Joshua Vaughn (Narrator/Reporter)
Appearances
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Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. The body of Tyreek Riley lies on a table inside a coroner's office. A breathing tube from the hospital still hangs from Tyreek's mouth. IV catheters protrude from his neck and right hand.
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where the Gun Trace Task Force, an elite police unit, turned into a criminal empire, robbing suspects and falsifying evidence while the city looked the other way. When the truth finally came out, it exposed a culture of corruption that went far beyond one rogue unit. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Discover exclusive seasons, binge new seasons first, and listen completely ad-free on Wondery Plus. Start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Lamont had been inside the walls of Dauphin County Prison. He knew just how easy it would be for the people who ran DCP to cover up the truth unless they were forced to reveal it.
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And in the days after Tyreek's death, it felt like that was exactly what was happening. Lamont kept tabs on any statements officials gave to the press. The district attorney of Dauphin County said that whatever happened at DCP, quote, "...did not appear to be violent." But Lamont and his family didn't buy it.
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And soon they'd have plenty of evidence to support their suspicions that something violent had occurred. Because through their lawyer, they've been able to get photos from Tyreek's autopsy.
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There were close-ups of cuts encircling Tyreek's wrist. A massive purple splotch covering his lower back. Deep wounds on his neck and upper back.
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To Lamont, it was clear. This had been a lot worse than the struggle his inside source had initially told him about.
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Lamont figured those brutal autopsy photos of Tyreek would force something to happen. Someone would come forward with more answers, and the people involved would be held accountable. Families in Dauphin County are often kept in the loop after a suspicious death. Someone from the coroner's office might sit down with the parents to discuss preliminary autopsy findings.
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But as the weeks went by, Tyreek's family wasn't hearing anything.
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Tyreek's father, Tom, felt the same way. After several weeks of hearing nothing, he went to DCP to help lead a protest. As he camped out near the gates, he spoke with a local reporter. The one-story tan building loomed in the background.
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Tom figured the silence was part of a game plan. Say nothing. Wait it out.
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The longer the official silence persisted, the more the circle of people demanding answers expanded. It wasn't just Tyreek's parents and Lamont anymore. On Facebook, people who hadn't even known Tyreek personally started posting about him. A few circulated the graphic photographs of his injuries that Lamont had seen. A hashtag started to spread. Justice for Tyreek.
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But another man would be responsible for actually deciding Tyreek's cause and manner of death. Graham Hetrick, the county coroner. Graham is there in the exam room during the autopsy, and he looms over the proceedings. In many ways, he looms over Harrisburg and all of Dauphin County. He has an unmistakable look, a neatly cropped white beard, tortoise shell spectacles, often a white lab coat.
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Quincy Irvin is one of Tyreek's cousins. He's also Lamont's son. Quincy and Tyreek pretty much grew up together.
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Back when Quincy and Tyreek were kids, they'd meet up on Friday nights and go to the high school football game. The lights would be on and the stands would be packed. And Tyreek and Quincy would try out their own game.
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So they weren't particularly smooth. But what Quincy remembers is everything about Tyreek was clean. He wore his hair in neat braids, kept his lineup fresh, loved his sneaker collection and Ralph Lauren clothes. And he had a cool car, a green Impala. He loved it, worked on it himself, made sure that it was always as crisp as he was. Quincy and Tyreek spent a lot of time in that Impala together.
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They'd roll down the windows and just kind of enjoy life. Enjoy being young. Enjoy not having anything else to do. It was their first real taste of freedom. But that freedom ended when Tyreek got sent to DCP. And after he died, Quincy was hurt and confused. Now, Quincy was looking for answers. And he was hearing a lot of things. Rumors, speculation.
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In fact, that one was so badly broken that it had protruded from his body. There was a rumor that a footprint was on Tyreek's back, presumably from being stomped. There's nothing that I've seen to suggest these rumors are accurate, but Quincy didn't know what was true. And while he was trying to figure out what had happened, Quincy was also coming to grips with his grief.
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A lot of that processing happened through music. Do you remember any of the songs that you wrote around that time? Yeah, I remember some. You willing to give me a couple bars? Tyreek's family had waited two months for answers. They kept being told they'd hear more soon.
