Murder at Baylor — Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness Pt.2 | Signal 51 Chronicles

When authorities pulled the body of a Baylor basketball player from a remote gravel pit, they expected merely a homicide.
What was uncovered instead was a conspiracy.
The discovery ignited an investigation that exposed a sweeping web of lies and corruption in southern Baptist country.
This is the Signal 51 Chronicles.
Episode 5, Murder at Baylor, thou shall not bear false witness.
I'm John Henry. I'm joined here by my Compadre Jake White. Welcome to the Signal 51 Chronicles.
This is the fifth episode of the reincarnation of the Signal 51 Chronicles.
In that producer's chair on the other side of the table is Ashley, a proud purple person.
Hello, friends.
Of TCU. We're lucky to have her.
Oh, I like you, too.
Now, we've been in five episodes. You know what Signal 51 means?
Yes, investigation.
I mean, she's listening. I mean, I rewatched Episode 1 through 3, like 22 times.
She knows the story better than we do.
As yet, Episode 1 through 3 has not been broadcast yet, so we're all knocking on wood that those were worth a damn.
They look great.
Well, that's because we have great editor over there.
It's true. It's true.
Could you imagine if we were doing all that stuff?
No, it would never get on.
It would look so bad.
Be terrible.
Yeah, we would convince ourselves it looked good.
Oh, that's fine. That's fine. It looks great.
Yeah, sure.
Let's go to that police blotter.
Jake, you got us one. You got us a date line for police blotter this week, and it involves you.
It involves me.
Yeah. Jake's a retired.
If this is the first time you've ever watched us, Jake is a retired sergeant of the fourth police department.
He got out before his 25, but that's another story altogether.
Not in a bad way.
No, it's not like you were fired or anything or pushed out or you know that.
You just saw you left on your own.
We talked about this.
That was done.
He was done with it and had another career.
He's a realtor.
Yes.
You're in his second life.
Yep.
Sales houses.
Residential realtor is what I meant to say.
I am a, I'm a journalist.
I'm the executive editor for Think Magazine in Fort Worth.
And we do storytelling.
So anyway, tell us about this date line of fourth in 2020, in 2020.
The throws of the lockdown.
Shelter in place or whatever they called it.
I remember that.
This was in the throws of it.
And this is by no means a gory war story.
I don't tell those.
I don't have any to be honest with you.
I just have funny humorous stories.
No close calls.
No cheating death.
Nothing of the sorts.
Now this is on the heels of our,
or if you ask me.
No, very much so.
And I'm okay with that.
I just remember the funny ones.
This is a good one.
Okay.
So this is on the heels of us talking about informants in the prior episode.
That's right.
In our prior episode, we discussed informants.
It got us to thinking about informants.
Yeah.
And Jake had informants.
Yeah.
Many.
Yeah.
So yeah, this goes back to April of 2020.
Started at the, uh,
great Bonnell's restaurant here in Fort Worth.
John Bonnell.
Fantastic human being.
Yes.
Great food.
Phenomenal.
And if you recall during this time,
perhaps a testament to his character
was in the throws of the lockdown.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was the one that started,
as far as I know,
he was certainly at the forefront of it.
At the forefront, for sure,
doing the drive-through meals.
That's right.
And you're getting, like,
top notch.
And there wasn't very much.
It was like 40 bucks.
40 bucks for a feet of family, yeah.
Yeah.
And he would do it.
Oh, yeah.
Did you?
Oh, yeah.
I never did.
I always wanted to.
And that thing, that, that,
lined up the, uh,
It was a mile long.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I caught it on the service road.
And I literally looked at my,
uh, odometer.
And it said a mile when I got to Bonnell's.
A mile long.
Yeah.
Wait, not that stuff.
Yeah.
It was a good stuff.
So this one, uh, again,
yeah, that was it.
Yeah.
So middle of the night, on a Sunday,
he had that big smoker,
and four coolers,
uh, outside.
And this is no ordinary smoker
that you would see on one's back porch.
Right.
It's industrial size for commercial use.
Yeah, it's gigantic.
To the tune of around $10,000.
So a couple,
uh, male and female decided,
we're going to steal that smoker.
Yeah.
I think it was hardwired into the building.
I mean, it took some skill to remove this.
Oh, yeah.
So I thought it was like,
you just cut the chains and they put it on.
I think it was hardwired.
I could be wrong.
No, call me on that.
Well, you could vote it on it.
