The mysterious death of a Georgia teen has taken a bizarre twist with the revelation that an autopsy of his exhumed remains found his internal organs missing and his body stuffed with newspaper.
The family of Kendrick Johnson, 17, was "outraged" and "devastated" by the discovery and believes his death was a murder that is being covered up, a lawyer representing them said Thursday.
Johnson, a three-sport athlete, was found dead on Jan. 11 in a rolled-up wrestling mat in his high school gym. State medical examiners concluded that he accidentally suffocated while trying to retrieve a sneaker.
But his parents, Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson, were doubtful about that conclusion.
"It didn't make any sense," Kenneth Johnson told newspapers on Thursday.
"We know how Kendrick is," Jacquelyn Johnson added. "We know he would have never crawled up in no mat.".In June, they won a court order to have Kendrick's body exhumed for a second autopsy.
What the private pathologist who performed the second autopsy found was shocking. The results came back in September.
"There were no organs in there," Benjamin Crump, co-counsel for Kendrick's family, said. "He [also] concluded that it was a homicide, and that he died from blunt force trauma."
The autopsy showed Kendrick suffered hemorrhaging on the right side of his neck.
Organs from the teen's torso up to his skull had been removed and replaced with newspaper after his death, Crump said, something that disturbed his parents terribly.
"They thought that they had their whole son returned to them. They only had half of their son returned to them," he said.
All of his clothes were also missing.
"It's very hard for we as parents to have to go through this ordeal," said Kenneth Johnson.
Kendrick's body had been in three places after he died: possession of the local sheriff when the crime occurred; the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which conducted the first autopsy in January; and the Harrington Funeral Home in Valdosta, which handled the embalming and burial, according to Crump.
Harrington Funeral Home and the Valdosta sheriff did not return a request for comment from new casters.
Sherry Lang, director of public affairs at the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said, "We stand behind our medical examiner's office and their autopsy report on this case. We returned the organs with the body to the funeral home. It's our policy and it's our practice on every single autopsy that we do."
On Thursday, Kendrick's parents announced they planned to seek legal action against government officials who may have had involvement in covering up their son's murder.
"To find his organs are missing is just insult on top of injury," Crump said. "They're outraged. They've been outraged for the last nine months."
He added that the death of the track, basketball, and football star, who he described as a "good kid," left the family "devastated."
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