Keith Warren
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com slash forensic tales. 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 a typical afternoon, July 31st, 1986, in Silver Spring, Maryland, a woman casually walks her dog, enjoying another beautiful summer day.

She looks up to discover a tragic scene that will alter her life forever. A young black male hangs lifeless from a tree. She screams in shock, anger, and disbelief. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 101, The Mysterious Death of Keith Warren. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fratwell-Ariola.

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Around 2 o'clock p.m. on July 31st, 1986, police officers in Silver Spring, Maryland, received a chilling 911 call. The caller told police a male teenager was hanging from a small tree with a rope tied around his neck. She said she saw the teenager hanging from the tree while out walking her dog in a wooded area behind her home.

The teenager was identified by his ID as 19-year-old Keith Warren. Montgomery County police arrived on the scene, a wooded area behind Keith's house. They saw him hanging from a small tree with a rope tied around his neck. The tree was almost completely bent sideways from holding his weight. Paramedics rushed to Keith's side to feel for a pulse, but they were too late. Keith was dead.

Keith Warren was born on April 9, 1967, in Topeka, Kansas. His parents were Mary and Cleo Warren. Mary worked as a medical lab technician, and Cleo was a major with the Durham, North Carolina Police Department. A few months after Keith was born, Mary and Cleo moved the family to North Carolina.

In August of 1977, Mary and Cleo Warren divorced, and in 1979, she moved to Silver Spring, Maryland, along with Keith and his younger sister, Sherry. Mary eventually remarried and now goes by the name Mary Cooey. Family and friends described Keith as a polite and friendly kid. He was the type of teenager who made friends quickly.

After graduating from John F. Kennedy High School, he spent the first few months of summer working two jobs to save up for college and spend a lot of time with friends. Like a typical 19-year-old, he was dating girls and was well-liked, especially after his father, Cleo, gave him a used blue Corvette. Most of Keith's friends were just like him, polite, good kids.

But that particular summer, Keith was rumored to be hanging out with some not-so-great people, people who might have been involved in drugs. By all accounts, Keith seemed to have a promising future ahead of him. He had just been accepted to North Carolina Central University and was supposed to start classes next month.

Not only was Keith excited to start college, but he also wanted to move back to North Carolina so that he could be closer with his father. But instead of starting college in the fall, the police found him hanging from a tree in an apparent suicide. On Tuesday, July 29th, two days before the woman walking her dog discovered Keith's body, Keith was last seen at his mom's house in Silver Spring.

After getting a phone call, Keith told his mom that he was headed out to go hang out with some friends. But Mary became concerned when her son didn't return home the following day. She tried calling all around to see if any of Keith's friends had seen or heard from him, but none of them seemed to know where he was. Eventually, Mary decided that something might be wrong. She decided to contact the Montgomery County Police.

But when she reached out to the police, they didn't seem to do anything. They told her that there was nothing that they could really do. Keith was legally an adult. He was 19 years old at the time. And that she basically had to wait at least 48 hours before she could report him missing.

The following afternoon on July 31st, the Montgomery County Police received the 911 call. Initially, the caller, Claudia Lawson, told the police that there was a suicide in the basement of her home.

But when emergency personnel arrived at Claudia Lawson's home, they were told, no, no, no. It wasn't the basement. Instead, the victim was out in the woods behind the house. Now, you've probably got the same question I do. How did this happen? It's unclear why there was this confusion, why she would say there was a suicide in her basement when in reality it was in the woods behind her home.

Now, it seems like it was just a simple mistake in reporting. Claudia Lawson and her boyfriend, who was the one that actually owns the home, had absolutely nothing to do with this case. When the police and paramedics got to the wooded area, they see Keith Warren hanging from a tree with a rope tied around his neck. Within an hour of the police receiving the 911 call, the Montgomery County Police ruled Keith's death a suicide.

Based on a quick visual examination of the scene, this was a textbook case of suicide. You've got a teenager hanging from a tree behind his house with a rope tied around his neck. There are no other visible injuries to his body. There were no eyewitnesses. Although the police didn't find a suicide note, this looked like a relatively straightforward case.