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But then, finally, in early September, Graham Hetrick, the county coroner, announced that he would be holding a press conference to reveal his findings in Tyreek's case. Graham was the guy who claimed in his job and on his TV show that he spoke for the dead, that the only people he answered to were the corpses that arrived at his office.
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As they prepared for the press conference, Tyrig's family couldn't help but wonder just who Graham really spoke for.
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Graham Hetrick had been the coroner of Dauphin County for more than 25 years when he got his own TV show and started telling the world about just what his job required.
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Graham was often making high-stakes determinations in autopsy reports, and Tyreek's was one of them. If he found Tyreek had died due to injuries he suffered in the prison, then that could force the hand of the district attorney to start a major criminal investigation. So what Graham had to say at this press conference mattered. The stakes were high, and Lamont Jones wasn't going to miss it.
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So on Friday, September 5th, he walked into the county coroner's office, not sure exactly what to expect. The room was bland. It had institutional gray carpeting and fluorescent lights. In the vast majority of his cases, Graham would simply issue a coroner's report. No need to address reporters. But this time was different. Graham was here to deliver the answers people had been demanding.
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Dressed in a suit with his signature bow tie and tortoise shell glasses, leaning on the authority of his office and celebrity, he seemed to assume that today he'd be giving the final word on the matter. Graham took a seat behind a desk at the front of the room, queued up a PowerPoint on the screen behind him, and began to speak. This audio is from a live stream of the press conference.
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He has his own TV show, a true crime reality series on ID Discovery, named for his catchphrase, I speak for the dead. And in real life, it was Graham Hetrick's job to solve the mystery of how Tyreek's time in jail led to his death. Graham had ruled on thousands of deaths before. His findings were rarely challenged, but this time would be different.
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The quality isn't great, but Graham's tone is clear. He's the expert here.
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Graham said, essentially, don't believe all that garbage on the internet. Just listen to what I'm going to tell you now in this press conference, because my agenda is this.
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Graham gestured to the slide behind him. It showed Tyreek's coroner's office case number. In smaller letters beneath were the words cause of death. This, said Graham, tells you why Tyreek died.
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Tyreek died because of cerebral vasculitis and... Encephalitis. Encephalitis.
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thrombi, and rhabdomyolysis. Graham acknowledged these were probably unfamiliar terms. He would explain.
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Lamont was standing off to the side waiting and not exactly appreciating Graham's lesson in medical jargon.
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Eventually, Graham laid out his theory in plain English. He said Tyreek was likely suffering from a brain inflammation before he arrived at DCP. Graham said the inflammation could have come from a virus. Or it could have come from drugs. And Graham pointed out that traces of cocaine had been found in a chemical analysis of Tyreek's hair.
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But Graham wasn't going to make any solid conclusions about the drugs or almost anything else. The only thing he could say for sure was that Tyreek had died of natural causes.
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And now, are there any questions? Yeah, Lamont had questions. He'd seen in the hospital records that Tyreek had arrived from DCP with missing teeth. But the autopsy from Graham's office didn't mention that. Why? Graham said missing teeth could mean anything. It could mean Tyreek had had teeth pulled at the dentist. Not necessarily that they had been knocked out.
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To Lamont, this was a non-answer. He kept going. What about the bruises on Tyreek's body?
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Nothing to indicate the type of bruising from punching or kicking, Graham said. Lamont wasn't so sure, and he said so.
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Graham got on the defensive fast. He was the expert after all. This was his room.
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Lamont tried to explain how he'd seen restraint chairs used as an inmate at DCP. But Graham interrupted him.
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Graham's conclusion was clear. Nothing that happened to Tyreek Riley at DCP played any role in his death. As the press conference was drawing to a close, a reporter asked Graham about his catchphrase, I speak for the dead, which he had turned into a kind of mission statement of his integrity and incorruptibility.
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To Lamont, the press conference had been a carefully planned bit of stagecraft.
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Like a magic show, Graham's remarks have been smoke and mirrors. Wow the audience, pull in their attention, and distract them from the reality of what was unfolding in front of them.
