[commentator] The incomparable Marching 100.
[crowd cheers]
The Florida Classic was a rivalry of the Rattlers versus the Wildcats.
I performed at every game this season.
But this game is different. This is a big game.
That morning, I read the caption.
The HBCU band community was in shock.
I kept thinking, what would make my child collapse and die like that.
We don't know what's happened yet.
Everybody's trying to cover their butts right now.
There was a lot of deception that was going on.
He pulled back the rug,
so that everybody could see the dirt
that exists in this band.
Any time you lie to the police, I call it the monster mistake.
[woman] You have to look at the evidence and everything,
to know that that's torture. That's murder.
[band music playing]
[commentator] It's showtime.
When I think of football, I automatically think of the Marching 100.
You can't have the football team, without the Marching 100.
The two go hand-in-hand like peanut butter and jelly.
[commentator speaking indistinctly]
The ninth wonders of the world, the incomparable Marching 100.
The Marching 100 are the flagship band for FAMU,
which is the Florida A&M University.
It's a very flamboyant band that marches incredibly well.
And it's a very elite squad.
For a school pride, it's great.
You have all of these alumni from all over the world,
that pack out the stadium, to come see Marching 100.
It's often said that the band is a bigger part of the show than the football team.
[chuckles]
There's a half time, and by the way, there's a football game.
It's a unique style, it's an exciting style, and we own it.
[Keon] People gonna hear their favorite songs,
they're gonna hear their pride songs that university plays.
And it's just a big, one big party, right?
So, obviously, like, marching band is, is where it's at.
[commentator] You gonna learn today.
The Florida Classic is traditionally the last game the FAMU plays every year.
And it's against our in-state rival, Bethune-Cookman College.
After a wonderful game, after a great show, great half-time performance,
nobody would have expected somebody to die that night.
[police siren wailing]
When I got to the hotel,
the buses were parked in the rear parking lot.
Looks like three buses parked there, the motorcoach type buses.
[indistinct dialogue over police radio]
[Detective Voyles] One of the FAM members, Robert Champion,
was at the back of the bus, frothing at the mouth when we got there.
We were being told that Robert Champion had just passed out on the bus.
So we initially thought he came down with heat exhaustion.
[Detective Voyles] The fire department came in,
and relieved one of the student who was doing CPR.
And we transported him to the hospital after that.
[Pam] We got a call.
And the call was from the band director, Dr White.
And he said Robert was no longer with us.
I remember saying, "What?"
And then, my husband took the phone.
I couldn't... I couldn't see my husband anymore because...
I had so much tears in my eyes, I couldn't see.
[Robert Sr.] The director of the band told me that, he just fell out.
And, I couldn't understand why a young man,
physically fit, just fall out.
And I kept thinking what... what would make my child collapse and die like that.
[Peter] Investigators must try to figure out why
an apparently healthy young man
would suddenly die like this, on the back of a bus.
[Detective Phelan] The bus was processed that night,
the 19th and early morning of the 20th...
at the scene, by the CSI.
We spoke to every student that was on that bus.
[Peter] They have to piece together, exactly what happened.
There's a lot of, um...
you know, memories that suddenly don't work.
[Detective Voyles] It's very much close lipped.
It's like, oh, we don't know what happened.
We get a lot of students saying, "I wasn't there."
Well, I'm sorry. We have a bunch of witness testimonies says you were.
So, everybody's trying to cover their butts right now.
We don't know what's happened yet.
But, we know something bad has happened.
[Pam] Robert was born July 13th, 1985.
I'll never forget that day when we actually got to see each other, face-to-face.
When he grabbed and wrapped his hand around my finger,
he was so sweet.
You know, just, my little man.
I was hooked.
When Robbie was seven-eight years old, he started playing the clarinet. And he was good.
You could tell he was feeling the music.
It was just in him.
The music, it was his gift.
Robert attended Southwest DeKalb high school.
Southwest high school had one of the best band in the state of Georgia that time.
He was excited being there.
When he gets on the field...
he is a whole another person.
[Pam] I had no problem spotting my Robert.
If they jumped, he jumped higher.
If they hunkered down, he went down lower.
He put everything he could in his margin.
It's like he came alive on that field.
I was so, so proud of him.
So proud of him.
The day Robert received his acceptance letter from Florida A&M,
he opened it and he just jumped full of joy.
The whole family got into it.
And we were just excited for him.
He wanted to go off to college,
come back, be a band director at Southwest DeKalb high school.
