The Mysterious Death of Brandon Embry, Part Three
42:10 Share

This is Murder, She Told, true crime stories from Maine, New England, and Small Town, USA. I'm Kristen Zevey. You can connect with me at MurderSheTold.com or on Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast. This is the conclusion of a three-part series on Brandon Embry. If you haven't listened to parts one or two, I suggest going back and starting with those ones first.

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 reached out to him on a whim, and the stories that he shared with her, they were eerily familiar. There are pictures of Danny on a hike around Memorial Day in 2019, and he looks jaundiced.

And he said that it was a complete struggle for him to make this hike. Like, he could barely do it. He said in that condition, there's no way that he would even be able to defend himself against Cassandra, that he was so weak. And now that she's been gone, his health is changing. Like, he doesn't feel the way he did before. And he said there's definitely a difference in how he feels physically

from this exhaustion, fatigue, just absolutely no energy. He said he understands Brandon's apartment because the same thing was going on in his own home, that Cassandra was making these messes she wouldn't clean, and he was the one who would primarily clean. But he said all he could do was kind of get through work and then come home and just stay

sleep and he said he had no energy to do anything and another thing was that she had been gone and he hadn't been sick and she came back and he got sick again he got really sick and he kind of made that connection that when she came back he's sick when she leaves he's not

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 the bedroom and she would pretend to be asleep. She never told him what she was up to. But in reflection, things started to make sense to him. He now 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 about their relationship.

He and his now-wife had read some of Sarah's writing on Brandon's death. And again, what Kevin had to say was very familiar. This is Kevin's wife. She had passed him a cigarette once, and it had tasted like there was powder on the end of it. And she got pissed off because he made her stop so he could buy a pack of cigarettes. And she told him it was fine that she used to dip her cigarettes in bleach and then smoke them.

This is another incident that Kevin recalled.

She passed him a vitamin water. It was an open vitamin water. I drank it. And he got sick. I got sick. I wasn't feeling too hot at all. Like nausea, sick right to my gut and stuff. Then after that, I told her I was never drinking an open bottle again. And after that, I just went and made sure every bottle I had was closed and made sure I grabbed it, not her.

It breaks my heart to hear how this lingering trauma has affected Kevin. It shook his trust in others.

Brandon's mystery health issues began in February 2019, around the 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 body 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'd made three or four visits to Asheboro to see Brandon.

There were several sources of correspondence from Cassandra. Sarah had an extensive correspondence with her and she saved all of those records. Two, Cassandra left some burner phones at Danny's house. Three, Danny's phone had a long history of texting with Cassandra, which he screenshot and sent to Sarah. Cassandra was very chatty and blathered constantly on her phone.

Cassandra told Danny some staggering lies. She told him that she'd given birth to twin boys before Danny and that they died when they were quite young. She even sent him a photo of two boys that were about 10 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 three plates with food on them when my legs collapsed this morning around 10.30 a.m. It started Monday at 7 p.m. 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 this same pattern of lying. She used to tell him stories of how her, was it her uncle, was in the mafia. Her uncle was supposedly mafia, and that she was married to a cop at one time and had kids. And her stories about where she was from? They went back at least a decade. She would do something and then say that she was leaving and going to Russia. Leaving to go to Russia. I always got...

When she'd get fighting with me and stuff like that, she'd say she was going to Staten Island. Mm-hmm, New York. That's where she told me she was from, Staten Island. But lying about where she was from pales in comparison to this bold-faced lie. I was reading through some of the stories on the Brandon page, and I saw somewhere on there that there was like a fake

fake pregnancy or it might have been something told me she told she was pregnant and then everybody noticed she wasn't gaining weight and she wasn't having a baby and she tried to tell him oh well it's a cryptic pregnancy and nobody caught on to the fact she wasn't actually pregnant until she looked at them and told them that the doctor couldn't figure out how to get the baby out that it died inside her had to take it out

And then after that, she got pregnant again. Right.

Cassandra also had a habit of impersonating people on their communication devices. This is Kevin again, remembering how she used to pose as him. And she would text it all out. Right.

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 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 for his birthday.

Kevin would let her borrow his phone during the day. She didn't have her own cell phone. He refused to pay for her own cell phone. He said that she was using his phone while he was at work to talk to other guys and was lying to him and saying, oh, it's my brother. Oh, it's a friend that's like a brother. And then he was finding very provocative pictures on his phone.

She weren't sending pictures to them. They were sending pictures to her. And how bad did she rack up your dad's house phone bill? Was that two grand? Yeah, she racked my dad's house phone bill like up to two grand. Wow. She'd always say like she had to call her brother, but it was always out of state. 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.

