The Mysterious Death of Brandon Embry, Part 3
This is part three in a three part series on the death of Brandon Embry.
Click for Part One and for Part Two
A history of poisoning
Sarah had never dreamed that she would be talking to Cassandra’s husband, Danny, a year after her son’s death, but fate had brought them together. One of Sarah’s friends had reached out to him on a whim, and the stories that he shared with her? They were eerily familiar.
Danny shared with Sarah some photos of him on a hike in May of 2019. His color was off. He was jaundiced. He recalled that he was so weak that he could barely complete the hike. He had symptoms of exhaustion and fatigue. He was the one to do most of the cleaning around the house, and he remembered that Cassandra would make messes and he would be so exhausted from work, he would come home and go straight to bed. He even noticed that when she left, he would feel better.
As Danny learned about the circumstances of Brandon’s death, things in his life started to make sense. He realized what had been happening to him, and he speculated how she was doing it to him.
Danny told Sarah about his morning routine. He would rise very early, start a pot of coffee in the kitchen, and then walk to the bathroom. As soon as he would close the door and start the water for the shower, he would hear Cassandra get up and walk to the kitchen. Cassandra was heavy-footed and he could hear her footsteps even over the water. After he got out of the shower, he would poke his head into her room and she would be pretending to be asleep. She never told him what she was up to. But in reflection, things started to make sense to him. He believes that she was poisoning his coffee. He would take two large thermoses of coffee to work and he would feel nauseous, weak, and fatigued all day.
One night he was driving home and blacked out, ending up in a ditch on the opposite side of the road. Fortunately, no one was hurt. He wasn’t sleepy. He was drugged.
In January of 2016, Danny sent his wife a text: “I’m just so run down. I feel like it’s not like being tired, but like my body’s getting weak.”
Sarah spoke to Kevin, Cassandra’s ex-boyfriend of three years, and he opened up to her about their relationship. He and his now-wife had read some of Sarah’s writing on Brandon’s death and, again, what he had to say was eerily familiar.
Passed a cigarette once that had some sort of powder on it. He refused it and got a fresh pack. When they were on the way to the store, she told him how she would sometimes dip her cigarettes in bleach and smoke them to get a “high” off them. After he got a fresh pack, she refused to smoke any from the pack she had offered him.
Kevin recalled another incident where Cassandra passed him a Vitamin water. It had already been opened. He got badly sick, nauseous and vomiting. He decided from that point forward he would never drink a bottle that had already been opened, and he maintains that habit to this day. It shook his trust in others.
Brandon’s mystery health issues began in February 2019, the same time that he met up with Cassandra for the first time. His symptoms, if you remember from Episode 1, started as abdominal pain and vomiting, but became more severe. He was unable to answer questions, became disoriented and ultimately blacked out in the ER. His kidneys were failing, but after intensive treatment during a five-day stay in the ICU, he was released. The kidneys and the liver are the filters in our bodies, and one of the first things to be affected by poison.
Again in April, Brandon had another health scare: abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, and passing out that landed him in the hospital. Once more in mid-August and again in September. About three to four times in total. Though we don’t have the phone records to confirm when in 2019 Cassandra was in town, we do know that she told detectives she had made three or four visits to Asheboro to see Brandon.
Documentation sources about Cassandra
There were several sources of correspondence from Cassandra.
One, Sarah had an extensive correspondence with her and she saved all of those records.
Two, Cassandra left some burner phones at Danny’s house, and he took screenshots of the phone’s text messages and sent them to Sarah.
Three, Danny’s phone had a long history of texting with Cassandra, which he screenshotted and sent to Sarah.
The volume of correspondence is staggering. Cassandra was very chatty and blathered constantly on her phone.
More patterns of deception
Cassandra told Danny some staggering lies. She told him that she had given birth to twin boys (before Danny) and that they had died when they were quite young. She even sent him a photo of two boys that were 10-11 years old.
