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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales. You know the stories, but have you ever stopped to ask yourself, why? Why would someone holster a semi-automatic rifle to begin a heartless shooting rampage? Why do serial killers methodically single out their next helpless victim? Why are thousands of innocent lives taken instantly?
So far this year, over 300 mass shootings have occurred in the United States. Some experts believe over 2,000 serial killers are operating in the U.S. today. Unfortunately, these events happen so frequently that we've become numb. Behind every massacre, there lies a reason.
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Anatomy of a Massacre is a true crime podcast investigating the most notorious massacres in human history. From serial killers to mass shooters to genocides, there lies a new horrid reason to expose in each episode. Join your host, Courtney Fretwell, a forensic psychologist, as she dives deep into the psychology, criminal theories, and policy implications behind each tragedy.
New episodes of Anatomy of a Massacre are available right now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your favorite shows. You know what happened? Now, let's uncover why. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. On April 15th, 2022, Kim woke up with an eerie feeling.
Her 38-year-old son, Johnny Cashman Jr., hadn't returned any of her messages. But she lived over 800 miles away, so she decided to call the Virginia police to do a welfare check. But what they found wasn't good. The police told Johnny's mom that he was found dead inside of his apartment from an apparent medical condition. Days later, Johnny's ex-girlfriend entered his apartment and made a gruesome discovery.
The apartment walls and floor were covered in blood. The place didn't look anything like the police described. And what they said happened to Johnny Cashman Jr. didn't seem to add up. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 148. The mysterious death of Johnny Cashman Jr. ♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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To support Forensic Tales, please visit patreon.com slash Forensic Tales or simply click the link in the show notes. You can also support the show by leaving a positive rating with a review. Now let's get to this week's episode. On April 14th, 2022, 38-year-old Johnny Cashman Jr. spoke with his mom Kim over the phone.
Johnny lived in Lynchburg, Virginia, a Virginia city east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and his mom, dad, and sister lived several hundred miles away in Maine, the northern eastmost U.S. state in the country. So to stay in touch, Johnny and his mother talked daily via text or phone calls. After Kim hung up the phone with her son Johnny, the two of them went on with their days, Kim in Maine and Johnny in Lynchburg.
The following day, April 15th, Kim sent Johnny a text message to see how his day was going. She got no response. She sent several more messages throughout the day, but they were all left unanswered. She thought it was strange that her son wasn't responding, but maybe he was just busy and reply the next day. Kim woke up the following day, April 16th, and sent another text message. She even tried calling him. Still no response.
Kim thought something might be wrong by the second full day of not hearing from her son. It was unusual for them not to communicate at least once a day, either by phone or texting, and it had been almost two full days without hearing from him. It wasn't only because Johnny wasn't answering his phone that worried Kim. She also knew that Johnny suffered from depression and addiction.
So when Kim didn't hear back from him, she assumed he might have fallen into an extreme bout of depression or his alcohol addiction was getting the best of him. But neither scenario seemed to make sense. She had just talked to him a little over two days earlier, and he appeared to be in good spirits. Nothing about their last phone call suggested that Johnny was upset about anything or using drugs or alcohol. Their last phone call was perfectly normal.
By April 19th, Johnny's parents and sister in Maine were incredibly worried. It had been five days and no one had heard back from him. So they decided to call the police in Lynchburg, Virginia. Since they were hundreds of miles away in Maine, this was their best hope.
They called the local police in Virginia and asked them if they could send over a few police officers to go check on him. They wanted to make sure everything was okay because this was entirely out of character for him. At 6.42 a.m. on April 19th, a couple of Lynchburg, Virginia police officers arrived at Johnny's apartment on Kemper Street to perform a welfare check.
A welfare check, sometimes called a wellness check, is when police stop by a person's house to make sure everything's okay. Usually, these types of requests are made by the missing person's family or friends, and they're usually done after the person has unexpectedly stopped answering their phone or getting in touch with others. Sometimes getting a police department to perform a welfare or wellness check can be tricky.
