Transcript of BONUS: Murder At The U Episode 1

Hey, listeners, you're about to hear the first episode of a new series from ESPN's 30 for 30 podcast, murder at the U. You may remember that we spoke about this series with the host and lead investigator, Paula Levine, on our show last week.

This is the story of how Caine's football standout, Brian Pata, was gunned down in broad daylight, just steps from campus, and how his murder went unsolved for nearly 20 years. But a suspect was finally identified. A former teammate was accused of Pata's murder.

Murder@theu examines how a team of dogged ESPN reporters revived Brian's dormant case and why the search for justice continues. If you want to listen to the rest of this series, follow 30 for 30 podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen. Now, episode one of murder at the U. It's 2006. Two guys in their 20s are driving down US One in Miami in a black Infinity SUV. The AC is blasting, the music is blasting.

Who the fuck you think you're fucking with? I'm the We on our way to my crib, driving to that Rick Ross. You know? Us One going south. So, you know? The driver is a football player at the University of Miami, Brian Pata.

The guy next to him in the passenger seat is a sports writer from the Miami Herald. His name is Manny Navarro. Manny has his camera trained on Brian.

I was a young reporter who wanted to do something cool. Mtv Cribs was big back then.

Mtv Cribs was a show where celebrities led camera crews through tours of their houses. Manny wanted to make something similar for the Miami Hérald. But in Manny's version, the celebrities would be University of Miami football players, The Hurricans.

Every day I'm hustling, every day I'm hustling, every day I'm, every day I'm. So my idea was just make these guys personable. Tell a story that is unique in Miami. These are Miami guys playing Miami football program. Brian was really the first guy I threw the idea across. Oh, yeah, I'm down. I'm down. Let's do it. Let's do it. And I got the camera on him because I want to make sure I get the audio and the video, the whole thing.

The two guys head to Brian's apartment complex. It's called the Colony, where several other University of Miami players live. It's classic Florida, with corridors on the outside of the building like a motel.

We get to his apartment, he runs in there, he starts picking stuff up, moving stuff around. He's like, Don't record yet. And he says, How do you want me to... Where do you want to start? I said, Well, why don't you open the door? This is what they do in MTV Cribs, right? They open the door, they welcome you in. What up, you all? This is my crib. I'm Brian Patta, University of Miami, Dives of Tango. If you walk in, this is a townhouse, two bedroom, two and a half bathroom. He's giving me the tour, opening cabinets up and showing me stuff. This is my cabinet right here. I love pudding. He was just so happy to be the star of the show. I think in his mind, I think he started to think, Yeah, it's only the Miami Harold right now, but I How can we do this for MTV. This is a nice little practice run. Here's some of my family during the Florida State game. My two sister, my cousin. This is my mom right here, and this is my girlfriend, Jada. I just I just remember the feeling of this kid is so happy with his life.

He knows that the best is yet to come. This is good. Life is good. I got a girlfriend. I got a dog. Other than that, this is me, Brian Paddle. How are you getting it? All right. Thanks a lot. We'll go downstairs real quick. All right. But it was this feeling of things are going to get better.

It seems that way, listening to the recording, hearing Brian's enthusiasm, his giddiness, except for one thing. A few weeks later, Brian Pata would be dead.

We do have a breaking story. A University of Miami football player has been shot and killed. Amara Sowns, Live in Kindle with the very latest. Michael Jackie, Miami Dade Police, confirming tonight Brian Pata, UM's defensive lineman, was shot and killed tonight. We are told his body was found in the- From the outside looking in, It was the case that police should have been motivated to solve quickly.

A star player on a major college football team murdered near campus, just a few months shy of the NFL draft. But that is not what happened. Instead, weeks turned into months, which eventually turned into years, and Brian's murder remained unsolved. But almost 20 years later, someone is finally set to stand trial for the murder of Brian Pata. I'm Paula Levine. From 30430 podcast, this is, murder at the U. The story of how two University of Miami teammates found themselves on opposite ends of a murder investigation, and what happened when a team of ESPN reporters brought that investigation into the light. Episode One, Chilling with the Canes. As a reporter, I try to stay out of the story, but sometimes the work you do to get the story and what you uncover changes it. That's exactly what happened here. And that story starts in 2017 in the office of Ben Webber.