So that was his goal. So I knew, wherever he went,
he will eventually be in a band.
Robert wanted to be in that Marching 100 band.
[Donovan] The band is an integral part of football.
It provides entertainment before the game,
during the game, during half time and after the game.
The 100 has a very vigorous audition process.
When Robert Champion came to FAMU, he went through that process.
And he was accepted into the band.
He became section leader, in charge of the whole clarinet section.
[Keon] At the level of Robert's musicianship,
you can definitely tell that he started at a young age.
He was really good.
He was definitely somebody that you can look up to, as a band member.
He always knew his music. He was always on time.
He was always the perfect example of leadership.
He was very much focused on being the top dog in the Marching 100 for sure.
For Robert, being a drum major that year, it was everything.
He was a clarinet section leader already.
But, there was something that he really wanted to achieve.
[Detective Voyles] The drum major is the head of the line.
He's got a cape, he's got a baton,
he's marching, he's doing all the dance moves.
He is the lead person on that field.
Being a drum major is like being a captain of a football team, right.
Everyone looks at you on a higher platter.
[Keon] FAMU was known for having ten drum majors.
It's... It's literally a wall of leadership.
But it was hard. You had to go through an audition.
The 100 pride themselves on being very selective,
and detail oriented and precise.
When Robert got the news he made drum major, he was so excited about it.
Over the phone, you knew he was excited.
[Robert Sr.] Drum major uniform, they make it a certain size.
And Robert was a big guy.
So, he had to work himself down...
to get into the uniform.
[Keon] All of the other drum majors, they were on the staff,
or getting ready to graduate.
So it was gonna be up to Robert, to be able to carry the mantle for next season.
But I feel like, for Robert, people were just so against him,
because, that didn't like the fact
that he was about to be the head drum major for the band.
Which means, he was gonna have all the authority over the band.
Robert did mention to me that, um,
some people wanted him to do something. This is how he said it.
He said, "Mom, some people just keep asking me to do something."
He said, "But if I did it, I'd never get any sleep."
And my reply to him was, "Robert, you don't have to do anything you don't want to.
You don't have to do anything."
And he said, "Yeah. I know, Ma."
But I didn't know the Marching band had a secret.
We were involved in something that was illegal.
That we shouldn't have been doing.
And, it cost him his life.
[Peter] FAMU is one of the larger historically Black colleges for HBCUs.
Football at FAMU, the games have this,
family reunion kind of vibe to 'em.
[Terry] The community is very involved.
You know, you have people in their 70s, 80s, that still
enthusiastic about coming to the football games.
There's a unique electricity, energy,
spark, and a relationship that HBCU band has with the student body,
alumni, and fans.
FAMU's football team definitely benefits
form the popularity of the Marching 100.
I mean, the Marching 100, they've done so many famous events.
They've done the Super Bowl.
Presential inaugurations.
So they are a big part of the show at a football game.
The last time my son, Robert and I spoke... was on the 17th.
The Florida Classic was coming up.
This would be the first time Robert would march,
in the Florida Classic as a drum major.
That brought some excitement for him.
Little did I know that was gonna be the last time I talk to my son.
Little did I know...
that would be the last time.
[woman reporter] FAMU drum major, Robert Champion, dies suddenly...
[Pam] The TV was going.
And for the first time I heard my son's name from a reporter on a TV.
And they was talking about... his death.
And I stopped... in my tracks,
and I turn back and I look at the TV.
The thought hit my mind.
What they did to my child on that bus.
[Donovan] That morning, I turned on the news.
First thing that popped up... a big picture of the FAMU band bus.
And I read the caption.
The HBCU band community was in shock.
[Keon] Me and Robert tried out for drum major together.
Everybody knew who the new drum majors were, right?
They knew it was me, they knew it was Robert.
And when they found out what happened,
they instantly started calling me, texting me,
asking me a bunch of questions.
[Terry] Robert's death definitely affected the football team.
We were just trying to get a hint of what happened.
So that was the issue that was circulating the campus.
Oh, why did it happen? And where did it come from?
[Peter] The initial report was very bare-bones.
It was just that a drum major died after the Florida Classic.
But Robert Champion has all these injuries
that don't have a good explanation.
When the autopsy comes back, they discover some disturbing information.
He died of blunt force trauma.
And hemorrhaging to soft tissue in his back.
His body, arms, legs, back, head,
multiple contusions everywhere around his body,
till the point that it was almost like a mush, underneath the tissue.
It's clear that he was beaten to death.
We talked to all the students from the bus.