If the person is an adult, sometimes the police will brush it off. They'll tell the family to wait a few more days and the person will likely show back up on their own. But in this case, the Cashman family had already waited several days. It had been five days since anyone had heard from Johnny. And based on his history of both depression and addiction, they feared the worst.
and they needed the police to check on him and ensure everything was okay because they were too far to go to the apartment themselves. When the police officers got to the apartment, they tried knocking on Johnny's front door, but they didn't get a response. This wasn't entirely unusual because it was a little before 7 o'clock in the morning, so they thought Johnny might still be sleeping and he just simply didn't hear the door knock.
One minute later, at 6.43 a.m., the officers knocked again. Still no response. At 8.01 a.m., the police returned to the building, and this time they entered the apartment. Inside, they found Johnny Cashman. He was lying on his back on the middle of the floor, and he had been dead for several days.
The Lynchburg Police Department notified the family about Johnny's death later that morning. According to the police, they found Johnny lying on his back in the middle of the floor. They said there was some puddles of blood around his body. But based on the scene, they didn't suspect foul play.
They told the family that they thought Johnny had suffered from, quote, an apparent medical condition. But they didn't specify exactly what condition that was. They also confidently told the family this wasn't a murder. The news about Johnny's sudden death shocked his parents and sister.
Their first thought was that maybe this was a suicide. If foul play wasn't involved, like the police said, maybe it was suicide. They knew Johnny had struggled with depression and alcohol addiction on and off for years, and suicide could explain why they couldn't get in touch with him for the last five days. So the family asked the Lynchburg police if they thought Johnny had killed himself, but the police said no.
They said Johnny didn't commit suicide either. According to the investigators, it was a natural death, not a suicide, and not a homicide. And based on the way they found his body, slumped over the floor, it appeared like the death happened, in their words, instantaneously. Detectives assured the family that he likely didn't suffer.
The police removed Johnny's body from the apartment, and the family asked if an autopsy was going to be performed to determine exactly what had happened. They were only told that his death was a natural death caused by a medical condition. So they wondered if an autopsy could help figure out how a seemingly healthy 38-year-old guy suddenly died inside of his apartment. But the police said no, there wasn't any need for an autopsy.
Two hours after Johnny's body was discovered, the Virginia medical examiner released his exam notice at 10.16 a.m. And on the notice, they reported that they were declining to perform an autopsy.
In the report, the medical examiner didn't note any injuries or marks found on Johnny's body. And besides a few cigarettes, the police didn't find any drugs, alcohol, or weapons inside of the small apartment. The medical examiner wrote this about the facts of the case. Quote, "...found obviously deceased at home by LEO upon welfare check."
The report noted that, quote,
Unfortunately, precisely what that medical condition was isn't listed on the medical examiner's release. However, based on the report, the medical examiner suggested that his death could also be a heart attack or a stroke.
Once the Lynchburg police got this medical report from the state's medical examiner's office, they considered the case closed. Johnny had died from some type of medical incident, and if it's a medical or a natural death, then an autopsy isn't necessary. Johnny's family asked the Lynchburg police if they could pay for an independent autopsy.
But once again, the police said no. They were confident enough in their decision that they considered his case closed and that there was no need for the family to pay for an independent autopsy. A search warrant for Johnny's Kemper Street apartment was issued at 10.39 a.m. Lynchburg police officers searched Johnny's entire studio apartment but didn't report finding anything significant or suspicious.
According to the signed search warrant, all the police collected for evidence was a white iPhone with red bloodstains and a quote, six swabs of evidence. Other than that, nothing from inside Johnny's apartment was either collected or tested.
Johnny's family believed the police word that his death was medical and they began making arrangements to have his body cremated so that his remains could be flown back to Maine. Hundreds of miles away, they made all the arrangements from afar. And because they were so far away, they never got a chance to see Johnny before his body was cremated.
They had every reason to believe that the police did a complete and thorough job investigating. No one in Johnny's life, friends or family, went to the apartment until several days later. His ex-girlfriend, Johnny's ex-girlfriend, was the first person to see Johnny's apartment besides the police.