I was a feature producer at ESPN.

One of the shows Ben worked on at the time was College Game Day, ESPN's weekly show about college football.

Glad to have you with us. How great is it to have college football back on a full Saturday?

College game day rolling- In August 2017, Ben received an email from an odd source.

I got an email that said the Miami Police Department was interested in helping us tell this story in an effort to try to find new leads.

The story was more than 10 years old, and it was about the unsolved murder of a University of Miami football player, Brian Pata. Is it unusual for police departments to pitch stories to ESPN.

I'll say in my 25 years here, that's the first and only time that that has happened.

But Ben looked up the case, and as he was scrolling through the results, he found a video of a press conference about this murder. It had happened only three months earlier.

It started pretty regular press conference.

Ben would be the first of us to watch this press conference, but we'd all come back to it over and over again. In many ways, it was the reason we all got pulled into this case. The press conference was at the Miami Dade Police headquarters in a nondescript fluorescent lit room. Detectives in ties and police officers wearing tan uniforms stood in rows. In front of them, at a table, said a family, Brian Pata's family. A reporter wants to start?

Ms. Pata, your first name is... Jeanette? J-e-a-n-e-t-t-e? Yes.

Brian's mom, Jeanette Pata, wore a colorful, striped blouse. In her hands, she gripped a magazine with Brian, her youngest son, on the cover. The photo showed a young man with locks squinting in the Miami Sun. He wore a bright white Miami Hurricanes football uniform with a number 95 on the shoulder.

It's been ten and a half years. How muchHow much easier is it for you to cope ten and a half years later? This is not easy for me because ten years and a half, we never find here. We don't hear nothing. We waiting so long to find the answer, Who killed my son? Nobody know how I'm feeling. Jeanette was answering a question, and then I think she just was overcome with emotion and thought about 10 and a half years have gone by and we still don't have answers. My heart, I cry, crying, and cry don't help. But sometimes before I go to bed or whatever, I have to pray. I say, God, I'm in your hand. One day you're going to find me the answer for my son. And then the tone and tenor shifted pretty quickly. I don't think even they're working the case anymore. We could let the case is closed. Nothing.

The room went silent. Jeanette Pata had just accused the Miami Dade police of ignoring her son's case.

She insinuated that the Miami PD had done nothing, and it became a little bit more accusatory and ramped up the uncomfortable nature of that press conference. I don't I don't know what the police officers expected to get from that press conference, but I can almost guarantee that it wasn't this.

Next, a reporter addressed the lead detective in the case, Miguel Dominguez.

And within the 10 years, have there been any leads?

Yes.

We've followed a multitude of leads.

Obviously, we don't have anything solid enough to make an arrest at this time. Dominguez stood directly behind the family. His head was shaved clean, and he had a long horseshoe mustache.

So what are you asking for the public?

We believe that there's somebody out there with first-hand knowledge.

Whoever is responsible for this We believe that either somebody close to them, a friend, a family member, somebody has to know who was involved in this. And we're hoping that we get a phone call.

Is it fair to say that after that press conference, after that plea, that Dominguez didn't get the phone call with the new evidence or the new witness or new information that he was waiting for?

Yeah, I think that's really fair, and I think that's what led them to reach out to us at ESPN.

Like Ben said, this was an unusual pitch for College Game Day, but he was intrigued. So he set up a call with the detectives on the case to find out more.

So the case is still open on your end, right? Right, correct. It We're still in an open status, then we're still working on. So what's going on right now on your end to advance it? Is there anything or is it in a lull? But as far as any fresh new leads that came in, no. We're at a standstill. So this is a hypothetical. If you can't answer it, that's fine. But how ultimately do you guys think this case is going to get solved? By somebody coming forward and having the first-hand knowledge of whoever the perpetrator is or the guy told somebody what he did. We believe there's somebody out there that knows.

Here's what Ben knowledge of whoever the perpetrator is, or the guy told somebody what he did. We believe there's somebody out there that knows. Here's what Ben The case had gone unsolved for more than a decade. At the same time, Miami Dade police were convinced that someone, somewhere, knew something.