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Graham's conclusions about why Tyreek died would unleash a furious response and expose a fact that local officials were trying hard to hide. Tyreek's death was part of a pattern. Something very bad was going on inside Dolphin County Prison.
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Graham's conclusion also meant it would be harder for Tyreek's family to pursue any legal action.
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Not only potential lawsuits, but other investigations as well. A detective from the Dauphin County DA's office was assigned to look into Tyreek's death. After he read Graham's autopsy report, he concluded his investigation. Death by natural causes seemed to mean no crime had been committed. That press conference that was meant to put an end to the speculation, it ended up being the beginning.
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By the time I started working at PennLive, it was two years after Tyreek's death, and Graham's press conference had become notorious. Tyreek's story had lived on through his family that had been able to advocate for him, to organize protests, to file a civil lawsuit against the warden of DCP, and through a cousin like Lamont who was always pushing for answers.
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Many inmates at DCP didn't have families like that, And as I dug in, I saw a lot of those inmates were dying. Many of those deaths seemed to come after what officials dubbed, quote, medical incidents. And the cause and manner of those deaths was often deemed to be natural or even undetermined. I recognized those words. They sounded official, even scientific, but they revealed nothing.
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They were as helpful as a politician saying no comment. I wondered what was hiding behind those words, and I knew what to do next. I put in a public records request with the county. I wanted to get my hands on any official documents pertaining to the deaths at DCP.
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I knew there must be use of force reports from inside the jail, hospital records from inmates who were sent there, autopsy findings from Graham's office. I remember when the first email arrived with a link to documents from the jail. I clicked on one. It was about a death that I was particularly curious about. A death where the official manner was undetermined.
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Where there had been, quote, no evidence of physical assault. Where, according to the official press release, a 29-year-old man had just stopped breathing. And as soon as I started reading, I realized here was proof that something terrible was happening at Dolphin County Prison. And those documents were just the beginning.
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That's on the next episode of Death County, PA. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
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If you have a tip about a story you think we should investigate, please write to us at wondery.com slash tips. From Wondery and PennLive, this is episode one of six of Death County, PA. Death County, PA is written and reported by me, Joshua Vaughn. Producer is Rachel Yong. Senior producers are Eric Benson and Chris Siegel. Story editor is Michael May. Associate producer is Emily Locke.
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Fact-checking by Annika Robbins. Sound design and mixing by Jeff Schmidt. Audio assistance by Daniel William Gonzalez. Sound supervisor is Marcelino Villalpando. Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freesun Sync. Senior managing producer is Lutta Pandya. Managing producers are Heather Beloga and Matt Gant. Senior development editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Development producer is Olivia Weber.
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Executive producers for Advanced Local are Richard Diamond and Selena Roberts. Executive producers are Nigeri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for Wondery.
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From Wondery and PennLive, I'm Joshua Vaughn, and this is Death County, PA. I grew up in Waynesboro, a small town in central Pennsylvania. It's a great place to grow up. It was small and rural. You knew your neighbors. You got a lot of freedom as a kid. It was also homogenous, almost completely white, and it could feel a little stifling.
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Waynesboro is about an hour from Harrisburg, the state capital. And when I was a kid, Harrisburg was the big city to me. It had a bad reputation, and sometimes for good reasons. The longtime mayor of Harrisburg ran the city like a petty dictatorship. People called him mayor for life.
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Tyreek was just 21 years old, a young black man whose death was unimaginable just two weeks earlier when he had been arrested and sent to the local jail. Now, it falls under the broad category of a death of questionable circumstances. So, in a sterile exam room in a generic office park, a few miles southeast of downtown Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the autopsy of Tyreek Riley begins.
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He was blamed for putting tens of millions in public funds towards personal interests, like rare artifacts for a Wild West museum he wanted to build. The museum never opened. Instead, investigators found boxes full of those artifacts in the mayor's home after he left office. He was indicted and eventually pled guilty to 20 counts of theft by receiving stolen property.
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When I became an investigative reporter in Harrisburg, that mayor was long gone. But I realized there were still plenty of bad things happening just outside the public eye. And nowhere was that more true than at the local jail, Dolphin County Prison, or as everybody calls it, DCP. Law enforcement actually has a more colorful name for DCP. They call it the County Toilet.