The story was that, they went to the game, he came back.
They found him on the bus, passed out.
But, based upon the autopsy,
we knew that the kids have been telling us, not the full truth.
There's a lot of back and forth, you know. I wasn't there. I didn't see it.
[Keon] There was a lot of deception that was going on.
For whatever reason, why people chose to lie,
whether they were trying to lie to cover up what happened,
or protect themselves, or they were scared,
there was a lot of lying.
But any time you lie to the police, I call it the monster mistake.
It raises a question of foul play.
And this is where a murder investigation begins.
The band director, Dr. White, called me that night to tell me,
that my child just collapsed and died when he didn't.
I just really didn't know what to believe.
[Pam] So you're trying to figure out what's going on.
After that initial night,
on November 19th, we got the call.
We heard nothing else from the school.
No one contacted us.
Nor did we hear anything from the district attorney office.
Um, we heard nothing.
One of the big breaks in the case, is when Robert's roommate,
Keon Hollis, started talking to police.
[Detective Phelan] We interviewed Mr. Keon Hollis.
One of the drum majors and who is a friend of Robert.
Mr. Hollis held nothing back.
[Keon] You have to take accountability.
And I personally feel, we all need to live in our truth.
I still just thought I needed to, not only speak up for Robert,
but for myself as well.
[Pam] When you look at what was done to him...
by a bus load of people...
it had to be intentional.
If they weren't trying to kill him...
they were certainly trying to set an example.
[Detective Voyles] Robert was beaten to death.
But, everyone was saying, oh, he just passed out of heat exhaustion.
It wasn't until we spoke to Keon Hollis,
he was like, this is a bunch of [bleep]. This is what happened.
Keon Hollis, he said that it was a ritual.
Ritual in the marching band.
That's when things ramped up.
Like, okay, this isn't what we thought it was.
We learned the ritual is called Crossing Bus C.
[Keon] In the band program...
everybody knew Crossing Bus C is when you literally have to run,
as fast as you can through the middle of the bus, and push through everybody.
There are other band members on the bus,
punching you, kicking you, hitting you.
It's something that you can say,
I have this, certain level of respect from the band members.
Because, I then wanted the most challenging rituals in the band.
[Detective Phelan] He told us, a young lady went through the process and followed him.
Then he went though the process,
and then Robert Champion went through the process.
Three people went through that night, one person died.
Why did Robert Champion die?
There has been speculation that there could have been,
some specific motive to target Robert that night.
Robert made it very known that he didn't condone hazing in any sort.
He said, "I feel like it's stupid.
I feel like I've already became the drum major, the leader in the band.
Why should I have to put myself through something like that,
to show that I'm a leader?"
A lot of the band members were feeling like, he wasn't tough enough,
or he wasn't macho enough.
They would scream out, oh, hey, he's gay. He's this and that.
[Pam] His sexual preference was his.
What does that have to matter?
It still do not give an excuse as to what was done to him.
My son was literally tortured to death.
So, to stop and say, Oh, because he was gay,
no, no. Uh-uh.
[Detective Voyles] The Bus C ritual is basically hazing.
When the member of an organization
commits any active violence, has been initiation,
and you told them they had to do it, to be a part of this group, that's hazing.
[Detective Phelan] The Florida law states, during a hazing,
whether you are the participant, you are the victim,
you are guilty of hazing.
And if someone dies, then it becomes a felony.
[Donovan] Hazing has been a problem...
with some of our HBCU bands.
All of us has experienced
students trying it at some point of time.
It's entrenched in our culture.
[Keon] In 2011, when this happened,
a lot of organizations were hazing people.
It was more than just a band.
We talking about organizations across the country.
Greek organizations, sports, anything, you know,
people are involved in hazing.
Any time you get introduced to any type of organization,
I think there are some type of hazing.
Just for you to wow at the organization.
There's two sides of the coin to hazing.
There's a very strong impulse for young people to wanna belong.
And then on the flip side, I would say,
there's the people exerting the pressure.
It's essentially a form of bullying.
Bus C was technically the recursion bus.
And, the leader of the recursion station
is the president of Bus C, Dante Martin.
The night of the Florida Classic,
there was a text from Dante Martin,
asking if...
I was gonna cross Bus C.
And I remember undoubtedly saying to myself,
yes, I'm gonna cross Bus C.
When we got back to the room,
I told Robert that I was gonna cross Bus C.
He didn't plan on doing it.
But when I told him that I was going to cross,
he changed his mind.
