< Back | Home
Baylor University basketball player Patrick Dennehy, shown in this 2002 school photo, has been missing for almost three weeks.
Mystery at Baylor University
Missing player a devastating blow
By: Michael O’Keeffe | NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Posted: 7/10/03
WACO, Texas (KRT) - As the broiling summer sun finally set on this high plains college town Wednesday, Baylor student Chris Johnson sat at a picnic table and popped open another beer while his friends lounged around the pool and played volleyball at the Sterling University Parks apartments.
The apartment complex, with its manicured lawns and its well-maintained buildings, was the center of missing Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy's world in Waco. It's a short walk to his classes and a three-point shot from the Ferrell Center, the golden-domed basketball palace where Dennehy practiced and worked out. It's where Dennehy shared an apartment with former teammate Carlton Dotson, one of his closest friends, and the man a police informant says shot the missing ballplayer during a heated argument. It's where Dennehy left his two pit bulls and a pair of basketball sneakers.
Johnson says Dennehy's disappearance is disturbing, but just as troublesome is the way the police and the university have handled the case.
"Everybody is speculating before they know the facts," Johnson says. "In the process, lives are being ruined. Maybe Dotson shot Dennehy, maybe he didn't. But you shouldn't accuse the guy of something like that until you know the truth."
It is hard to know the truth in a case that has taken so many bizarre twists and turns, and the facts behind Dennehy's disappearance remain as elusive as the identity of the person who killed JonBenet Ramsey in Boulder, Colo., in 1996. In many ways, the two whodunits are similar - like the Ramsey case, the Dennehy investigation has been marred by police missteps, angry fingerpointing and contradictory accounts. Both cases were set in communities that felt insulated from big-city crime.
"People say they're shocked that something like this could happen at a Baptist college, but this is not a perfect place. There are 14,000 students here, and not all of them are nice, religious people," senior Scott Mauldin says.
This much is known: Baylor, which is undertaking an ambitious 10-year program to turn the nation's largest Baptist school into an Ivy League-caliber academic power while maintaining its deep religious roots, has suffered a devastating blow. So has its athletic department, which has been plagued by losing teams and scandal in recent years, and its basketball program, which seemed to be finally heading in the right direction after coach Dave Bliss was hired in 1999.
"How does Bliss tell the parents of a recruit that their son will be safe at Baylor?" asks Johnson.
Dennehy has been missing for three weeks, and optimism that he is still alive fades with each passing day. "There's always a glimmer of hope," Waco police spokesman Steve Anderson says, his voice trailing off.
Without a body or stronger forensic evidence of a crime, Anderson later admits, it will be difficult to file criminal charges. "You want to find a body," Anderson says. "Until then, we're at a stalemate, we're just hitting dead ends."
As the summer session began last week, dusty bulldozers and piles of dirt dotted the Baylor campus, part of university president Robert Sloan's ambitious "Baylor 2012" plan to build a state-of-the-art campus.
The conservative school that forbid dancing until 1996 is eager to become an elite academic institution with big-time sports.
Across University Parks Drive is the Ferrell Center, the Bears' handsome basketball arena, and the Baylor Ballpark, a three-year-old baseball stadium with red brick and green girders that looks like the Ballpark at Arlington.
Baylor athletics, however, have not kept pace with its glistening sports facilities. The woeful football team has had four coaches in eight years. The baseball team advanced to the NCAA Super Regional this spring, but it is better known for the two players who were suspended two years ago for beheading a stray cat.
The basketball team, meanwhile, hasn't been to the NCAA Tournament in 15 years. The program was placed on probation in 1994 for five years when coach Darrel Johnson was fired amid allegations of academic fraud. During the 1998-1999 season, the Bears were 0-16 in Big 12 play.
Bliss was hired after that awful season and has helped the Bears take small steps towards respectability by building a team that resembles the Island of Misfit Toys - transfers from other schools, kids who had behavior problems, poor grades or just didn't fit in.
One of those players was Patrick Dennehy, a 6-10 rebound machine who left New Mexico after two well-publicized altercations with teammates and sat out last season because of NCAA eligibility rules. Those outbursts, says girlfriend Jessica De La Rosa, were unusual for a guy she describes as sweet and sensitive. "He's such a big, tall guy but so not like the stereotypical athlete. He's very personable," she told the New York Daily News.