In September and October, really started to dig in and do a lot more research on Brian, on the murder, and then went down towards the end of 2017. So I was making a quick trip down to Miami and started to do initial interviews and then realized this could turn into something big.

So he began to build a team.

We have a feature producer that lives in Miami. Let me see if he has a willingness to help out or be involved in this project. My name is Dan Aruta. I'm a feature producer with ESPN, and I've been living South Florida since 2015.

When you got the call about working on this project, what did you remember of Brian's story?

I clearly remember it being a national sports story, and it led SportsCenter for several days. Brian Pata, senior defensive lineman from Miami, gunned down yesterday at the age of 22.

So take me back to that at the beginning. How did you start off with this? And you get this call. What do you do next?

I literally just began to pile up interview after interview and just try to gain a stronger understanding of who Brian was and how big, for a lack of a better word, his life was and how complicated and layered it was. Brian was the youngest of nine siblings. In the spring of 2018, I interviewed several family members, including Brian's mother, Janette, and his twin older brothers, Edric and Edwin. They were the closest in age to Brian, only two years older. We would walk to school together, we would play football together, we would do everything together.

Tell me about Edwin and Edric.

I think the first thing you notice about Edwin and Edric is their size. These are two guys who played collegiate football, and they carry a certain swagger and confidence with them. I think the second thing you'll notice is just how kind they are. Here I am, I'm coming into their lives asking about the worst memory of their life. There's every chance they'll be guarded and wary about sharing their thoughts with me. But they were as open and as honest as anyone could have hoped for. For the weeks and months after the shooting, police really… Tight-lipped. Tight-lipped, not telling you much? Not telling you much. Until this goddamn day, tight-lipped. At what point do you and the family start getting frustrated with the lack of progress? Three years laid down the road, given us false hope. What do you mean by false hope? Pumping us up. We got it. We're going to make everything we can. We're going to do it, and we know who did it. I think that's this freaking method that they use to console the family, get them hope, still have hope. They used that for many years until it got silent.

Until we started calling the offices. We weren't answering. So many different damn detectors were assigned to the case. It was just, now who was this, Sergeant? Now, goddamn, who was this, that, then, sergeant? Now, who was this? Oh, we don't... No, something like that was assigned to that case. I'm like, wow, what the hell is going on? Confusion.

What do you remember about meeting Brian Pata's mom.

We met for the first time in 2018. Jeanette was in her 60s at the time and spoke with a thick Haitian accent. She was incredibly warm and kind. What was Brian like when he was a little boy? Brian was funny boy and like to laugh and make a joke. He make people happy. Even you sad, he try and make you happy. Anytime he come into the house, see me laying down in the bed. Mommy, move. Move, mommy. Can I get a place to sleep, please? I said, Go sleep in the couch. No, mommy. I want to sleep with you. Eventually, our conversation shifted over to the investigation, Miami police and her feelings about them.

What were her feelings about the police?

Frustration. You could just tell she was angry and had lost all her patience with them. Now I'm waiting for answer. This is over too long. Why they take so long to find out who killed my son? Eleven years. Eleven years? Have you kept in touch with the police all these years? What have they told you? Nothing. Sometimes we call, they not answer. They didn't do nothing in the case.

Jeanette raised Brian and his siblings in Little Haiti, a community in Northern Miami with one of the largest concentrations of Haitian Americans in the country. In the '80s and '90s, if there was a headline from Little Haiti, chances are it was a story about crime. The truth is, the family had always feared one of them would die young. They just never thought it would be Brian.

So many people died around us who were lucky. I expected one of us to get killed. And I remember saying to myself when I got to college, my goodness, thank God that nobody got killed. They said all the time like, Man, nine of us and nobody got killed, especially with our older brothers, man. And you would never think that the last child in college, his senior year, he'd get killed.

You would never think it, especially because Brian had been on track to be a football star. For the Pata's, football was supposed to be a way out of Little Haiti. So Edwin played at Florida International University and Florida State. Edrick played two seasons at a junior college in San Jose before transferring to Virginia Union University. And Brian, of course, chose the University of Miami. Brian would join the University of Miami at a high point for that school's football program, a program that took kids like Brian from Miami's neighborhoods and turned them into NFL stars. A program known simply as The You. Take a look at Coral Gables.

