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Pat Mullins

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Pat Mullins

Pat Mullins

Real Name: Patrick Lee Mullins
Nicknames: Pat
Location: Bradenton, Florida
Date: January 27, 2013

Case[]

Details: Fifty-two-year-old Pat Mullins was a librarian and media specialist at Palmetto High School in Palmetto, Florida. He had worked there since 2004. He and his wife, Jill, married in 1983 and had two children, Mason and Miles. Mason was in the Army and stationed in Afghanistan. Miles was a civil engineering major at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
Pat grew up on Anna Maria Island. He had two brothers, Bert and Gray, and two sisters, Linda and Nancy. During the 1990s, Pat was a sergeant in the National Guard. He taught fourth grade for over twenty years with the Manatee County School District before he and Jill decided to get their master's degrees at the University of South Florida. They both became librarians. Jill says that the students at Pat's school loved and respected him because he cared for them.
According to Jill, Pat sometimes kept the library open until 6 or 7pm so the students could finish their schoolwork. He pushed for them to do more recreational reading. He made sure to help those who needed a "little bit extra" help, such as the ones who did not have a father figure. He even helped pay the ACT and SAT fees for financially struggling students. The principal said Pat was an "intricate part" of the school. Pat's niece and Bert were also teachers at the school.
Pat and Jill lived at 5631 43rd Avenue East in Bradenton, Florida. She says that when they moved there, it was a pretty small town. Their house was on a tributary of the Braden River. She says it was a great place to raise the kids. Miles says that while growing up, they spent a lot of time out on the water, fishing or hanging out. He always had a good time.
Gray says that Pat and the rest of their family grew up on the water. There were boats everywhere, and everyone had them. Their family was able to go out all the time. He says they were all compelled to work on things, tinker with them, tear them apart, and put them back together. He says Pat was good at that and was "brilliant".
Pat was known as an experienced, responsible boater and an excellent swimmer. He owned a fourteen-foot, flat-bottom Stumpnocker boat. Growing up, he coveted that type of boat. He often told Gray, "That would be the boat to have". Jill says Pat used the boat mainly on the Braden River, which was extremely shallow. Miles says Pat often took them out mullet fishing on it, and it was a "magical" experience. He says it was a peaceful place to be.
Pat was described as kind, sensitive, cautious, hard-working, and devoted to his family. Family friend Dr. Mark Sylvester says Pat was regimented, disciplined, and serious, with a dry sense of humor. Miles says Pat was "by the books"; he did things the way they were supposed to be done. Jill says he was living a good life. He planned to retire in 2014. He was looking forward to his future. After he retired, he and Bert planned on starting a business venture: fixing old motors and boats, one of Pat's favorite hobbies.
On Sunday, January 27, 2013, Jill planned to go to her sister's house in Sarasota, Florida. She did not know what Pat's plans were for the day. She says he had numerous outboard boat motors that he was working on restoring. As she left, he wished her a good day and kissed her goodbye. He told her he would help her gather up furniture she planned to give to a co-worker when she returned. Between 6:30 and 7pm, she arrived home. Pat was not there, but his truck was in the driveway, so she thought he was at a neighbor's house.
Jill called Pat's cell phone. However, he did not like to carry it with him, so she was not surprised when he did not answer (it was later found in his truck). She went outside and looked for him. She looked at the neighbors' houses. She still did not see him. She says they had a pretty normal routine. On Sundays, which they considered work nights, they started "winding down" around 7pm. She felt it was odd that he was not home yet.
As it got later in the evening, Jill became more nervous. She decided to walk to where Pat kept his boat. It was not there. She was concerned because he rarely took it out after dark. She called friends and relatives, but no one had seen or heard from him.
Jill called Miles, who was at school in Tampa. He told her not to worry about Pat. The day prior, Pat had mentioned to one of his brothers and a friend that he planned to take his boat out to test a motor he was working on and run gas through it. Jill found a note from Pat that confirmed this. Miles says he was not worried about Pat finding his way home.