Officer Leverett of the Montgomery County Police Department was one of the first police officers to arrive on scene that day. I'm going to read directly from Officer Leverett's police report that day. And in his report, he's going to be using the term writer quite frequently. And at first, it seems a little confusing about what exactly is going on. But the term writer, he's simply referring to himself. So when you hear writer, he's talking about himself.

So this is what he wrote in his report about what happened. Quote,

Investigators are notified along with the county coroner. Detective Beasley, Detective Rogers, and Mayhew arrived on the scene. An attempt to notify the next of kin at the residence was negative. The next door neighbor, Nicholas B., was shown a picture of the victim.

A work number of the mother was obtained and the neighbor, Nicholas, called and spoke with the mother and left a message to contact the police. Examination of the scene by Dr. Rogers, Detective Beasley, and the writer showed no evidence of foul play. The victim tied the rope to the base of a tree and made several loops.

The other end of the rope was looped around a smaller tree and was thrown between the fork of the top and the noose was made. The victim apparently used a log to jump off and his body weight completed his intent. End quote. Once the Montgomery County Police Department ruled Keith's death a suicide, they transported his body to the local funeral home at 500 University Boulevard, Silver Spring.

Because the medical examiner and lead detectives on the case believed that this was just an open and shut case, no autopsy was ordered. So instead of transporting his body to the morgue, the police took Keith's body to a local funeral home for embalming. The police didn't notify Keith's mom or sister until six hours later.

This is now hours after the initial 911 call and hours after the medical examiner ruled his death a suicide and transported his body to the funeral home. When the police finally notified Keith's mom, Mary, they simply told her that her son was found dead hanging from a tree with a rope around his neck and that his death was ruled a suicide.

When Mary asked the police if an autopsy was going to be done, they said no, that the medical examiner had already closed the case, and that Keith's body, well, Keith's body is already at the funeral home and is ready to be embalmed. The news about Keith's suicide was devastating to the family, especially for his mom and sister. Not only were they heartbroken over his death, but suicide seemed to be the last thing on Keith's mind.

According to his mom and sister, he never expressed feeling depressed. He was only one month away from starting college. He seemed to have a big, bright future ahead of him. There was nothing in Keith's life that his family believed would suggest that he was suicidal or even thinking about killing himself.

But Keith's mom and sister aren't alone. No family member or friend wants to believe that their loved one is capable of committing suicide.

Most of the time, suicide comes as a complete shock to family members and friends. Many people who are depressed or suicidal don't reach out for help. They don't talk to people about what they're going through. And it's very common for people who are depressed to keep to themselves.

So when something like this happens, not many people can see it coming. And when it does happen, it makes it that much more shocking and heartbreaking.

Initially, Keith's family accepted the medical examiner's decision on suicide. Even though, again, the news was completely shocking and devastating, the family accepted it. Of course, they were angry and sad that they didn't see this coming and that they couldn't understand why he would do this at his point in his life.

However, they trusted the police. They believed what the police told them, that this was a simple case of suicide by hanging. Although it seemed hard to believe that Keith was suicidal, it was even harder for the family to think that this was foul play. The family couldn't think of a single person who would want to kill him. So if suicide didn't make sense, well, neither did murder.

A couple of days later, the Silver Spring police turned over Keith's personal property to his mom, Mary. The items included some audio tapes, a jacket, and Keith's favorite pair of brown boots, boots that he wore practically every single day.

When the police turned over the items to Mary, this was the first time everything seemed real. It was really starting to sink in that Keith was gone, that he was dead. She was never going to see her son again. But as reality is setting in, so is the growing suspicion that there is more to this story. A lot more.

In the days following Keith's death, Mary learned about odd people coming around the home looking for her son the week leading up to a suicide. The people were all described as being black. Now, Keith Warren was African-American, but Keith only had white friends, according to his family and friends, and he wasn't known to hang around or associate with any black teenagers.

So Mary found it a little strange that all of a sudden groups of black people were coming to the house asking and looking for Keith only a week before he died. Keith's close friend, a guy by the name of Rodney Kendall, told Mary about a strange encounter with one of Keith's high school acquaintances just days earlier.