Dennehy was known as quiet and studious. "Patrick sat in front of me in chapel every day," says Alexis Parrish, a junior majoring in journalism. "He took it seriously. Some people do homework during chapel, but he always participated."
At Baylor, Dennehy befriended Carlton Dotson, a 6-7 forward who had led his Maryland high school to a state title but had to settle for a junior college program because of academic problems. He transferred to Baylor from Paris JC a year ago, about the same time he married his longtime girlfriend, Melissa Kethley.
But neither the marriage nor the season worked out for Dotson. He spent most of his time on the bench, losing his scholarship in April. His wife left him this spring, accusing Dotson of domestic violence. Dotson - known as Dotty - moved into Dennehy's apartment and talked about going to yet another school, where he could get more playing time.
Dennehy was concerned about his friend, but at the same time he was excited that Harvey Thomas, a smooth 6-8 forward who had attended five high schools and played for Georgetown and Northeast Oklahoma A&M, had agreed to play for Baylor. The coaching staff had asked Dennehy to help recruit Thomas, according to De La Rosa. "Harvey was Patrick's recruit," she says.
According to a search warrant affidavit prepared by Waco police, De La Rosa told investigators that a person named Harvey had threatened Dennehy. But De La Rosa told the Daily News she didn't know of any problems between Dennehy and Thomas.
"I can't understand it," she says about her boyfriend's disappearance. "It's so hard to fathom."
The last contact De La Rosa had with Dennehy was a June 11 phone call. "It was very brief," she says, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
Nothing has seemed ordinary since then. Dennehy's family reported him missing on June 19, and the people closest to him have been rattled by the bizarre twists in the case and the allegations.
Dennehy's stepfather, Brian Brabazon, says the university failed to act even after Dennehy missed workouts and classes. Brabazon says two assistant coaches told the family Dennehy had told them he had been threatened, yet they did nothing to protect his stepson.
"Nobody at that school did anything until the police department was involved," Brabazon told the Waco Tribune Herald.
School officials say that's untrue. "At no time did Patrick say anything about safety concerns or personal threats," Bliss said last week.
The case took another strange turn when Dennehy's 1996 Chevrolet Tahoe was found on June 25 hundreds of miles away in Virginia Beach, Va. Then, at a June 27 news conference, police spokesman Anderson said Baylor basketball players were suspects in Dennehy's disappearance.
Anderson later backed off, saying Baylor players and others were simply "people of interest" because they might have information that would lead to his whereabouts. An hour later, a McLennan County, Tex., court released a search warrant affidavit that says Dotson, according to an informant, shot Dennehy in the head during a heated argument.
Police have not moved to arrest Dotson, who had returned home to Hurlock, Md., and the shocking bit of information now seems less an allegation than a piece of a puzzle that may or may not fit in a bigger picture.
"We did not want that information to come out," Anderson says, "and we hope it doesn't hinder the investigation for Mr. Dennehy."
Friends doubted the anonymous informant's story, saying Dotson and Dennehy had grown close in recent months - so close, that Dennehy ignored threats to his own safety to stay close to Dotson. The two purchased guns to protect themselves, friends said, and had taken to opening the door with weapons drawn.
"It seemed like maybe the threats were aimed more at Carlton than at Patrick," Dennehy's longtime friend Daniel Okopnyi said.
Okopnyi told "Good Morning America" that the missing athlete expressed concerns about two players on the team, including one named "Harvey," the name also mentioned in the affidavit.
Anderson, however, says police have not linked the Harvey described in the affidavit to Thomas, who is from Fredericksburg, Va., about 150 miles from Virginia Beach, and Bliss strongly denies that Thomas is involved.
Police have twice scoured the property north of Waco where the shooting allegedly took place, failing to find any evidence of Dennehy's fate.
As the investigation grinds on and as the likelihood that Denney is still alive nosedives, police are pursuing scores of leads.
"Somebody knows what happened to this guy," Anderson says. "We're waiting for that little bit of information that will lead us to what happened."
© Copyright 2009 Western Courier