You're voted on it now.
I'm going to retract that statement.
I'm uncertain,
but I think that it was.
All right.
This is on the news.
You know, it hit that in the local coverage
because of, you know,
what he was doing,
kind of helping footwork,
things like that.
So it was a big story.
Yeah.
Not a huge story,
but yeah.
I remember it.
Yeah.
And before you got involved.
Before I got involved.
I didn't think much over that.
I'm like,
that sucks.
I can't believe somebody would do that.
Yeah.
Actually, I can't believe someone would do that.
But that still sucks.
Yeah.
So,
day two later,
three days later,
somewhere in that time frame.
I get a call from some other investigators here in footwork.
Yeah.
Um,
they're on the case that said,
hey, do you know such and such?
I'm not going to say the name.
I said, yeah.
And they said, well,
have you seen that story about Bono Smoker that got stolen?
I said, yeah.
I've seen it.
Well, we've got some people that we're talking to now
that said they took it down.
I don't want to give too many details away,
but they took it to a certain neighborhood here in footwork.
Mm-hmm.
And traded it for some dope,
heroin to be specific.
And that one of the people may be this name.
So, yeah.
I can actually call him or her
and find out.
So, I called.
Because this is an informant of yours.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
I mean, they both,
they all live a double life.
Yeah, of course.
You just got to make sure that they're credible.
That they're giving you credible.
I want to ask you about that in a second.
Yeah.
The credible.
It would always give me credible information.
Trustworth the information.
What he did on his off time?
One can only imagine.
I guess sold heroin.
Perhaps.
Right.
So, call them.
And with him.
Said, hey, do you know anything about this smoker?
I said, no pun intended.
It's hot.
And he said, yeah.
I said, well, it's probably a good idea that we get it back.
I said, we can probably work something out to work.
If we get it back, it's not damaged or something like that.
No questions asked.
No questions asked.
We'll let bygones be bygones.
So, they.
And he said, well, meet me.
Meet me at the middle store.
The middle store is one of the neighborhood closed down convenient stores.
And so, I'm sitting there.
I'm in regular closed, possibly the same closing I'm wearing now.
I don't buy new clothes often.
It couldn't quite literally.
I don't know for sure.
And so, I pull up into this parking lot.
It's not the greatest of neighborhoods.
It's the middle of the day.
I'm sitting there in my normal unmarked car.
And this, like, 2005 Chevy Tahoe with four different rims,
pulls up, and there's my guy.
And he's waving at me like I'm troubling him.
Like, what you are, clearly.
I was like, oh, man.
I was like, where are we going?
He's like, follow me.
I said, all right.
So, I pull out.
And at the time, I'll buy myself.
Because they are, you know, I think there was a somewhat of a trustworthy relationship.
They trusted me.
I trusted them.
I don't know that they would have trusted any of the other cops.
So, I was like, well, you know, just stay nearby.
And the event, something crazy happens.
And so, we start going to the back part of this neighborhood.
The parts that are not traveled often.
Right.
And we pull up to an abandoned house.
They get out of the car.
There's two of them.
My informant.
And then another guy.
I also knew well.
And me.
Like I said, I'm by myself.
I'm like, wow.
What's the worst that can happen here?
So, we walked to the backyard.
But you count the ways?
Yeah.
Yeah.
They were walking behind me.
No.
Nothing like that.
I mean, it was not in the way, shape, or form, like, scary or anything.
You were not in danger.
I was in the way, shape, or form in danger.
Nor did I feel like it.
And so, I walked to this backyard and sure enough, they're like, and they just point.
There she is.
Covered by a blue tarp.
And I walk over.
And I pull off this blue tarp and there she is.
So, I'm looking at this thing and it weighs, I don't know.
It looks like it weighs like 2,000 pounds.
It's big, massive.
So, that presented a problem.
I thought you'd get it out of there.
And we get it out.
Yeah.
So, they said, do you want us to call some people to help you?
And I said, well, I can't get it myself.
They were like, do you need a truck?
I was like, I can't get a truck.
So, they make some phone calls and three minutes later, these other four dudes show up.
And they knew me and I knew them.
Oh, they're the informants people.
Yeah, okay.
Yeah.
And they probably knew what was going on in there.
Right, right.
So, the five or six of us lift this smoker and we get a truck to pull up and load the smoker into the back,
and we found the bonnels.
And these guys, I said, look, you know, it's pretty expensive.
