EAST LANSING, Mich. – A petition to reopen the investigation into Brendan Santo’s death has more than 5,000 signatures.
Local 4 spoke with a private investigator last week and learned new information that raised questions about the case.
Santo, 18, disappeared from the campus of Michigan State University on the weekend of Oct. 29, 2021. He was a Grand Valley State freshman who came to campus to visit friends.
He was last seen leaving Yakeley Hall just before midnight and walking near Michigan Avenue and Beal Street. He disappeared, and his body was found 84 days later in the Red Cedar River.
Why are there new updates in this case?
The person who found Santo’s body was private investigator Ryan Robison.
Robison took a personal interest in the case and spent five hours talking to Santo’s father.
Robison said he started to search for Santo on Jan. 6. After about two weeks, he noticed a spot in the river where several pumpkins had collected.
He took some underwater photos in that area and noticed Santo’s very distinct shoes.
The Michigan State University Police Department officially took on the investigation and determined that Santo had drowned. But Robison never stopped looking into the case.
He came to us to share these new findings, and he believes the case should be reopened.
“You were suspect in the very beginning on whether or not he drowned,” Karen Drew said.
“I would say both the dad and I were,” Robison said.
Here are the new pieces of evidence:
No water in lungs or stomach
The autopsy for Santo lists his cause of death as a drowning, but Robison obtained documents that show there was no water in his lungs or stomach.
Oakland County’s chief medical examiner, Ljubisa J. Dragovic, said this case is a “jigsaw puzzle” and far from being solved.
We brought him a copy of the autopsy for a second look.
“What about the lungs: When you take a look at the report, it doesn’t note that there was water in the lungs, but he died from drowning,” Karen said.
“Not everybody that is submerged and found submerged resulted there from drowning,” Dragovic said. “A person may be dead before being placed in the body of water.”
Local 4 has learned that no X-ray was performed on Santo’s body. Dragovic said there should always be an X-ray before a drowning is ruled someone’s cause of death.
“Does that worry you?” Karen asked.
“It is a concern, obviously, and foul play cannot be safely excluded,” Dragovic said.
Cellphone ping
There’s also major questions surrounding when Santo’s cellphone was last used.
Police said his cellphone last pinged at 12:09 a.m. and then went dead. The theory was that he fell in the water sometime after midnight, so the phone wasn’t used after that.
“There’s text messages saying his battery’s dying,” said digital forensic expert Scott Bailey. “At 12:09 was the last ping or the last connection to a tower.”
It’s hard to get much information from police reports because they’re heavily redacted for this drowning case.
But we learned something that has never been publicly shared, or even told to Santo’s parents.
Santo’s phone pinged again at 2:39 a.m. -- a full two and a half hours later.
“At 2:39 a.m., that phone is turned back on,” Bailey said.
“It just wouldn’t turn on itself?” Karen asked.
“It wouldn’t turn on itself,” Bailey said.
“So somebody had to press that,” Karen said.
“Had to press the button, and there’s enough power to start what’s called the iBoot process, to get that phone starting to boot up,” Bailey said.
Who turned on Santo’s phone? Could that mean he was still alive for two and a half unaccounted-for hours?
Police aren’t sharing the location of that ping, but some witnesses who spoke to Robison put Santo on north campus around 2 a.m.
Another cellphone found
Also according to the police report, a Motorola cellphone was found in the area where Santo was last believed to have been seen.
Michigan State University police didn’t keep that phone for possible testing. They put it in the lost and found.
“You’re an investigator -- what would you have done with that phone?” Karen asked.
“They gave it to the lost and found,” Robison said. “That’s not what I would have done. I would have bagged it, put it in evidence.”
On the MSUPD case report, it says, “The found Motorola is unrelated to this investigation and was turned over to MSUPD Police Desk as lost and found property.”
Petition details
Robison said he thinks the case should be reopened.
“The case has to be reviewed, and I hope, I pray, and the family does, that the (Michigan State Police) will reopen it,” Robison said.
A petition on Change.org was posted a week ago on Sept. 10, 2024. As of Tuesday morning, it has 5,331 signatures. They reached their original goal of 5,000 but are hoping for more.
You can view the petition here.
Click here to view a post about the petition from Robison’s wife, Katie Robison.
MSU Police Department statement
The MSU Police Department sent us the following statement:
I received your inquiry on the Brendan Santon case. I appreciate you letting us know about your pending story and a chance to provide a comment. I apologize for the late response.
Some of your questions are better directed to the Ingham County Prosecutor or the Office of the Medical Examiner. And of course, MSU can’t comment on any decisions that the Michigan State Police (state of Michigan, not MSU) would be making.
What happened to Brendan Santo is deeply tragic and our thoughts remain with the Santo family.
The investigation into Brendan’s death was thorough, comprehensive and involved a task force of multiple agencies including MSU Department of Police and Public Safety, the FBI and the Michigan State Police. Investigators and subject matter experts reviewed complex cellular and GPS data and were also involved in reviewing other aspects of the investigation. The results of the comprehensive investigation were submitted to the Ingham County prosecutor in June 2022, who determined there was no criminal activity involved in this tragic event.
The autopsy was conducted by the Office of the Medical Examiner and Sparrow Forensic Pathology, independent of the task force investigation.
No new evidence has been presented to indicate the possibility of any criminal activity.
To address a few of your questions:
When Mr. Santo was located and recovered, he was wearing the same t-shirt that he was wearing when he was last seen before he went missing. His cell phone was found on his body when he was recovered. The toxicology report found that Mr. Santo had a blood ethanol concentration of .22%.
The safety and security of our entire MSU campus community is paramount. Since this unfortunate incident in the fall of 2021, MSU and the Department of Police and Public Safety have employed additional safety and security measures on campus. Some of those improvements include permanent fencing around the Red Cedar River near Kellogg Center, Michigan Avenue and Beal Street entrances to improve pedestrian safety; additional security cameras and improved lighting campuswide. After the campus shooting in February 2023, further additional safety elements were also added including door locks on classrooms and expanded campus emergency alert notifications.
Michigan State University Police Department