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and inmates knew DCP wasn't just dirty and in disrepair, it could also be deadly. Tyreek Riley's death was when the community started waking up to that same reality. This is Episode 1, Natural Causes.
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Lamont Jones had just left a prison in Buffalo, New York, where he'd spent the day leading workshops with inmates, talking to them about life skills, building self-esteem, and their plan for after they were released. Lamont was tired. It was tough work, but also rewarding.
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Lamont wanted to change that system, make it fairer and more humane. At that moment, the best he could do was help out one prisoner at a time. But he was ambitious. At 44 years old, he felt like he was ready for something bigger.
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As Lamont drove back from the prison in Buffalo to his home in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, He was thinking about his next steps when his phone rang. It was his cousin Rhonda. Lamont and his cousins talked often. They were a sprawling African-American family that had been well-established in Harrisburg for generations. There was always some kind of minor drama or neighborhood gossip to catch up on.
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But Rhonda was distraught. One of their younger cousins had died, Tyreek Riley. And I was like, what?
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Rhonda said Tyreek had been at Dauphin County Prison before he died. This was the first Lamont was hearing about that. It was a lot to process. But Lamont would do anything for his family. He put his feelings aside and wanted to know how he could help.
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Lamont sometimes ran his programs at Dauphin County Prison. And from his work there, he had connections to senior Dauphin County officials. He figured maybe he could ask for a favor, but he tried to manage expectations.
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But first, Lamont had to get the entire backstory. Earlier that summer, Tyreek's parents noticed their son seemed off. Tyreek was complaining about migraines and would sometimes have trouble making sense. On a few occasions, he told his parents somebody was outside their house, somebody who didn't belong there. But his parents hadn't seen anything suspicious. They weren't sure what to think.
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Then, early in the morning on June 18th, 2019, Tyreek's behavior got scary. His parents woke up to find Tyreek standing in the kitchen holding a sledgehammer, talking again about someone lurking outside. Tyreek's dad was alarmed. He lunged at Tyreek and grabbed hold of the handle. The two struggled for control of the hammer. Tyreek's mom was terrified. She called 911.
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A forensic pathologist in a surgical mask examines Tyreek's body. In some ways, he seems to have been perfectly healthy. The pathologist notes Tyreek still looks well-nourished and well-built. But Tyrek's body also shows signs of injury. The pathologist jots down what he sees. Contusion to the mid-forehead. Contusion to the tongue. Abrasions on the lips.
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And as she was talking to dispatchers, she was trying to calm down Tyreek.
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Help arrived in the form of an ambulance, but there were also police officers who arrested Tyreek and took him to DCP. Nine days later, Tyreek's parents went to the courthouse for their son's preliminary hearing. But when they arrived and announced who they were, they weren't ushered inside the courtroom. Instead, a police officer approached them. There was no hearing.
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Tyreek was in the ICU at Harrisburg Hospital. He was unconscious, and he never woke up. On July 1st, Tyreek was declared dead. Now, Lamont was trying to figure out what the hell had happened to Tyreek. He called one of his contacts at DCP.
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A struggle. Lamont felt there had to be more. A prisoner being transferred to the emergency room would have generated a lot of paperwork. Maybe Lamont's source was holding back. Or maybe Lamont's source hadn't been given all the information himself.
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And for some people, that might have been it. They might say, hey, I tried. It's not happening. But not Lamont. He had made it through a lot of challenges in his life, some of his own making. Lamont had spent 11 years behind bars, some of that time at DCP itself. He sold cocaine in his teens and 20s and made a lot of money.
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He drove around town in a white Cadillac DeVille, the very picture of a street corner badass. But it had major consequences for him. Lamont was in prison when his kids were growing up, and when he got out, he found that no one was eager to hire a convicted felon. Lamont was done with that life, and now he spent his time trying to steer young black men away from making the decisions he had.
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But he also learned a lot in those years, hustling and fighting for his piece of turf. He adopted an alter ego. His street name was Montmont.
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Lamont left prison for the last time more than a decade ago, but he's not completely done with Montmont.