We can probably get you some Crime Stoppers money here.
Get you a little tip or bonus.
Yeah, for doing the right thing.
We paid informants.
That's exactly.
They did many of them.
Exactly.
And the one was like, nah, I know, snitch.
Kind of are you have been for some years now?
But it directly involved him.
He wouldn't pick an office competition, I suppose.
Maybe he justified his other informing episodes in different ways in his own mind.
So, anyway, we took it back to bonnels.
And he was most certainly grateful and, you know, put it back to use, if you will.
And the value of the informants is kind of the moral of the story, I suppose.
Yeah.
So, he refused to take any remuneration, any getting money, not remuneration whatsoever.
Almost was offended that I even asked.
The thing of honor.
There's an honor amongst thieves, right?
Or something like that.
How that goes?
Yeah.
Perhaps you're right.
Cultivating informants.
Because you're right.
And we've talked about another informant that, who I happened to know.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, that was a random.
There has to be, how do you know when you can trust these guys?
When their first tip is right or whatever, or second tip, right?
I mean, there's a slew of things that's involved.
It's an art, not a science.
You got to prove them up, right?
I mean, you're not going to, especially at first, you're definitely not going to take their word as gospel.
But after a while, some of them are good.
Some of them will give you, you know, it's never 100% as they describe.
It's usually slightly embellished like, hey, there's, you know, ten kilos of coke in this house,
and you get in there, and there's an ounce, right?
Something like that.
But nonetheless, there's usually something in there.
But some of them are, like I said, some of them are good.
Some of them are honest.
Some of them, you know, it depends on what motivates them.
You know, they're working off a case or getting paid.
It kind of depends.
Because a bad informant or one who's not trustworthy can be dangerous very much so.
Case in point, the guy that I was just talking about, you fired him.
Oh, yeah.
Because he was full of shit, essentially.
So what are some of the potholes when you get bad information?
Potential.
Potholes you get bad information.
I mean, they could be, I mean, it could be really bad.
It could get you killed.
What that?
I mean, it could get you killed.
It could also, you know, I mean, if you're working a, it can jeopardize an entire case.
Right?
It could jeopardize convictions.
You know, one of the things that we're going to get into is this idea of, like,
this more relates to jailhouse confessions, but like jailhouse informants.
You know, what's their motivation is what the
has to be kind of a central theme of why are they doing what they're doing.
Right?
Frankly, in the dope world, most of them are picking off competition,
or they don't want to go to the jail themselves.
This whole thing of, you know, this whole code that they don't snitch,
everybody snitches in the right circumstances.
It's very seldom.
You're going to find one that's like, nah, just take me in.
I mean, there's some of them that exist, but the ones that you would think
would be like, oh man, this guy's pretty hardcore.
Been in the game for a long time.
Now, once you're like, hey, here's what you're facing,
and this is what we need, maybe to help out your cause a little bit.
They're very quick to squeal.
You had a, we were talking about this recently, you and I about,
you were a rookie cop still on with what, you got like a sponsor or something,
what would he call that, a training officer or something you go out with when you first got there?
And there was somebody, somebody was, there was an alleged theft somewhere, right?
When, on your first case?
No.
I don't know.
We were talking about this.
I asked you your first case of, on the job.
Oh, it was one of our risks of that girl that I went to high school with.
Okay.
Yeah.
Did she steal something?
Go ahead, tell that story.
I'm trying to think of the details.
I just remember, again, recollection from several decades ago,
that she was more of a cool kid.
I was more into punk rock music and skateboards and things of the sorts.
Definitely was not involved in the school spirit, if you will.
Yeah, yeah.
And I believe she was like a cheerleader of the sort.
A spirit girl or something.
Yeah.
A popular kid, if you will.
Yeah.
And so I remember if this was that at Coles.
The end club.
Yeah.
The end club.
Yeah.
And going there, walking in.
I was like, man, this girl, you know, I'm only five or six years out of,
maybe five years out of high school at the time.
And I was like, man, this girl looks familiar and her name.
And I was like, whoa.
Definitely took it downhill, downhill turn in life.
Yeah.
So, yeah, that one.
She was a kid stealing something, right?
Oh, yeah, a bunch of clothes.
Like baby clothes or something.
Baby clothes, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, she had neck pipe on her.
She did.
Yeah, neck pipe.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
What did you do with her?
Yeah.
Take her down, take her downtown.
She didn't know me.
