Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Fraternity hazing: ‘Brothers’ ignore dying Penn State pledge?
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: A national fraternity at Penn State University is suspended after
- 0:09Speaker 1: the death of a student. Nineteen year old Timothy Piazza,
- 0:12Speaker 1: a sophomore at Penn State University, partied inside the Beta
- 0:16Speaker 1: Theta Pi fraternity house, left unconscious twelve hours after falling
- 0:21Speaker 1: down a flight up stairs. This is Crime Stories with
- 0:24Speaker 1: Nancy Grace. Court documents at Piazza fell head first down
- 0:27Speaker 1: a flight up stairs after he was forced to bench drink.
- 0:31Speaker 1: A former member now speaking out, claiming he wanted to
- 0:34Speaker 1: call nine one one and no one would let him.
- 0:36Speaker 1: I was screaming at the time of my lungs. I
- 0:38Speaker 1: was like Tim right now, Like we should call nine
- 0:41Speaker 1: on one right now. Prosecutors say A brother called nine
- 0:44Speaker 1: one one the next morning, twelve hours after the fall.
- 0:47Speaker 1: Eighteen students chars eight with involuntary manslaughter. It seemed like
- 0:52Speaker 1: they just wanted to make sure that they themselves were safe,
- 0:55Speaker 1: rather than Tim truly being saved. Everybody was surrounding him,
- 1:00Speaker 1: laughing and pointing. A Penn State fraternity brother says he
- 1:05Speaker 1: begged and begged to call nine one one for a
- 1:10Speaker 1: young teen pledge who dies after a hazing ritual, and
- 1:14Speaker 1: he was called crazy as all the party goers. The
- 1:19Speaker 1: frat boys at Penn State mocked made fun of the
- 1:24Speaker 1: unconscious boy Timothy Pianza as he died. He is dead
- 1:30Speaker 1: after an alcohol fueled pledge night at Beta Theta Pie
- 1:34Speaker 1: party at a private chapter house, and one of the
- 1:39Speaker 1: fraternity brothers, Cordell Davis, says he begged and begged and
- 1:43Speaker 1: kept saying, we gotta call nine one one, we gotta
- 1:45Speaker 1: call nine one one, And everybody blew him off, laughing
- 1:49Speaker 1: and pointing, making fun of the unconscious boy. I mean,
- 1:54Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I've been saving since
- 1:57Speaker 1: the twins were born, to a forward to send them
- 2:01Speaker 1: to what college they want to go to. And I
- 2:05Speaker 1: mean now it is fifty seventy thousand dollars a year
- 2:10Speaker 1: for some colleges, and you send your child away for
- 2:13Speaker 1: higher learning and bam he's dead. Oh oh no, Hell
- 2:19Speaker 1: would have no fury like mine. Uuh in Oh, I'm
- 2:24Speaker 1: Nancy Grace. This is crime stories, and this is a crime.
- 2:29Speaker 1: Now you will hear. The law is that to omit,
- 2:36Speaker 1: to act, to fail to act, it's not a crime.
- 2:40Speaker 1: Sadly that is true. However, if you had a hand
- 2:44Speaker 1: at all, and this boy's death Oh yeah, you're gonna
- 2:49Speaker 1: be charged with me, Alan Duke, Alan, I am disgusted.
- 2:54Speaker 1: I am disgusted not by a prank that went bad,
- 2:59Speaker 1: but by the others mocking and laughing and pointing and
- 3:03Speaker 1: making fun of the little boy as he either I say,
- 3:06Speaker 1: he's a little boy. He's a teen, a pledge at
- 3:10Speaker 1: Beta Theta Pie. So I guess you know, in some
- 3:13Speaker 1: circles you would not say he was a boy. But
- 3:15Speaker 1: to me, I mean, that's just a little baby. He
- 3:19Speaker 1: didn't even know what he was doing, much less that
- 3:22Speaker 1: everyone was standing around mocking him as he like dying
- 3:26Speaker 1: at a frat party. What do you know, Alan Duke,
- 3:29Speaker 1: this is a supposedly dry fraternity. Now it's Beta Theta.
