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The idea of a modern-day lynching has opened old wounds in a Southern town and across the country. But the case of Lennon Lacy is too thick with mystery to close it just yet. In the coming months, America Tonight will be returning to Bladenboro for an ongoing investigation into how the popular football player died and what the response to his death says about race in America today.
BLADENBORO, N.C. – On Dec. 13, hundreds of protesters gathered to remember the life of 17-year-old Lennon Lacy and demand a federal investigation into his death. It was an echo of the protests after the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, although in this case, the police haven't been accused of wrongdoing. No one knows who strung up the boy's body on a swing set in the middle of a trailer park on a late August night.
“We know it was a hanging,” said the Rev. William Barber II, the NAACP state's chapter president, at a rally before protesters marched through Bladenboro. “But the question is, was it self-inflicted? Was it a staged hanging? Or was it a hanging or lynching homicide?”
That is the mystery that Lacy's family and supporters, local law enforcement, the NAACP and now the FBI are trying to solve. Underlying his death is the question: Was Lacy killed because he was black and reportedly dating a white woman?
That is the mystery that Lacy's family and supporters, local law enforcement, the NAACP and now the FBI are trying to solve. Underlying his death is the question: Was Lacy killed because he was black and reportedly dating a white woman?
“There are things that happened that has not been explained to me, and to the community,” said the boy's mother Claudia Lacy. “We deserve that, as our civil right and as Americans. My son did not deserve to be taken from me this way.”
The mystery began with a 911 call made by a 52-year-old woman at 7:30 a.m. on Aug. 29: “I need EMS. I have a man hanging from a swing set… Bladen Rental Properties. It’s a black male subject hanging from a swing. He hung hisself.”
The local medical examiner quickly ruled the death a suicide. And an autopsy, released a month and a half later, concluded that Lacy “had been depressed over the recent death of his uncle.”
But for Lacy, the idea that her son hanged himself over the death of an aging uncle is just one of many things that doesn’t make sense. “We had just buried a 78-year-old ailing uncle that was more like a substitute grandfather to him,” she said. “He was upset, but not suicidal upset.”
She said her son was upbeat on those last nights of summer, looking forward to playing his first game as a varsity linebacker. “He said, 'I can hardly wait,'” she remembers. “He said, 'I think I'm going to shine this year.'”
“His demeanor would have changed," she continued. "His personality, his attitude, his eating habits. I would have known something was wrong.”
No suicide note was found.
At Lacy’s request, the NAACP hired an independent forensic investigator to review the preliminary local and state investigations. It raised several troubling questions. In addition to the lack of any signs that Lennon was suicidal, the physical evidence was problematic. He was only 5 feet 9 inches tall, yet was allegedly found hanging from a beam that was 7 ½ feet high. There was nothing for him to stand on while tying the noose. The rope also appeared too short for one person to tie around the beam and loop around his neck. Nor did the family recognize the black and blue belts used to form the noose.
His mother also didn't recognize the white size-10.5 shoes that Lacy was found wearing. The size-12 Air Jordan shoes he normally wore were never found.
The investigation by the local and state police investigators also raised red flags. Hubert Kinlaw, the medical examiner who responded to the scene, said local officers told him that they didn’t want an autopsy and that state investigators threatened to take his camera if he took pictures of Lacy's’s body. As a result, no pictures exist of how his body was found.
So far, there is no proof that Lennon's death was anything other than a suicide. But in the absence of information that can explain his death, his mother and others fear the worst.
“I feel it's a lynching, because of this public display of where his body was found,” Lacy said.
The image of a hanging black boy's body resonates in a town that many black residents consider de facto segregated and where the Ku Klux Klan has been known to march. Michelle Brimhall, the 32-year-old white woman who was in a relationship with Lennon, believes he was murdered because of their interracial relationship.
And in a town with simmering distrust between black residents and the all-white police force, there is a growing consensus that local and state police did not thoroughly investigate the possibility of foul play. Lacy believes that at the very least, race played a part in that initial response.
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