Later that night, when Jill called again and told Miles that Pat was still not back, he realized something was wrong. He immediately left Tampa and drove down to Bradenton. At around 11pm, Jill called Bert and told him Pat was still not back. He offered to look for Pat in his boat. He met Miles at the boat ramp, and they went out and started searching.
Bert and Miles focused their search on the Braden River. Because his boat was designed for shallow water, Pat only used it there. Miles felt it was unlikely that Pat would have taken it into the larger Manatee River, which the Braden River flows from.
Bert and Miles searched the river's main routes. When they did not find anything, they started to go into all the nooks, crannies, and streams. Sometime after 11pm, Jill called the Manatee County Sheriff's Office and told them Pat had gone out on his boat and never returned. Lieutenant Rabun Moss asked her the common missing person questions: did he have any problems, did he leave a note, and did he have his phone with him?
Jill says the Sheriff's Office asked about her and Pat's relationship, if they had money troubles, if they owned weapons, and if he was depressed. She says they first checked a few boat bars, although she claims he did not go to bars. Shortly afterward, the Sheriff's Office started a search operation with their marine unit. They learned that Pat was seen by his neighbors mowing his lawn between 1:30 and 3pm. They last saw him leaving in his boat around 3pm. There was no indication that any other person was with him.
Since Pat's boat was a riverboat, the Sheriff's Office concentrated their search along the Braden and Manatee Rivers. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) became involved soon after. At 2:40am on January 28, the Sheriff's Office notified the Coast Guard about Pat's disappearance.
Coast Guard Lt. Commander Roy Cromer says that time is not your friend in a search and rescue case. The longer they search, the farther something could drift. In Pat's case, they did not know if they were looking for an upright boat, a capsized boat, or a person in the water.
Jill says helicopters went over their house all night long. She was worried and knew something was wrong. Family friend Stephen Covey thought that Pat's boat had broken down or that he had hurt his back since he had back problems. He expected that they would find Pat stuck onshore with something broken. Gray also thought Pat was suffering from some kind of physical ailment. Gray believed that if something were wrong with the boat, Pat would have been able to fix it and get it home.
The search for Pat included helicopters, search and rescue vessels, eighteen surface units, and a C-130 aircraft equipped with advanced FLIR technology. They covered over 2,000 square miles.
At around 11am on January 28, the day after Pat disappeared, his boat was found in the Egmont Channel, about seven miles northwest of Egmont Key in the Gulf of Mexico, between markers 8 and 9. Large container ships use this channel to deliver goods. It would have taken Pat about two or three hours to reach that location.
Miles says there was no reason for the boat to be there. Jill says it was "amazingly" far from their house. She could not see how it had traveled that far. Pat's family says that if he were testing the boat's motor, he would have been able to do it in the Braden River; he did not have to go out into the Manatee River, Tampa Bay, or the Gulf of Mexico.
Pat's belongings were still in the boat, but he was nowhere to be found. According to Lt. Moss, they found a life vest, sunglasses, straw hat, and gas can onboard. The anchor was missing. The boat was out of gas. The engine was set to idle, and the ignition was on, indicating that it possibly ran out of gas while in the idle state. According to Lt. Moss, there were no signs of foul play on the boat.
The Sheriff's Office initially theorized that Pat had a medical event and fell overboard. They also theorized that the boat stopped functioning and he got off somewhere. Lt. Moss says they looked into Pat's background to see if he had financial problems. They looked into phone records to see who he was in communication with. They found no troubled areas in his past or problems that could help them determine if he vanished voluntarily or was the victim of foul play. They had no idea what had happened to him.
After Pat's boat was found, it was returned to his family. Miles says that when they examined it, they noticed light-red paint markings on its side. He says those markings had not been there in the past. At the time, they did not know what to think about them.
Pat's family wondered what to do next in their search for him. They wondered if he had made it to land somewhere. They tried to figure out which islands they had not searched. They wanted to figure out what happened to him. But all they could come up with was more questions and no answers.