- 3:36Speaker 1: Is it Pie? Or five is Pie? P H? I Alan, sadly,
- 3:42Speaker 1: and I know I'm risking the wrath of people commenting
- 3:45Speaker 1: how mean I am to you. But it's not Greek,
- 3:48Speaker 1: and that is American English fanatics. P I would be
- 3:53Speaker 1: Pie and p H I would be Fie. Okay, as
- 3:59Speaker 1: in phil harmon on it, go with it. This fraternity
- 4:03Speaker 1: in their manual, manual, manual go ahead. Yeah, really, they
- 4:07Speaker 1: didn't go buy the book on this one because They
- 4:09Speaker 1: broke every rule in their book. They're supposedly dry. Anybody
- 4:13Speaker 1: with alcohol at the house is supposed to be immediately
- 4:16Speaker 1: ejected from the fraternity. And of course we know now
- 4:20Speaker 1: from the gran jury testimony that we've got a copy
- 4:22Speaker 1: of at least page charging document, is that it from
- 4:27Speaker 1: the president on down. They collected money to buy twelve
- 4:30Speaker 1: hundred dollars worth of booze, including fifteen cases of beer,
- 4:34Speaker 1: well hundred dollars worth of It took them eight days
- 4:38Speaker 1: to buy it all. They and they used what they
- 4:41Speaker 1: called it slush funds, so they didn't show up on
- 4:43Speaker 1: the fraternity ledger. Every person at the beginning of the
- 4:47Speaker 1: semester contributed two hundred and fifty dollars to their alcohol
- 4:51Speaker 1: slush fund for these parties. This was a pledge event.
- 4:54Speaker 1: They had thirteen young men nine years old who were
- 5:00Speaker 1: students at Penn State University who were considering joining and
- 5:03Speaker 1: in fact, they were celebrating that night that these thirteen
- 5:07Speaker 1: had accepted the invitation to join this fraternity. And that's
- 5:10Speaker 1: why they lined them up in the basement, gave them
- 5:13Speaker 1: a bottle of vodka and said drink it, and told
- 5:17Speaker 1: the pledges to keep passing out until they keep passing
- 5:21Speaker 1: it around until they finished it. And that is where
- 5:24Speaker 1: it started. You know, I'm just imagining my son or
- 5:29Speaker 1: my daughter in that situation. You know, they're nine now,
- 5:34Speaker 1: this is just a few years from now that they'll
- 5:36Speaker 1: be going off. I don't even want to talk about it,
- 5:38Speaker 1: going away to college, and I can't even imagine them
- 5:42Speaker 1: in that situation. I gotta tell you something. You know,
- 5:45Speaker 1: half of my college I was Greek, half of my
- 5:48Speaker 1: college I was Independent. And then law school I don't
- 5:52Speaker 1: even know what happened. I remember studying NonStop. People will say, hey,
- 5:56Speaker 1: don't you remember that law school partyment? I might, No,
- 5:59Speaker 1: don't you remember that timing? No? No, I just you
- 6:03Speaker 1: know all I did with study then. And you know,
- 6:06Speaker 1: once I decided to go to law school, it was
- 6:08Speaker 1: all all off. And the sorority I was in for
- 6:13Speaker 1: two years ad pie. No one even once told me
- 6:19Speaker 1: I had to drink. I never at any of the
- 6:22Speaker 1: parties the sorority had, we didn't have alcohol. I can
- 6:27Speaker 1: honestly say that now. I sat plenty of parties where
- 6:30Speaker 1: there was alcohol, fraternity parties and other independent parties, but
- 6:35Speaker 1: no never. And I'm just trying to imagine. You know, Alan,
- 6:39Speaker 1: don't they read the news. Don't they all have iPads
- 6:42Speaker 1: where they can see how wrong this is. So twelve
- 6:46Speaker 1: hundred dollars worth of booze? Is that what you said?
- 6:48Speaker 1: They had to purchase over eight days and they were
- 6:50Speaker 1: given a big bolavaka and said drink until it's gone.