So she'd tell my bank that she was married to me, but she weren't on my account or nothing. I used to go on like two-day trips out on an offshore boat. And then I'd come off the offshore boat and she'd tell me how she cashed my check for me, how the bank let her cash it. I'd say she probably cashed five or six checks before I actually called my bank, so they wouldn't let her do that. When she left, she was out on an offshore boat and she took off with $2,500. Really?

Though it's 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 Sean'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 clothes to remember him by. Sarah often wonders who the other women in the text are that she's 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?

The day before, Cassandra told Sarah that she knew where the spare key to his apartment was. She also said that she would call Brandon and have him leave the door unlocked for her. Were these claims true, or were they 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 asked 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. Danny remembered seeing some dog tags, though, laying on her bed at his house in Darlington.

Were they Brandon's? Sarah has scoured the correspondence record she has with Cassandra, searching for kernels of truth amidst the lies. A recurring theme that came up in her correspondence with Danny was sleeping pills.

In her text messages, it's just copious amounts of these sleep aids. These are the maximum strength, so it's like a double dose, and she's asking for bottles. And sometimes it seems like a couple of times a week that she's asking her husband to stop at Walmart and to buy her these sleep aids or NyQuil, mostly the diphenhydramine.

And then he is finally like packing up her belongings, putting stuff in boxes. And he finds diphenhydramine capsules and they are squeezed out. And it is similar to what is seen in the cryotene photos, that there are these bottles. There are two, possibly three. There are these like capsules scattered around. And you can tell some of them the liquid has been squeezed out because you can see through them. It's not opaque. You can see the floor through the capsule.

What was she doing with all of these sleep aids? If you recall from part two, Brandon's toxicology testing came back positive for diphenhydramine. When I was told about the Benadryl, the word Benadryl was used, not diphenhydramine.

So I'm assuming, you know, Benadryl as an allergy medication. I mean, it was much later that I learned that Benadryl, the ingredient is named diphenhydramine and that is an ingredient in sleeping pills. So I probably expressed that they said that there was Benadryl in his system.

But she is on the phone, she's recording, she's talking about how Brandon would take the same sleeping pills that she did and they were the Walmart brand. And again, this is another time where, you know, I'm just letting her talk and just letting her tell me all the details.

in that conversation, it was kind of like her trying to insinuate maybe Brandon tried to commit suicide and took a bunch of sleeping pills. But then she would say it in a way like, I don't think he would do that. Do you? Like, that's how she put it. But she was trying to plant that seed. You know, what if he was trying to kill himself? So she knew all about these sleeping pills. And I

I don't know anything about the sleeping pills until the crime scene photos. And even then, it took me a while to go. There are so many photos and there's so much to see. And each photo, it's overwhelming. So even though they're sweeping up these bottles of sleeping pills, it wasn't like I went straight for those. But I did see them. I saw these little blue capsules and, you know, them sweeping up his medications and these pills.

Inside Brandon's bedroom, there was a bottle of the exact brand of sleep aid, Equate, a Walmart brand. This is the same brand that Cassandra made mention of and 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.

Cassandra seemed to be after a particular kind of guy. Kevin, Danny, and Brandon all kept to themselves. They were heads-down, go-to-work, homebody kind of guys.

They were all tolerant of her behavior. For

Perhaps they felt like they didn't have many options. This is Sarah speaking on Danny's behalf. He's a very gracious person. And even with Cassandra, like reading through his text, you can see that he allowed her so much grace with...

with all of the things that she was doing wrong, that he would continue to support her and forgive her time and time again. But I think it finally just got to the point where he knew that the marriage was no longer like a normal marriage. And all of them were pushed to their breaking point. That

Cassandra kept up a correspondence with some men that literally had no other options. Danny discovered letters that were written to her by a couple of prisoners, and he sent them to Sarah. If crimes against a child are a trigger for you, I suggest skipping ahead a minute.

The first one is Wade Hoover. He was a trusted karate instructor in Lewiston, Maine, where he led the studio Kosho Warriors Martial Arts and taught primarily children as young as three 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. Almost all of his victims were under 12, 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 in jail when he was stationed in Virginia, and she would tell Danny that she was visiting her father, who was in prison. If you haven't already guessed, her father's never been to prison.

Most of the content of their correspondence was either romantic and affectionate or 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 back in the woods, and killed him with a screwdriver he nicknamed Pokey and a garrotte fashioned from a bicycle's brake cable nicknamed Chokey.

