Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Deborah Roberts here with another episode of Murder at the U from our colleagues at ESPN and 30 for 30 Podcasts. Remember, you can get new episodes early if you follow 30 for 30 Podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast app. Now, here's the next episode of Murder at the U.
Chapter 2: What was Bryan's life like outside of football?
Previously on Murder at the U. The word swagger, which you hear at the U more than other places.
And what swagger connotes to some people is something akin to violence. People kill you by anything. Yeah, people get pissed enough from a fight that they'll come back and kill you.
I've seen him on the floor. I remember saying, all right, it ain't funny why you lay it on the ground for.
You're not here? Brian is dead. There's more to this than meets the eye.
The night of Brian Pata's murder, calls and text messages pinged among the Hurricanes. No one knew for sure what had happened, just that it was bad. Once the coaching staff learned about it, head coach Larry Coker called the whole team back to the Hecht Athletic Center for a mandatory meeting.
As more than 100 players, coaches, and staff members made their way into the team meeting room, rumors began to swirl.
You know, everybody has their own two cents of what they heard or what they didn't hear. There was one I remember saying it was like a drive-by kind of, and I was like, what?
Josh Holmes was a few months into his freshman year. Brian had driven him home earlier that night.
I remember just a lot of different opinions at the time of what exactly had happened.
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Chapter 3: How did the team react to Bryan's murder?
Memory is an imperfect record of the past. Neuroscience tells us that every time we recall a memory, we write over the previous version. So our recollection of past events is always a patchwork of stories we've told and retold. And the more time passes, the harder it can be to get at the truth of what happened.
When we started reporting the story, more than a decade had passed since Brian's murder. So every time we interviewed someone, we had to consider the question, how accurate are these memories? In the first year of our reporting, producer Dan Arruda was doing most of those interviews. Dan, tell me about the first big break you had in your reporting. Okay, so in 2018,
I had been trying to sit down and speak with as many of Brian's teammates as possible.
At some point, Chris Zellner's name was mentioned, and I was able to sit down with him.
Try it one more time. Testing, one, two. Testing, testing, one, two. Perfect. All right.
Start with this.
Zellner was a teammate of Brian's. They had met when Brian hosted him on his initial recruiting trip to Miami.
What did Chris tell you about the night of the murder?
Chris remembers getting ready to go to class. He had a night class at the time. And he was just about to leave. And he gets a call that the entire team is being summoned back to the HEC Center, which is the football facility.
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Chapter 4: What were the circumstances surrounding Bryan's death?
Keep talking shit, like, yo, come see, like, it was one of those things.
And what did Brian do after getting that phone call?
According to Chris, he just shook it off like nothing ever happened.
He literally just started smiling again.
That's who he was. Like, he literally didn't let, like, even when he was hurt, like, he didn't let that shit faze him.
He immediately realizes that he's got information that needs to be out.
So he remembers talking to Coach Mario Cristobal. who at the time was an offensive line coach, that he needed to talk to the police.
I knew right when they told us what happened, man, like, that's the first thing I said, let me tell the cops, because maybe they can look at who called or something, because that conversation was one of those conversations where it was like, if that person was in front of them, I think they would be fighting.
I know that had to be, I felt it had to be somebody a part of it.
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Chapter 5: What significant leads emerged from interviews with teammates?
I can only guess that because they said it was an open investigation, they were still very guarded about any information getting out, which might eventually affect the prosecution.
At the end, what did you expect to get out of that initial interview? If there was something that moved the ball forward, what was it?
The one thing I really wanted was to get Detective Dominguez out to visit the crime scene, kind of walk it through with me, get his theory on how he thinks the shooting took place.
When did you go to the crime scene with Dominguez?
It was literally a few days later.
I think we're rolling here.
Any trick questions this time? Were there two questions last time? One. Okay. No trick questions this time, I hope. I'm still not sure what Detective Dominguez thought was a trick question. What do you remember about arriving here the night of November 7th?
Um, Brian's vehicle was parked backwards into the parking space. He backed into a spot?
Yes.
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Chapter 6: How did Brian's relationships impact the investigation?
Clues. Snippets of what the police had looked into, breadcrumbs for us to follow. If we wanted to figure out who killed Brian, we realized that we would need to pursue some questions of our own. Questions like, where did Brian's money come from? Remember, on the night of the murder, Brian had $900 in cash in his wallet. He drove an Infiniti with a $500 monthly payment.
And he still had money to pursue an expensive hobby, buying old Chevys, giving them custom paint jobs and rims, and flipping them. He called those cars his babies.
This is my baby right here. You know, y'all seen her many times. She's both my babies.
And they fit right into the Miami backdrop. He painted an Impala bright orange and a Tahoe glossy blue. Brian's brother, Edwin, was as intrigued by the money as we were. Some of this explains itself. If you're buying and selling cars, you should be turning a profit. But Brian seemed to regularly have thousands of dollars on hand. And D1 football players don't have part-time jobs.
Brian worked on the cars with his brother Fednal, but even Fednal didn't know where Brian's money was coming from. Near the start of Brian's senior year, Fednal remembered seeing him in a new car.
He had $14,000 cash in the car. And I said, something ain't right.
I've been an investigative reporter for almost 30 years. Anytime there's a murder and there's large sums of money attached, the next logical question is, did the money have anything to do with it? Fednal told us someone was paying for Brian's nights out, but Brian didn't want to tell Fednal who that was. He'd always refer to that person as Uncle or Unc or My Guy.
Here's how Fednal remembers those conversations.
We used to go out to the club and stuff like that.
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Chapter 7: What role did money play in Brian's life?
We were able to find out when he was receiving money or how much money he was receiving?
No.
We've been told it was in the tens of thousands. What's your reaction to that?
I don't know if that's true or not. I wasn't able to uncover that.
Would that piece of information be useful?
It's important. It shows a lifestyle. A lifestyle that it appeared the police didn't look into very much, but one we would come to learn all about over our years of reporting. For starters, money was absolutely swirling around University of Miami athletes at the time. A few years after Brian's death, all that money led to a major scandal that dominated college sports news.
See, before 2021, the NCAA forbade players from getting any extra benefits. Even a free pizza could get a guy in trouble. Yet that didn't stop the boosters. They were often wealthy fans who would shower gifts and money on players. One of those boosters at Miami was a man named Nevin Shapiro.
The story I am about to share with you could turn out to be the biggest scandal in the history of college sports. It's unfolding right now.
According to the NCAA, Shapiro provided $170,000 in impermissible benefits to Hurricanes players between 2002 and 2010. Shapiro told us the amounts were much higher than that.
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Chapter 8: What connections did Brian have with gangs?
What made you decide to get involved with helping the program? Like, do you remember your first donation?
To the minute. To the minute. Here we go. 2001 season, prior to us winning the title, I think I donated $12,500. And that was it. I was a booster. Just like that.
And what did being a booster get Shapiro?
You know, you get to go to the events, you know, the banquets and things like that. You get afforded. And as I made the next large donation, I negotiated my own deal. And part of that was running out of the tunnel, which nobody does.
Shapiro said he got to run onto the field with the players before two games. How much did that cost you?
Well, I made a $250,000 donation, and I gave a list of specifics of what I wanted to do.
Shapiro used his status as a booster to get closer to Hurricanes players. He said he hosted house parties for them at his South Beach home, and Brian was a regular at Shapiro's house.
I was a very close friend of Brian Pata's, and sort of like a little brother to me in many regards.
One night, he had Brian and some other teammates over for a barbecue. Brian was playing with Shapiro's puppy, Teddy. But sometime later, Shapiro realized he'd lost track of Brian and the puppy.
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