The After Show: Murder at the U

March 9, 2026·29 min·2 clips

In the weeks before his murder, Brian Pata slept in his closet with an AK-47 and covered his personalized license plate with black tape—convinced someone was after him.

It begins with a detour. A promo for Bridge of Lies sets a missing-person mood before Debra Roberts turns to the recent 20/20 story, Murder at the U. Then Brian Pata comes into focus. Roberts describes him as the son of a single mother from Haiti, one of nine children, and a young man people connected with the American dream. The after-show style is loose, but it does not drift for long. Roberts briefly connects with the idea of a large family, then the episode returns to the case. Paula handles the details. She and Roberts go back to the night Pata was killed, as he was getting out of his car outside his apartment complex. November 7, 2006 sits at the center of the story. Investigators read the scene as something more deliberate than a robbery almost right away. His wallet was still there. The $900 was still inside. His vehicle had not been taken. That left a hard conclusion: someone appeared to want Brian Pata dead. The language around the scene turns toward ambush and execution style. Then everything slows down. Years pass with no arrest, and the case is described as going cold after leads were pursued. ESPN later enters the story, hoping attention might help. At a press conference, Pata's mother, Jeanette, pleaded publicly. The family wanted answers, especially when police-report entries seemed to stop around 2009 or 2010. The excerpt ends with police finally arresting Rashaun Jones, Brian's former teammate, while leaving the obvious question hanging: if suspicions were there, why did it take so long?

As heard by us

A sober retelling of Brian Pata's killing, the stalled case, and the family's long wait for answers.

Murder at the U returns to the killing of Brian Pata, a University of Miami football player whose story had the shape of a promise cut short. It tracks the known facts around November 7, 2006: Brian leaving his car outside his apartment complex, his body found face down in a…

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Why you'd press play

You want Brian Pata's case laid out clearly, from the ambush outside his apartment complex to the years-long cold stretch and eventual arrest.

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