2004 Kansas hate crime murder remains unsolved despite $100,000 reward

LA CYGNE, Kan. (KCTV) – Esperanza Roberts is used to talking about her brother. In the twenty years since he was found dead, his story has been featured on Dateline and Unsolved Mysteries. Despite all the telling and retelling, she still chokes.

“It’s been 20 years, but it still hurts like it was yesterday,” Roberts said. “Alonzo missed a lot, you know? He missed a life. We missed that.”

Her brother, Alonzo Brooks, was last seen at a large house party in La Cygne, Kansas in April 2004. Alonzo was 23 years old. What followed was a series of strange developments.

A search by the police turned up nothing. Then his family found him dead in the same area almost a month later. How is that possible? For years his cause of death was unknown. In 2020, 16 years after his death, his body was exhumed and a new autopsy classified his death as a homicide. The FBI is investigating it as a hate crime. Four years ago, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. It remains unclaimed

A PLAYFUL AND LIGHT-HEADED YOUNG MAN

Alonzo Brooks was the youngest of five children. His brother was the eldest. There were three girls in the middle. Roberts remembers him as a child who always wanted to come along.

“(He) followed us everywhere, everywhere we went. We had to, according to our mom and dad, take him everywhere,” Roberts recalled with a laugh.

As he grew older, he was the fun uncle to their children and often helped with babysitting. Occasionally, Roberts said with a chuckle, he was the mean uncle by enforcing rules like bedtime.

“(He was) playful, liked to joke around,” Roberts described.

Alonzo grew up in Topeka and later moved to Gardner. He lived with his mother and worked as a custodian. He had a younger brother from his mother’s second marriage. The three people he met at the party were closer to his brother’s age. Roberts said Alonzo played soccer with them in the city park. She deliberately avoided calling them friends of his because the person who brought Alonzo to the party left without him.

“If you’re a friend, you don’t leave your friend,” Roberts said. “There have been different stories about what happened and why he was left behind.”

He didn’t come home that evening. He never came home. The party – on April 3, 2004 – is the last place where anyone who has spoken publicly has admitted to seeing him alive.

‘Everyone knew something was wrong’

The day after the party, Roberts received a call from her mother.

“I remember that day so vividly. I was preparing for my daughter’s birthday,” she said.

She was shopping in a store. It was late afternoon or early evening. She doesn’t remember the exact time, but she does remember what her mother said.

“She calls me and says, ‘Your brother didn’t come home.’ And I’m like, ‘What do you mean?’ She said, “He went to a party and he’s not home yet.”

Roberts had a bad feeling, but suggested to her mother that he call his friends and come back to her in a few hours. The person who took him to the party told Alonzo’s mother where the party was. The farm was located just east of the La Cygne city limits. It’s a small town by many people’s standards. About 1,000 people lived there at the time.

“My husband and Alonzo’s best friend drove there and looked around a little bit and didn’t see anything,” she continued.

Roberts said her mother contacted local police to file a missing persons report, but they told her that because he was an adult, they would not file a report until he had been gone for 48 hours. A larger group of family and friends made the hour-long drive to La Cygne. They asked if anyone had seen Alonzo or heard anything. They asked if they could put up flyers.

“They certainly met some resistance,” Roberts said. “But there were a few people who helped.”

Shortly thereafter, the Linn County Sheriff’s Office conducted a search of the area around the farm and parts of nearby Middle Creek, according to reports at the time. The Kansas Bureau of Investigation was called in to assist. Then the FBI was called in to help. There were concerns that there was foul play and that Alonzo’s race may have played a role. His father was black. His mother is Spanish.

The police search turned up nothing. His family found him less than a month later after organizing their own search.

When U.S. Attorney Stephen McAllister ordered the case reopened years later, a press release described what the family discovered.

“They started on the road near the farm and walked along the two branches of Middle Creek. Within just under an hour, they found Alonzo’s body, partially atop a pile of brush and branches in the creek. read the edition.

Roberts was there that day. She saw his body. She remembers her shock and disgust.

“I think there’s no way they would have missed him if they had done an extensive search,” she said. “(It was) devastating to have had faith in law enforcement so they couldn’t find him, but relief that we did and relief that we were able to bring him home and bury him.

