The thing about Creve Coeur, everyone comes out
for the football games.
We were doing pretty bad.
Then Coach Jaz came and we got a playoff opportunity.
It was Jaz that prepared them
to win that state championship game.
It's not every day that we have
a prominent football coach murdered.
Who would do this to Jaz Granderson?
Who would have such ill intent that they would kill him?
Could this be a parent? Could this be a rival coach?
Could this be a player?
I never heard the name.
I mean, he could have known Susan, Jackie, and Teresa.
She could be an unwitting, unknowing participant in this,
or she could actually be the catalyst event.
We don't know.
On October 16, around 12:50 in the morning,
we received a call through our 911 dispatch center that
there was a shooting victim.
He was struggling to provide a location
to the 911 evaluator.
You could tell he was searching for something that he could
give to them to narrow down where he was at.
His 911 call is one of the harder ones to me,
because you can feel his, just, panic.
Just the desperation in his voice, the fact that
he knew that he was so mortally or gravely wounded,
that if he did not get help, he was not gonna make it.
So they sent officers to the area.
Once they got there, were able to locate the victim,
collapsed in the kind of common area between some
apartment buildings.
We were able to ascertain that the victim had been shot
one time in the stomach.
And as we were processing that scene, we found out that he had
succumbed to his injuries.
The victim had identification on him in the form
of a driver's license.
We learned that he was 27-year-old Jaz Granderson.
He had connections to some of our very upper command staff
for the things he's done in the community.
Commanders, captains, the chief.
It seemed that everybody knew who Jaz was.
It's not every day that we have a prominent football coach...
murdered in the city.
Jaz was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri.
Me and his mom had gotten a divorce when he was 10,
and I wind up getting custody of him when he was 11.
Every day I would pick Jaz up from school and we would drive
by Fairground Park.
And he'd look at the kids out there practicing.
And then when Jaz was six years old, he'd say,
"Daddy, I wanna play football."
Made that U-turn and went and signed him up,
and he been playing ever since.
Jaz came into Kirkwood High School as a truly
squirrely underclassman.
I was an assistant principal, but I always had the pleasure
of having kind of a mother-son relationship with Jaz.
I am that person that watches, I'm on the side of the field
and I'm cheering and I'm running along.
He was so fast and he had such great hands,
and he did not like to lose-- at all.
Man, the way he come up and hit, Jaz will come up from
that safety position and really ring your bell.
Jaz's determination and his work ethic
earned him a spot at University of Northern Iowa.
Then in 2015, Jaz got an invite to the Kansas City Chiefs
for a tryout.
But unfortunately, he did not make the roster.
He was kind of distraught.
He was kind of upset about it,
and I just had to pull him to the side.
I said, "When your dream is derailed, it's derailed
"for a reason.
"So you have to get back on your track to kind of stay focused
and do what you gotta do."
He knew his calling was to coach, and that's what
he gravitated to.
In 2016, Jaz was offered his dream job
at De Smet Jesuit High School for boys
in Creve Coeur, Missouri.
The thing about Creve Coeur and De Smet,
everyone comes out for the football games.
Everyone is there.
It's often standing-room-only.
I mean, you go to a De Smet Spartans football game,
it's wall-to-wall people, people doing their little
chants and cheers.
It's just a good space to be in on Friday nights.
At that time, De Smet was not known for being a winning team,
but Jaz went in with the goal of really trying to build that team,
and to bring in kids from the inner city to help them
build their lives, and he made a really big impression
on them there.
We were doing pretty bad.
We kind of just already predicted where the season
was headed towards.
Then Coach Jaz came and take over, and then we got
a playoff opportunity.
He worked very hard, and I'll just give
you an example. He wore cleats to practice.
As simple as that, he'd get out there and do a drill
with you if he have to,
and he'd do it with high energy, too.
On October 2016, he sent me a text message and said,
"If I can get you into believing me this off-season,
"I'll be sending y'all to D1 next year.