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And now that Lamont had to stand up for his deceased cousin Tyreek, he felt Montmont coming out more and more.
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That toughness was about to be useful because Tyrig's family had gotten their hands on photographs that would force the powers at DCP to give them some real answers.
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A quarter-inch cut encircling the right wrist. Cuts on the knuckles. Bruising on a forearm. Abrasions on the legs and feet. And a six-inch bruise on the right hip. The pathologist examines the internal organs too. He sees hemorrhaging in the lungs, oxygen deprivation in the brain. It would be up to the pathologist to stitch together these findings into an official report.
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In Death County, PA, Lamont Jones thought freedom meant leaving Dolphin County Prison behind. But when his cousin dies under mysterious circumstances, Lamont uncovers a web of corruption, a reality TV corner, and a system designed to silence the truth. If you're drawn to stories of justice gone wrong, you'll be gripped by American Scandal, Police Corruption in Baltimore.
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Hello, this is a prepaid call from... An inmate at the Dauphin County Detention Facility. To accept this call, press... Hey, how you doing?
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They turned on all the electricity, y'all. We were just eating in the dark. Dark place, lunch and dinner in the dark. They had to use the bathroom in the dark. How long was the electricity off for? 17 days with no electricity.
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Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. It was a cloudy Sunday morning when Justin Douglas got to the Bridge Church.
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But what Stevan and Imhotep told me about their medical slips going unanswered, they reflected a common concern I had heard from other inmates and from the medical staff inside DCP.
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He was a nurse with Prime Care at Dauphin County Prison. Garth isn't his real name. He wanted to remain anonymous. He's concerned about retaliation.
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I had seen other evidence that PrimeCare staff seemed to ignore inmate complaints. In one case, an inmate named Jimmy King reported having brutal headaches after getting in a fight with another inmate. According to court documents, PrimeCare staff administered an x-ray, but didn't assess him for a traumatic brain injury.
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King kept telling medical staff he was having headaches, dizziness, and chest pain. He said he felt like he was bleeding inside his brain. 10 days later, he died of a brain hemorrhage. Tatiana Bunty, another former prime care nurse, told me about the case of one woman who suffered from epilepsy.
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When she was brought to DCP, she was taking Keppra, an anti-seizure medication. According to Tatiana, the PrimeCare nurse handling her intake told the woman that they couldn't fill her prescription right away. The pharmacy was closed. And until it opened, they couldn't verify her prescription.
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And Tatiana says if a brand name medication was too expensive, it was a practice not to fill those prescriptions, even if the consequences could be terrible.
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Which could trigger a serious mental health episode. We reached out to PrimeCare and they said there's an explanation for their approach to medical care. They told us there are times when medication may not be continued. For example, quote, they may not be verified. They could be harmful to the patient.
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They also told us that not all sick call slips require a face-to-face response, saying it is, quote, There was this interlocking web I was starting to see. Inmates suffering from mental illness getting sent to a jail that was overcrowded and understaffed.
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where correctional officers sometimes didn't follow their training, and where the third-party medical staff said they were told to cut corners to save cash. Every penny that PrimeCare spent came out of their potential profits. Just as I felt like I was really piecing a lot of things together, the county stopped honoring my right-to-know requests.
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It seemed like they thought I'd reported enough on the deaths at DCP. They said they weren't going to turn over any paperwork from DCP staffers about violent physical altercations anymore. Their excuse was that providing those reports could put the safety of the jail at risk.
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But it wasn't just the churchgoers that were at Bridge Church that Sunday. When the national leaders of the Brethren in Christ found out Justin was welcoming gay and lesbian members, they strongly objected. So Justin invited the leadership to come to his church and hear from the congregation directly.
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The county spokesperson actually told me that they had erred on the side of transparency when releasing the reports, but were no longer going to do that. As DCP was cutting off my ability to monitor them, they were definitely monitoring me.
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Just a few minutes later, the line cut out. I lost you. I don't know if you can still hear me, but I completely lost you. Okay, I got you. I got you now. Not long after, I got access to some emails from a source who worked at the county. They're from the DCP warden to senior jail staff and the county's lawyer.
