AT CYGNE, Kan. (KCTV) – Esperanza Roberts is used to talking about her brother. In the 20 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 seeing that.”

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

A search by law enforcement came up empty. Then his family found him dead nearly a month later in the same area. How could that be? For years, the cause of his death was unknown. In 2020, 16 years after his death, his body was exhumed and a new autopsy ruled his death a homicide. The FBI is investigating it as a hate crime. Four years ago, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction. It remains unclaimed

A YOUNG PLAYER AND USER

Alonzo Brooks was the youngest of five children. His brother was the eldest. Three girls were in the middle. Roberts remembers it as a child and always wanted to pair it.

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

As he grew up, he was the fun uncle to their children, frequently helping to babysit. Every now and then, Roberts said with a chuckle, he would be the mean uncle, enforcing rules like bedtime.

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

Alonzo grew up in Topeka, then moved to Gardner. He lived with his mother and worked as a caretaker. 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 purposely avoided calling him his friends because the person who drove Alonzo to the party left without him.

“If you’re a friend, don’t leave your friend,” Roberts said. “There were several different stories about what happened, why he was abandoned.”

He didn’t make it home that night. He never made it home. The party — on April 3, 2004 — is the last place anyone speaking publicly admitted to seeing him alive.

“EVERYONE KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG”

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

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

He was in a store, shopping. It was late afternoon or early evening. She doesn’t remember the exact time, but she remembers 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 hasn’t come home yet.”

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

“My husband and Alonzo’s best friend drove over there and kind of looked around, didn’t see anything,” she continued.

Roberts said her mother contacted local law enforcement to file a missing persons report, but was told that because she was an adult, they would not receive a report until she 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 hang flyers.

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

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

A search by law enforcement came up empty. His family found him less than a month later after organizing a search party.

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

“They started on the road by the farm and walked up the two branches of Middle Creek. In a little less than an hour, they found Alonzo’s body, partially atop a pile of brush and branches in the creek. read the release.

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

“I think if they had done an extensive search, they wouldn’t have missed him,” she said. “(It was) horrible to have had faith and trust in law enforcement for them not to find him, but relief that we did and relief that we could bring him home and bury him.

The ensuing autopsy listed his cause of death as undetermined. The leads have dried up.

The investigation lay dormant until the U.S. Attorney for the District of Kansas stepped in 15 years later. Stephen McAllister was appointed U.S. Attorney in 2018 after being nominated by then-President Donald Trump. He previously taught law at the University of Kansas. He asked 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 when announcing the reopening of the case. “It is a quiet place of deep sadness to one who knows its history, but there are no answers. I am convinced, however, that there are people who know the answers, people who have kept terrible secrets all these years and carried a terrible burden. We ask that one or more of them come forward now and finally lay down this burden so that we can relieve the suffering of a family and serve the cause of justice.”

“TWO ADDITIONAL FACTS WERE UNDISPUTED”

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

“The initial interviews that were conducted had some of the party goers talking about the use of racial slurs,” Ramana said.

She estimated there were 100 people at the party, possibly more. Alonzo was one of three black people at the party. He might have been the only one there as the night wore on. Word spreads fast 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 was flirting with a girl, others said drunk white men wanted to fight an African-American man, and some said racist whites were simply upset by Brooks’ presence .” a 2020 press release from McCallister’s office reading. “After the party, two troubling facts were indisputable: Alonzo could not be found; and no one who attended the party would admit to knowing what had become of him.”

THE EXUMED BODY

In 2020, Alonzo’s body was exhumed from his grave in Topeka. It was sent to Dover Air Force Base for examination by the Army Medical Examiner, who was assisted by medical examiners. A FBI Press Release 2021 it referred to “injuries to parts of Brooks’ body that the examiner concluded were inconsistent with normal patterns of decomposition.”

“From my understanding, the forensic anthropologist was able to review not only the body that I brought to him and the coroner, but also the photographs and the insects and the landscape around Alonso’s body when it was recovered and use it in the consideration him,” explained Ramana. “From there, they decided Alonzo’s death was a murder.”

Ramana has not said how investigators believe she died or even if the manner of death has been determined. She did, however, have answers to the question of why he was not found by law enforcement before his family found his body.

And she was curious how the search for the family was successful after the search by law enforcement failed.

“One of the things we first went back to look at was the rainfall that was happening in the area at that time and the growth in the fall of Middle Creek and how it responded,” Ramana said. “It’s possible, with the rainfall that’s been going on, that creek has risen and fallen on a few different occasions, which would allow anything that was trapped under the really big brush piles to be dislodged 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 substantially higher than the bounties offered for area kills. Four years later, there is no indication that anyone has provided extensive information to claim this.

The passing of time can be discouraging, but somehow it brings new hope. Many of those at the 2004 party were minors. The hope is that as adults they will be more honest.

“You’re older now,” Roberts said, addressing people who are still hiding what they know. “Your parents can’t do anything to you. Tell us what happened if you know anything.”

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

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

When the U.S. attorney reopened the case, Alonzo spoke to KCTV5 indicating he was hopeful. He has since died. But hope is still alive.

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

For Roberts, there’s that and something more basic.

“We just have faith,” she said. “We trust that eventually we will find out what happened and get some justice.”

REWARD $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 Greater KC Crimestoppers anonymous tip line at 816-474-TIPS. You can also submit a tip online at tips.fbi.gov or through Crimestoppers online tip form.

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