It's a place of doing, of recreation and cultural activity in many forms. It's learning at the University of Miami, where young people of every age study everything home.

When you drive from downtown Miami to Coral Gables, it's like you traveled to a different, more affluent world. Luxury cars fill up parking lots. There are fountains in the middle of the roundabouts. And well-manicured lawns surround giant Mediterranean-style houses. Coral Gables is its own city, a city built around a medium-sized private university, the University of Miami. The second you drove around this town and you saw how beautiful the place was and you saw the lifestyle that college students have when they're here, it's why it got the reputation as Suntan U. Billy Corbin is a lifelong Miamian. He's also the director of two 30430 films about the University of Miami. He's a little obsessed with the place.

My grandfather graduated from the University of Miami School of Law about 70 years ago before the current campus even existed. He has had season tickets to the Miami Hurricanes since he was a student there 70 years ago.

I am also a graduate of the University of Miami.

I'm profoundly in debt, not indebted to, but in debt as a result of my attendance at the University of Miami.

Today, the University of Miami carries the legacy of being a hard-hitting, trash-talking football program with a chip on its shoulder. Billy says that story began in 1979, when Miami hired Howard Schnellenberger to be their head coach.

It's going to be our objective to move the program forward in such a manner that we can rank with the very best in the country.

Howard came in with no resources, with not a lot of money, with not an opportunity to send assistant coaches on the road, buying buying plane tickets so they could go scout players in other states. And then the creative solution was, why don't we recruit Miami and plant our flag here?

Well, we recruit heavily in state and heavily in South Florida. The bulk of our talent comes from this area. And that became a real point of pride for a lot of people in Miami.

And Schnellenberger's strategy? It worked.

Miami has played a great football game. They certainly deserve to be national champions.

By the end of the 1983 season, Miami's football team won its first national championship ever. Winning is obviously the best pitch you can make to a kid in Liberty City or in little Haiti, just to say, come and be a part of this winning tradition and create an opportunity for yourself, not only from high school to college, but from college to the NFL. As the team won, they became notorious for their antics, on and off the field. Antics that earned them their national bad boy reputation. Take one incident from 1987 when the hurricanes played against Penn State in the Fiesta Bowl. The team walked off their plane wearing top to bottom military fatigues and sunglasses.

The Miami squad made noise the moment it reached Phoenix.

They looked like extras in a Rambo movie. The image is iconic. Media coverage at the time tilted strongly against the hurricanes. Are these guys really thugs, or did they just put on this image for the Fiesta Ball? Because Miami recruited locally, their team was largely made up of players from Miami's Black neighborhoods. Once they were hurricanes, these players became celebrities almost overnight. When sports reporters would moralize about the team, they'd use code words like inner city, but you could tell they meant Black. Well, Well, they have their reputation because they've had a lot of problems with police.

They've had fights with fellow students.

They've had one player was arrested for allegedly hitting his girlfriend. Any idea why? I mean, are they just some problem players?

They give the excuse that they live in a big city, but that doesn't condone doing anything.

We had this college team on the rise, and it was a college team made up predominantly of Miami kids. It was a major point of pride for everybody in this town, particularly when the team played with an us against the world mentality.

Miami had this us against the world mentality.

This us against the world mentality would only grow stronger after an NCAA corruption scandal hit the football program in 1995. University of Miami players reportedly took cash prizes for big plays in violation of NCAA rules. The accusations became part of Miami's lore. There were out-of-control football dorms, run-ins with the police, trips to strip clubs on official visits, money, sex, drugs, you name it. The NCAA banned the Canes from playing in a bowl game for one season and hit the team with other sanctions.

The NCAA put the school on three years probation for handing out unauthorized supervised financial aid to football players.

Their probation undermined the team's standing and performance for a while, but the talent pool of recruits was still strong. By the end of the decade, the Canes were back.

Dorsey, play fake once at all. Going to the end zone. Touchdown. Right in stride to Andre Johnson. Great call.

These are years in which the Miami Hurricanes should have won three national championships in a row. By 2001, Miami fielded what many considered to be the best college football team of all time.