Let's get ready to go hard."
I was infuriated by Coach Jaz's murder.
It's always hard taking such a heavy loss,
and the way we took the loss, you know,
not that natural causes took him, but somebody else,
you know, took Coach Jaz from us.
Coach Jaz meant everything to me.
It was just crushing. It was absolutely
heartbreaking that this had happened.
There were so many unanswered questions.
Who would do this to Jaz Granderson?
Who would have such ill intent that they would kill him?
Oftentimes, when we get to scenes, the victim has already
succumbed to his injuries.
On this occasion, Jaz was in and out of consciousness,
but he was trying his best to convey what happened.
Jaz was able to mention something about an SUV.
I think Jaz was trying to explain to us that
somebody left in an SUV.
I think that it was paramount to him to get the SUV out there
so that we had clues.
From the people on scene, we learned that there were
screeching tires that one of them heard, but there was
no SUV on scene.
We then received a call
from an individual who lived
15 to 20 miles from where Jaz was shot
that wanted to note that there was a strange SUV parked
in the rear alley of their home,
and that they saw two individuals exit the vehicle
and kind of take off and run down the alleyway.
It was like a light bulb went off.
That could be the SUV he was referring to.
The caller saw a black male with dreadlocks wearing
dark clothes and black pants.
The passenger was described also as a black male,
but he was wearing something kind of unique.
He was wearing a red jacket with a football logo of some sort.
Knowing that Jaz is an assistant football coach at
one of our bigger high schools, we wondered, could this
be a parent? Could this be a rival coach?
Could this be a player? We just didn't know.
October 15, 2017,
was the last time I talked to my son.
We talked every day.
The moment that I knew something was wrong is when
I kept hitting his location.
And when the location first came up, it was like,
he's at police headquarters.
So I'm like, man, what is going on?
And a short time after that, I got a call from
a St. Louis police officer.
I was in a panic mode then, and he said,
"You coached my son with Jaz."
He said, "Jaz is dead."
And I said, "What?
What are you talking about, man?"
And I was...
I was just truly upset at losing my son.
I had such anger in my heart, and I wish that on nobody.
The community wanted answers. I had alumni from De Smet
reached out to me.
They said, "If there's anything we could do,
please let us know."
It was just a situation that really touched me, man.
Monday morning, I arrived at school.
I just remember all of us football players
being devastated. It just didn't make sense.
We got playoffs coming up.
When we found out how he died, it just didn't add up, because
we all knew Coach Jaz, and we was all very close
with Coach Jaz.
So him leaving the way he did, him going the way he did,
it just didn't make sense.
The individual that the witness saw leaving the SUV
in the alley was wearing a red hooded jacket with what
appeared to be a football logo.
Maybe it belonged to someone that attended De Smet High School
or was employed by them.
I spoke to Jaz's father regarding his son and mainly
trying to figure out is there anyone in his life that
he was having a problem with?
Was it anything relative to being a coach
or even from when he was a player?
Did he have any major issues we needed to be aware of?
Johnny reported that Jaz was a well-liked, well-loved guy.
He wasn't able to really say a bad thing about him.
After speaking with all of Jaz's friends and family,
there was no one that they could think of that could
have committed this murder.
Every parent...
every player, every rival all seemed to love Jaz.
I responded up to take a look at where the car was found.
It was a 2017 white Jeep Grand Cherokee.
I wanted to see what condition it was in.
Was there any potential evidence that I could see myself,
near or around the car?
We want to know if there's DNA, if there's fingerprints,
if there is ballistic evidence.
Unfortunately, we received nothing back in the form
of biological evidence from anything recovered
within the Jeep.
But when our evidence technician looked in the center console,
they found identification for a man named Ronnie Wingo Jr.
We knew that Ronnie Wingo, from the family,
was Jaz Granderson's best friend.
The caller saw a black male with dreadlocks.
And he was very similar in description.
Was this about something that had happened
while he and Ronnie were together?