Cassandra wrote in one of her text conversations with Danny:
“I feel like I'm legit dying. Just got home. Almost passed out at work. Saw stars. Legs collapsed in the office. Massive stiff neck. Hands are shaking like I have Parkinson's, and I feel like I met Floyd Mayweather in an alley and he took me out. I feel like I'm dying. Oh, and I broke 3 plates with food on them when my legs collapsed this morning around 10:30AM. It started Monday at 7:00PM. If it doesn't stop, I'm going to the emergency room.”
Danny’s response? “What do you want for dinner?”
Danny was so accustomed to her lies that he simply ignored them and redirected the focus to more tangible things like food and schedule.
Kevin remembered the same pattern of lying. She used to tell him that her uncle in the mafia, and that she was previously married to a cop.
And her stories about where she was from? They went back at least a decade. She used to tell Kevin after a fight that she was going to Staten Island with her family.
But lying about where she was from pales in comparison to this bold-faced lie: Cassandra told Kevin that she was pregnant, but as the months went by and she wasn’t gaining weight, people started to doubt her. She explained it was a “cryptic pregnancy.” When it was time for her to ‘deliver’ the baby, she told everyone that the doctor couldn’t figure out how to get the baby out and that it had died inside of her. Kevin’s mom even threw her a baby shower and bought $700 or $800 worth of stuff for her.
And then after that? She, quote, “got pregnant again”. Right.
A history of impersonation
Cassandra also had a habit of impersonating people on their communication devices.
Kevin recalled that she would use his phone, texting people, pretending to be him. He remembered that his sister grew frustrated and freaked out and said, “I want to talk to my brother, not to you, Cassandra.”
This rang true with Sarah as well. She remembered that some of Brandon’s final texts, the week of his death, just didn’t sound like him. The last time that Sarah is confident she was communicating with her son—and not Cassandra—leading up to his death, was on the Saturday prior, when she spoke with him on the phone on his birthday.
Kevin would let her borrow his phone during the day, while he was out working on the water. She didn’t have her own cell phone. He remembered that she would use it to talk to other guys, in a sexual way, and lied about it, saying it was her brother or his friends. He would find “provocative pictures” that guys would send her. One time she even racked up his dad’s house phone bill up to around $2,000.
And finally, Kevin remembered how she would use his last name and pretend to be his wife in order to gain access to his finances.
While Kevin was out on the water for 2 day off-shore trips, she would take his checks to his bank and cash them, telling them that she was married to him, but she was neither married to him nor on his account. She would brag about what she had done when he got back, and Kevin eventually told his bank to stop letting her do it. She even took off with $2,500, and he told her that he was going to call the cops, but she had skipped town.
Parsing fact from fiction
Though it is difficult to parse fact from fiction, there were hidden truths in the lies that Cassandra would tell.
For example, she texted Danny on October 10th, 2019,
“It’s almost Shawn’s one-month death anniversary. His mom stopped by and gave Ariel a sweatshirt, me a shirt and shorts, and Louise a shirt, pants, sweatshirt, and photos.”
She was very likely referring to Brandon in this text and it was true that Sarah had given her some of Brandon’s clothing to remember him by. Sarah often wonders who these other women in this text are that she is referencing.
That same month, Cassandra told Danny that she was super sick and went to the hospital where she was diagnosed with septicemia. But she was actually with Sarah during this time, not sick at all, and perhaps being around Sarah caused her to think about Brandon’s death and portray herself to her husband as experiencing some of his symptoms.
On December 3rd, Cassandra called Sarah through Facebook Audio and relayed a dream: she saw Brandon’s death scene and saw him laying in the bathroom, naked. A dream? Or a recollection?
On December 2nd, Cassandra told Sarah she knew where the spare key to his apartment was. She also said she would call Brandon and have him leave the door unlocked for her. Were these claims true? Or were these references to Brandon’s missing apartment keys, which were on her mind.
Throughout Cassandra’s conversation with Sarah and even with her conversations with Asheboro Police detectives, she would ask about Brandon’s dog tags, which were never recovered. She would say, “Please find his dog tags. They were so important to him.” Brandon’s family doesn’t remember him wearing them. They had his social security number on them, so he likely stored them in a safe place, like with his passport. Danny remembered seeing some dog tags, though, laying on her bed at his house in Darlington. Were these Brandon’s?
