it to us because of how the body was and the decomposition of it. Yeah. So during the time...

we all was not believing that that body was jelani's me personally i mean i feel like all of us didn't want that department to be the corner to look over the body or we was all skeptical about okay why do you need the mom dad and brother

to get the DNA. Usually it's just the two parents. We were all skeptical of them trying to say, "Okay, well, we're going to plant this. Let's take it to somebody so we can just get over it." We had a lot of different talks and thoughts about all of that. And each time we spoke about it, they would try to convince us not to look at it. And of course, nobody wants to see your loved one, brother, nobody like that at all. I just took it upon myself. I felt like I needed to, so I could.

see exactly what they were trying to describe to me so I could see if that at all was anything to tell me like, no, that's not him. Or...

Confirm it to me. So another area I want to clarify has to do with the autopsies. The first autopsy was performed by Scott Denton on September 5th, the day after the body was found in the river. And keep in mind that the autopsy was to determine the cause and manner of death, which is different from what Richard Plock was doing to identify the body. In his autopsy report, Scott reported that there was no evidence of pre-death injury or assault, altercation, sharp,

blunt or gunshot injury according to his findings which were submitted to the lasalle county coroner on october 25th jelani's cause of death was drowning but the manner of death could not be determined but besides the fact that his body was found in water there really is no actual indication that jelani drowned and of course this report only fed into investigators belief that jelani killed himself

which again is such a problematic view to take. Please, someone explain to me why Jelani would drive an hour north, go throw his wallet into some random person's yard, park his car in a wooded area, and then walk several miles to the river and drown himself. And let's not forget that Jelani was an avid swimmer. He had so many plans for his future.

I mean, he was doing so well in school and he had a bright future ahead of him. He was going to help people. He was going to help his father by donating bone marrow. I mean, it just makes no sense. Angelani's siblings felt the same way.

In fact, after his body was first identified in late September, they convinced Carmen that a second autopsy needed to be done, and she agreed. Carmen hired an independent pathologist named James Bryant to perform the autopsy, and his results were

are very shocking. He says that the body was so badly decomposed that it would be impossible to tell that it was Jelani and impossible to determine the cause of death. And he actually said he wouldn't have even been able to tell the gender of this person because the genitals had been flayed. And he...

he didn't know how the other coroner came to his conclusion. So after this second autopsy, they still weren't convinced that the body was even Jelani's. So that's when they did a third autopsy. And this time it was performed by pathologist Sergio Serratella. And he ended up having to grow a piece of Jelani's skin that he had recovered and at that point was able to make the final determination that it was in fact him. And obviously getting that final determination was

was hard for their family, but at least at this point they could be confident that it was Jelani. A commemoration of life ceremony was held for Jelani on October 9th, while everything else was going on where family, friends, and members of the community gathered in Jelani's honor. The four-hour service was truly a celebration of Jelani's life and a reminder of the impact they made on so many people's lives.

But this service wasn't the end for them and their efforts to get justice. By the end of October, investigators were saying there was nothing new.

And until they did have something new, there was nothing else they could do. And that's when the Justice for Jelani Day marches began and his supporters took to the street to demand that something be done to look into his death. Reverend Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Push Coalition even got involved and have been major supporters of this movement. There was so much unknown information and the fact that investigators were just waiting for new information rather than looking for it themselves was extraordinary.

was extremely disheartening. But in November, there was a major discovery. Jelani's iPhone was found by a man who was driving on Interstate 55 North and

And he pulled over to secure the mattress that he had on his car. And that's when he noticed a phone lying in the grass next to the interstate. The phone was cracked. And of course, he didn't know that it was part of a criminal investigation. So he actually brought it to Walmart where he sold it in one of those phone ATM machines for 80 bucks. And the phone ended up traveling all the way to California before it was discovered to be Jelani's.

And the Illinois police were contacted and it was then mailed back to them. And honestly, this is some crazy luck because if this didn't happen sooner,

It's possible the phone would still be missing today. And remember how Carmen found out about Jelani's car through the news, through that link that Kara sent her? Well, pretty much the same thing happened with the phone. This time, she actually found out from a Facebook post made by someone who worked with a guy that found the phone in the first place. This was a major discovery. And once again, the family doesn't find out from police,

This time they find out from Facebook. As for the phone itself, it was first turned into the FBI for analysis, but Apple's new software encryption made it impossible for them to get access to his data without the passcode. And you would think that these professionals would do everything possible to try and figure out this passcode.