I had to highlight the fact that we were once classmate.
I'm sure you did.
I'm sure you did.
Well, God willing, she has gotten herself straight now.
We can't say the same for ourselves.
The murder of Patrick Dinahee, who went missing in March 2003,
and was found in July that year, shot dead, allegedly by a teammate,
Carlton Dotson, who told an informant in Delaware that he had indeed,
he had indeed pulled the trigger after an argument with Patrick Dinahee.
So where does that take us in episode five?
I'm going to tell you about a really fantastic human being.
His name is A. Bar Rouse.
And when I was with Star Telegram, this must have been in 2013.
They called me up and said, hey, we want you to do the 10-year anniversary story on this case.
And we'll get into the details of that.
But it was through that assignment that I met A. Bar Rouse, who joined the Baylor.
He was a basketball coach with some aspirations.
He wanted to, like any young basketball coach, wanted to climb through the ranks
and make a career, get a good job at a good school, and make a career out of this.
And he got that opportunity.
So he thought, at Baylor in 2003, I believe he'd been on the job.
I believe he got the job in June.
So right in the middle of this, Dinahee was Patrick Dinahee was still missing.
They didn't know where he was, what had happened to him.
And A. Bar Rouse gets this job at Baylor when he thought was a dream job.
He had had a series of jobs at small NCAA schools and junior colleges.
And this was finally the big time, or at least as close to it, an assistant at a big 12 conference school, a power conference.
And he was also coming home. This was his alma mater, Baylor was.
He graduated six years, after graduate, he graduated six years earlier.
And in coaching, as I mentioned, you move around a bunch.
Actually, I'm sure you know coaches like that, they move around and finally find the right fit.
Even then, they still move around.
And they still move around. That's right.
So after graduate and Baylor 1997, he went to Midwestern State.
He went to Sam Husses State. He went to Ranger Junior College.
He went to Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina.
You're seeing Cape Fear?
Yeah.
Remake. No?
Oh, God.
Remake.
Oh, we ate.
Like in the 80s or 90s?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cape Fear Community College in North Carolina.
South Eastern Community College in Iowa.
McClendon Community College in McClendon County, Waco.
And then ultimately back to Baylor for this job.
So since 1997 to 2003, six years, he had one, two, three, four, five, six, six jobs.
But Baylor was the place Abar Rouse could stay for a while and build something or so he thought.
And went up position open after dinner, he's a parents, a disappearance.
Rouse was hired primarily because it was, quote,
no one wanted the job with the cloud over the program.
And it was hardly the way he envisioned getting his break, but he was going to take it.
Rouse's former boss at Midwestern State, gentleman by the name of Jeff Ray,
quoted, quoted, is saying when he got there, he was just extremely excited.
You're in the big 12.
It's a fantastic job, especially for a young guy like him.
He was 28 at the time.
And in a way, it's maybe the dream job.
And then all this happens.
Race that I felt bad for him and the timing was just awful.
Because instead of this feel good homecoming, returning to Baylor was a trip to the darkest side of college athletics.
So Dave Bliss, the coach.
Dave Bliss was the head coach.
The head coach had cooked up a scheme to protect his ass and his career against what would likely have been a career ender.
Patrick Dinahee was an on-scholarship at Baylor, not yet at least.
There are only so many, I think, numbers around 15 or so today.
Yeah, I think so.
So what many programs would do is take guys as walk-ons.
That is not on-scholarship.
Dinahee was set to go on-scholarship the next season.
Yeah, so they have this agreement that you can come and walk on.
We'll get you on-scholarship next year and we have one available.
But in the meantime, Dinahee had to find or pay his own way to find someone to do it.
Is Baylor not exactly cheap?
No, no, not at all.
So, this may have changed, but then it's against NCAA rules as it's against NCAA rules as improper inducements.
So Bliss had designed a ruse to explain how Patrick Dinahee was paying his tuition.
He was a drug dealer.
What could go wrong?
And Bliss needed his coaches and a handful of players to go along with that story.
Quote, this guy is going to get these kids to say this.
Abar Raus said.
Wait, the story was he's a drug dealer?
The story was he's a drug dealer.
So he wasn't a drug dealer?
He was not a drug dealer.
Oh wow.
Bliss concocted this whole thing.
To explain how he had enough money to pay for tuition.
And we'll get to that in a second.
That's a weird story.
Yep.
Or a coach to make up.
Interesting.
Quote, this guy is going to get these kids to say this.