- 6:54Speaker 1: All of these frat members and the detective that testified
- 6:58Speaker 1: detailed the shotgunning. In fact, after the vodka that would
- 7:02Speaker 1: be handed that and told to swig it and keep
- 7:04Speaker 1: going with it. Then they were required to quote shotgun
- 7:07Speaker 1: a beer shotgunning. The fraternity president explained, it curse when
- 7:11Speaker 1: you put a hole in the side of the can.
- 7:14Speaker 1: So if this is like a normal can, you put
- 7:16Speaker 1: it in the side, you put it in the hole,
- 7:17Speaker 1: and when you drink from the hole, you open up
- 7:20Speaker 1: the top of it creates an airflow easier to drink
- 7:22Speaker 1: real fast. You've ever chugged or shotgun a beer? I haven't.
- 7:26Speaker 1: I'm shocking, I'm sure, but no, I have not shotgunned
- 7:30Speaker 1: a beer, Alan, Duke, It's very fast, intake. How can
- 7:35Speaker 1: you even ask me if I shotgun to beer for
- 7:37Speaker 1: Pete's snake? You're from near Macon and I you please
- 7:41Speaker 1: quate dragging geography into every single discussion beer, just so
- 7:45Speaker 1: you know it was sold in every state in the Union.
- 7:47Speaker 1: Can we get back to these facts and not what
- 7:49Speaker 1: you did when you were in college? Okay, thanks, you know,
- 7:52Speaker 1: let's get down to at the corner in this case,
- 7:54Speaker 1: determine Piazza died not from alcohol poisoning, but as a
- 7:58Speaker 1: result of multiplematic injuries sustained from a fall. Okay, tell
- 8:04Speaker 1: me about the fall. Alan. He hit his head several times.
- 8:07Speaker 1: First of all, he did register his blood alcohol level
- 8:10Speaker 1: was point three six. Let's get that on the record.
- 8:13Speaker 1: First of all, way over the legal limits. According to
- 8:17Speaker 1: the scenario, he fell a number of times. There was
- 8:20Speaker 1: an upstairs area and he comed down, fell down a
- 8:23Speaker 1: flight of stairs, to put it simply right. And they
- 8:26Speaker 1: say he tried to stagger to the door like he
- 8:29Speaker 1: was trying to leave, because he knew he had to go,
- 8:32Speaker 1: he had to get help, and he the final time
- 8:35Speaker 1: was he fell and he hit his head. And who
- 8:38Speaker 1: knows if that's the final blow, but yes, it was
- 8:40Speaker 1: the concussions. And you know, I find it really hard
- 8:42Speaker 1: to believe he got multiple blows to the head falling
- 8:46Speaker 1: down a flight of stairs. His fall was not caught
- 8:49Speaker 1: on camera, but somebody in that front house heard it
- 8:53Speaker 1: and found the boy lying face down at the bottom
- 8:57Speaker 1: of the stairs. You know, it's it's at she making
- 9:00Speaker 1: me sick to my stomach, imagining John David or Lucy
- 9:04Speaker 1: in this situation. One of the other guys at the
- 9:07Speaker 1: party messaged all the other frat brothers and said, quote,
- 9:11Speaker 1: tem Piazza might actually be a problem. He fell fifteen
- 9:15Speaker 1: feet down a flight of stairs. Here first going to
- 9:18Speaker 1: need help. But they didn't get him help. Know what
- 9:21Speaker 1: they did. In fact, of the eighteen who are charged,
- 9:24Speaker 1: five of them are just charged with tampering with evidence.
- 9:27Speaker 1: That means trying to hide things. But what they would
- 9:29Speaker 1: do in order to the only help they gave him
- 9:32Speaker 1: was they made sure he didn't roll over on his back.
- 9:34Speaker 1: I guess the theory was, Hey, we don't want him
- 9:36Speaker 1: throwing up and choking on his own vomit, right, So
- 9:39Speaker 1: they actually piled textbooks on top of him to keep
- 9:42Speaker 1: him from rolling over. Now that's some assistance right there.