Lt. Cromer says that after the boat was discovered, they continued searching for Pat in the water. He says the boat was their best clue because it allowed them to backtrack and figure out where Pat might be. They tried to determine where the boat came from using the "reverse drift method", surface currents, and wind data.
Lt. Cromer says the wind was out of the east that night. With the tide also pushing offshore, they estimated that the boat probably drifted from somewhere in lower Tampa Bay. He says searching for a person in the water for an extended period of time is challenging. But they do not slow down their search efforts once they find an empty boat.
Jill says that after Pat's boat was found, it was a long week of waiting to find out if he would be found. She hoped that he would be found alive. But she prayed that he would be found regardless, saying, "An answer at least is an answer".
At around noon on February 5, nine days after Pat disappeared, fishing boat captain Geoffrey Page was on his way in from a charter fishing trip. As they approached Emerson Point in the southern part of Tampa Bay, near the mouth of the Manatee River, one of his clients said, "Captain! Captain! What is that out there?" He looked over and saw what looked like a mannequin or a body, but he was not sure what it was. It was floating about a half-mile from Emerson Point.
Once they got closer to the object, Geoffrey realized it was a man's body floating face down. He suspected it was Pat's. He noticed the man was wearing a shirt, blue jeans, a belt, and only one shoe. Everything about him was "clean as a whistle". He had a wristwatch on his wrist and a wallet in his pocket. And there was a rope wrapped around his body.
Geoffrey says the rope was intricately wrapped under the man's arm, then around his neck and chest. The rope went into the water and was attached to a tiny anchor that had dug into the sandy bottom. The water was about four feet deep. Geoffrey did not flip the man's body over or touch him. Since the water was crystal clear, he could see the front of the body. The back of the skull, cheeks, nose, and face were all gone.
Geoffrey immediately called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). An FWC agent arrived about forty minutes later. A Sheriff's Office boat later took the body ashore and delivered it to the medical examiner's office. The wallet found on the body contained Pat's identification card. The body was positively identified as his through fingerprints.
Later that day, Jill received a phone call and was told that Pat's body had been found. She says it was horrible. Gray says he searched the area where Pat's body was discovered. He is glad that he was not the one to find Pat. Miles says that when Pat was found, he thought about how lucky he was to have had him in his life. But he was sad that he was gone.
Dr. Russell Vega, the Manatee County Medical Examiner, examined Pat's body. It was fully clothed, except for one shoe. A three-quarter-inch rope and a twenty-five-pound anchor were tied around it. The rope was wrapped across Pat's left shoulder twice, then went down in between his legs, around his waist about seven times, and was then tied off across his chest. His body was in a moderate state of decomposition, consistent with being in the water for eight or nine days. There was no way for Dr. Vega to narrow down the time of death specifically.
Forensic anthropologists at the University of Florida reconstructed Pat's skull. To Dr. Vega, it was clear that there had been some kind of severe head trauma. There were six exit perforations on the left side of the skull and what appeared to be one large perforation on the right side. It was clear to Dr. Vega that a shotgun with buckshot had been used. The gunshot wound came from the right side and was a little bit upward and backward. It went right-to-left and exited on the left side. He could not determine if Pat had been shot more than once.
Dr. Vega does not know if Pat's death was a suicide or a homicide. In the medical examiner's reports, the manner of death is listed as "undetermined". Dr. Vega says that suicide is a reasonable possibility. He notes that Pat's arms were not bound at all. The knots were tied in front of him. There were no other injuries that indicated a struggle. Dr. Vega believes the gunshot wound could have been self-administered.
Surprisingly, Pat's family did not find out the exact cause of his death until five months later. Dr. Vega had assumed that the Sheriff's Office had informed Jill, but they had not. He told Pat's family that he leaned towards suicide. He said the ropes would have been tied differently if it were a homicide. He also said Pat lived a relatively safe and sedate lifestyle and was an unlikely murder victim.