The autopsy that followed listed his cause of death as undetermined. Pipes dried up.

The investigation lay dormant until the U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas intervened fifteen years later. Stephen McAllister was appointed U.S. Attorney in 2018 after being nominated by then-President Donald Trump. He had previously taught law at the University of Kansas. He ordered the FBI to reopen the case and start over.

“I stood under the trees on the bank of Middle Creek where Alonzo’s body was found,” McAllister said as he announced he was reopening the case. “It’s a quiet place of deep sadness for anyone who knows the history, but there are no answers. However, I am convinced that there are people who know the answers, people who have harbored terrible secrets for all these years and carry a terrible burden. We ask one or more of them to come forward now and finally lay down that burden so that we can ease the suffering of a family and serve the cause of justice.”

‘TWO disturbing facts were indisputable’

Special Agent Leena Ramana was assigned to the case when the FBI reopened the case in 2019, 15 years after his death. She reviewed previous interviews and did new ones.

“In the first interviews conducted, some partygoers mentioned racial slurs,” Ramana said.

She estimated there were a hundred people at the party, possibly more. Alonzo was one of only three black people at the party. He may have been the only one there as the night progressed. News spreads quickly in a town like La Cygne. Investigators heard numerous rumors that led them to believe they had a hate crime on their hands.

“Some said Brooks might have flirted with a girl, some said drunken white men wanted to fight an African-American man, and some said racist whites simply hated Brooks’ presence,” a 2020 press release from McCallister’s office read. “After the party, two disturbing facts were beyond dispute: Alonzo could not be found; and no one who attended the party would admit that he knew what had happened to him.

BODY EXCITED

In 2020, Alonzo’s body was exhumed from his grave in Topeka. It was sent to Dover Air Base for examination by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, who was assisted by forensic pathologists. A FBI News Report 2021 referred to “injuries to parts of Brooks’ body that the investigator concluded are inconsistent with normal decomposition patterns.”

“From what I understand, the forensic anthropologist was able to not only look at the body that we brought to him and the medical examiner, but also look at the photographs and the insects and the landscape around Alonso’s body when it was recovered, and use that in his consideration,” Ramana explained. “From this they ruled that Alonzo’s death was a murder.”

Ramana will not say how investigators believe he died or even whether a decision has been made on the manner of death. However, she did have answers as to why he wasn’t found by police before his family found his body.

She was also curious how the family’s search succeeded after the police search failed.

“One of the things we started looking at first was the rainfall that was happening in the area at the time, and the rise of the Middle Creek fall and how that responded,” Ramana said. “It’s possible that given the rainfall that occurred, the creek rose and fell a number of different times, causing whatever was stuck under the really large brush to become loose and come to the surface.”

‘You’re older now’

In 2020, the FBI announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest, prosecution and conviction of those responsible for Alonzo’s death. It is significantly higher than the rewards offered for killings in the area. Four years later, there is no indication that anyone has provided enough information to make this claim.

The passage of time can be discouraging, but in one sense it brings new hope. Many people at the 2004 party were underage. The hope is that they will be more forthcoming as adults.

“You’re older now,” Roberts said, addressing the people who still hide what they know. ‘Your parents can’t do anything to you. If you know anything, tell us what happened.”

Ramana said even something small, like knowing the names of other people who were there, could help.

“They may assume we already knew that, but it’s a new name and a different individual we can talk to,” she said.

When the U.S. attorney reopened the case, Alonzo spoke to KCTV5 and indicated he was hopeful. He has since passed away. But hope still lives.

“I still feel like there are things we can do and there are people we can talk to and there are advances and technology that we don’t even have right now that could be the key to solving all of this ,” said Ramana.

For Roberts, there is that and something more fundamental.

“We just have confidence,” she said. “We are confident that we will ultimately discover what happened and get justice.”

REWARD OF $100,000

The FBI is offering a $100,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone responsible for Alonzo’s death. You can call the FBI at 816-512-8200 or the anonymous Greater KC Crimestoppers Hotline at 816-474-TIPS. You can also submit a tip online via tips.FBI.gov or via the Crimestoppers online form for submitting tips.

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