Jaz was living with Wingo.
They were roommates.
When Jaz and Ronnie was growing up, if Ronnie wasn't
at our house, Jaz was at Ronnie's house.
He wound up playing in the NFL,
three years with Atlanta, maybe a year and a half
with Buffalo.
The last time I spoke to Jaz, he told me he was going to
the bowling alley with Ronnie and some friends.
Jaz's father, Johnny, told us that Ronnie was the last person
that saw or spoke to Jaz.
At about 11 a.m., Ronnie came into the St. Louis
Metropolitan Police Department's headquarters.
I was interested in the Jeep Grand Cherokee.
Ronnie explained that it was a rental vehicle.
He indicated that he let Jaz borrow the vehicle for the night.
We had to ask ourselves after learning that he and Ronnie
had been out that night, did something happen?
Was there a dispute? Was this about a girl?
Was this about something that had happened
while he and Ronnie were together?
First met Jaz playing football.
I was six years old, he was seven.
From there, we got super, super close.
When me and Jaz first started playing football, we was able
to really, really gel as friends and as brothers.
I just miss our friendship, just our brotherhood with
each other.
He was a hell of a dude.
The night of the 15th, we was just chilling.
There was no problem.
We didn't live that type of life to where we had beef
or anybody looking for us or following us
or anything like that.
When he left, he said he was gonna see a lady friend.
I didn't ask no questions.
It was just, "I'm about to leave, go see somebody."
"Aight, I'll be here when you get back."
But I didn't even know her name.
This is an important clue.
It was a very big deal to learn that Jaz
was going to meet up with a female.
We was 27 at the time.
We was young, bachelors.
So there was nothing that out of the ordinary.
Jaz truly was that guy that had the total package.
He was smart. He was athletic.
He had a million-dollar smile and just the charisma
that he could walk in and you were going to take note of him.
And the fact that he was a great guy really made it much
easier for young ladies to be drawn to him.
Ronnie didn't know much about her,
by much I mean anything.
But we knew that he had left,
in that Jeep Cherokee, and he was meeting a girl.
The first Friday after Coach Jaz died,
we played Hazelwood Central.
whatever he had, he gave.
He would always let me know when he could be here.
Jaz was-- "No I'm quitting, I'm showing up."
And that's what I want you guys to do, man.
It was actually the playoff game.
Coach Jaz's dad did come to the locker room that day.
All I can say is that Jaz wanted them to continue
their lives and do the best that they could.
I felt such a sense of sadness, profound sadness,
because you have this young guy
who brought so much to these kids.
And then to have him taken away like that is just...
a horrible thing.
So the energy behind
what he brought to them was really something special.
We had a little moment of silence
and a tribute also to Coach Jaz.
We even had his Grizzly symbol put on our helmets.
And then we wore neon for him.
Emotions were just really off the rail.
I can only imagine the pain of having lost a coach,
a coach that was revered, a coach that was loved.
They knew, tonight, we're not just playing for us.
We're playing for Coach Granderson.
And we're gonna go out here,
and we're going to do everything we can
to really show everyone how much we loved him.
It was definitely kind of crazy to go into the game with that
feeling, but at the same time, you know you gotta play hard,
because that's all he ever wanted from us.
The violent weekend throughout the area of St. Louis claimed
the life of a beloved coach.
He actually taught football here at De Smet High School.
As you can see, the football players
and the coaches who are still here are dealing with the loss.
According to St. Louis City Police,
27-year-old Jaz Granderson was shot and killed last night
on Minnesota near Hill in South St. Louis.
For me as a reporter, I came in, I got my assignment.
And I didn't realize the gravity
of what had occurred.
When I went to the school, you could tell the kids were,
you know, kind of trying to do their thing.
I sensed the energy of it.
I kept thinking, how are they doing this?
But at the same time, I also knew that Jaz would have told
them, "Keep going, keep pushing, don't stop."
I played very hard out there.