Sarah has scoured the correspondence records she has with Cassandra, searching for kernels of truth amidst the lies.
Sleeping pills
A recurring theme that came up in her correspondence with Danny was sleeping pills. She would ask for bottles of sleep-aids from Walmart. Sometimes multiple times a week. Who could go through so many in such a short amount of time? As Danny was cleaning out his place after she left, he even found squeezed out capsules, similar to the ones that were discovered at Brandon’s apartment.
If you recall from part 2, Brandon’s toxicology testing came back positive for diphenhydramine, the active ingredient in these sleep aids.
Cassandra said that Brandon would take the exact same brand of sleeping pills that she used. She even suggested to Sarah that Brandon could have died by suicide using sleeping pills.
Inside of Brandon’s bedroom, there was a bottle of the exact brand—Equate, a Walmart store brand—of sleep aids. This is the same brand that Cassandra requested that Danny pick up for her. The bottle was on the floor of his bedroom near his body, and also on the floor were some of the blue pills.
Some commonalities between Brandon, Kevin, and Danny
Cassandra seemed to be after a particular kind of guy. Kevin, Danny, and Brandon all kept to themselves. They were head-down, go-to-work, home-body kind of guys.
Kevin’s current wife has another word for it: loner. She said that Kevin’s the kind of guy that is happy to order pizza, and stay in for 2 weeks, and he would if it weren’t for the fact that his friends and family drop by unannounced all of the time.
They were all tolerant of her behavior. Perhaps they felt like they didn’t have that many options?
Sarah noticed that Danny allowed her so much grace despite the many things that she was doing wrong. He would continue to support her and forgive her, but all of them were pushed to their breaking point.
By the end of it, Kevin would refer to her as “the devil”. One moment she would be sticky sweet and clingy, and the next she would be “off like a rocket”.
Cassandra’s friends in prison
Cassandra kept up a correspondence with some men that had literally no other options. They were inmates in all-male prisons. Danny discovered some letters that were written to her by a couple of prisoners, and he sent them to Sarah.
The first one is Wade Hoover. He was a trusted karate instructor in Lewiston, Maine, where he led the studio Koshowarrior’s Martial Arts and taught primarily children, as young as 3 years old. He would go on camping trips with his students, drug them with Benadryl, and then film himself sexually assaulting them. He was tried and convicted, first on federal charges in 2013, and then on state charges in 2016, for producing child pornography and for gross sexual assault. Some of his victims were less than 12 years old, and many of them were unconscious. He is serving a combined 60-year prison term. We believe that she met him through martial arts when she trained, having grown up in Maine. She would visit him at jail when he was stationed in Virginia, and she would tell Danny that she was visiting her father, who was in prison. Just so you know, that is another lie. Her father was never in prison. Most of the content of their correspondence was either romantic and affectionate or perverse and sexual. His letters talked about his desires and kinks and his experiences in jail.
The second inmate was Michael McNaughton. He had lured a man to a remote wooded area near Lewiston, Maine, brought him out into the woods, and killed him with a screwdriver, nicknamed “Pokie”, and a garrote fashioned from a bicycle’s brake cable, nicknamed “Chokie”. He was tried and convicted and sentenced to life in prison in Maine’s state prison system. She got a letter from Michael that included a sexual sketch that featured a bearded, muscular man with fair-colored hair that resembled Brandon, and a woman with a bottle of pills wearing a sex toy that resembled one found in Brandon’s apartment. What was impetus for this sketch? Was it fantasy or was it recollection?
Danny got a letter from the Maine State Prison system that Cassandra had been banned from visitation for 90 days. It didn’t cite a reason, but I can only assume that she had broken some visitation rule. It boggles the mind.
Why reach out to Brandon’s family?