Well, Miami has erased all doubts about the national champion. They are clearly the national champions of college football in the year 2001.

Those early 2000s Miami teams had guys like Ed Reid, Jeremy Shaki, Santana Moss, Willis McGahee, Devon Hester. The list goes on. These were the teams Brian was watching as an elite recruit fruit at Miami Central High School. In 2003, when Brian was a high school senior, he and his brother, Edrick, watched Miami play Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl.

We watched the Championship game. When they lost, he started to cry. It is fourth down, the final play, unless they can stick it in the end zone.

Darcy under pressure, throws it. Incomplete. The Buckeyes win. That game cemented Brian's decision to become a hurricane.

I'm going to that school. That's the school I want to play for. I'm going to Miami. I said, All right, make your decision. Yeah, I'm going to Miami. Why was it important for him to go to Miami? He goes to Miami because I'm here. That's why maybe he don't want to leave me because sometimes he said, Mom, I want you to cook food for me. Anywhere I go, you have to cook for me because I love the food. So that's why.

From the players and coaches all the way down to the athletic trainers and equipment managers, there are a lot of people who make up a powerhouse college football team, easily 200. You can feel that when a game is about to start. Waves and waves of people pack onto the field. It's part of what makes college football so different from other sports, the sheer numbers. And so within this giant team, you have position groups within defense and offense. Brian played defensive end, and the guys on the defensive line were among his closest friends.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is number 93, Dwyane Hills. It's called a catfish.

Dwyane Hendrix, a. K. A. He, Catfish, went on to play for the New York Giants. But back in college, Dwyane was on the defensive line with Brian. Eventually, they became roommates.

How did you spend your free time? After games, I remember this, we would go to Like small little bars to get wings between me and him. We were trying to pound back 50 to 100 wings on average. And the offseason, we trained And then we went out a little bit to some clubs and things like that. Nothing too extreme.

As their friendship grew, Brian started inviting Dwayne to his family's house for dinner.

I I remember him bringing me to his mom's house. Haitian people cook the same thing that Jamaican cook because we had rice and peas. I remember that, and it tasted the same way. So it brought me back to my high school days with his family being Haitian and my family be in Jamaican. I think we have some of the same values, work hard, keep your head down, and you get things that you want out of life. It's because of the patterns that I didn't get homesick because that was my home. It was my second home. And quite honestly, I didn't call my mom as much as I should have because I already had people I looked at his mom as my mom. I looked at his brothers as my brothers. Everybody used to think that we were related and we were brothers or something like that.

That's Eric Moncour. Eric and Brian were actually rivals back when they played for different high schools in Miami.

I thought that I was the number one defensive in in Dade County. And then all of a sudden, His dudes ranked ahead of me. I was mad about it. I was pissed. I used to say his name wrong on purpose. Who was this paid-up kid? Who was paid-up? Brian paid-up.

But they became friends when they started playing together on the hurricanes. Brian gave Eric his nickname.

He was like, Edi, this is your Haitian name. I was like, All right, man, whatever. So ever since then, everybody's been calling me Edie.

In his junior year, Brian got a camcorder.

University of Miami at night.

The dorms over there.

And this is the front entrance of this, too.

And started making videos of his time in college.

Yeah, though. Check your boy out, dude. You know what I'm saying? You feel me? Check my biceps out.

He carried that camcorder around everywhere. These tapes capture Brian as a football player hanging out with his teammates before early morning workouts. What's up, though?

Wake up. We got a long day today, though. What? Fucking, we got practice in the morning. Class. Studying hard, practice in the afternoon.

Study hard meeting. They capture Brian's love of cars.

You know this shit boy, entertainer. Big pattern. You know what I'm saying? Just showing you all my cars or whatnot.

You know all that? They capture him joking around on campus. No bullshit.

No, we're throwing him face. Come here, boy.

And cat calling women on the streets of Miami. All the way live, baby.

What's up, baby? What's up, man? Shake something for the camera. You're not going to shake nothing? He ain't got nothing to shake anyway.

They're a perfect time capsule of Brian's life, and that mid-2000s pre-smartphone era.

He had that smile though, like that laugh.

Chris Zellner played tight-end and was also one of Brian's friends.

