Jerry Kearney: Homicide or Suicide?

On February 23 1990, the Paulsboro, New Jersey police department received an anonymous phone call reporting an incident of domestic violence at 1546 South Delaware Street, the residence of 25-year-old Gerald “Jerry” Kearney and his family. When police arrived there was an argument going on between Jerry and his wife Chyrll. Although she begged the police not to arrest him, four officers removed him from the home and took him to jail. Shortly after being placed in his cell, Jerry allegedly used his T-shirt to hang himself.

Jerry grew up in a dysfunctional home and suffered abuse at the hands of his father. He and Chyrll were married on June 9, 1984. At the time of his death the couple had three children, and Chyrll was pregnant with their fourth. Jerry was excited about the pregnancy and had just received invoices and business cards for his new landscaping business.

According to his sister Kathleen Kearney, Jerry was a good, caring man who loved his family very much. But he was by no means an angel, having had numerous run-ins with the law, mainly for theft.

On the night of his death, Jerry called Kathleen and asked her to come over and babysit so he and his wife could go out. When she arrived about an hour later, she noticed tiny droplets of blood on the steps leading to the front door, and learned that Jerry had already been arrested and taken to jail.

A shortly time later, a police sergeant who had been one of the arresting officers came to the door. He told Kathleen and Chyrll that Jerry had an outstanding warrant for a $25 traffic ticket. Kathleen explained that all of Jerry’s warrants had been taken care of in January, when her parents put their house up as collateral to bail him out of jail. The officer said he would go back to the station and check further. Twenty minutes later he came back and said Jerry would be released as soon as the paperwork was done. Kathleen had been right, there were no outstanding warrants and they were not going to charge him in the domestic incident.

A short time passed and the sergeant was back again. This time he was accompanied by an assistant prosecutor. They said that Jerry had hanged himself in his cell and was dead.

When Jerry was pronounced DOA at the hospital, the attending physician refused to sign the death certificate. When Jerry’s parents got to the hospital to identify his body, they were denied access. A priest, who had been called to administer last rights, was also denied access to the body.

The medical examiner from Burlington County should have received the body. However, the police chief placed a call to the Gloucester County medical examiner, Dr. Claus Speth, who was attending a convention in Ohio at the time, and asked him to return and do Jerry’s autopsy as a personal favor. The next day Dr. Speth performed the autopsy. Afterward, he called Jerry’s parents and told them he believed Jerry had been murdered. He said he’d make a final decision after conferring with the police.

Although Jerry’s family doesn’t know for sure what happened at that meeting, they have heard that the session was recorded on an audio tape. Allegedly, one of the arresting officers stated that he’d slammed Jerry’s face into the concrete walkway. However, whatever his reasons, Dr. Speth ruled the death a suicide.

The official reports state that Jerry fell down the steps. But some witnesses say that Jerry was screaming “I’m not resisting, I’m going peacefully,” as officers dragged him down the steps by his feet, with his head bouncing off the concrete steps.

Some witnesses say they saw Jerry unconscious or possibly lifeless at the bottom of the steps.  Kathleen states that the autopsy showed Jerry had two black eyes, a split lip, multiple bruises, neck injuries not consistent with a hanging, and his voice box and thyroid glands were hemorrhaged.

According to Kathleen, one of the involved officers had been fired from other police agencies for incidents involving brutality and his records were sealed after each firing. This is the same officer who allegedly told Dr. Speth that he slammed Jerry’s head into the walkway.

Of further concern to Jerry’s family, the police told them that the T-shirt Jerry used to hang himself was lost and is unavailable for examination. In addition, the authorities claim the security cameras in the facility were broke at the time of the incident.

Was Jerry Kearney’s death suicide or homicide? The family may never know for sure.

The Case of Shawn Allison

On November 20, 2000 Shawn Joseph Allison was found dead of a gunshot wound to the face in his cabin in LaPine, Oregon. He was 29 years old.