Abar Raus said.
And this is not where this ends.
There's going to be a murder trial.
And they're going to have to testify.
And they're going to have to testify to this lie they're telling.
Raus further said.
Another quote.
So now this becomes about drugs.
They're telling us this kid was shot twice in the head, execution style.
And you throw drugs in there.
You've just changed the motive for murder.
And that could mean the death penalty.
He, being Abar Raus, said he was so uncomfortable about the circumstances surrounding his higher
that he couldn't even sit in his new office.
Raus's decision to blow the whistle on Bliss's scheme was motivated by doing right by the player
who could no longer speak for himself and by doing right by himself, protecting himself legally.
And there was precedence.
In 1995, a federal jury convicted three Baylor assistant basketball coaches of male fraud,
wire fraud, and conspiracy for their roles in helping five junior college recruits obtain
phony academic credit.
So that's just eight years prior to this.
That was not that long prior.
The jury acquitted Darryl Johnson, then the head coach of similar charges.
In the front of Raus's mind was being held criminally liable for obstructing justice in the murder case,
as well as protecting Denahee and Dodson's right to a fair trial.
Under the Texas Penal Code, merely making a false report to a peace officer is a class B misdemeanor
punishable by up to 180 days in jail, and a maximum of a $2,000 fine.
So yeah, so that Darryl Johnson scandal was only eight years prior, and this could have been a whole lot worse.
While he was in, while what's this man's name?
He bought Raus.
While he was in college.
He was at Baylor at that time.
If he graduated.
Yeah, yeah, he was at Baylor's time.
Yeah, exactly so, yeah.
So Raus said to me, he says, I didn't know what happened to what or to who, as far as the case of Denahee and Carlton Dodson.
But I did know they were both my responsibility as a coach.
Now keep in mind, Abar Raus has been there, not even a month, you know, about a month.
And he's thinking about his responsibility to two guys he doesn't even really know.
There's only doesn't know Patrick Denahee because he's not a lot longer with us, but he barely knew Carlton Dodson.
He's concerned about his responsibility to those kids as a coach.
And he continued to say, I also thought about my school.
He's an alum.
There were a whole bunch of reasons that went into what he wound up doing, which is taping the conversations that he had with Dave Bliss and Bliss had with other people.
Bliss's aim with what he hoped would be Raus' cooperation was to coerce players to tell authorities that Denahee paid for his tuition by dealing drugs.
In fact, Denahee's tuition was being paid for by members of the Baylor basketball community.
A major NCAA violation, which if uncovered, would likely mean the end of Bliss's then 30-year career,
that began as an assistant under of all people, Bob Knight at Army.
And he followed Knight to Indiana as well.
From Indiana Bliss went on to head coaching positions at Oklahoma, SMU, in New Mexico before taking over Baylor in 1999.
And at each of those places, Oklahoma, I think Oklahoma, but SMU and New Mexico for sure, the NCAA was always on his tail.
Because he was always had allegations of some sort of illegal inducements.
He just couldn't recruit the right way, apparently.
No, but in his defense, he was far from the only guy he was doing that step right time.
So the issue of how Denahee was paying his tuition came to light when his stepfather, Denahee's stepfather, said he didn't know how he was paying his tuition.
Because he went on scholarship yet.
So his father's stepfather's like, he's not on scholarship yet.
So Abar says to me, he says, you're a young professional. He's talking about himself.
And you're looking at how the boss is handling this situation.
Abar also said that he was threatened with termination if he didn't go along with it.
And you're looking at Bliss for leadership, and this is what he comes up with.
Abar said, I'm just a regular guy. I just thought it was wrong.
And ultimately, I couldn't see myself explaining to my child or my mother. I just couldn't do it.
In his book, Matt Samen, another player on that team, said that Bliss pulled him aside as well in the hallway and confronted him with story.
Samen said he was oblivious to Denahee even being a walk on.
And no way could I ever imagine Samen said, you know what walk-ons look like.
And you know how they play and what their purpose is.
It was pretty obvious that they're not that or that they are that.
When you see these guys that are just athletic and huge like Denahee,
you just don't ever know a question. You just assume he's on scholarship.
We all just assumed that, at least.
Samen was, by that time, disillusioned by the whole experience,
and not completely surprised to hear what Bliss was saying.
That something, he said, just didn't rub me right.
Plus, like many as age, he held coaches and does an authority and good esteem.