We just couldn't score.
We lost 0 to 20.
This was the first time
they knew Jaz wasn't on that sideline.
I just think they was just too distraught and upset
behind losing Coach Jaz.
I was actually able to sense how people felt about him.
A lot of times you may or may not get that in stories,
but in this case, I sensed it when I started
covering the story.
People really cared for him.
The people in Creve Court
did not want this whole thing to slide.
They all wanted justice for Jaz, and they wanted
to make sure that they could do everything possible to help
investigators make that happen.
Generally speaking, with any investigation, we're asking
for community help.
With this particular investigation,
we didn't have to ask.
Everybody knew Jaz.
Everybody wanted to make sure
that his case stayed in the limelight.
And because of that, we did receive
an anonymous call.
This anonymous caller told us that we needed to speak
to a woman named Destiny Logan, who lived within the complex
where Jaz was shot and ultimately found collapsed.
They said that Destiny may have been someone that Jaz
was going to visit.
Knowing that Jaz had left the apartment,
taking Ronnie's vehicle, and going to meet a female,
I was wondering if Destiny
was the female that we'd been looking for.
That night Jaz was murdered,
there was a particular apartment where there
were lights on.
Somebody was in there.
Obviously, we did knock on that door.
They did not answer.
It was later determined that Destiny was right there,
in that apartment complex.
Once Destiny was identified, we went back to talk to her.
Destiny did advise us that she was home the night
of the shooting, and she heard shots,
and she heard what she described as tires screeching.
But she did not know Jaz personally,
knew nothing of the incident.
We had no reason to believe
that she wasn't telling the truth.
We didn't believe that she actually
had a connection to him.
Why the tipster gave us Destiny, I'm not really sure.
But once we got to Destiny,
we started making some progress.
She did mention that her neighbor had been
an exotic dancer and insinuated that she often had company
and that if Jaz was there in that apartment complex
to meet up with someone, it was likely her neighbor.
The only problem was she couldn't give us her name.
She just knew that she lived within the complex,
around that way.
Jaz was in possession of his cellular phone.
Unfortunately, it was password protected.
We transferred the phone to our cyber crimes detectives to
determine if they would be able to bypass the password and get
into the device, but they were unsuccessful.
Since the phone was not gonna be an investigative option,
the next thing is to try to get the phone records.
While it won't necessarily have text content or any photographs
or social media like the actual phone would,
it will tell us who he was in phone contact with,
both voice calls and texts.
Once we got the cellphone records back,
we determined that between him leaving Ronnie Wingo,
with that car, and him being shot,
there were several outgoing calls to the same number.
The outgoing calls were between 12:15 a.m. and 12:40 a.m.
And the 911 call was received at 12:50 a.m.
So this was right before he was shot.
That's definitely important to note, that he was,
at the very least, in phone contact with this individual
immediately prior to his death.
We learned that the subscriber name listed was Jherrica Dixon.
Jherrica had an apartment on Hill Street within the same
apartment complex where Jaz was shot.
I never heard the name Jherrica Dixon.
Jaz had multiple relationships.
He wasn't in a committed relationship,
and he was honest about it.
I mean, he could have known Susan, Jackie, and Teresa.
I just couldn't understand what happened.
It was a top priority for the police department.
And with me knowing those guys the way I did,
and for as many years as I did,
they broke everything down and said,
for whatever reason, Jaz had went to go see Jherrica.
And I don't know if it was before he went in,
or after he came out...
...that he had got shot.
The loss of Jaz affected me
in a very, very distraughtful, hard manner.
I kind of isolated myself.
I just sat on the couch listening to music for days,
didn't do nothing, couldn't work, couldn't really
talk on the phone, or just sat at my house.
It still affects me to this day.
I didn't know Jherrica personally or never seen her.
But I did know of her,
from him saying different stuff about her.
He had seen her before.
It wasn't like a one-time thing.
She was never brought around,
or I'd never be around her like that.
