MISSING: Gregory ‘Keith’ Mann Jr.

SPEAKER_1 (0:02)

We're riding 911, it's here, just me or where is it? I'm Wayside Lane in Redding, I just drove past it. I think I just saw, I'm pretty sure I saw a car upside down, like flipped upside down. Where on Wayside Lane? My phone's about to die.

Crap. Hello? Yes, I'm a filler.

Ashley Flowers (0:21)

That 911 call about a car flipped upside down in Redding, Connecticut is what started it all. A true mystery that we have been obsessing over here at Crime Junkie HQ for months. Because this is a case where none of us can agree on what happened to the man inside that car. A freak accident, murder, or a suicide, as the official record reflects. So Crime Junkies, I'm going to tell you the whole story and let you make up your own mind.

I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

Brit Prawat (0:55)

And I'm Brit.

Ashley Flowers (0:56)

And this is the story about the mysterious death of Gugsa Abe Dabela.

That 911 call I played came in to dispatch in the early morning hours of April 5th, 2014

We don't know if the caller's phone actually died, because he wasn't there when two officers from Reading PD arrived on Umpwog Road near Wayside Lane. It wasn't hard to spot the car that the caller was talking about, though. The headlights were on, the radio was blaring, and even though the car was upside down, the wreck looked survivable for the man in the front bleeding from his head. I mean, at first glance, it seemed like he may have even tried getting out before collapsing, because the driver's side door is slightly open, and the driver's side window is completely shattered. So officers go straight for the man inside trying to get him fully out. They pry the driver's side door all the way open, they grab him, and they begin to tug. But as they do, something on his belt, like snags at the steering wheel. And it's an empty gun holster attached to his hip, that they have to like maneuver around to get him out. And finally, they do. And one of them does CPR until EMS arrives and takes over. By then, the other officer had found the driver's wallet and ID'd him as 35-year-old Gugsa Abe Dabela. But EMS says there is no saving this guy, because it wasn't the car flip that caused the wound to his head, it was a bullet. He had been shot in the head, and he was pronounced dead right there at the scene. Now, for some reason, six hours later when Abe's dad is notified about his son's death, he is only told that Abe had been in a fatal car crash, like full stop, no details about his injuries.

According to one of Abe's four sisters, Alba, the first time they hear anything about a gun is when they read the news later that day, which included a press release from Redding Police Chief Douglas Fuchs, saying that Abe had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. As I am sure you can imagine, this was complete whiplash for Abe's family, who by the way is like made up of some very smart, very logical people. Like Alba is an Ivy League educated lawyer, their father is a physician, and he is the first to point out the facts. Like forget the emotion of this, forget that this doesn't make any sense, forget that you didn't even mention to us a gun was involved in any way. He's like there hasn't even been an autopsy yet. They haven't processed the car or run ballistics or done any investigation. How could the police have enough information to rule this a suicide?

Brit Prawat (4:16)

Well, and also what are they saying happened? Like he pulled the trigger and then rolled the car? Like I don't think I've ever seen anything like that.

Ashley Flowers (4:23)

They're not going in to detail yet about like how it went down. I mean, to Abe's dad's point, I don't think they can yet. They're just saying this was a suicide, we'll fill in the rest later.

Which is not the scientific way of doing anything. No. And it's making the family side eye-reading police, like pretty hard. Especially because, you know, forget all the usual stuff that we see in suspicious suicide rulings and what we see here. Like, his family is saying that he had no history of suicidal ideation, he was talking to people that very same night about future plans, like all of his communications were normal. Like, put all of that aside. In this case, there is something else.

They know that there is history between Abe and the police chief. You see, when Abe moved to Reading in 2011, he kind of stood out. He was a young, funny, outspoken first-generation Ethiopian-American lawyer coming to a predominantly white town. And one of the things that he was most outspoken about was Second Amendment rights. And I know that feels like it's always been a hot button topic, but I need to like orient you in time and place here. The Sandy Hook school shooting happened just over a year before this in Newtown, Connecticut, which is just like a town over. So, this community in particular was completely traumatized, and they had exceptionally strong feelings and opinions about the issue, including Chief Fuchs, who was a first responder at Sandy Hook. He was strongly in favor of stricter gun laws.