I asked Sarah what she thought Cassandra’s motives were in reaching out to her family in the wake of Brandon’s death. At first it seemed to be to mourn the loss of Brandon together, and to reflect on his life, but in hindsight, if she was involved, it seemed like there was something more nefarious at play. Perhaps she wanted information—to be kept abreast of the investigation. Or perhaps she wanted to see—up close—the pain caused by his death. Or maybe she had some secret delight knowing that she was getting away with something, even when she was within arm’s reach.
I asked Sarah how their relationship finally ended, and she explained that she had begun going public with information. She had created a Facebook page devoted to Brandon’s case. Then started sharing her suspicious about Cassandra. She said that there was no definite conclusion, but things tapered off to nothing.
Gathering of records
Sarah has been working tirelessly for over two years to compile all of the records for this case. Her quest to learn everything about her son’s death was ignited when the police decided to close the case in February of 2020. We have more official documentation to work from on this case than any other case we have covered. Hundreds of pages of Brandon’s medical records, 911 calls, EMS reports, search warrant affidavits, autopsy reports and photos, crime scene photos, evidence logs, narratives from detectives, phone call recordings, and more. It’s incredible.
Through her work, she has uncovered some of the truth about why the Asheboro Police haven’t taken the case as seriously as she has.
Issues with the Asheboro Police Department
As we alluded to in Episode 1, the police suspected recreational drug use. Detective Johnson, early on in the investigation, said that synthetic marijuana was found at Brandon’s apartment. This term refers to newly invented, lab-developed, psychoactive chemicals that are sprayed onto plant matter and smoked. They are usually sold in small packages, about 2 inches by 2 inches, under names like “K2” or “Spice”. There are some recorded fatalities associated with synthetic marijuana.
But Detective Johnson’s claim is unsupported by the facts. First and foremost, the police evidence log carefully details everything that was taken from the apartment, and it does not list synthetic marijuana (or any recreational drug for that matter). Secondly, Brandon’s tox screen was negative for all illicit drugs – not just in September prior to his death, but every time that he went to the hospital in 2019. Three, Brandon denied using recreational drugs himself: his medical history indicated that he admitted to using chewing tobacco and alcohol but denied any drug use. Four, everyone close to Brandon has told us that he never used drugs and was very careful about what he put in his body. And lastly, there was a something at his apartment from a smoke shop called Kratom that could have been mistaken for something illicit (though it is a much large package and it contained powder, rather than shredded plant matter). So Sarah, rightly, was very upset to hear that this rumor was being peddled to medical professionals – including the medical examiner performing Brandon’s autopsy. In fact, she believes that the reason that the autopsy was revised to “undetermined” due to the, quote, “ingestion of an unknown substance”, was a result of Detective Johnson insisting on her unsubstantiated theory to the ME.
Detective Johnson also alleged that Brandon abused anabolic steroids, likely as a result of finding bags of disposable hypodermic needles. This note even appears in his file at the medical records at the hospital, but again, this is unsubstantiated by the facts. Brandon had a prescription for hormones to address his low testosterone production, a common medical issue. His hormone medication was overseen by a doctor and it had nothing to do with his power lifting or the claim of “anabolic steroid abuse”, but again, it sadly colored the perspective of the medical professionals who were working on Brandon’s case. It even appears in black and white on the autopsy report.
Another bit of medical misinformation is the inclusion of “depression” on his chart, adding more credence to the claim of suicide. I’ve reviewed every medical chart from 2019, and Brandon himself denies any history of depression in each of them. The only way I can make sense of this is that perhaps him being depressed about losing his job was misinterpreted as a clinical diagnosis of depression. And this, too, sadly made it onto the autopsy report.
Sarah spoke to the first detective – Detective Sudduth – as she was deciding what to do with Brandon’s remains. He assured her that, regardless of the outcome of the autopsy, he would investigate the case to its conclusion—that the medical examiner’s opinion of cause of death would not end the investigation. With his assurances, she felt safe to have him cremated. Now it is impossible to get a second opinion - there is no body to be further investigated.
And the police missed some easy opportunities to firm up the timeline of Brandon’s final days. They didn’t get the surveillance in time before it was deleted from Adam & Eve, the adult store in Greensboro where Brandon’s card was used, or from the mall in Asheboro, where his card was used to purchase a meal from Jade Express. It’s a mall, for heaven’s sake. There’s surveillance everywhere!