Jherrica Dixon was not a name that had come up at any point
at that time in the investigation,
whether from family, friends, or otherwise.
So this was definitely something that we could
move forward with and try to do a workup on Jherrica,
and figure out who she was and where she's from.
Through the phone records, we learned that Jherrica opened
that account on October 14th of 2017,
and she closed it on October 17th of 2017,
which is the day after Jaz was murdered.
It was pretty telling to us that potentially she deleted
this phone account the day after Jaz was killed.
It looked like an attempt to hide communication with Jaz.
We learned that she was a 23-year-old exotic dancer.
She worked on the East Side, which is where a lot
of our adult entertainment clubs are.
The night that Jaz was shot and killed,
we discovered a group of .45 caliber shell casings
that were kind of right next to each other
at Minnesota and Hill,
basically around the corner from Jherrica's residence.
The shell casings matched ...45 caliber shell casings
that were recovered from an incident that happened
the night before Jaz was killed.
Another individual, a man named Jeremy Williams,
was shot and carjacked.
Jeremy Williams, thankfully, survived his attack,
and he was able to tell us exactly what happened.
On October 15, Jeremy Williams was gonna meet up
with a female when a masked armed man approaches his car,
essentially orders him to exit.
And after Jeremy exits, he's shot in the leg.
That individual then enters Jeremy's car
and flees the scene.
Jeremy indicated that the woman that he was going to meet
was Jherrica Dixon.
He said she was completely surprised and shocked
that this happened to him.
But I don't find it to be a coincidence that these
two incidents within 24 hours of each other both involved her.
What we didn't want to do was tip her off that we were
looking at her as potentially being complicit.
We didn't want her to wipe her social media.
We didn't want her to get rid of evidence.
We didn't want her to notify the shooter that we were
looking at the situation.
We are trying to determine whether or not she actually
had anything to do with it.
I reached out to a crime analyst that I trust,
and I asked her if she recalled any incidents recently
involving Jherrica Dixon.
She recalled from memory
an incident from September 16 of 2017,
just a couple of months prior to Jaz's murder,
in which an individual named Tommy Anderson
was robbed and shot just on the other side
of the same apartment complex where Jaz was shot.
On October 25, we were able to talk to Tommy Anderson,
and he was able to give us his account
as to what happened with his case.
He indicated that he met Jherrica at the beginning
of the summer of 2017 at a gas station,
and they exchanged phone numbers
with the intent to hang out at some point.
She had invited him over to watch a movie at her house.
When Tommy Anderson arrived, she came out of the house
and she got in his car.
Tommy thought it was strange because his whole intent
going over there was for them to hang out and watch a movie.
So he didn't understand why they were just
sitting in his car communicating.
And the next thing he knew, a Black male in dark clothing
approached the driver's side of his car
and tapped on the window with the barrel of a gun.
Tommy exited the car, and this masked individual...
...shot him in the shoulder.
Tommy was trying to flee.
He gets a certain distance away,
and when Tommy turns around,
he sees that this suspect is gone,
his vehicle is gone, and Jherrica is also gone.
We couldn't learn from Jaz what exactly happened to him,
but we knew, at least from Jeremy Williams and now,
you know, Tommy Anderson, that they were asked to come
to a specific location in which an armed subject approached them
and shot them and took off in their vehicle.
Was Jherrica known to this armed suspect?
Was this person known to Jaz?
I definitely thought it was odd that Jaz was shot in a place
that could lead to death.
Jaz's shooting was center mass, maximum damage.
As compared to Jeremy and Tommy,
it felt much more personal.
It definitely made me wonder if the killer had some other
motive other than just stealing the car.
I had a lot of questions at this point about
the relationship between Jaz and Jherrica.
We knew that the individual that had robbed and shot
Jeremy Williams and Tommy Anderson was a male,
so we knew it wasn't Jherrica.
But was it someone that she was close to or someone
that she would have been in phone contact with?