- 9:46Speaker 1: Surveillance video catches after the fall, it's about thirteen minutes
- 9:52Speaker 1: till eleven pm. They show the other frat boys carrying
- 9:57Speaker 1: him upstairs, four of them. He was limp and already
- 10:02Speaker 1: had a visible bruise on his side. Now I'm suspicious
- 10:06Speaker 1: of that, because you fall, you don't get the bruise immediately.
- 10:11Speaker 1: Was he bruised some other way? Then they put him
- 10:14Speaker 1: on a couch and poured liquid on his face, and
- 10:18Speaker 1: one guy even punched him in the stomach. Someone said
- 10:22Speaker 1: his legs sat on his legs to keep him from
- 10:25Speaker 1: rolling off the couch. All this is happening as he's dying.
- 10:29Speaker 1: He is dying now. One of the new initiates got
- 10:35Speaker 1: upset and screamed they needed to get him to the hospital.
- 10:39Speaker 1: And he saw Piazza thrashing and making weird movements on
- 10:43Speaker 1: the couch, stressing that they had to get him to
- 10:47Speaker 1: the hospital, that he could have a concussion. He said,
- 10:50Speaker 1: he told the grand jury. We now have the grand
- 10:52Speaker 1: jury testimony. Piaza the boy looked quote horrible, and when
- 10:57Speaker 1: he wanted to call for help, they told him to
- 11:00Speaker 1: get out and shoved him against the wall and said
- 11:02Speaker 1: we've got it under control. If you look at the
- 11:05Speaker 1: charging documents, this is the summary of what the gauntlet
- 11:08Speaker 1: in two minutes, as they called the gauntlet. The pledges
- 11:11Speaker 1: consumed approximately four to five alcoholic beverages, beer, wine, liquor,
- 11:16Speaker 1: all within a two minute time span. That would knock
- 11:19Speaker 1: me out. I can tell you that would knock me
- 11:20Speaker 1: out flat PM. The pledge master slaps Piazza three times
- 11:26Speaker 1: in the face, allegedly. Seven minutes later, another tackles another
- 11:32Speaker 1: frat brother onto the couch. They land on him. One am.
- 11:36Speaker 1: They put that backpack full of books on him to
- 11:39Speaker 1: keep him from rolling onto his back. Now three two
- 11:42Speaker 1: a m. He's still alive. He tries to stand up,
- 11:46Speaker 1: but he falls and hits his head again on the
- 11:50Speaker 1: wooden floor. Three forty six it's almost four am. This
- 11:53Speaker 1: is going on since ten o'clock. He's in the fetal
- 11:56Speaker 1: position on the floor. The fetal position. He falls at
- 12:01Speaker 1: four a m. Five a m, each time hitting his
- 12:04Speaker 1: head on an iron railing and landing on a stole
- 12:07Speaker 1: stone floor. He tries to get up, hits his head
- 12:11Speaker 1: on the front door. I find it really hard to
- 12:12Speaker 1: believe he keeps accidentally hitting his head. Fraternity brothers enter
- 12:18Speaker 1: and leave the frat house, just step over him, leaving
- 12:21Speaker 1: him there. Seven a m. Seven a m. He falls
- 12:27Speaker 1: down the basement stairs again, He's cold to the touch,
- 12:31Speaker 1: blood on his face. Forty more minutes pass before they
- 12:34Speaker 1: call nine one one. He rolls to his side, clutching
- 12:38Speaker 1: his abdomen. Several of them are caught on video trying
- 12:42Speaker 1: to shake him and prop him up, and when they
- 12:45Speaker 1: do call nine one one, they don't tell them Piazza
- 12:48Speaker 1: fell down the steps the night before. Ultimately, cops conclude
- 12:54Speaker 1: after Piazza was taken to the hospital, the frat brothers
- 12:58Speaker 1: tried to hide evidence of hazing and under age drinking
- 13:02Speaker 1: by deleting their messages and trying to erase surveillance video.
