On a warm summer night in August of 2021, Jelani Day picked up some MJ from his local dispensary, probably just wanting to unwind after a long day. The Fall semester at Illinois State University had just started, and as a graduate student majoring in pathology, his course work was no doubt grueling. Tragically, Jelani was never heard from or seen alive again. His body was found 10 days later near Peru on the banks of the Illinois River.
Jelani Day, an accomplished young man and beloved son, disappeared on Aug. 24, 2021. Police recovered Jelani’s car from a wooded area in Peru just two days after his disappearance. The license plate had been removed and they found a partially smoked blunt in the car. There was something else—a journal—perhaps a possible clue into Jelani’s state of mind.
A body was found 10 days later on the south bank of the Illinois River near Peru, over 60 miles from where Jelanie was last seen, and nearly a month after his disappearance, it was confirmed that it was Jelani.
Due to contradictions between the Coroner’s autopsy and a second independently conducted autopsy, rumors of missing organs spread like wildfire.
Reports had surfaced indicating Day’s body was missing several organs when an independent autopsy was ordered by the family. LaSalle County Coroner Richard Ploch told NBC 5 in a statement “some were severely decomposed due to the body being in the water,” but he noted that no organs were missing.
While this is not a case of organ harvesting, Jelani’s mom Carmen is positive that her son did not put himself in that river.
Six weeks after Jelani’s body was found in the Illinois River, a man driving on I-55 north in Bloomington pulled over to secure a mattress tied to the roof of his car. By chance, he looked down at the side of the road and saw a shattered iPhone, which turned out to be Jelani’s.
Police sources close to the investigation, say that Jelani’s Verizon cellphone records show his iPhone was turned off at 9:21 am shortly after he was last seen buying marijuana at the Beyond Hello dispensary in Bloomington. His car was captured on video driving away. Carme said that investigators dismissed information for months that could have assisted in the case, like a video of a car leaving the parking lot as Jelani was leaving.
Police would not comment on the contents of the journal, but we do know there was no suicide note. Carmen said that Jelani’s journal began in 2016 but there were only two entries in 2021.
More puzzling was the discovery of Jelani’s sneakers and shorts on a riverbank north of where his body was found. While the items contained DNA, it wasn’t Jelani’s and still has not been identified, raising even more questions for the family.
The task force assigned to Jelani’s case includes investigators from multiple municipal police departments, Illinois State Police and the FBI. On Oct. 2, 2023, they sent a joint press release concurring with the LaSalle County coroner’s determination that Day drowned. An autopsy report found no evidence of foul play. Day’s family has rejected theories that he was suicidal or self-harming and have maintained the belief he was murdered. Jelani’s family also noted he was a strong swimmer, which contradicts the idea that he could have accidentally drowned.
Jelani’s mom Carmen Bolden Day remains dissatisfied, pointing to pieces of evidence and leads she uncovered that police haven’t followed up on. During her nearly two-hour livestream last August, she said police ignored shoe prints and a radio found near the body and what she characterized as the suspicious manner in which Day’s clothing was found on the opposite bank. When Jelani Day’s phone was returned to Bloomington police by the FBI, she was told investigators couldn’t unlock it.
“The FBI had Jelani’s phone for a year and a half,” she said. “In 10 days, I and my children figured out the code to Jelani’s phone and were able to get his phone unlocked.”
According to Bolden Day, Bloomington police said the phone had “nothing of evidentiary value” once it was unlocked.
Bolden Day said she met with the two women who reportedly found Day’s clothing, pleading with them to appear on a video with her as she pushes to get the case moved to the U.S. Department of Justice. They declined.
All of this evidence on its own is clearly concerning and warrants further investigation, but in my opinion and the opinion of many, is compounded by the fact that Peru and the neighboring town of LaSalle, were/are sundown towns. A sundown town is an area that practices or once practiced a form of racial segregation characterized by intimidation, hostility, or violence among White people directed toward non-Whites, especially against African Americans. Historians estimate there were around 10,000 sundown towns in the US between 1890 and the 1960s.
The term “sundown town” derives from the practice of White towns erecting signage alerting non-Whites to vacate the area before sundown. These rules were/are strengthened by the local presence of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). While discrimination practices commonly found in sundown towns became federally illegal during the 20th century, that does not mean that residents of these places no longer hold these sentiments, nor that they stopped these practices.
Jelani’s family created the Jelani Day Foundation to fight for equity and justice for missing people of color. “I want to find out what happened to my son,” said Bolden Day, “and I want the truth told. I want the people who did this held responsible for it.”
Now, all of this information I found from reputable news outlets online. But with pretty much all unsolved cases, there is also a deep reddit thread on this case that provides a potential whole new side to this case.
Amongst other things, it points to a few out of the ordinary things that had happened prior to Jelani’s death:
He changed his phone number in June 2021
He was hanging out heavy with his childhood friends from Danville in the weeks before he disappeared. Jelani liked to party. They smoked marijuana when they got together. One friend stated in the police report that “Jelani lives two lives, one life outside of Danville and the other with his friends and family in Danville.”
A week or so prior to going missing, he confided to his sister and church mentor about having weird vibes and dreams that two of his best friends were plotting against him/wanted to kill him
He was struggling with school, and a number of his professors and classmates expressed their concern
He failed to show up to two different jobs he had gotten
It’s not uncommon for graduate students to be extremely stressed, but these events seem more elevated than just stress from school. Was Jelani just doing too much, leading “two lives” as a friend said and became overwhelmed, not seeing any other way out of this situation, or did something more sinister happen, whether that be his supposed friends or a completely unknown assailant who simply did not like Jelani being in their town.
If you have any information, the public can submit tips anonymously via 1-800-CALL-FBI.
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