But surprise, they didn't. And Carmen was the one who figured out how to unlock his phone. In May of this year, Carmen realized that that footage, that surveillance footage of Jelani texting on his phone actually showed him typing in his passcode. She tells investigators and tells them that they should enhance this footage and try to figure out what he's typing in. And it took them 11 days to do it.

And once the phone was opened, it seemed like they once again had very little urgency. Only one person was assigned to go through it. And Carmen has been told that no information of value has been found. But they feel that only someone who knew Jelani could determine what is of value and what's not. Someone who knows Jelani well and can kind of read between the lines. But

they won't let her. Even though she was the one who helped them figure out the passcode, they won't let her have access to the phone. Now, if you look up information about Jelani's phone being found online, you'll see that there's some information about a Freedom of Information Act request. Through this request, some heavily redacted emails have been released that include information about Jelani's phone records. What's confusing, likely because it's heavily redacted, is that some of the emails talk about phone numbers of

interest while others say nothing crazy was found. And this conflicting information is just part of the pattern we continue to see. There's wrong information. There's conflicting information. There's so much that investigators aren't sharing that the family deserves to know. They say that this is an open and active investigation and so they can't share information. Yet Carmen has been the one to get them

everything they need to do their investigation. Why not at least clue her in on what is being done to give her some peace of mind? She has been gaslit. She has been cussed out. She's been treated terribly by multiple people along the way, and all she's ever wanted is the truth. And this is devastating news to share, and I'm sure many of you have not heard this before.

But Seve Sr. passed away at just 51 years old on April 8th, 2022. As if this family hasn't been through enough. He died without ever getting answers about what happened to his son. But they're not giving up. They're continuing to fight. And I don't think they should have to fight alone.

And they've already gathered an incredible community of people that stand behind them. And I hope that my community will join in and continue to support this family. I'm asking that they support us in those, whether it's making phone calls or whether it's showing up to rallies, whether it's showing up to a march. We also have formed the Jelani Day Foundation, which is a foundation that will provide resources to

to families of missing people of color because we don't get the same resources that non-people of color get. We don't get the same help. I didn't get the media coverage

until I had to get out of there and start speaking about the disparity that was faced. There are many ways you can support this family, all of which will be listed in the description box. At the very least, if you would just leave a supportive comment or head over to their social media, which will all be linked below and send them that love and support there as well. And like you just heard Carmen say, the Jelani Day Foundation was created to provide vital resources to help families of color who do not receive the same treatment and resources that non-people of color do.

They want to bridge the gap between these extreme disparities and how missing persons cases are treated. And there are many ways that you can help support this foundation and the family overall. Like I mentioned, we have created two Justice for Jelani Day t-shirts that can be purchased, both a short sleeve and a long sleeve. And 100% of the profit from that collection will go directly toward the foundation. If you would like to make a donation but not purchase a t-shirt, you can go directly to the GoFundMe, which will be listed below with all the other links I'm going to be talking about today.

There's a petition you can sign, which please, at the very least, sign this petition. It's so easy to do. It takes seconds. There will also be a list of government and law enforcement officials that you can contact to demand action from, as well as a sample script of what to say in the description box. Also, Carmen is hosting the second annual All-White Remembrance Dinner in Jelani's

honor. However, this event was recently postponed. It was originally scheduled for August 26th. However, now it will be held on February 3rd, 2024 on National Missing Persons Day. The event will be held at the Bone Student Center on ISU's campus. Tickets are $50 for adults, $25 for students. And this is going to be another really special event in Jelani's honor. And I know it would mean the world to them if you are able to be there. I really wish that there was more to share with you guys. I hope that one day there will be.

And I want to thank Carmen and Seve for coming all the way out to Colorado to record with me. I want to thank their whole family for helping me put all this together. I think you guys are an amazing family. You're incredibly strong. Your closeness is so admirable to me. I just love the way that your family supports each other and have all rallied together during such a horrific time in your lives.

Your strength has been really inspiring to me. And I truly mean that. I truly hope that one day in the near future,

your family will get the answers you deserve and that there will be justice for Jelani Day. I want to thank all of you who have followed my coverage on Jelani Day, who have listened to this family's story. Even if you've listened multiple times, it's truly appreciated. And for all of you out there who have already taken an action or plan to to help this family, thank you for being an active true crime consumer.

That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode and make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple podcasts. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then stay safe out there.