On April 29th, 10 days after Johnny was found dead, his ex-girlfriend and her mom went to the apartment to pick up some items. After she found out about Johnny's death, she contacted the police to be allowed to go there to pick up some of the stuff she had there. But when her and her mom got to the apartment, they weren't prepared for what they were about to see.
The small studio apartment looked nothing like the police described. The first thing they saw when they opened the front door was a massive amount of blood. Blood was everywhere throughout the tiny apartment. There was blood smeared across the windows, furniture, and even the walls. Besides pools of blood, there were also smears of blood and bloody fingerprints on the window and door handles.
Inside the bathroom, they found another large pool of blood and bloody footprints and fingerprints smeared across the walls. The police told Johnny's ex-girlfriend the same story they told his family that he suffered from a medical condition. But according to the ex-girlfriend, the apartment looked nothing like that. According to her, it looked like murder could have happened there.
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Before Johnny's ex-girlfriend and her mom left the apartment, they took photos of the place with a cell phone. They wanted to document everything they saw because of how different the place looked from how the police described it. They couldn't wrap their heads around how a medical condition could cause so much blood.
Now, all of these photos that she took that day are available on the internet. And let me warn you, they are shocking and very disturbing. It's not too often that I direct you to go online and look up photos from a case. But this is one that you need to see for yourself.
So when I first heard about this story and I saw the images for myself, I knew that I needed to cover this case on the show. The photos depict an apartment covered in blood, especially in the bathroom. Now, as you look at the photos, remember what the police and the medical examiner said about what happened to Johnny.
They believed this was a medical condition. According to them, Johnny likely died from a GI bleed. Keep that in mind as you look at the photos. But again, before you do that, these images are very alarming. They're very disturbing. So please view them at your own discretion.
As Johnny's ex-girlfriend and mom walked out of the apartment, they ran into one of Johnny's neighbors. He lived in an apartment directly across the hall from Johnny. He told them that he had a security camera installed at his front door and that the camera also pointed towards Johnny's front door. So the camera captured anyone coming and going from Johnny's apartment.
The neighbor told the ex-girlfriend that the police came over when they saw the camera and asked for all the footage on April 19th. So he turned over all the audio and video recordings from April 14th when Johnny was believed to have died and on the last day that he spoke to his family.
But the neighbor told the girlfriend that he found something suspicious on the tapes and thought that she should take a look at it for herself. What she saw in the video was bone chilling.
At 3.03 p.m. on April 14th, the security camera captured Johnny walking by himself up the steps towards his apartment. He seemed completely normal and completely healthy. There was no sign that he was about to experience any type of life-ending medical emergency.
Less than one minute later, the security camera captured something else, but it wasn't anything visual. The camera heard something. In the video, a man can be heard shouting, "'Dude, what the F?' A few seconds later, "'What are you doing, man?' "'Yo, what the F, dude?' After that, the camera picked up several loud banging noises coming from inside Johnny's apartment."
At the same time, banging noises are heard. A man screams, stop, over and over again. Stop, stop, stop. Then the same man can be heard saying, help, help me.
At 3.11 p.m., only eight minutes after Johnny walked in, the camera captured a man wearing a black leather jacket leaving Johnny's apartment. But the man wearing the leather jacket wasn't Johnny. It was someone else. According to the neighbor, the man seen leaving the apartment at 3.11 p.m. was a man who had been staying with Johnny for the last few days.
On the security camera, the man is seen walking out of Johnny's apartment and closing the door behind him. He walked down the flight of stairs almost to the bottom, but then he suddenly turned around and went back upstairs towards Johnny's apartment. Once he got to the front door, he pulled his shirt sleeve down to cover his hand.
Because his back is turned to the camera, it's difficult to see exactly what he did next. It either looks like he tried to get back inside the apartment, but he didn't know the lock code, or he used his shirt sleeve to wipe the door handle clean. After that, the same man turned around and went down the stairs again to leave the building.
Seconds later, the loud bang of the building's outer door can be heard as if to capture him leaving. For the next few minutes, it's dead silent on the security tape. Then at 3.12 p.m., Johnny is heard screaming for help inside his apartment. And then, then the video went silent for the rest of the day.