According to Rodney, a guy by the name of Mark Finley, someone who went to high school with Keith, approached him in a vehicle just outside of Keith's house one day. Mark Finley asked Rodney if he knew where Keith was. Rodney said, no, I have no idea where he is. Why? What do you want?

But Mark Finley wouldn't tell Rodney why he wanted to see Keith. All he said was that he needed to find him as soon as possible and that he needed to talk to him about something. But when Rodney told him that he didn't know where his friend Keith was, Mark Finley just quickly drove away and that was that. Now at that time, Rodney didn't read too much into this weird encounter.

Sure, he didn't know who this Mark Finley guy was or why he was looking for one of his best friends outside his home. But at the time, he didn't have any reason to be concerned. It wasn't until after Keith was found dead that Rodney and Keith's mom thought that this was strange for all of these random teenagers to all of a sudden be coming around the house looking for Keith just days and a week before he died.

What did these people want from Keith, and were they somehow connected to his suicide? About one month after Keith's death, Mary asked Rodney if he could take her to the tree where they found her son's body. By this point, she had had enough time to process what had happened, and she was finally ready to see exact location of where her son died. And Rodney agreed.

But when they arrived at that location, something surprising happened. The tree from which Keith was hanging from was gone. It was nowhere to be found. All that was left was a stump. Mary immediately got on the phone and called the Silver Spring Police Department to find out what happened to the tree.

But the detectives aren't giving her much information. They're avoiding her question. They're even kind of annoyed that she's calling them, asking them about where this stupid tree is. But after some pushback, they eventually told her that detectives, well, detectives cut down the tree and that it was being stored as, quote, evidence in the case.

Mary finds this weird. If the case was already closed and Keith's death was listed as a suicide, why was there a need to store the tree as evidence? You typically don't keep evidence in closed cases, especially not closed cases that are ruled a suicide. After Mary hung up the phone with the police, she had this sinking feeling in her gut that something wasn't right.

Keith's body was found hanging from a small tree. By the time the police arrived that day, the tree had almost been bent in half from holding onto Keith's body weight. His knees and legs were bent, touching the ground. But the size of the tree isn't the only weird thing. It was how elaborate the whole setup was. The design wasn't just your typical rope around someone's neck hanging from the top of a tree.

Let's talk about that. So the rope used to hang Keith was first anchored around the base of a much larger tree. Then the rope was extended 25 feet away to a smaller tree. Finally, the rope went around the smaller tree's trunk and then arched up through a fork in the tree.

Now, when Mary, Keith's mom, learned about this, the first thought that she had was that she didn't believe that her son would know how to do this. This whole setup looked way too elaborate for one person, especially her son, to pull off.

Now, this doesn't mean that it's impossible for one person to do. The setup was entirely possible and one person could absolutely execute this. But Mary knew her son. She didn't believe that Keith was capable of this type of elaborate setup and that this would be the way that he would choose to hang himself. Now, what about the size of the tree?

Why not simply hang yourself from one of the bigger trees in the area or simply find an entirely different location altogether where there's much bigger and easier trees to hang yourself from? Why go through the trouble of tying an elaborate knot around a tree and then extending the rope 25 feet in another direction and then tie it two more times around a different tree?

This all seemed like a lot of work for someone trying to hang themselves for a tree. This just didn't seem like something that her son would do. After seeing the location for herself, Mary started to become more and more suspicious about the circumstances surrounding Keith's death. She still didn't know if something else could have happened to her son. All she knew was that there was something more to this story.

So she started writing letters demanding answers. She wrote letters to the Silver Springs Police Department. No response. She wrote letters to congressmen, to senators. She even wrote letters to federal law enforcement officials.

But her campaign for answers didn't get anywhere. It didn't seem like anyone wanted to hear anything about Keith Warren's case. To everyone else on the outside looking in, his death was an open and shut case of suicide. Two years after Mary discovered that the tree was cut down and held in evidence, the police destroyed it. It was gone forever.

And that's how Keith's case stood for the next four years until April of 1992. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. What are some of your self-care non-negotiables? Maybe you never skip leg day or therapy day. When your schedule is packed with kids' activities, big work projects, or podcasting like me, it's easy to let your priorities slip.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash tails to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash tails. It was Keith Warren's birthday on April 9th, 1982. If he were still alive, he would have turned 25 years old.