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 using a sex toy that resembled one found in Brandon's apartment. What was the impetus for this sketch? Was it fantasy, or was it recollection? Dani got a letter from the Maine State Prison 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. I asked Sarah what she thought Cassandra's motives were 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 reflect in 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 an arm's reach.

I asked Sarah how their relationship finally ended. I think I had already created Brandon's page on Facebook, which was the first place I kind of went public and started talking about Brandon's case. And I hadn't really said anything about her. But at that point, I realized I'm not getting any more information from her. So now I'm going to be more public about their relationship and what I know and what

everything that was so suspicious about her. So I'm sure that she probably saw those things as well. And there was no verbalized definite point like, okay, we're not going to talk anymore or anything like that. It was just, I didn't bother to contact her. And I started writing things and being more public about what I knew. And she stopped reaching out to us also.

This podcast is sponsored by Talkspace. You know when you're really stressed or not feeling so great about your life or about yourself? Talking to someone who understands can really help. But who is that person? How do you find them? Where do you even start? Talkspace. Talkspace makes it easy to get the support you need.

Talkspace is here for you.

Plus, Talkspace works with most major insurers, and most insured members have a $0 copay. No insurance? No problem. Now get $80 off of your first month with promo code SPACE80 when you go to Talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at Talkspace.com. Save $80 with code SPACE80 at Talkspace.com. I'm sending my Aunt Tina money directly to her bank account in the Philippines with Western Union. Oh!

Hey.

Sending money direct to her bank account is super fast, and Aunt Tina gets more time to be the bingo queen. Western Union, send money in-store directly to their bank accounts in the Philippines. Services offered by Western Union Financial Services, Inc., NMLS number 906983, or Western Union International Services, LLC, NMLS number 906985. Licensed as money transmitters by the New York State Department of Financial Services. See terms for details. Have you made the switch to NYX? Millions of women have made the switch to the revolutionary period underwear from NYX. That's K-N-I-X.

Period panties from NYX are like no other, making them the number one leak-proof underwear brand in North America. They're comfy, stylish, and absorbent, perfect for period protection from your lightest to your heaviest days. They look, feel, and machine wash just like regular underwear, but feature incognito protection that has you covered. You can shop sizes from extra small to 4XL.

Choose from all kinds of colors, prints, and different styles, from bikinis to boy shorts, thongs to high-rise. You've got to try NYX. See why millions are ditching disposable, wasteful period products and have switched to NYX. Go to knix.com and get 15% off with promo code TRY15.

That's knix.com, promo code TRY15 for 15% off life-changing period underwear. That's K-N-I-X dot com.

Sarah has been working tirelessly for over two years to compile all 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 cases that we've covered.

hundreds of pages of Brandon's medical records, 911 calls, EMS reports, search warrant affidavits, the autopsy report and photos, phone call recordings, and more. Through her work, she's uncovered some of the truth about why the Asheboro police haven't taken the case as seriously as she has.

As I 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. Synthetic marijuana refers to new, lab-developed psychoactive chemicals that are sprayed onto plant matter and smoked. They're usually sold in small 2x2 inch packages under names like K2 and 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.

Brandon's talk 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.

Brandon denied using recreational drugs himself. His medical history indicated that he admitted to using chewing tobacco and alcohol, but denied any drug use. Everyone close to Brandon told us that he never used drugs and was very careful about what he put in his body. There was something at his apartment from a smoke shop called Kratom that could have been mistaken for something illicit.

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 the autopsy was revised to undetermined due to the "ingestion of an unknown substance" was the result of Detective Johnson insisting on her unsubstantiated theory to the medical examiner. 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 the 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 level, a common medical issue. His hormone medication was overseen by a doctor and it had nothing to do with powerlifting 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 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 the cause of death would not end the investigation. With his assurances, she felt safe to have him cremated. Now it's impossible to get a second opinion. There is no body to be further investigated.

When they told us the results of the autopsy, I was told by the detective that his case was separate. That even if the medical examiner

says natural causes, his investigation is separate and the case is still open as long as he's on the case. I mean, I was furious. I was furious with this medical examiner because she's telling me he died of pneumonia. And I'm like, no, there's, there's something else happened here. Had he have not said that I would have got a second autopsy right away.

had the detective not told me that it doesn't matter what she said. And the police have 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 and 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.

Yeah, I didn't even get all of the reports until a few months ago. So we're like past the two-year mark of my son's death and I've done so many FOIA requests. I have sent many, many emails. It was not until I started calling the North Carolina Department of Justice and asking what the procedure was to report them for noncompliance of FOIA that

And I contacted the city attorney. As I started contacting those agencies, then I started getting the reports. So that's how I finally got what I do have. But most devastating of all is this. On March 9, 2020, Detective Johnson gave the blessing to destroy all forensic evidence that was collected by the police.

