Kansas City Chiefs fans deaths: Jordan Willis checks into rehab as families await toxicology results
Jordan Willis is "facing his addiction head-on" in rehab, with a source close to his family calling the freezing deaths of three men in his backyard an "enormous, heartbreaking wake-up call."
"After the shocking loss of three of his close friends under extremely tragic circumstances, Jordan recognized that he had a problem with addiction," the source told Fox News Digital on Wednesday. "He immediately checked himself into rehab after vacating his home and putting his things into storage."
The bodies of Ricky Johnson, 38; Clayton McGeeney, 36; and David Harrington, 37, were recovered outside Willis' Kansas City, Missouri, home the evening of Jan. 9. They were last seen alive inside the home at a watch party for the Kansas City Chiefs' game against the Los Angeles Chargers on Jan. 7.
A neighbor told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that they saw two of the now-deceased men arrive at Willis' house with two 30-packs of beer that night.
A fifth man present at the watch party, Alex Weamer-Lee, left Willis' house around 11 p.m. on Jan. 7 as the four other men were watching "Jeopardy!," his attorney, Andrew Talge, told FOX4 Kansas City.
"He doesn't know what happened," Talge said. "We don't know anything until the toxicology reports come back, if they show anything… these men were my client's good friends."
There are conflicting reports that, after the deaths were discovered, Weamer-Lee may have texted other people about drug use at Willis' house during the watch party.
An exterior view of the backyard and porch of Jordan Willis’ home in Kansas City, Missouri, on Friday. The bodies of Willis’ three friends — Ricky Johnson, Clayton McGeeney and David Harrington — were found in Willis’ backyard, with one body found on
The Kansas City Police Department has told Fox News Digital that the case is "100% not being investigated as a homicide," and no foul play is suspected in the men's deaths.
Medical and law enforcement experts previously told Fox News Digital that fentanyl, a fentanyl analog or even a synthetic easily mistaken for marijuana like K2 could have played a role in the men's deaths, causing them to pass out in the snow and succumb to hypothermia.
However, family members of the deceased have accused Willis, 38, of playing a more active role in his friends' deaths after he failed to report the dead men in his backyard to police or answer alleged repeated attempts at communication.
One man's concerned fiancée lodged a call to the Kansas City Police Department around 8:51 p.m. on Jan. 9 after she found one of the men's bodies on Willis' property. According to family members, she broke into the man's house after he failed to answer messages or his front door as she searched for her partner for days.
Willis' attorney, John Picerno, has said that Willis — an HIV-researcher with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative — works from home and slept with noise-canceling headphones for "a lot of" the two days following the Chiefs watch party.
Willis escorted the men out of his home before going to bed after the Chiefs game, Picerno said, and it was not abnormal for his friends to leave their cars on his street.
Willis' dogs were at his father's house, giving him no reason to go outside in the snowy weather, the attorney said, and he was first made aware of the tragedy when police knocked at his door.
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Picerno said Willis moved out of his home on Northwest 83rd Terrace in "fear of retaliation" after his friend's deaths made headlines. In the days following the discovery of his friends' bodies, neighbors told Fox News Digital that two men were seen loading his belongings into a U-Haul.
On Wednesday, the source close to Willis' family said his things have been placed in storage, and he will "still cooperate with the police department in their investigation."
Picerno declined to comment for this story.
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Willis voluntarily allowed police to search his home on the evening of Jan. 9, according to the Kansas City Police Department. Ross Nigro, an attorney retained by the family of Ricky Johnson, told Fox News Digital that a second search was carried out with a warrant on Jan. 11.
As Fox News Digital previously reported, investigators have asked Johnson and Harrington's parents for their phone passwords in an effort to piece together their last moments alive.
In all likelihood, the Kansas City Police Department is trying to determine whether drugs were sold or given to any of the men and establish a chain of possession, attorney and retired NYPD inspector Paul Mauro said in an interview last week. That process may further delay the investigation.
"I would think that now they have to try to jailbreak the phones [if they can't get passwords], which is very difficult to do these days," Mauro said. "Most of these phones… a lot of the data default to the cloud. You can get a cloud search warrant. Instead of having the password, you’re not going to get in with the thumbprint."
Previously, the source close to Willis' family told Fox News Digital that he had remained in Kansas City to care for his father, who has a mid-stage Alzheimer's disease diagnosis. The deaths of his friends and the "wild speculation" surrounding the case, according to the source, left Willis "depressed" and "devastated."
"Not only is the whole country accusing him of murdering his friends without factual details, evidence or any charges at this time, but he also lost three close friends," the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told Fox Nation in an exclusive interview Saturday.
"He didn’t get to say goodbye or go to their funerals due to the circumstances of these wild speculations and accusations.
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"No one seems to be willing to wait for the results of the toxicology report or wait for any other facts from the police department from a case that is still under investigation to make these speculations."
A spokesperson for Frontier Forensics Midwest, the private company contracted by Platte County to carry out autopsies, told Fox News that the results of the men's toxicology reports will take six to eight weeks to process, while their full autopsy reports will not be released for another 10 to 12 weeks.
Fox Nation's Kelly Skehen contributed to this report. Read more of this story from FOX News.