That same afternoon on April 9th, 1992, Mary returned home from work and received a plain manila envelope on her front doorstep. The next part of this story still gives me the chills. Inside of that manila envelope were five official police photographs which showed different angles of Keith's hanging.

First of all, I can't even begin to imagine being a mother and seeing photographs of your son like this. Up until this point, Mary had never seen any of these photos. The first and only time she saw her son was at the funeral home. So she had no idea what the scene looked like and she had no idea what her son looked like.

Not only was this traumatizing for Mary, but it was also really confusing. The first thing Mary noticed in the photographs was the clothes that her son was wearing. In the pictures, Keith is wearing different clothes than what the police turned over to the family back in 1986.

Back in 1986, the police turned over a jacket and brown boots. But in the photographs of Keith's body hanging from the tree, he isn't wearing a jacket and he's not wearing brown boots.

Instead, he's wearing a t-shirt and white sneakers. He's wearing a completely different outfit. And according to Keith's mom and sister, what's stranger about this discovery is that Keith didn't own a pair of white sneakers. According to them, Keith was wearing someone else's clothes when the police found him hanging.

After discovering this inconsistency, Mary immediately picked up the phone and called the Silver Spring Police Department. She demanded to know why Keith was wearing someone else's clothes and why they turned over a jacket and a pair of brown boots.

didn't seem to think that this was a big deal. The police basically told her that some of the items that were returned to the family, like the jacket and brown boots, were found around the body. So they're saying, okay, we understand Keith wasn't wearing those items, but investigators found the jacket and the brown boots just sitting next to the tree.

But why would someone change clothes, leave them on the ground just moments before hanging themselves? And besides that, what happened to the clothes that Keith was actually wearing in the photographs, the t-shirt and white sneakers? The police never turned over these items, so it's still a mystery as to whose clothes these belong to.

At this point, Keith's family decided to hire a private investigator to look into the case. The family was convinced that something wasn't right here and that they started to fear that the police were attempting to conduct a cover-up here. So the family hired Joe Alicia to look at the case. And the first thing that Joe Alicia did was look at the photographs, the one that magically showed up on Mary's front doorstep.

And right away, the private investigator noticed something else in one of the photos. One of the photos was taken of Keith's back while hanging from the tree. In the photograph, you can see leaves and dirt on the back of his T-shirt. To the private investigator, this could suggest that Keith was lying on the ground, got the leaves and dirt stuck to his shirt before ending up on the tree.

Before someone hoisted him up onto the tree. Two years later, in May of 1994, Keith's family requested to have his body exhumed and complete an autopsy. Remember, the police never performed an autopsy back in 1986. After ruling his death a suicide, they simply transported his body to the funeral home to be embalmed.

So in May 1994, eight years after Keith's death, this would be the very first time that a forensic pathologist could examine Keith's body. The family hired Dr. Isidore Mihalakis, Warren County's medical examiner, for over 25 years to perform the independent autopsy. And the findings would flip this case completely upside down.

The medical examiner published his findings of the private autopsy on May 26, 1994. His official ruling? Cause of death undetermined.

And under final anatomic diagnosis, the medical examiner wrote, "'Cause of death, undetermined, in spite of decedent, found hanging from a tree limb with feet touching the ground and knees bent because toxological findings are incompatible with the autopsy findings and in fact do not support a hanging diagnosis.'"

Okay, let's break this entire statement down. The first thing the forensic pathologist noted as a reason for his undetermined finding was, quote, the clinical history is in contention between the investigators and the family, end quote. According to the Montgomery County Police Department, one of the lead detectives assigned to Keith's case knew about Keith's prior mental history.

According to the police officer's notes and official report, this detective claimed to know about mental issues that Keith suffered from. But the report doesn't mention exactly how he knew this. All the report says is that this lead detective knew that Keith suffered from some sort of mental illness.

This detective knew about Keith's mental capacity before arriving on the scene, even though the family was told that no prior interaction existed between Keith and the Montgomery County Police Department.

So the reason why Keith's mental history is in contention here is that according to the family, this Lee detective would have no reason and would have no insight into Keith's mental history. And in his report, he makes no mention as to how he got this information. This detective filled out this report five hours even before speaking to Keith's family.