Following the closure of the case, Asheboro Police have been resistant to provide records. Sarah started asking for records in early 2020, and got some by the summer, but much was missing. She resorted to filing FOIA requests, but it wasn’t until she started contacting agencies and the city attorney about what to do if the police department wasn’t complying with FOIA requests that she finally got most of what she was asking for.
But most devastating of all is this: on March 9th of 2020, Detective Johnson gave the blessing to destroy all forensic evidence that was collected by the police.
She wanted to test the evidence herself. She had hired a private investigator with forensic experience. But when she got the evidence log and crime scene photos in the summer of 2020, she learned what had happened. She was especially galled by the fact they had destroyed his fingernail clippings. They could have DNA that would prove that there was close contact with another person.
Asheboro PD, managerial review
On February 15th of 2021, the chief of police of the Asheboro PD ordered a managerial review of Brandon’s case. It was conducted by Major Jay Hanson, a supervisor. He met with Sarah and listened to her thoughts of alternative theories about what had happened to Brandon. The things he recorded on his report are all medical questions.
From the crime scene photo of where Brandon’s body was found, you can see blood spatter near where his head was lying. Spatter—in contrast to pooling which was found nearby. Sarah hypothesized that the back of Brandon’s neck, near the base of skull, was cut, and produced the spray observed on the floor. Neither the autopsy photos nor the Asheboro Police photos from the hospital show his neck clearly. The only thing we have to go by is the medical examiner’s review, and she didn’t document on her report any cuts on his neck. This, like many of the other theories that Sarah raised to Major Hanson, was based upon unexplained facts surrounding Brandon’s death. Unfortunately, his review didn’t seek to explain the unexplained, but rather sought to discredit Sarah’s theories. Major Hanson met with the ME and, one at a time, she discredited the 8 theories that Sarah suggested. Most of the responses can be summarized as “she didn’t observe that.” But there was one theory that seemed to prompt additional investigation, and that was the question of whether Brandon was poisoned with antifreeze. The ME ordered some additional tests to determine if there was evidence of antifreeze poisoning in Brandon’s system, and the results came back negative. The ME also mentioned that in typical antifreeze poisoning, crystals would tend to form in the kidneys, and that she didn’t find any.
On October 21st, 2021, 8 months later, Major Hanson concluded his review. This is what he wrote:
“There was no evidence of forced entry, no evidence of theft or burglary, and no concrete motive for someone to have committed a homicide. Based upon the totality of the evidence reviewed, I concur with (the medical examiner’s opinion that his death is not a homicide)”.
He did leave the door open for the future, saying that if additional credible evidence were discovered, it could impact his conclusion, and that the ME’s current manner of death ruling—undetermined—leaves room for change.
Sarah acknowledges her weaknesses
Sarah knows that she doesn’t have all the answers. She never expected to don the clothes of a medical examiner, a forensic examiner, and a private investigator. She just felt that her pleas were being ignored, and decided to do whatever she could to learn the truth about her son’s death.
She is not an expert in any of these fields, and she acknowledges that it is difficult to process so many records and evidence. She is still muddling through the process: unearthing new records, scouring them for key details, and establishing patterns of facts; but she struggles to organize her thoughts and to express herself clearly:
She said herself that she is working on the case all the time, and there’s just so much information. She still hasn’t mentally sorted through everything.
Cops deal in timelines and facts, and it makes me wonder if their impatience with Sarah’s disorganization is the heart of the issue of why this investigation remains closed.
Next steps
Sarah is still missing information. She has Brandon’s cell phone and his laptops sitting in her office, but she doesn’t have access to them. They are all password protected. His carrier produced his cell phone records to the police, but she has never seen them herself: the police refuse to provide her a copy. There is hope, though, to gain access to the devices through forensic hacking.
There is also the question of why Brandon’s employer decided to take photos of his hotel room in Detroit. Was there some other event that happened while he was on the job that motivated them to take a closer look at Brandon?