One of Dr. Vega's staff members, after learning that Pat liked to climb onto buoys as a child, speculated that he might have climbed onto one and shot himself. However, they did not explain how Pat could have done this while carrying a shotgun and an anchor. Jill tried to keep an open mind about the possibility of suicide. But she could not find anything to support the theory.
Lee Williams is a former investigative reporter at the Herald Tribune in Sarasota. He claims the Sheriff's Office said Pat's death was a suicide before they even pulled him from the water. A sheriff's official allegedly told reporters gathered at the scene that the death was likely a suicide. Williams says that from then on, they pressured Jill to accept that Pat killed himself. When he interviewed them about this, they also tried to get him to "buy" the suicide theory. He says they tried to convince him to leave the case alone because it would be the best thing to do for the family.
Miles says the Sheriff's Office's theory was that Pat tied the rope around himself and the anchor, positioned himself on the boat's edge, shot himself, and went overboard. He wonders how they came to that conclusion, given the circumstances. He says it does not make sense. He also wonders how Pat's boat ended up so far out if no one was driving it. Jill wonders why no one noticed an unmanned boat traveling all that distance.
Jill was surprised when she learned that Pat had died of a shotgun wound to the head. She says they never had any guns in their house. He did not have any interest in them. The Sheriff's Office did a forensic audit of his bank accounts. He never got the money out to buy a shotgun. He had never owned one or had any shotgun shells. The Sheriff's Office and Williams checked with local gun dealers. No one had sold Pat a shotgun. None of his family members or friends had loaned him one either.
Despite an extensive search of the water, the shotgun has never been recovered. Investigators noted that the river's current is strong, so the shotgun may have been "whisked away" from the area. The only thing investigators found related to guns was a YouTube link on Pat's computer about determining the age of a Marlin shotgun. Also, a gun show took place in nearby Palmetto on the weekend of Pat's disappearance.
Gray says nothing was found that would lead him to believe that Pat committed suicide. Based on what he knew about Pat's life and personality, he does not think suicide was an option. Jill says she never saw him depressed and that he had "everything" to live for. He had no serious financial, medical, or personal problems. He had no history of drug or alcohol abuse. Investigators found no evidence of suicidal behavior or a viable reason for him to commit suicide. However, they did find that his school district's life insurance policy had a "no suicide" clause that would have prevented payment if he committed suicide.
Miles says Pat bought a drain valve for an air conditioner and a pair of welding goggles on the day he disappeared. Pat did not need the goggles that day and had no plans for them. Miles says Pat bought them because they were a good buy, and he could use them later. Miles says that Pat was excited about the future.
Jill says Pat wanted to be a grandfather so much, and it was "big" in his mind. They were going to be celebrating their 30th anniversary in June 2013. Pat had picked out a hotel in Fort Myers and planned to make reservations. He also planned to retire in 2014 and collect more than $150,000. Jill says there were too many positive things going on in his life for him to end it.
Another thing that did not make sense to Pat's family was the way the rope was tied around his body. Miles says the knots used were not ones that Pat or any experienced boater would use. He thinks that if Pat were to commit suicide, he would have used one "good" knot.
During a meeting with Pat's family, the detective division commander implied that his death must have been suicide because she had never seen ropes tied that way in a homicide. Jill says the Sheriff's Office also told her that Pat's death was "clearly" not a homicide because his hands were not tied, which would have allowed him to tie the rope and shoot himself. She says that if someone else killed Pat, they would not need to tie his hands. She believes that he had to be either unconscious or dead in order to be wrapped with the rope in that manner.
Jill says that at one point, the primary detective asked her to "be reasonable" and accept that Pat committed suicide. He told her that if someone had killed Pat, they would have taken his wallet, watch, ring, and/or money. She says she does not know why someone killed him, but she does not think it was for the eight dollars in his wallet. She believes the detective was inexperienced, as he had never conducted a death investigation before.