So the family is saying,

How did the police get this information if there was no previous interaction between Keith and the Montgomery County Police Department? And why was this third party information used to support a suicide ruling? Basically, in the end, the family is saying that there is absolutely no way that this lead detective would know anything about Keith's mental state or history of mental illness because this detective had never even met Keith before.

The second thing noted by the forensic pathologist was the crime scene. The report read, "...the scene investigation and handling of the body immediately afterward was inappropriate and not following accepted standards of a good medical legal investigation system."

This particular point refers to the police decision to not perform an autopsy. And because the police pronounced Keith dead, not a medical examiner. So to comply with good medical legal investigation standards, the police should have completed an autopsy to confirm their suicide suspicions. And a medical examiner should have been the one to officially declare a time of death.

On Keith's death certificate, it states that Officer Leverett was the person who pronounced Keith dead.

But the same report says that a medical examiner was on scene. Typically, if a medical examiner is on site, they are on the scene. They're the ones who should be officially calling the time of death, not a detective or a police officer. Now, unfortunately, neither of these things happened in Keith's case. Although there's a report saying that there was a medical examiner there, he was not the one to declare the time of death.

The third bullet point and most interesting to this case is what was discovered on Keith's toxicology report. Dr. Mihalakis found the presence of several toxic chemicals in Keith's system at the time of death. He found a lethal dose of trichloroethylene, or TCE, and a toxic level of dichloroethane, or DCE.

Both TCE and DCE were detected in Keith's blood, brain, liver, kidney, and muscles. Now, to give you an idea of what he means by a lethal dose of TCE, the presence of TCE in blood of a person at a concentration above 1.0 to 1.5 milligrams per deciliter would be consistent with death.

Keith's blood TCE level was recorded at 6.0 milligrams per deciliter. TCE is a toxic chemical found in glue and solvents. Solvents containing TCE are sometimes abused as inhalants because they can have this intoxicating effect. That's where this whole idea of kids sniffing glue came from.

Many common household types of glue have TCE, and when inhaled, it can sometimes have this intoxicating effect. But according to the forensic pathologist, the amount of TCE found in Keith's system was lethal. So it wasn't like he, quote, just sniffed too much glue.

Based on the high concentrations of the solvents in the tissues, he believed Keith received a lethal dose of TCE and a toxic dose of DCE via ingestion, which led to his death. And again, based on the concentration, Keith likely ingested the solvent one to two hours before he died.

Because the concentrations of TCE and DCE in Keith's liver were much higher than the concentration levels in the blood, this means that both chemicals were ingested. But how did Keith unknowingly ingest these chemicals?

The pathologists believed that these solvents were likely mixed with alcoholic drinks, such as wine coolers, to increase the solvent's water solubility and absorption from the gastrointestinal tract. Wine coolers would also help make the taste of the solvents, well, just taste better. But why wine coolers? Well, get ready for this discovery.

Empty wine coolers were found in the park where Keith's body was discovered. So what does the Montgomery County Medical Examiner say about this finding? Well, according to them, TCE and other chemicals were injected into Keith's body with the embalming fluid.

So they're saying that what was found in Keith's system is consistent with standard embalming practices. Keith's body was embalmed at the funeral home, and that's why TCE and other toxic chemicals are showing up in his toxicology report all of these years later. But there's one big problem with the Montgomery County Medical Examiner's statement.

TCE is not consistent and is not used in any embalming fluid. So the distribution of the chemicals in Keith's body isn't consistent with post-mortem injection.

Here is what Dr. Mihalakis said in his autopsy report, quote, Subsequent toxicology findings and complete autopsy of the body, as well as preliminary literature review, indicate the presence of substances which would not be expected to be found in a body that has been buried, even taking into consideration the eight years it has been.

Such substances are not normal constituents of embalming fluid or decompositional effect. The substance that most stands out is TCE. Based on the levels noted, I do not believe he would have the ability to hang himself, and for that matter, he would in all likelihood not even have the ability to make a decision about hanging himself.