- 13:07Speaker 1: One text, Allan says, if need be, just tell them
- 13:11Speaker 1: what I told you guys. Founding behind the bar the
- 13:13Speaker 1: next morning around ten am, he was freezing Cole, but
- 13:16Speaker 1: we decided to call nine one one instantly because the
- 13:19Speaker 1: kid's health was paramount. I'm so distraught. Just imagine if
- 13:26Speaker 1: this was your child in this condition, in this situation.
- 13:31Speaker 1: All he did was go to a party have some
- 13:34Speaker 1: alcohol when he was forced to and told to if
- 13:36Speaker 1: he wanted to be part of the fraternity. And now
- 13:39Speaker 1: he's dead. I mean, the heartbreak of this family. I
- 13:43Speaker 1: gotta tell you I'm beside myself about this kid. Other
- 13:47Speaker 1: disturbing details in the charging document says this isn't the
- 13:50Speaker 1: first This is the first time they had a death
- 13:52Speaker 1: in the house, but not the first time they had
- 13:54Speaker 1: a serious problem like this. One of the young young
- 13:57Speaker 1: men who testified, who had been part of all of this,
- 14:01Speaker 1: testified that when he pledged about four or five months earlier,
- 14:04Speaker 1: that he fell in his head, resulting in profuse bleeding,
- 14:09Speaker 1: and they took him to urgent care, but nobody ever
- 14:11Speaker 1: called nine one one. It never got reported to police.
- 14:14Speaker 1: I'm just so distraught, Alan, because I keep and I
- 14:18Speaker 1: know as a prosecutor or a lawyer, you're not supposed
- 14:23Speaker 1: to inject your own emotions into the case. It clouds
- 14:27Speaker 1: the case. It clouds your ability to try the case
- 14:31Speaker 1: or to analyze the facts. But I gotta tell you,
- 14:34Speaker 1: I can hardly I keep looking at this boy, Timothy
- 14:38Speaker 1: Pianza and imagining John David or Lucy in this situation.
- 14:43Speaker 1: It's just what more do have we learned from the
- 14:47Speaker 1: charging documents? This is not a new practice. This has
- 14:50Speaker 1: been going on. One of the conversations that they captured
- 14:53Speaker 1: from a year before, text messages between members of the
- 14:56Speaker 1: fraternity are talking about how they do this, and it's
- 15:00Speaker 1: the same setup. So year after year they have been
- 15:05Speaker 1: doing this, and they know, they noted in it, that
- 15:09Speaker 1: every time they do it, somebody has a problem. And
- 15:13Speaker 1: so these guys were not ignorant of the problems. Say
- 15:17Speaker 1: obviously new, But I I guess until you have a death,
- 15:20Speaker 1: you don't really in your fraternity know that it is deadly.
- 15:24Speaker 1: I mean, but they should have there. This is nothing new.
- 15:28Speaker 1: I went online to one of these organizations that monitors
- 15:32Speaker 1: hazing and tries to prevent it. And this has been
- 15:34Speaker 1: going on since the eighteen hundreds in this country. This
- 15:38Speaker 1: has been going on forever. You know. The Penn State
- 15:40Speaker 1: President Eric J. Baron permanently banned the fraternity. But I
- 15:47Speaker 1: really don't know if that's enough. I really do not
- 15:49Speaker 1: know if that's enough, because I mean, it just has.
- 15:53Speaker 1: It seems like it happens over and over and over.
- 15:57Speaker 1: So they're facing in voluntary manslaughter, will probably end up
- 16:01Speaker 1: in straight probation, if anything at all. They may even
- 16:06Speaker 1: get p t I pre trial intervention, which which means
- 16:10Speaker 1: you go to some classes and then the whole thing's
- 16:12Speaker 1: wiped wiped off of your record. And then at some
- 16:17Speaker 1: point the fraternity will petition to get back on campus.
