What Happened To Alonzo Brooks?

When Unsolved Mysteries returned to our tv screens in July 2020, one of their first cases was a doozy. The Netflix reboot of the show featured the case of a mid-twenties partygoer who may have been the victim of a series of hate crimes that ultimately lead to his death. If it wasn’t for the reboot, however, his case would still be closed.

The Story

Twenty-three-year-old Alonzo Brooks grew up in Topeka, Kansas. He was the youngest of 5 children, growing up with one older brother and three sisters. The 5 kids were raised by single mother Maria Ramirez. Maria had a special bond with Alonzo according to everyone who knew them. When Alonzo’s older brother Billy turned eighteen and moved out, Alonzo and his mother move to the suburbs of Gardner. In what is perhaps a premonition, Billy felt that he needed to toughen his younger brother up — much to their mother’s chagrin. She felt that he was trying to make Alonzo grow up to fast, but Billy felt that he needed to protect him from getting taken advantage of by his new peers.

That premonition would bear out in a series of mystifying events.

On April 3, 2004, Alonzo told his mother that he was headed to a party for the night. He explained that a friend of his was going to join the military and Alonzo wanted to see him before he left. A friend of Alonzo’s named Justin picked him up that night and would join him. Oddly, there was a dispute among Alonzo’s friends with regard to just how this party got put together. Justin didn’t believe that the party was planned in advance. Another friend — Daniel — agreed that the plans were pretty spur of the moment. He said that he’d called Alonzo the day of the party and invited him out. Tyler, a third friend in the group, recalled making calls to put the party together for that night. Then there's the fact that Alonzo was apparently not one to go out with that particular group of people, to begin with. According to Daniel, Alonzo was a few years older than him and didn’t even attend the same parties.

Whatever the circumstances that lead to the formation of this party, Alonzo was still determined to go. He laced up his boots, put on his beanie, and was out the door.

Alonzo and Justin drove to La Cygne, Kansas — a town 40 miles south of Gardner. The two reached the small town within an hour of leaving Alonzo’s house. The party was also lively and vibrant. While walking up the long driveway, Justin recounted seeing people outside chatting, dancing, and playing drinking games. According to Justin, Alonzo shouted “who wants a beer” and joined in the activities. He immediately started getting involved in some of the drinking games and meeting new people. Tyler made it a point to mention that Alonzo was surprisingly more outgoing than usual that night. That would unfortunately not be a good thing in its entirety. After taking a shot with Alonzo, Daniel recalled seeing him get into a fight with someone else at the party. He needed to pull Alonzo away before the fight became physical.

Shortly after that incident (and about an hour and a half into the party), Daniel got a call to see some friends at another party going on that night. Since the person that drove him was going to that other party, Daniel had no choice but to tag along. Before he left, though, he checked in with Alonzo. At that point, he was doing fine and enjoying himself. Once it reached 11:00 pm, Tyler decided to leave as well. He made sure to say goodbye to Alonzo at that point. Again, Alonzo was doing just fine. Both boys thought that Justin would drive him home since he was his ride to the party in the first place.

By that point, Justin had smoked his last cigarette and went to get one from Alonzo. However, he was out as well. Justin left to get more cigarettes, agreeing to get him a pack as well. When he left, he made a wrong turn and ended up getting lost on some gravel roads. He ended up being thirty minutes north of the party. He called another friend that was at the party and told him to tell Alonzo that he was lost. They eventually agreed that their friend Adam would give Alonzo a ride home. Justin, though, wound up leaving the party to get more cigarettes after both he and Alonzo ran out. While en route, Justin got lost and was about 30 min away from the party altogether. Justin called a friend to make Alonzo aware of this and they all reached an agreement that Adam (another friend) would be Alonzo’s ride home.

Alonzo never made it home.

The Search

The following morning, his mother Maria received a phone call asking if Alonzo made it home okay. When she went up to his room to check on him, she found that he had not been home since the previous night. She looked all over the house and found no trace of her youngest son. With growing concern, she called his friends to see if she could piece together his whereabouts. Tyler and Daniel were two of the first to get a call from Maria. Right away they got the feeling that something wasn’t right. When Justin spoke to Alonzo’s mother, he told her about the cigarette run and that their friend Adam was supposed to Alonzo’s ride back home. Justin spoke to Adam and learned that Adam left without Alonzo once he couldn’t find him at the party.

Rodney English, a good friend of Alonzo’s from home, learned from Maria that he was missing. He immediately took the drive to Gardner, Kansas, and spoke to Alonzo’s friends in person. They gave him the address to the party that they’d attended the night before. When Rodney got there, he found no traces of Alonzo. However, when he went to an area across the road, he discovered Alonzo’s beanie and one of his boots. The matching boot was later found close to a nearby creek. Everyone was now certain that something bad happened.

Maria went to the police to file a missing person's report but was told it was too early. She needed to wait until Alonzo was missing for at least 48 hours before she could successfully have him declared missing. That night, Maria called Alonzo’s brother and sisters to tell them what happened. They were all in agreement that something was horribly wrong. His brother Billy drove to La Cygne the next morning with his wife. Once they went to check out the house where the party was held, they found it completely empty. It turns out that it was a rental house and no one actually resided there. The couple then drove throughout the surrounding areas to see if they could find anything. While they came up with nothing physically, they did notice that the residents of the town were paying close attention to them.

The night after the party (April 4), the sheriff went to the party house, and searched the creek, but found nothing. On April 7th, he turned the case over to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI). The Bureau immediately began increasing the efforts to find Alonzo’s whereabouts. They conducted a large search of the surrounding areas, brought in helicopters to assist, and even enlisted the help of the FBI. With all of that done, however, they still were unable to find out what happened to Alonzo. The KBI and FBI began conducting hundreds of interviews to get a clear story of what happened that night. Justin — who spoke with investigators nearly every day — said that they believed Alonzo got drunk, took his shoes off, and attempted to walk home from the party. Of course, his family and friends don’t agree with that.

Bill constantly called the sheriff’s office asking if they could join in the search. That request was denied at every turn, and he was told to stop reaching out. Finally, on May 1st, they were allowed to search the area (curiously, the police were not joining them). While volunteers were searching a white shed near the house, they found Alonzo’s body.

The doctor performing the autopsy had a difficult time determining the cause of death due to some of his tissue being damaged by animals and bugs. He threw out the possibility that Alonzo was drowned, strangled, or possibly beaten. Ultimately, though, he ruled the cause of death as “undetermined”. Going off of that, the KBI found no reason to keep his case open. They released a statement explaining that they would be closing his case since there was no indication that he was the victim of a crime.

Status

Thanks to Unsolved Mysteries, there was a renewed interest in the case. In the same month that the segment hit Netflix’s homepage, Alonzo’s body was exhumed by the FBI. The new autopsy found injuries that were not consistent with decomposition. Although Alonzo’s case is still unsolved, it has since been reopened.