Tommy told me that Jherrica communicated with him
through the same 8-3-0-2 number
that had been in communication with Jaz Granderson.
But he said every other time
he ever communicated with Jherrica,
he communicated through a different number
that ended in 4-0-0-0.
This was definitely Jherrica Dixon's
primary cellphone number.
And I was able to receive a search warrant
for this cellphone number.
I located Jherrica's Facebook.
I noticed that she tagged another individual,
and his name was Kirk Kobang.
I entered Jherrica Dixon's primary cellphone number
into one of our law enforcement databases,
and I learned that a gentleman by the name of Kurt Wallace
had used her phone number as an emergency contact in the past.
I looked at prior photographs,
and I determined Kirk Kobang was Kurt Wallace.
Kurt Wallace is a 24-year-old Black male
who has a criminal history dating back to 2009,
when he was first arrested
for a shooting case as a juvenile,
but tried as an adult.
I was able to get a good
cellphone number for Kurt Wallace.
We could see that Kurt Wallace was in the area
of 328 Hill Street at the time Jaz Granderson was shot.
And then within a few minutes of the 911 call,
he was on the highway, heading north,
which is the location where Ronnie Wingo's car
was later recovered.
On November 15th, Jherrica Dixon and Kurt Wallace
were indicted federally for Jaz Granderson's carjacking,
resulting in a murder.
On the same day that they were indicted,
we knew that Jherrica Dixon had a court date
on an unrelated charge.
We sent officers over to the courthouse.
Also present with her, actually outside the courtroom,
was Kurt Wallace.
We were able to take them both into custody at the same time,
at the same place, unarmed.
During Jherrica's confession, she admitted
that she essentially lured Jaz to her apartment on Hill Street.
He drove there, parked his vehicle,
and before he could even get out,
he's approached on the driver's side by Kurt Wallace,
and on the passenger side by Kurt's cousin, Floyd Barber.
Ultimately, Jaz exits the vehicle,
at which time Kurt Wallace shoots him.
I think that Kurt was getting rid of his competition,
because Jaz was everything Kurt wasn't.
They couldn't have been more opposite people.
Jaz was a good-looking, successful guy, athletic,
you know, has a good job, great friend group.
Kurt spent most of his adult life in prison
and was unable to get out of that lifestyle.
Kurt Wallace pled guilty to four counts of carjacking
and one count of carjacking, resulting in death.
The man who pleaded guilty in the killing
of a high school football coach
is headed to prison for the next 60 years.
A judge handed down that sentence to Kurt Wallace today.
He admitted to shooting De Smet coach Jaz Granderson
during a string of carjackings in 2017.
Jherrica Dixon received a 19-year sentence.
Jherrica and Kurt were like a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde.
When I learned of the arrest, it was conflicted for me,
because it's like, they're gonna go to jail,
but at the end of the day, Jaz is still gone.
I was happy we got justice, but at the same time,
it's like, they killed an innocent, you know,
guy that was giving back to the community.
I have wondered if he thought he was protecting Jherrica Dixon,
not knowing that she was actually involved
in this carjacking.
Knowing him, he would have
made a move to make sure she was safe.
You've spent all of your life being this football player.
And you're tough on the field.
And you're basically invincible while you're out there.
And so that could have possibly carried over into this night.
I think Coach Jaz's story just got ended way too soon,
I think Coach Jaz would probably be coaching
in the NFL right now.
Not every coach can make you believe that college football
or, you know, the NFL is within grasp.
In 2019, Jaz's team, the De Smet Spartans,
had reached the state finals
and they won the state championship.
It was Jaz that prepared them
to win that state championship game.
And it was such a great, great honor
to see them accomplish that, man.
I was just so happy, man.
This is the ring that they issued.
And on the back, they have Jaz's name and DS,
which stands for De Smet.
Jaz was not only a coach, he was a mentor and a friend.
He helped those kids.
I would like Jaz to be remembered
as a young man that truly put community first.
He was truly a great son.