Johnny is never seen leaving the apartment and no one else entered the apartment until the police arrived five days later. After watching and listening to the chilling video, Johnny's ex-girlfriend immediately contacted the Lynchburg Police Department. She wondered why the police weren't investigating Johnny's death as a possible murder since the neighbor said he turned the video over to them.
But when she tried getting in touch with anyone from the police department, she was turned away. She was never allowed to speak with any of the detectives who worked on the case. After failing to get in touch with the Lynchburg Police Department, she then contacted Johnny's sister Sarah in Maine. She told her about the neighbor's security camera, and she said that she needed to watch the video herself.
As soon as she watched it, she picked up the phone and called the investigators in Virginia. But each time she called, the police ignored her. After calling and leaving messages for days, Sarah finally got in touch with someone at the department. And when she got him on the phone, their story about how Johnny died seemed to change slightly.
Initially, the police told Johnny's family that he didn't suffer. According to them, his medical condition happened almost instantaneously and that he likely didn't feel any pain. But now the investigators said he must have suffered a medical emergency and that it may have lasted for several minutes. Sarah asked the investigator to explain the large amount of blood found inside the apartment.
How could they explain all the blood if this was a natural death? According to the investigator that she spoke with, Johnny was, quote, vomiting blood everywhere and uncontrollably, end quote. After this conversation with the police, Sarah decided to dig into her brother's medical records.
She wanted to see if she could find anything to suggest that he had a condition that would cause him to vomit so much blood. But what she uncovered led to more questions than answers about his death. Johnny's medical records show that on December 29, 2021, about five months before his death, he went to see his primary care doctor for a full physical checkup.
The checkup even included a complete abdominal examination. Everything from the checkup came back normal. They didn't report any GI or vomiting concerns. The only concerns through his medical records show that he was diagnosed with anxiety, bipolar disorder, and hypertension.
Johnny went back to the doctor again one month later in January. And just like with his visit in December, there was no mention of any GI-related disorders. Everything about his doctor visits were relatively normal. Now, it's unclear why Johnny visited the doctor twice in two months, once in December 2021 and then again in January 2022.
But based on his history of mental health issues as well as substance abuse issues, his family argues that Johnny regularly saw a doctor. His reason behind the visits aren't clear, but what the doctor noted in his report is clear. Both times Johnny went to the doctor, just months before he died, they didn't report any significant medical issues.
On May 2, 2022, two weeks after Johnny's death, the Lynchburg Police Department released a public statement. In their statement, they asked for the public's help in identifying the man wearing the black leather jacket seen leaving Johnny's apartment that day. But they were careful not to call the person a suspect. Instead, they referred to him as a witness.
In the press release, the police said, quote, he is a witness seen leaving an apartment just before another man's death from an apparent medical condition, end quote. However, the police stuck to their claim that they still considered his death natural. Nine days after the press release, the police got their answer.
On May 11th, the Lynchburg Police Department identified the man as Stephen Church from Elizabethton, Tennessee. According to the police, Johnny had let Stephen Church stay at his apartment for a few days before his death, but it's unclear how or when Johnny met Stephen Church or why he allowed him to stay in his apartment for a few days.
One month after this announcement, the police made another one. In June 2022, Lynchburg police said they tracked down and spoke with Stephen Church in Nashville, Tennessee on May 28th. But according to the department, they received a full statement from Stephen, including a statement that, quote, "...outlined the events leading up to Johnny's death," end quote.
Following his statement to the police, no arrests were made. And according to the police, Stephen Church has been found to have nothing to do with Johnny's death and has been fully cooperative with detectives. On June 7, 2022, the Lynchburg Police Department announced that their investigation into Johnny Cashman Jr.'s death is ongoing.
Although they still believe his death resulted from a medical emergency, they continue to consider other possible evidence. The FBI office in Richmond, Virginia, has also confirmed that they are assisting with the investigation. Johnny's family continues to seek answers, and many of those answers could have been provided by forensic evidence if the police had collected it.