In 2021, Pat's family brought in Dr. Lori Baker, a professor of anthropology and forensic science, to examine the suicide theory. She was told that no one was certain if his death was a homicide or a suicide. She says the way the rope was wrapped around Pat's body sounded unusual. It is not something she has seen before in a suicide case.
Dr. Baker tried to reconstruct Pat's death as if it were a suicide. She had a male assistant try to tie himself up on the edge of a boat with an anchor weighing him down. She then had him try to hold a gun in the same trajectory that Pat would have held it. She tried to figure out how Pat would have sat on the boat to ensure he went into the water with the shotgun and anchor. When the assistant put the anchor in the water, they noticed it pulled hard on his back.
Dr. Baker notes that the angle of the gunshot is unusual and not typical for a suicide. The shot was fired below the right earlobe at the rear of Pat's cheek at a slightly upward angle. Dr. Vega says he has never seen a self-inflicted shotgun wound with such a trajectory and in that location on the head.
Dr. Baker says that if Pat had used a shotgun with an eighteen-inch barrel, it would have been difficult to hold because it is heavy and unwieldy. She believes he would have pressed it up to the area he was firing at. However, when she looked at his skull, she saw no black marks on it. If it were a contact wound (where the weapon is placed against the skin), there would have been black marks.
Dr. Baker says that since a long-barreled gun was used and it was not a contact wound, it seems unlikely that Pat shot himself. Dr. Vega says that, in his experience, most gunshot suicide victims have contact wounds. Dr. Baker and her assistant agreed that the position Pat would have to hold the shotgun in was awkward and unnatural.
Dr. Baker says that if Pat shot himself in the boat, the breeze and the amount of force and blood spray from the shotgun blast would have made it almost impossible for him not to get blood, tissue, and/or bone in the boat. Lt. Moss says that after Pat's body was found, they examined the boat and conducted luminol testing. However, no blood or other evidence was found.
Dr. Baker, Dr. Vega, and Williams do not believe Pat was killed in the boat since no biological evidence was found in it. Williams says if Pat was killed elsewhere, it is reasonable to conclude that his death was not a suicide.
After looking at photographs of Pat's body, Dr. Baker was perplexed to find no evidence of scavengers touching it, even though it had been in the water for almost ten days. After a gunshot wound to the head, a large amount of blood comes out. She says that within a few minutes, you would see scavenging activity. But there was almost no damage to his body at all.
According to Dr. Baker, sharks can smell blood about a half-mile away. The area where Pat's body was found had sharks, alligators, and other animals. She wonders if Pat was really in the water for ten days. Miles wonders if Pat was held somewhere else, possibly on land, for several days before being placed in the water.
Williams' theory is that Pat encountered something on the Braden River that he should not have seen. He speculates that Pat, acting as a Good Samaritan, went to another boat, believing they needed help. He says that theory makes the most sense because Pat was that kind of person. Miles says that if Pat saw someone having a mechanical issue with their boat, he would probably approach and try to help them.
When Pat's boat was found, the engine was in neutral and the gas had run out. Miles believes that Pat "paused" while he was doing something. He says Pat would leave the engine running if he was making a quick stop. He would put the engine in neutral if he was pulling up to a dock or wanted to stop and look at something.
Williams believes that Pat's killer was running drugs or some other type of contraband. He notes that the Braden River is a great place to go and recreate. But some people use the river for bad purposes. According to him, there have been motorboat thefts, people harvesting fish illegally, and drugs being moved up and down the river.
Investigators looked into the theory that Pat was killed after he surprised drug smugglers on the Manatee or Braden River, but it did not pan out. According to them, there was no drug smuggling activity on the rivers that day. They also looked into the possibility that he was killed after he came across fishermen using illegal gill nets. That theory was also discounted.
According to Jill, about a week before Pat disappeared, he was having severe headaches and was irritable. She says he was normally not like that. Later on, she talked to a medical professional who suggested that the headaches might have been stress-related.