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In one email, the warden says he's going to listen in on a phone call I've scheduled with someone at DCP. It reads, The jail's lawyer, who I learned had also listened in on my calls with DCP inmates, suggested they should use information they got from the calls and texts against me, if possible. It was clear that the administration at DCP were looking for ways to get rid of me.
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When the warden was confronted about this during a public meeting, he brushed it off. He said he merely listens in on my calls because he knows inmates talk to me about their concerns. The administration at DCP could try to stop me from reporting. But I wasn't the only threat to the status quo at Dauphin County Prison. Lamont Jones worked inside DCP for years.
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And he was finally finding a way to get through to the people who had power over the jail.
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Lamont was in his role as a member of the Dolphin County Prison Community Advisory Committee, which was just that, advisory, no real power. But he figured maybe with his catch bees with honey approach, he could make some improvements. He took aim at a policy that struck him as especially cruel and unusual. The county was actually charging some inmates to stay at DCP.
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They would have to pay a nightly rate to be locked up. They called it room and board fees.
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Lamont saw this as a blatant example of the county taking advantage of inmates any way they could. These charges would add up. They were due as soon as an inmate was released.
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Lamont made it his signature issue on the advisory board. He told the county commissioners and the warden and everyone else how this policy was leading to recidivism, how it wasn't a deterrent, but was instead making everyone in the community less safe. He slowly felt like people were actually starting to listen to him.
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members of the church got up one by one and spoke on the stage was justin the board of the bridge church and the president of the denomination most of the people who spoke were either those who were family members of lgbt people in our community or lgbt people in our community and most of what they said was incredibly heartbreaking
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About a year after Lamont joined the board, Dauphin County officially ended the practice. Lamont had spent years trying to push for reforms. Now he'd actually achieved a major victory. He decided he would push for more, but with real power. Around the same time Justin was gearing up for his run for Dauphin County Commissioner, Lamont entered the race for a seat on the Harrisburg City Council.
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Lamont's life and work had given him a clear-eyed view of the interconnected problems facing the city. He was practical. He knew he couldn't fix everything. But he thought just the experience he could bring to the council could open up new ways of looking at those problems. And he thought his candidacy itself would be a message.
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Lamont would be an unorthodox candidate with an improbable background. There was one person who was following his campaign closely.
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Justin would see Lamont at events, and Justin was excited when he found out Lamont was going to run for office.
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Justin was blown away by the coalition that Lamont was putting together.
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In his own campaign, Justin was going to have to figure out a way to appeal to the community like Lamont. He needed to convince voters that a guy they'd never heard of should run the county, a guy whose main focus was on Dauphin County Prison. Imagine you're living out in the suburbs of Harrisburg. You've got a nice ranch house, three kids, comfortable job, 401k.
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You're not that interested in politics. You want a safe and peaceful life. You want your kids to go to good schools and get good jobs. You hear a knock at the door and you open it a crack. There's this big husky guy standing there with a beard and tattoos. At first glance, he's kind of intimidating. Your first instinct is to get him away from the door as fast as you can.
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But before you can do that, He starts to speak.
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Justin pulls out a flyer. He hands it to you. And if you give him a second, he starts talking.
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Justin was hoping that line, 18 deaths in the last four years, would shock the potential voters standing in front of him. And if you're that suburban voter, maybe you keep listening to what Justin has to say.
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Justin knew he'd have to stand out to have a chance. The Dolphin County commissioners had long been a group of insiders. They had deep roots in the area. They were often strongly committed to the status quo, which put a tattooed preacher from out of town who advocated for the rights of the queer community, the homeless, and the incarcerated at a sizable disadvantage.
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Two of the three incumbent commissioners were basically shoe-ins. But the third seat was held by someone who had never been elected. He had been appointed when the former chairman, a guy named Jeff Haste, had retired. Justin, like everyone in Dauphin County, was aware of Jeff Haste.
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Haste had hand-selected a nominee to take his old seat, who'd been voted in unanimously by a panel of county judges. To Republicans, that seat seemed safe from the opposition, especially if the opposition was a bleeding-heart liberal like Justin Douglas. And they weren't the only ones writing him off.