And I'm telling you, that shit lit up the room. He made Everybody laughed. He was just one of those guys that you wanted to be around.

Smiling and goofy and annoying. That's how a lot of people at the U remembered him, like Carroll Walker, his academic advisor.

Brian was a jokester. If he knew it was some little thing that annoyed you, but you couldn't be mad of him, he would do it. So for me, it was the gold chain, and it was whatever the chimes were. They clanked all the freaking time, and I couldn't stand it. And I was like, Put it in your shirt. I'm so tired. But then again, that's how I knew he was coming down the hallway. Brian would go, Ms. Walker, Ms. Walker, and then he would just keep saying it. And I'd be like, Do you want anything? And he would just laugh because he knew that got on my nerves.

Brian's mischievous sense of humor stood out on the team. That and his love for his mom. He put his daily phone calls with her on speaker so his teammates could hear. Here's his teammate, Dave Howell.

And you would hear her talking, and I was like, Oh, she sounds so sweet. She'd always be asking him, Did you eat? How are you doing? How was your day? Just the level of affection he showed to his mom, and he demonstrated it to everybody. He didn't just hide in the corner like, Oh, hey, mom, just on you real quick. He showed, and anybody who you speak to knew his mom.

On the outside, Brian seemed carefree. He could make anyone laugh. His family and teammates loved him. He was about to celebrate his first anniversary with his girlfriend, Jada Brody. He had every expectation of going to the NFL. But there was also this. In the months before his death, something had been troubling Brian.

So it was something bothering him, and he was trying to say it, but he didn't know how to express it. Tell us. He didn't want to burden you with it, but he kept it in. And then this was the thing that hurt us, man. I was like, Man, if you just would open up, just tell us what the heck is going on. I said, Did somebody threaten you? He said, Don't worry about it, man.

But he did tell his brother that he was having nightmares.

I keep getting away, man, but they keep chasing me like bad nightmares. I think his girlfriend said that at the time that she would wake up seeing Brian sleeping in the closet because he's fighting these things in his dreams in his sleep.

He never told his brother who might be chasing him. But Edric knew the reason Brian might have felt safe sleeping in his closet. It was because of what he kept in there.

And he would go in the closet and just be hiding, and he was trying to go grab his gun, his concealed weapons that he had.

When Brian gave that tour to Manny Navarro, the Miami Hérald reporter, weeks before his death, there was something in the apartment he didn't want on video.

I got to hide my guns, man. You got a license for them, right? Yeah, I got a license. I got a gun license. That's straight, then. You know what? No, don't add them, the gun thing, on a paper or whatnot, please. No, it's not going to be in a paper.

The thing is, Brian Pata wasn't the only one on the team with a gun. Reserve Safety Willy Cooper was shot and slightly wounded outside his off campus apartment by a gunman hiding in the bushes.

We carried him from protection because you just never know when you need it.

That's next time on murder at the U. And later this season...

An hour before he died, he was on a phone arguing with somebody. Well, come and get it then. You know where you could find me? I'm actually getting a little bit uncomfortable with this whole thing. He had $14,000 cash in the car, and I said, something is right. This is an assassination, and there's more to this than meets the eye. A lot of people thought we had a killer amongst I stopped looking into it because I was warned that these people will literally come up in your house and kill your family. Does MDPD know who killed Brian Pata?

Murder at the U is based on reporting by me, Paula Levine and Dana Rudha, with support from Scott Frankl, Elizabeth Merrill, and ESPN's investigative unit. Our Senior Producer is Matt Frasica. Our Senior Editorial Producer is Priti Varathon. Our Associate producers are Megan Coyle and Gus DeVarro. Story Editing by Adiza Egan. Additional Editing by Ben Webber and Mike Drago. Our Archival producer is Matthew Fisher. Our Line producer is Cath Sankey. Production managers are Jason Schwartz and Sheena Williams. Fact Checking by David Sabino. Original Music and Sound Design by Ryan Ross-Smith. Chris Buckle is Vice President of ESPN Investigative, enterprise, and Digital Journalism. Marsha Cooke, Brian Lockhart, Heather Anderson, and Berk Magnus are executive producers for 30430.