Some of these questions might be answered through a civil lawsuit. Sarah plans to file a wrongful death suit against Cassandra, and if the case is accepted by a judge, it will empower her with wide authority to subpoena records and depose witnesses, and hopefully answer some lingering questions.
She’s set up a GoFundMe to give you a way to support her as she moves forward with these expensive pursuits of justice. Private investigators, expert medical opinions, forensic hacking, lawyers and legal fees, the list goes on… and none of them are free.
I asked Sarah what drives her forward. She explained, “The more information that came up, the more questions that she had. It’s like getting a piece of the puzzle, but the puzzle keeps getting bigger. I know that I haven’t grieved him or memorialized him. I should be pouring over his accomplishments, but I’ve had to spend so much time working for justice, working for getting these answers.”
Furthermore, she had this to say about Cassandra. “If she’s the person responsible, she needs to be stopped. She’s in her early 30’s. There are many decades ahead of her to continue on this path of destruction.”
What happened to Brandon Embry?
I asked her what she missed about her son.
“I really miss having Brandon to talk to. He was such a genuine, sincere person. I always felt that he would hit his stride later in his life. He was gonna hit his groove and mature. I feel like he never even had a chance to have the best years of his life. They were taken away.”
Brandon was a healthy 33-year-old man, found in his own home, unconscious, naked, and face down in a pool of water and blood. His body had scratches, punctures, and lacerations from head to toe. His knees and shins were badly bruised and he had other bruises scattered across his body. His blood was found on the walls of his bedroom, his closet and in his bathroom. His place was ransacked and his bathroom was destroyed. He had a history of mysterious ER visits in 2019 that coincided with a new relationship. The medical examiner initially concluded that his death was natural from pneumonia, but later amended it to be undetermined.
So I ask you, what do you think happened to Brandon Wesley Embrey in September of 2019?
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Links
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Sources For This Episode
Newspaper articles
Only two articles: one by Fox8 (Greensboro, NC), and one by the Courier-Tribune (Asheboro, NC). Full listing here.
Online written sources
'True Crime: The Case of Brandon Embry' (Milam's Musings), 8/20/2021, by Brett Milam
'Brandon Embry lost his life in tragic circumstances…' (Reddit), 3/19/2021, by u/hayhaylou
'Brandon Embry - Blamed for 'beating himself to death'…' (Websleuths), 3/20/2021, by Miss_Bellatrix
'Timeline' (Facebook), 1/21/2021, by Brandon's Voice
Interviews
A special thank you to Sarah Lee for spending over 20 hours with us discussing her son’s case.
Photos
Most images from Sarah Lee and the Facebook page she manages here.
Official documentation (All shared with permission)
2019, Feb 18, Medical Records - ICU admittance (18 pages)
2019, Apr 24, Medical Records - ER admittance (31 pages)
2019, Apr 25, Medical Records - Drug testing results (1 page)
2019, Jun 28, Medical Records - Urgent care visit (15 pages)
2019, Sep 12, Medical Records - ICU admittance, hospital 1 (102 pages)
2019, Sep 12, Medical Records - ICU admittance, hospital 2 (60 pages)
2019, Sep 12, Search Warrant #1, Brandon’s apartment
2019, Sep 13, Search Warrant #2, Brandon’s truck
2019, Sep 13, Search Warrant #3, Brandon’s apartment
2019, Sep 16, Autopsy report, annotated by Sarah Lee
2019, Sep 18, Search Warrant #4, Brandon’s phone records
2019, Dec 20, Search Warrant #5, Cassandra’s phone records
(Produced) 2021, Oct 22, Evidence Log
(Produced) 2021, Oct 22, Narrative from Detective Johnson
(Produced) 2021, Oct 22, Narrative from Detective Macon
(Produced) 2021, Oct 22, Narrative from Detective Sudduth
(Produced) 2021, Oct 22, Narrative from Major Jay Hanson
(Produced) 2021, Oct 22, Narrative of initial police response
Guide to manner of death classification, here
Credits
Created, researched, told, and edited by Kristen Seavey
Research, writing, photo editing by Byron Willis