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Justin had well-meaning campaign advisors who were saying that his strategy of focusing on the jail was a terrible idea.
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There were times where Justin felt like he was going to be vindicated, that voters wanted something different. But then there were times when Justin wasn't so sure.
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Justin would walk away and try to psych himself up to keep going. He'd remind himself of the voters who seemed receptive. But as the spring turned into summer, Justin wondered if maybe he'd miscalculated. If maybe Dauphin County was less like the congregants in his church than he thought. Maybe Dauphin County wasn't interested in change.
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He would have to make a bold move or just give it all up. The idea came to him in a flash. He was out on Paxton Road, east of downtown Harrisburg. Across the street was the local Walmart Supercenter. Justin saw just how many cars drove by.
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He thought, what if we rent one of those billboards for six weeks and use it to tell people about the deaths at DCP? As expected, Justin's advisors weren't exactly on board.
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It was a landslide. 133 in favor of being inclusive. Just three votes opposed.
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Money was the biggest problem for the campaign. They didn't have very much of it.
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As soon as the billboard went up, people noticed.
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That was fine with Justin. He was putting out the message he wanted voters to hear. And as Justin was trying to get inside and turn things around at DCP, the cruelty at the jail was about to rise to a whole new level.
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That's on the next episode of Death County PA. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Death County PA early and ad-free by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey.
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If you have a tip about a story you think we should investigate, please write to us at wondery.com slash tips. From Wondery and PennLive, this is episode four of six of Death County, PA. Death County, PA is written and reported by me, Joshua Vaughn. Producer is Rachel Yong. Senior producers are Eric Benson and Chris Siegel. Story editor is Michael May. Associate producer is Emily Locke.
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Fact-checking by Annika Robbins. Sound design and mixing by Jeff Schmidt. Audio assistance by Daniel William Gonzalez. Sound supervisor is Marcelino Villalpando. Music supervisor is Scott Velasquez for Freesun Sync. Senior managing producer is Lutta Pandya. Managing producers are Heather Beloga and Matt Gantt. Senior Development Editor is Rachel B. Doyle. Development Producer is Olivia Weber.
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Executive Producers for Advanced Local are Richard Diamond and Selena Roberts. Executive Producers are Nigeri Eaton, George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent for Wondery.
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Justin walked out of that meeting feeling good. He was confident that church leadership was going to back down once they saw what their own members wanted. After all, they were a thriving and growing church. He was wrong.
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The Bridge Church is about eight miles east of Harrisburg and Dauphin County Prison. At that time, Justin didn't have much reason to think about the jail. It was just a simple rectangular brick building, kind of like his church, pretty drab and unassuming. Justin, on the other hand, is a sight to behold. He's a big guy with a beard, visible tattoos on his arms, and gauged ears.
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But they couldn't take Justin's congregants, the actual people who made up the church.
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Justin was wounded and battle scarred, but he'd learned some valuable lessons on what it meant to be a leader and that standing up for marginalized people was something worth fighting for. When he heard about the deaths at Dauphin County Prison, he was outraged, and he knew, one way or another, that would be his next fight.
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From Wondery and PennLive, I'm Joshua Vaughn, and this is Death County, PA.
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When Justin Douglas was kicked out of the Brethren in Christ, he lost a lot. He lost his home. He lost his steady paycheck. He had two young kids, so he had to hustle to make ends meet. He drove for Uber part-time. And in the mornings, he made people sweat.
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On top of all that, he was the pastor at the Belong Collective. And he and his congregation wanted to make an impact. When the city proposed clearing out a homeless encampment, the Belong Collective got involved. To Justin and his church, that was just wrong. Justin and the members of his church showed up with a U-Haul to help the displaced people move their belongings.
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Justin was a natural leader. But it was still surprising when one day, between CrossFit classes, he got a random phone call.
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Run for Something is a group that recruits young progressive leaders and urges them to pursue political office. And they had a proposition for Justin. Run for Dolphin County Commissioner.
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So, Justin started seriously thinking about it.
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Around this time, Justin had come across some of my reporting. And when he read about Jamal Crummel, he was outraged.