Brennan's case was closed February 27th of 2020. The very next day, I contacted them and I asked for the evidence because I wanted to see what I could have tested forensically myself, working with the private investigator that had forensic experience. They told me they would let me know what I could have back. So with that comment, I wasn't thinking anything was going to be destroyed. I

I was thinking they would give me what I could have, but some of it they may have to retain. When I went into Asheboro Police Department, I got the items still stapled and in their paper containers. I did not know items had been destroyed until we got the crime scene photos and the evidence log. And on that evidence log, it

It had what had been disposed, which was the items that were given back to me. And then the other items it said destroyed. Why would they destroy this? I don't understand. Why would they destroy his fingernail clippings? He had scratches on his body, which is showing possible close contact with another person. So there could be DNA evidence of another person under his fingernails. So I'm like, why would they destroy that? On February 15th of 2021, the

the chief of police of the Asheboro PD ordered a managerial review of Brandon's case. It was conducted by Major Jay Hansen, a supervisor. He met with Sarah and listened to her thoughts of alternative theories about what happened to Brandon. The things that 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 the 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 has raised to Major Hansen, was based on the 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 Hansen met with a medical examiner, and one at a time, she discredited the eight 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 medical examiner ordered some additional tests to determine if there was evidence of antifreeze poisoning in Brandon's system, and the results came back negative. The medical examiner also mentioned that in typical antifreeze poisoning, crystals would tend to form in the kidneys, and that she didn't find any. On October 21, 2021, eight months later, Major Hansen 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 on the totality of 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 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's difficult to process so many records.

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. You know, I don't mean to be so long-winded. Thank you all for being so patient. But it's like, you know, I'm working all the time that I have not, like, refined those main points. So when I talk...

It's hard for me to, you know, give those little pieces because there's just so much that, you know, I haven't like even mentally sorted through. 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.

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're all password protected. His carrier produced the records to the police, but she hasn't seen them herself. The police refused to provide her a copy.

There's 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, lawyers and legal fees, the list goes on.

and none of them are free. I asked Sarah what drives her forward. In the very beginning, I couldn't even think of justice. I just wanted my son back. I was like, that doesn't bring him back. And then as you kind of cope with the grief, and then Cassandra comes into the picture, really the more information that came out, the more questions that there were. It's like

getting a piece of the puzzle, but then the puzzle keeps getting bigger. And I just feel like I need things to make sense that I need the truth. I need some semblance of truth of what happened to my son. And I don't think that I've properly grieved him or memorialized him. I know like even through this podcast, it's like a lot of details about Brandon that I should be pouring over his accomplishments and remembering the good times, but there's

There's not enough of that because I've had to expend so much energy working towards justice, working towards getting these answers. There is a person who has lost his life. The same thing was happening to him. Same symptoms with the boyfriend and other people that are in her path that have unexplained death. If she's the person responsible, she needs to be stopped. Like this can't just go on. She's in her early 30s.

If she's causing this, there's many decades ahead of her that she could keep on this path of destroying people, families, lives. This just is something that has to be investigated. I asked her what she missed most about her son. I really miss having Brandon to talk to. Being able to call him up and like chat with him. He was just such a genuine, sincere person.

And that's what I miss the most. And I always felt like he was going to hit his stride later in life. He was going to find his groove and mature and things were going to really finally like click for him later in life, but that was taken away from him. So I feel like he really didn't even get to probably have what would have been the best years of his life.

Brandon was a healthy 33-year-old man found in his 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 undetermined.

So, I ask you, what do you think happened to Brandon Wesley Embry in September of 2019?

I want to thank you so much for listening. I'm so grateful that you chose to tune in and I couldn't be here without you. Thank you. If you want to support and contribute to the show, there's a link in the show notes with options. Leaving a nice review or telling a friend is a great way to support too. You can connect with me on Facebook or Instagram at MurderSheToldPodcast.

Special thanks to Sarah Lee for her generous amounts of time in sharing her memories with me. A detailed list of sources can be found on the blog at MurderSheTold.com linked in the show notes. Thank you to Byron Willis for his research and writing support. If you would like to make a suggestion for a future episode or a correction, feel free to reach out to me at hello at MurderSheTold.com. My only hope is that I've honored your stories and keeping the names of your family and friends alive. I'm Kristen Sevey, and this is Murder She Told.

Thank you for listening.