Jill says she and Pat talked about everything. However, he did not talk to her about whatever he was apparently stressing about. She wonders if Pat knew something that was causing him stress. She wonders if that information led to his death.
Pat's boat was found in the Gulf of Mexico, and his body was found in Tampa Bay, even though he normally did not go to either of those locations. Williams believes whoever murdered Pat towed his boat out into the ocean, cut the rope, and left it there.
Miles says that Pat's boat would have passed the CSX railroad bridge on the Manatee River for it to end up where it was found. There are cameras mounted on the bridge that record all boats that pass through it. He hoped they would see Pat and/or his boat. He wanted to see if Pat was alone or not.
Investigators obtained video from the bridge shortly after Pat's death. Unfortunately, the CSX personnel downloaded the video incorrectly, which made the file corrupt. Investigators went back a second time. Once again, the video was corrupted. When they contacted CSX again, they learned the original video had been recorded over.
Investigators also obtained surveillance video from Manatee Memorial Hospital in Bradenton and Regatta Marina in Palmetto. However, neither Pat nor his boat were seen in that footage. Miles was disappointed and frustrated about the corrupted video. He believed it would have helped them figure out what had happened. Gray says they have no facts or answers, just theories. He believes Pat was killed, but he is unsure who is responsible.
Lt. Moss says the Sheriff's Office tried to talk to as many people as possible. Damon Crestwood, a close friend of Gray's, was interviewed multiple times. Miles says Pat and Damon were not close. Gray and Damon met around 1990 and became fast friends. Damon owned a restaurant and was a talented chef. Dr. Mark Sylvester, a family friend, says Damon was a "sweetheart" and described him as likable, dependable, and admirable.
According to Mark, Damon's behavior became markedly different after Pat disappeared. He was very upset that Pat was missing and presumed dead. Mark says he was almost "disproportionately" upset. Gray says Damon would break into tears and sob uncontrollably. He would show up early in the morning at Gray's house, upset. Gray says he had never seen that side of Damon before.
After Pat died, Damon told Jill that he would look out along the Manatee River and cry and sob for hours. Miles says that if Damon and Pat had been close, he would have expected the type of reaction that Damon was having. But they were not.
Family friend Stephen Convey says that Damon went "off the rails". He constantly asked, "If something happened, would you still be my friend? Could I count on you being there?" No one knew why he was saying that. Mark noticed that following Pat's death, Damon had a mental breakdown every January (Pat died in January). Mark began to believe that Damon knew more about the case than he was saying.
At one point, Damon intimated to Gray that he had been using crystal meth. Mark, a psychiatrist, told Gray they needed to "keep an eye" on Damon. Mark noticed that Damon was getting more paranoid and impulsive. He says Damon had episodes of extreme erratic behavior that concerned everyone.
On Memorial Day 2013, Pat's family and friends got together. Damon came to the gathering. Miles saw Damon tie a rope to his dog and then tie the rope around himself. Mark says the rope was tied in the same manner as the one on Pat's body. Mark and Gray felt this was troubling and disturbing. Mark confronted Damon, asking him why he was acting weird. But Damon did not give any explanation.
Miles says there was another thing that connected Damon to the case. Damon's boat has a red stripe on it. When Pat's boat was found, it had red paint markings on it. Damon parked his boat in the Manatee River, close to where the river opens into Tampa Bay. This was the same area where Pat's body was found.
Investigators wanted to take paint samples from Damon's boat. However, he refused to let them do it. In his interviews, he denied being involved in Pat's death or knowing anything about it. Eventually, he stopped talking with investigators. However, without any witnesses or corroborating evidence, they were unable to investigate him further. According to Miles, investigators made no effort to talk to Damon further or get a paint chip from his boat.
On April 5, 2017, four years after Pat's death, Damon died of a suspected meth overdose. He was forty-eight. Mark says Damon's death was another trauma because they had hoped he would tell them what he knew about Pat's case.