It is even possible that he may have been dead and subsequently hung by others to make it look like a suicide. Wow, let me take a deep breath because this is huge. Not only does he have this toxic chemical in his system, which is not used in embalming fluids, but it's a lethal level.

Now, it's also worth mentioning here that the police didn't find any paint cans or rags or anything like that near Keith's body. They didn't find anything that would contain TCE.

Dr. Mihalakis concluded his report by saying that Keith's case should be considered and investigated as a homicide until proven otherwise. And at the very least, Keith's official cause of death should be changed from suicide to undetermined. Now I want to go back and talk about the photos that showed up on Mary's doorstep on Keith's 25th birthday.

Besides the photos, there was also a note inside of the manila envelope. The note read, quote, Miss Warren, don't worry, Mark Finley will be next, end quote. I mentioned earlier that Mark Finley was Keith's former high school acquaintance. Mark Finley was the one who drove by Keith's house looking for him just days before Keith's death.

He said he needed to talk to Keith right away, but wouldn't say why. Once he found out Keith wasn't home, he drove away. Well, before the photos and note showed up on Mary's doorstep, Mark Finley called Keith's mom.

He left a message on her answering machine saying something to the effect of, Miss Warren, this is Mark Finley. I got your message and I will be by to see you soon. I need to unload. But Mark Finley never made it to Mary's house. That's because one month later, Mark Finley was dead.

According to the police, Mark Finley died accidentally when he struck a curb and was thrown from his bike around 2 o'clock in the morning. But according to the paramedics who arrived on the scene, they thought the damage and injuries to Mark Finley's face didn't match the accident. To them, the damage and injuries to his face looked like someone hit him with something like a baseball bat.

The case into Mark Finley's death was never reopened, and the case remained closed today as an accident. So why is this Mark Finley character important to our story about Keith Warren? Well, we've got Mark Finley looking for Keith days before his death. We've got Finley contacting Mary a few weeks before the mysterious envelope arrives on her doorstep.

The envelope that contains a note saying that Mark Finley is next. And then, to top it off, we've got Mark Finley's suspicious death. So what does all of this mean? Well, the simple answer is that we don't know. But Keith's family has their suspicions. Mark Finley had allegedly told people at a party that he was involved in Keith's death.

This party happened just days before he was killed in a bike accident. Several years later, the Montgomery County Police Department received a tip that someone slipped something into Keith's drink at a party and dressed him in the wrong clothes. This tip could explain the TCE found in Keith's system and why he was wearing someone else's clothes at the time of his death.

But unfortunately, this tip has not persuaded the police to reopen Keith's case, even while the forensic evidence points to something else. As it stands today in 2021, Keith Warren's case remains closed and his death is ruled a suicide. The tree used to hang Keith's body was destroyed by the police two years after his death.

The clothes that Keith was seen wearing in the official police photos have never been identified, and how Keith ended up with toxic levels of TCE in his system remains a mystery. And as far as the manila envelope that mysteriously arrived on Mary's doorstep on her son's 25th birthday, that sender remains anonymous. Keith Warren's family continues to fight to have his case reopened.

Over the years, Keith's mom, Mary, spent countless hours doing her own investigation into her son's death, and she continued to fight for justice until her death in 2009. If you'd like to learn more about Keith's story and follow case updates, his sister, Sherry Warren, has created a website, thekeithwarrenjusticesite.com.

Anyone with information about the mysterious death of Keith Warren is asked to contact the Montgomery County Police Department. Death is tragic enough for a family, but not knowing why or how must be devastating. And my thoughts go out to Keith Warren's family. When a person commits suicide, it's not uncommon for their loved ones to not want to believe it.

As a result, family and friends will often begin to formulate theories about foul play. Sometimes they do this because they simply don't want to accept that their loved one would voluntarily end their lives. However, in other cases, it's because the forensic evidence doesn't support suicide. And the forensics never lie.

To share your thoughts on Keith Warren's story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales. Do you think this case should be reopened and investigated as a homicide? Or do you agree with the police findings? To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash Forensic Tales.

After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. This is where I get the opportunity to say what I really think happened to Keith Warren. To check out photos from the case, be sure to head to our website, ForensicTales.com. This is where I'll post crime scene photos from the case. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday.

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