If the Lynchburg medical examiner had ordered an autopsy, a different cause of death could have been identified. On the initial medical examiner's release, they didn't find any injuries to Johnny's body. But not all injuries are visible to the naked eye. So an autopsy could have revealed injuries not initially seen by the first responding officers.
An autopsy could have also revealed the specific medical condition that killed him. If his death was in fact natural, an autopsy would prove that and could identify exactly what happened to him and how he vomited blood like the police had said. But unfortunately, the Virginia police haven't released the exact condition even to this day.
Without an autopsy, it's difficult to say what it could have been. A complete review of Johnny's medical records found no history of severe vomiting or gastrointestinal issues. You would think that if Johnny experienced some type of deadly GI condition, it would have been identified at at least one of his recent doctor visits.
He was seen by two different doctors once in December of 2021 and the second time in January 2022, just months before he died. And neither one of his doctors found anything abnormal. Both doctors gave Johnny a clean bill of health. Unfortunately, an autopsy at this point is impossible.
Initially, Johnny's family believed the Lynchburg Police Department's word. They had no reason to suspect that they didn't conduct a full investigation into his death. So before they could decide to pursue an independent autopsy, Johnny was cremated, making the idea of an autopsy impossible.
Today, Johnny's cremated remains are with his family hundreds of miles away from Virginia in Maine. If the family wants to know what medical condition Johnny suffered from, the answers won't come from an autopsy.
Other possible forensic evidence might have been missed inside Johnny's apartment. For example, the photos captured by his ex-girlfriend paint a much different scene than the one they described to his family. The photos reveal that blood was everywhere in the apartment, especially in the bathroom. But it's not just the amount of blood that's concerning. It's the fingerprints and shoe prints found in the pools of blood.
and it's also the smears of blood, like someone was swiping their hands or fingers through it. If the scene had been tested more closely, valuable forensic evidence in the blood could have been found. For example, they could have determined if someone other than Johnny left the fingerprints and shoe prints in the blood.
If they discovered that someone else left evidence in the blood, this could suggest that someone was present when Johnny was losing the blood. But instead, the Lynchburg police only took a total of six swabs from the blood. Six swabs are virtually nothing for an apartment almost entirely covered in blood.
The only item the police took from inside the apartment was a bloody iPhone that belonged to Johnny. Besides that, they didn't take or test anything from the apartment. No fingerprints, no DNA testing, no trace evidence, nothing.
Besides the bloody apartment, the most disturbing part of this case is the video. You might not be able to see the moment that Johnny died, but you can certainly hear it. Like the photos, I recommend you put in a quick Google search of the front door camera footage. The video is incredibly disturbing, but it's a very crucial part of this entire story.
The video captured audio moments of Johnny's death, and it also captured the person seen leaving the apartment, who we now know is Stephen Church. Please watch the video and check the photos taken from inside the apartment. Viewer discretion, but once you do, you can come up with your own conclusions about what might have happened to Johnny Cashman Jr.
Johnny Cashman's story is one of the most recent cases that we've covered on the show. So if there are any updates to this case, I will absolutely bring them to you in a future episode. Unfortunately, Johnny's case hasn't received much media attention.
It wasn't until ABC 13 News picked the story up that people began talking about it. But there are still so many people who haven't heard his story. I am hopeful that additional questions surrounding Johnny's sudden death will be answered in the near future. And I'm optimistic that his family will get the answers they desperately deserve.
Every crime scene leaves behind forensic evidence, so maybe it's not too late for valuable forensic evidence to help identify the true cause of Johnny Cashman Jr.'s death. Anyone with information about Johnny Cashman Jr.'s suspicious death is asked to contact the Lynchburg, Virginia Police Department directly.
please contact Detective Doobie at 434-455-6102. You can also contact Crime Stoppers at 888-798-5900. All tips about the case can remain anonymous.
To share your thoughts on the mysterious death of Johnny Cashman Jr., be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, consider signing up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales. After each weekly episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case.
You'll want to listen to this one because I'm going to let you know what I think happened to him. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us. You can also help support the show through Patreon. Thank you so much for joining me this week.
Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings. ♪
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Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.