Shawn’s body was found by “Tad” Leighton Keith Shirley II, a friend of Jessica McEwen, the woman Shawn was seeing. Tad said that Jessica’s mother asked him to go “check on Shawn.” This is odd to Shawn’s sister Rita, because Jessica came to the cabin whenever she wished. Why send Tad?

Tad phoned the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Department at 11:36 am, yet Shawn’s neighbors saw Tad at the cabin at 9 am, sitting on the porch steps making phone calls. When one neighbor asked what was going on, Tad said, “Don’t go inside. Shawn’s shot himself.” Why wait two and a half hours to call police and who was Tad calling?

One of the phone calls he made was to Shawn’s friend Buster Tate at 10 am. Buster in turn called Shawn’s mother Veronica’s boyfriend. The boyfriend and Veronica arrived at the cabin minutes after sheriff’s deputies got there. They were met by Deputy Gary Decker, who asked them who they were. When Veronica said, “I’m Shawn’s mother,” Deputy Decker said, “They weren’t supposed to tell you!” It is Oregon statute that the next of kin must be notified. Who was Decker referring to when he said “they?”

Veronica watched in a state of shock as a mortician took away her son’s body. The family has since learned that it was illegal for Deputy Decker to permit the removal. Under Oregon law, only the coroner has the authority to release the body for burial.

Stunned, but still trusting the police, Veronica agreed to have Shawn’s body cremated. Decker asked her if Shawn had ever threatened suicide. She replied, “Yes. He threatened a lot of things back when he was told he was dying of cancer.” Without allowing her to explain that the cancer scare had been eight years earlier, Decker declared Shawn’s death a suicide.

Although the police took pictures, they conducted no investigation. No autopsy was performed. No fingerprints were taken. There were no ballistics tests. The cartridge and the bullet both “disappeared.” A sheriff’s captain pointed out a spot in the middle of the room and told Veronica, “He stood there when he shot himself.” Yet you can see from police photos that Shawn’s body was found across the room on a couch where he “bled out,” and a gun was under his feet. How did Shawn get to that couch unless somebody placed him there? And how could he shoot himself if his feet were on top of the gun?

Under Oregon Statute, if an unnatural death is not witnessed or attended by a physician, it is to be considered a homicide until such time as the evidence warrants other findings. This was not done in Shawn’s case.

According to Rita Allison, the sheriff’s department does not have a stellar reputation. In the years since Shawn’s death, then sheriff Greg Brown has been arrested for embezzling a quarter of a million dollars from the local fire district and later for selling rifles from the sheriff’s department and pocketing the money. Two of the deputies involved in Shawn’s case, one of them the DARE officer at LaPine High School, were arrested for having sex with teenage girls, giving them drugs and attempting to put sex videos on the internet.

The family feels they cannot get an outside agency involved in this investigation unless they can get the finding of suicide removed from Shawn’s death certificate. When they made an appointment to talk to the county coroner who signed the death certificate without viewing Shawn’s body, he kept them waiting for five hours and then charged them money to see him.

As of now, the death of Shawn Allison officially remains a suicide. Did he really take his own life or is someone getting away with murder?

The Mysterious Death of Patrick Rust

Army Sgt. Patrick Rust was assigned to the 10th Mountain Division headquartered at Fort Drum in Watertown, New York. In January 2007 he returned from deployment to Afghanistan. Following a 30 day leave he was back on post in February. The then 24-year-old Patrick was a local boy and was familiar with Watertown and the surrounding area. He didn’t have a driver’s license or vehicle.

On Wednesday, March 14, 2007, Patrick moved from the barracks on base to share an apartment with a fellow soldier at 156 Sterling Street, Apartment 4, in Watertown. At that time the two men had known each other for approximately 15 months. 

The following day Patrick rode back to the apartment in his roommate’s car after they were released from duty at around 5 pm. At approximately 5:30 the roommate heard Patrick engaged in a phone call with an old friend from Colorado who was visiting the area.