I had always grown up told to trust your coaches.
That's something my parents instilled in me.
But it was that same allegiance that Bliss was likely counting on to sell the story to players.
He knew he could get away with it.
A. Bar told me, he said, the entire situation took me by surprise.
When you're interviewed, they don't ask you if you're a cheater or if I cheat or violate NCAA rules.
Or, play a role in changing the facts and a murder.
They just don't ask those questions.
So, Rouse decided to press record and turn whistleblower.
In three conversations taped with a hidden microcoset,
tapes Rouse ultimately turned over to the NCAA.
On the last two days of July in August 1st, 2003,
Bliss suggested that players tell investigators they saw Dennehy with a tray containing drugs
and a roll of $100 bills.
He also tells players he knows they smoked marijuana and that Dennehy couldn't rebut the story because he was dead.
First of all, nobody is ever going to know about the fact that you might have smoked weed with the guys.
Bliss told one player.
I think the thing we want to do, and you think about this,
if there's a way we can create the perception that Pat may have been a dealer.
Even if we had to kind of make some things look a little better than they are, that can save us.
You don't have to tell me about Dotson because he's still alive.
But Dennehy is never going to refute what we say.
I've got some things to say about him because he came in and tried to get me to help him with something.
And I told him, I can't help you.
Now I know that ticked him off, but he knows that's the truth.
And now he's dead, so he isn't going to argue with me at all.
So Abar told me here, asking him about this,
quote, I'm a parent.
I put my kids face in Patrick's and Carlton's place and thought, are you kidding me?
You came to my house, sat down on my couch, and promised to treat my child like they were your own.
Abar continued, he said, you find me a coach that would allow their child to be put in that situation that Patrick's parents found their son in.
How would they respond?
If any of those guys would sit and tell you that they would be okay with that,
with what Coach Bliss was doing, they'd be lying to you.
Bliss resigned after the tapes were disclosed.
An investigation conducted by Baylor found that Bliss had paid up to $40,000 in tuition for dinner he and another player.
Officials also found that Bliss lied to investigators about attempts to cover up his conduct and that Baylor coaches failed to report failed drug tests.
The NCAA hit Baylor harshly.
Five years probation and the stripping of five scholarships over two seasons.
The bears were banned from playing non-conference games in 2005-2006 season.
In a detailed and often blistering report, the Division I committee on infractions formally assessed the scandal,
likening the case to the collapse of the SMU's football program nearly two decades ago.
Committee chairman Jean Marsh, a University of Alabama law professor,
said only Baylor swift and decisive response after the violation surface kept the program from facing the quote, death penalty.
The same punishment that shuttered SMU football for two seasons and remains the harshest sanction in NCAA history.
Even so, Baylor at the time ranked as the most prominent university directed to eliminate portions of a season because of major infractions.
The NCAA allowed the school to choose between dropping its non-conference schedule and either the 0506 or the 0607 seasons.
Baylor selected the upcoming season.
The bears were eligible for the death penalty because the violations occurred within five years of the men's tennis program being placed on probation for major infractions.
The tennis program itself had faced that punishment due to violations committed less than five years after the basketball team was penalized for widespread academic fraud.
So it's just back to back to back there, it seems like.
Yeah, and yeah, but it's certainly there.
And then, you know, a defensive Baylor, a lot of that stuff goes on in a lot of places.
They don't deserve your defense.
Well, okay, okay.
Here's our TCU girl over here.
It's kind of Baylor Homer.
We'll have a discussion about this after all of this is done.
So, along with a shortened season of 2005, 2006, the committee imposed, also imposed five years of probation, but largely upheld the penalties Baylor had already instituted on its own.
The Baylor president got swept out of there as well.
So the interim president, Bill Underwood, who served on the internal committee that examined the basketball program following this incident called the NCAA's decision, quote unquote, the final piece.
And the university's effort to move beyond events of that year.
And he said he believed the sanctions were fully appropriate.
What else would he say?
The former head coach, talking about Bliss, presided over a staff that exhibited blatant and sweeping disregard for NCAA rules, the committee said.
Bliss intentionally committed serious and numerous violations of NCAA legislation and involved members of his staff, student athletes, and their family members in his misdeeds.
To no surprise, Bliss's career as a division one coach was over.
If any school wanted to hire him within the last 10 years of 2013, the institution would have to appear before the NCAA in fractures committee to discuss it.
Nobody was going to deal with any of that stuff.