- 16:20Speaker 1: In it will because they always do. But these chilling
- 16:23Speaker 1: text messages revealed to me more than involuntary manslaughter. It
- 16:28Speaker 1: reveals to me they knew he needed help, that heat
- 16:32Speaker 1: desperately needed help, but instead of calling nine one one,
- 16:36Speaker 1: they mocked him, made fun of him, and made up
- 16:38Speaker 1: a plan to cover up his death. Found at the
- 16:41Speaker 1: bottom of the stairs, bleeding and cold, he died. The
- 16:46Speaker 1: c o D cause of death alan is traumatic brain injury,
- 16:51Speaker 1: traumatic brain injury, and eighteen of the fraternity brothers are
- 16:57Speaker 1: charged with involuntary manslaughter. What do you think I mean?
- 17:01Speaker 1: According to Thomas Klein, a lawyer for the family, these
- 17:05Speaker 1: young men deserve to be punished. I mean, they knew
- 17:09Speaker 1: he needed help. I'm wondering if you could prove more
- 17:12Speaker 1: than involuntary Well they I don't know. You you're the lawyer.
- 17:14Speaker 1: You told me involuntary manslaughter. If you knew that this
- 17:18Speaker 1: could result in death, if you were aware that that
- 17:21Speaker 1: has happened before, is it involuntary manslaughter? What are the
- 17:25Speaker 1: legal arguments? Well, the fact that they slapped him, punched him,
- 17:30Speaker 1: sat on him. To me, those are at acts an
- 17:36Speaker 1: active form of assault, not just standing by and letting
- 17:42Speaker 1: it happen. I think that there's an argument to be
- 17:45Speaker 1: made for voluntary manslaughter, but even with involuntary they can
- 17:52Speaker 1: do jail time. And I think they need to do
- 17:54Speaker 1: jail time. I really do. I mean, this is beyond
- 17:58Speaker 1: the pail, his unacceptable behavior, and every parent that is
- 18:03Speaker 1: sending all you moms and dad's this is from this
- 18:07Speaker 1: kid's from a good family. He was an athlete, he
- 18:11Speaker 1: made good grades, the works. His family is heartbroken. This
- 18:16Speaker 1: can happen to anybody that sends your kid off to college.
- 18:21Speaker 1: Really distressed about it, because college for my family was
- 18:26Speaker 1: the dream. My mom and dad didn't get to finish college.
- 18:29Speaker 1: My mom didn't get to go to college, and their
- 18:32Speaker 1: dream was for us to go. And they work their
- 18:35Speaker 1: fingers to the bone for me to go and do
- 18:41Speaker 1: a good job, not to be treated like this and
- 18:45Speaker 1: mocked and made fun of at some drunken party. And
- 18:48Speaker 1: you know, and this kid ends up dead. His parents
- 18:51Speaker 1: are trying to give him the world and he ends
- 18:53Speaker 1: up dead, and I want justice. Alan. When I first
- 18:58Speaker 1: saw this story, I was thinking, is a bright young man,
- 19:02Speaker 1: Why would he go through this? What is the motivation
- 19:05Speaker 1: other than just to get into the fraternity be accepted?
- 19:09Speaker 1: I found in the grand jury's charging document. The detective
- 19:12Speaker 1: testified he asked one of the members what would happen
- 19:15Speaker 1: if a pledge did not participate in this hazing, and
- 19:19Speaker 1: the fraternity brother answered back that failing to participate could
- 19:23Speaker 1: affect the pledges pledge ranking, which determines whether or not
- 19:27Speaker 1: they're able to live in the Beta house. So there
- 19:29Speaker 1: was an actual incentive to go through the hazing, not
- 19:33Speaker 1: just to have fun. This was about getting a bed
- 19:36Speaker 1: in the house for your college career, and also about acceptance.
- 19:43Speaker 1: You know a lot of teens and children are not
- 19:46Speaker 1: strong enough or confident enough to say no. You know,
- 19:52Speaker 1: I just hate it. I hate it so much for
- 19:54Speaker 1: this family. All I can say now is Timothy Piazza
- 19:59Speaker 1: rest in peace and God comfort his parents and his
- 20:05Speaker 1: family at this time of deep, deep sorrow. Nancy Grace
- 20:10Speaker 1: Crime Stories signing off goodbye friend.