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And it wasn't just Jamal. Justin learned that there had been 18 deaths in the past four years. He wondered, why were so many people dying at DCP?
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Tyreek, Ishmael, Jamal, they were all a part of something much bigger that was going on at Dauphin County Prison. Something that felt nefarious. In the last five years, more people have died prematurely at DCP from apparent neglect or abuse than have been executed by the state in the last 50 years.
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As commissioner, Justin couldn't wave a magic wand and just fix the jail, but he and his two fellow commissioners would control the county budget, which included the jail and all the contractors who provided services there. That meant he could hire more corrections officers so that the current staff wasn't so stretched and overworked. He could ensure inmates had more outdoor recreation time.
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He looks like he's in a rock band, not a pastor at a small Pennsylvania church. And the sermon he was preparing that early morning wasn't an ordinary sermon.
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He could take a close look at prime care, who came up quite often in the stories about inmate deaths. He could make big, sweeping changes just by saying yay or nay. He told Run for something, yes, he'd do it.
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Justin was in the race. But getting enough signatures was just the beginning. He was a long shot, an unknown first-time candidate trying to get a seat on a commission steered by longtime incumbents. He was a super progressive Democrat in a pretty conservative county. This was the same county that kept re-electing Graham Hetrick for the past 30 years.
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But he was confident that with the right message, he could disrupt things. Honestly, I was excited for Justin and his candidacy. But while Justin wanted to change the system from the inside, I was finding out just how far the system would go to keep me on the outside. In Death County, PA, Lamont Jones is fighting to uncover the truth about his cousin's death in Dauphin County Prison.
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But standing in his way is a reality TV corner and a system built on secrets. If you're captivated by stories of betrayal and cover-ups, you should check out Wondery's podcast, Exposed. This series reveals the horrifying crimes of Dr. Robert Haddon, an Ivy League OBGYN who assaulted hundreds of patients while the system protected him.
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From the prestigious halls of Columbia University to the courtrooms where survivors finally got their day in court, this is a story of power, accountability, and the courage it takes to fight back. Follow Exposed on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Exposed exclusively and ad-free right now on Wondery+.
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Start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. By the time Justin began his campaign for county commissioner, I had been reporting on DCP for about two years. My goal was to write stories that took people inside of the jail. People like Justin, who could see the horrors and then want to do something about them. But reporting on DCP wasn't easy.
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For starters, I had been primarily working off of records requests and interviews. I hadn't actually been in the building. They wouldn't give me any kind of tour, no matter how limited or chaperoned. In order to tell the stories of the inmates at DCP, they had to call me on a recorded line.
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Hey, what's up, Josh? Good morning. Good morning. How you doing, man?
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Stevon Crummel is a cousin of Jamal's. I first talked to him a little over a year after Jamal's death. We spoke a few times. He gave me a really good sense of what was going on inside.
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When you heard this time that you were going to DCP, what was going through your head? Am I going to die? Are they going to kill me? Is that because of what happened to Jamal? Yeah.
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Stevon couldn't get the image of his cousin freezing to death out of his mind.
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Justin's church was part of an evangelical denomination called the Brethren in Christ. Justin had taken a strong stance. He welcomed gay and lesbian members into Bridge Church. He was open to hiring them in church positions. On this Sunday, the community was going to take a vote on whether they wanted to continue Justin's approach. Members of the congregation were streaming through the doors.
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Jamal had died after having medical and psychological needs that went unaddressed. It was enough to wonder what was going on with PrimeCare, the for-profit company that provided all medical services at DCP. Were they understaffed? Undertrained? Or was something else going on? To hear Stevon tell it, it sounded like Prime Care had a habit of neglecting all kinds of medical requests.
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That man died by suicide. There was another inmate who I started talking to, a guy named Imhotep Mohammed.
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He also had stories about obstacles to getting medical care at DCP. After he fell and messed up his face and teeth.
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The nurse told him, I guess he won't be able to sing Christmas songs this year. According to court documents, instead of giving Imhotep painkillers, the nurse gave him salt water for his busted teeth. Then she sent him back to his cell. Imhotep insisted he needed more than just salt water. He thought he might have a concussion. But when he submitted medical slips asking to be evaluated...