He was persona non grata.
Bliss is now 82 years old, or thereabouts.
And he, believe it or not, went on.
There was a good lot of scandal over, or not scandal, but controversy over him over his next job, which was dean of students and athletics at the Allen Academy in Bryan, Bryan Texas.
Would love to know what they were thinking.
He said Matt Samen, who played on that team, he said this whole thing was tough.
He says, I was close with Dave Bliss. I enjoyed playing with him.
We spent some time together off the court.
And it just goes to show he went on to say that if you're not careful, and don't keep your heart guarded, and allow the pressures of whatever you're doing to take over your judgment,
that even good people, and I consider him a good person, he told me in 2013, even good people can make horrific decisions.
And Matt Samen said he believed at the time that Bliss was using his experience to help others not make the same mistakes.
Who would hire Dave Bliss at all?
I keep thinking of that little kid that says a bullshit.
Who says that?
There's this little meme, and it's this little girl, and she sits in the back of the car, and she says, a bullshit.
Oh, I've seen that actually, yes, and that's exactly what I keep thinking of.
Exactly what it is. So Dave Bliss, let's look right quick.
So he didn't stay long. I'm actually looking now.
So he goes to Allen Academy, the college prep school in Bryan.
Almost immediately, Bliss became embroiled in controversy.
On November 28, 2010, it was reported by multiple news outlets in Bryan that Bliss received a two-year suspension from coaching basketball,
and a one-year suspension from school administration at Allen Academy by TAPS, the Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools.
I played in TAPS.
Are you a TAPS legend?
No, I'm Catholic. No, I was not a legend.
In my own mind.
Yeah, in your own mind.
That suspension came less than a month after the start of his first season as head boys basketball coach,
and less than three months after joining the school in an administrative role.
They just climbed a comment, the TAPS director, at the time to climb to comment,
but so I don't know if it was related to that.
I'll wait till we're done summarizing everything before I give you all my absolute holy stuff,
but who would let their children around this man?
I always call them little league parents, but there are parents who are diluted into thinking
that their kids are going to be a major sports star.
They're going to get a Division I scholarship to play whatever.
And they think that they're of the belief that a guy like Dave Bliss,
who has all this network and these connections, can help make that happen.
He tried to help to me from what sounds like he helped cover up a murder.
He should have been a jail.
He certainly could have been right, because if Abar Rouse had not taped him,
and he went through with this, he probably absolutely would have faced what's the where I'm looking for.
Colluding or covering up evidence.
A murder trial.
That veil would have been pulled back real fast, though.
There's no way that you could rely on a bunch of 18, 19, 20-year-olds to do what he wanted to do.
I mean, look at Samin as the perfect example.
Yeah.
It's one thing for Bliss to say, hey, say this.
It's another thing for them to actually be sitting in a police interrogation room saying that.
I think that would have been uncovered rather quickly.
But that in its own right to tell me if I'm wrong, is illegal.
Isn't that impeding investigation?
Yeah, your impeding investigation is what he was attempting to do.
Now, whether Matt Samin or whoever, whatever player went in, would have...
I'm not serious.
I've authentically gone into an interview room with a detective and starts telling them this stuff.
Or, or...
Or, perjures himself on the witness stand by saying this stuff.
I mean, that's where it gets real.
A. Bar Rouse was probably, you know, he's not far removed from school.
Age-wise.
Yeah, he's 28.
Obviously he has a high moral character.
Yeah.
Puts it all on the line and says, hey, I got my dream job.
And I'm about to tank that.
But for the right reasons, like I said, if A. Bar Rouse didn't come forward,
somebody at some point.
Because again, you're dealing with teenagers.
You're dealing with 20-year-olds, 21-year-olds.
Some of these kids are not going...
There's, in my mind, zero chance they're actually going to go through with this whole plan.
If you...
I feel like though, and this goes back to, and we can go back to this in the next episode,
but this whole aspect of trust your coach thing,
what you were talking about.
Like, especially nowadays, I wouldn't tell my kid to trust their coach.
I wouldn't.
At all.
No matter who it was.
No matter who it was.
The people you trust me.
Like, you trust me.
Yeah.
And God willing, they can, right?
Exactly.
I wouldn't tell them to trust their coaches.
I mean, look at all the stuff that's going on in Salina and Cedar Hill and Godly and all these ISDs.
No way, I was saying.
They're all business, though.
It's all a business.