At around 6:30 the two left the apartment and drove to the Salmon Run Mall. While there Patrick purchased some games for his Gameboy PSP player in the Best Buy store. They then went to the food court and got something to eat at Wendy’s. After that Patrick withdrew cash from an ATM machine estimated by the roommate to be between $100 and $300.

At approximately 7:50 they left the mall and stopped at a tanning salon where the roommate wanted to get a tan. At that point Patrick said that he was going to walk back to the apartment, which was a relatively short distance away.

According to a timeline prepared by military investigators, another soldier saw Patrick walking and gave him a lift to the apartment at approximately 7:55. This individual told the investigators that he dropped Patrick off, but didn’t actually see him enter the apartment building. The roommate states that he arrived at the apartment around 8:30 and Patrick wasn’t there. He remained at the apartment and went to sleep between 10 and 11 pm.

The next reported sighting of Patrick takes place at around 9:30 when he was observed in a bar called Clueless located at 545 Arsenal Street. Clueless is known as a gay and lesbian bar; but straights are welcome as well. There is no indication that Patrick was gay; and according to all available information he had never been in the establishment before.

While at the bar Patrick met a classmate from his school days. This man was in the company of his roommate, another Fort Drum soldier. According to witness statements Patrick and his former classmate engaged in lengthy conversation about their school days. As time passed Patrick obtained his old acquaintance’s phone number so they could keep in contact and hook up again in the future. 

At approximately 1:00 am on March 16 the bartenders at Clueless reportedly refused to serve Patrick any more alcohol because he was intoxicated. One patron at the bar told investigators that Patrick had seemed “high” and had mentioned cocaine at one point. However, no cocaine was observed and there are no reports that Patrick was causing any trouble, only that he’d had too much to drink. When Patrick exited Clueless he left through the front door which was only used for deliveries. Regular patrons knew the back door off the parking lot was for entrance and egress. It is believed Patrick used that back door upon his arrival at the bar and during multiple smoke breaks during the evening. That is the last known time Patrick Rust was seen alive.
It was subsequently reported to military investigators that Patrick placed two calls from his cell phone to his former classmate’s phone at around 1:10 am. The first ended with Patrick leaving a voicemail that he had enjoyed their conversation and would catch up with him again sometime. The second was a hang up.

Patrick’s roommate told investigators that he awakened around that same time, checked Patrick’s room and found it empty. When asked why he woke up at 1 am, he said he always got up in the middle of the night to check his emails. He returned to bed, woke up again around 5 am and again found Patrick’s room empty.
At approximately 5:10 am the roommate sent a text message to his superior stating that Patrick hadn’t been home all night and would not be at the 7:30 formation. 

The sergeant whom the roommate texted later told investigators that he was surprised to receive such a message over two hours before the scheduled formation. He also said that Patrick had no history of being late for or missing formations.

Sometime between Friday, March 16 and Sunday the 18th, before Patrick’s family or the civilian police were told he was missing, the military cleared all of Patrick’s belongings from the apartment. The explanation provided by the military for clearing the apartment so quickly was that it was their procedure.

On Monday, March 19, Patrick’s mother Judy Rust, her ex-husband Rodney Rust, Patrick’s roommate and the sergeant went to the Watertown Police Department where Patrick was officially reported as missing. The Watertown police launched an investigation and the military continued their inquiry.

For the next six months neither the military nor the Watertown police made any progress in their investigations. And then on September 16, a farmer cutting hay in a field about five miles out of town found skeletal remains. The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology responded to the scene to handle the recovery.

Some clothing was found along with Patrick’s identification and ATM cards. DNA testing confirmed that the remains were those of Patrick Rust. A subsequent autopsy by the military conducted in Washington, D.C. was unable to determine the cause or manner of death. Due to the condition of the remains toxicology tests could not be performed. 

At this time there is no active investigation into Patrick’s death by either civilian or military law enforcement.

The Rust family needs your help in finding out what happened to their son on March 16, 2007. If you have any information regarding this case please email me at denny@crimewiresite.com.