After Damon's death, his daughter permitted investigators to take a paint chip from his boat to test against the red paint found on Pat's boat. Miles hoped that this would lead to some resolution in the case. Investigators later told him that the paint was a match; however, they said it was "not important". According to Lt. Moss, the report stated: "The boat cannot be eliminated as a possible source of red paint smears on the victim's boat".
Lt. Moss says the paint found on Pat's boat is a common variety. They cannot say what brand it is or anything of that nature. Jill says investigators discounted the test results. They said a lot of paint was made that year, and the results were "as good as nothing". However, she does not feel that way. Miles also thinks they mean something. He believes it is highly unlikely that something else would have rubbed Pat's boat and matched the paint on Damon's boat.
Jill feels that Damon was aware of what happened to Pat, given his strange behavior and obsession with Pat's death. There are several theories as to how Pat interacted with Damon's boat and ended up dead. One is that Pat came across Damon's boat floating with the engine up. Gray says Pat would have gone to help Damon, as Pat was knowledgeable and skilled at engine repair. Gray wonders if someone other than Damon was using his boat that day. However, he does not have a scenario that "puts it all together". He thinks anything is possible.
Lt. Moss says that based on their investigation, they have more questions than answers as to what happened that day. They wish they could help Pat's family by finding those answers and getting them closure. Dr. Vega says that in most homicide cases, there is information suggesting a reason or motive for the person's death. But there was none of that in Pat's case.
Dr. Vega says the most important factor in keeping suicide a consideration was the unusual rope application on Pat's body. He says it could have been self-administered. He says suicide and homicide are both reasonably likely, which is why he left it as "undetermined". However, in 2020, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement classified Pat's death as a homicide.
Around the first anniversary of Pat's death, Jill started putting up flyers about his case because she felt they were not getting any closer to an answer. She also put up benches with his picture and information about the case. She has received a few phone calls. However, she says she has not gotten any information that has turned out to be valuable. She says a couple of calls have gone into the Sheriff's Office as well.
Jill says that Pat would "hate" what she is doing because he was always low-key and did not like attention. But, she says, he did not need to die. She says that whoever killed him is a danger to everyone. Gray feels that someone out there has to have answers to their questions. Miles says they have to keep up hope. He notes that cold cases have been solved decades later. He hopes that will happen in Pat's case. He says there are so many things that do not make sense. He wants to know what happened that day.
Jill says her children need to know what happened to their father. She says this story is not pretty, and it does not have a conclusion. She is still trying to get answers. A $20,000 reward is being offered in this case.
Suspects: Damon Crestwood is considered a potential suspect in Pat's death. He was a friend of Pat's brother, Gray. After Pat's death, he seemed overly emotional and upset, even though he did not know Pat well. He asked friends if they would be there for him if something happened. He had a breakdown every January following Pat's death. At one point, he tied a rope around himself and his dog in a manner similar to the rope tied around Pat's body. His boat had a red stripe on it; tests indicated that the paint was the same as the paint scratches found on Pat's boat. Damon died in 2017.
It has been theorized that Pat's death was related to drug smuggling or other criminal activities that occurred along the river. However, no other suspects have been identified.
Extra Notes:

  • This case was first released on November 1, 2022, as a part of the third volume of the Netflix reboot. It was released in the third part of a three-week Halloween event.
  • According to one source, a witness came forward, saying that he saw a boat similar to Pat's traveling out of Terra Ceia Bay at 6:20pm on the day of Pat's disappearance. He remembered there was one person onboard, but he was not sure if it was Pat. When Jill contacted the witness, he said he was not sure if the boat was Pat's or not.
  • Some sources state: Pat and Jill lived on 43rd Avenue West or in East Manatee; she was going to her aunt's house that day; she returned home at 6pm; his boat was seventeen feet long; it was found at 10am; it was found two days after he disappeared; it was found nine miles offshore; and his body was found in the Manatee River.

Results: Unsolved
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