Well, and when you're talking about as much money as involved in the revenue sports of NCAA Division I,
there's always going to be some corruption.
I mean, these kids probably thought if they didn't stick along with it or do it,
they were told that they weren't going to be allowed to go back to school.
Yeah.
I mean, I have no doubt that they were probably...
I mean, so maybe, I mean, yes, there's probably somebody in there that would have snitched,
but you threatened a kid enough.
Yeah.
You might not.
Imagine what he didn't get caught for.
Well, that's just it.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not like you get caught on your first time.
Right.
Colleges are so corrupt.
It's not even funny.
Well, you said that.
I didn't say that.
It's okay.
I can't say it.
There is certainly corruption in...
There's so much money involved with it.
Did you mention after his experience at Alan Academy in Bryan,
Bliss was hired by Southwestern Christian University in 2015.
That's an NAIA school.
And he was designed there in 2017.
But he did resign from there after the airing of a document around Showtime about this whole thing.
So he left.
And then in 2017,
a Las Vegas high school hired him.
At least he's closer to where he should be in Las Vegas, right?
Sin City.
That's where he should be.
But he resigned there in 2018 after one year.
And he has not worked since.
And probably didn't even need to work.
So I'm sure he could have retired.
Depending on how many people he was putting through Baylor at the time, I guess.
But all right.
So let's talk about some of this stuff.
Did you learn that a coach trying to steer players toward a false narrative,
like calling the victim a drug dealer?
What went through your mind when you heard all this stuff?
I mean, you're going down unnecessary rabbit holes.
It's what it's all for.
For the police.
For the investigators.
I mean, like I said, at some point, more than likely,
that whole scheme that he concocted is going to...
Will collapse or would have collapsed.
Somebody is going to snitch.
Like we talked about, yes, I think that some of the players,
especially if they're on scholarship or some of them would have gone through with it.
But again, when pressed, do they have the skill set to lie to the police?
Because frankly, we're not dealing with a bunch of seasoned criminals here.
Right.
So I think that whole story would have certainly collapsed.
It's kind of ridiculous.
Again, like I said, what did he not get caught for?
I guess at this point.
But I mean, to me, it's hard pressed to think.
I'm hard pressed to think that that's going to work.
Something's going to come out.
So in summary, you're chasing a false narrative
that you're going to uncover that this is actually what really happened,
and that was the truth.
All right, so let's take it from the angle of, for example,
Abar Rouse comes to you as the lead investigator
and says, Dave Bliss is pressuring me and players
to lie to police about this situation.
How do you handle that?
The police are focused on the crime.
They're not focused on non-criminal corruption out of college, right?
Would Bliss not be criminally liable for trying to influence an impede investigation?
I mean, outside of purgering himself would be hard pressed to think that,
I mean, people lie, witnesses lie in investigations all the time, right?
And they're seldom charged.
But they could be.
Maybe, maybe not.
I think it depends on what they are lying about,
because again, they're not alleging a nether crime occurred, right?
When you look at that false report, you're saying, hey,
you're reporting something that you know is not factual to the police
that's a specific crime.
That's not the case here.
Denny, he was dead.
Denny, he was already killed.
They're just trying to create a backstory, right?
So, again, people lie all of the time in a myriad of investigations.
So do I think that he would have been tried for something?
I mean, you'd have to probably get deep down into the penal code to make that fit.
Because the players who lie didn't know they were lying, right?
They just, they're told this.
They were told that they're best of their record.
Best of their knowledge.
This is the truth.
I mean, again, I don't know that, you know,
obviously what he did was wrong.
I mean, and I think it certainly fits more into the category of being
administratively disciplined, if you will,
whether it be from the NCAA or from Baylor by him getting terminated
or resigning whatever, with the facts that we know,
I don't know what his charges would be.
Do we still have access to our resident attorney?
Yes.
You should talk to him about it coming on?
No, I need to.
He's got a role now to where he may.
We're probably going to have to seek a new attorney perspective.
I want like a defense attorney, like, you know,
going, maybe we should get a weezy board out
and try to get the spirit of the ghost of racehorse Haynes.
No.
Yes.
We don't fuck with a weezy board.
We're going to board the weezy board.
All right, no weezy boards.
That's what the boss says.
Let's, let's, let's end it here.
In this satan tragic case of the murder of Patrick Dinahy and Baylor,
come back.
We'll finish off this case in episode six.
Yep.
See you next time.
This is a stolen water media production.