He was the type of person that he wasn't gonna let his brother go do anything alone.
[Pam] Robert is a care giver.
A known care giver. He was big in stature,
but he had a soft heart.
I believe Robert went there as a protector.
He went down there to say, look, y'all need to stop this.
Y'all need to stop this now.
[Keon] It was probably a little after nine,
when Robert and myself, we walked down to the bus.
The bus is parked in the back of the parking lot.
We get on the bus. It's really dark.
It's like, walking into a haunted house.
Because it's just pitch black, and all you see are these figures of people,
in almost like, the shadows.
I cross Bus C first.
People are hitting me with mallets or whatever they have.
I was literally on the break of damn near passing out.
And Robert went last.
The stages of Crossing Bus C,
first there's a hot seat.
That's when you are hunched over in the seat,
and other people are hitting on you,
with sticks or whatever they have.
From the back, I can literally see
everybody just welling on Robert,
as he's going through his hot seat.
It felt like his hot seat lasted longer than mine.
Because I felt as though,
people have personal reasons for why they wanted to harm him.
After the hot seat, you get up, you hold the railings of the bus,
and people will hit you on your chest and on your back.
He was crying out during the whole process,
of them hitting on him with sticks and mallets.
And I remember them holding him.
I see them literally smacking him as hard as they could,
on front of him and behind him.
After that part, then you have to push forward to the back of the bus...
through the middle aisle, through everybody that's trying to push you, punch you.
And as he made a little leg way,
getting closer to the back, they literally would drag him
back to the front and make him start over.
There were people hanging from the luggage rack,
stomping on Robert as hard as they can, like a street fight.
Like it was a backyard brawl or something.
And I just remember feeling like, damn, like, well, why?
They wanted to beat on him,
to hit on him, to make sure that he felt pain,
going through this process.
Because they didn't like the fact that he was against hazing.
I remember hearing him scream.
And I'll never forget this for the rest of my life.
Like they personally wanted to harm him.
It made me want to literally get up and push through
and pull him to the back.
And, it wasn't allowed.
They didn't go this hard for me.
They didn't go this hard for anybody else.
It was personal.
[Pam] Robert had to be about five when we took him to a parade.
And he was so impressed with the drum majors.
He couldn't take his eyes off of 'em.
Ever since he saw that first marching band in a parade,
he had in his head,
that this is what he was gonna do.
[Robert Sr.] Robert liked to entertain.
He had a broomstick, because he seen a drum major with his baton.
So he thought that his broom was the baton.
[Pam] He did eventually become a drum major in the high school.
I was so, so proud of him.
Each one of my children brought something different.
Robert brought me music.
[Keon] When Robert finished Crossing Bus C,
I asked him if he was okay.
He just kept saying like, "Man, I'm tired. Man, I'm tired."
We were all get off the bus.
I was just so exhausted, I was just ready to get back to the room,
shower, change, that I didn't even look back.
I just walked off.
I get back to the room, and I get a call.
Like, hey, something is wrong.
[Peter] As the detectives were getting all of this from Keon Hollis,
they realized that this Crossing Bus C ritual
is very organized and yeah, there's a person at the head of it.
The head of Crossing Bus C in a person determines when you've properly crossed
is the president of Bus C.
At the time of Robert Champion's death,
the president was Dante Martin.
Dante Martin was described by most of the students,
as being the one that set everything up.
[Detective Voyles] Dante Martin is the one that kept, you know, texting,
going, are you gonna do it? Are you gonna do it?
Dante is the person that sent the text out,
to make sure that if it was gonna happen,
this is where it's gonna happen, this is when it's gonna happen.
He planned it. He orchestrated it.
Because of that, he is the first one that gets charged.
Aside from Dante Martin, there were specific students that had a...
particularly important role in the hazing of Robert Champion.
Jessie Baskin,
Caleb Jackson,
and Benjamin McNamee.
[Detective Phelan] Students painted a picture of Jessie Baskin
as being one of the most physical of the people on the bus.
Baskin was hanging from the overhead rails,
and was kicking Robert.
Benjamin McNamee, like Jessie Baskin
was described by other students,
as being rather physical,
against Robert as he was trying to progress to the back of the bus.
Benjamin McNamee was singled out
as having kicked Robert back in the seat when he was almost done.
[Detective Phelan] Caleb Jackson, referred to as CJ,
was described by many being very violent.
One of the drum majors say, he had to try and rip
Robert from Caleb Jackson's grip,
in order to get Robert to the back of the bus.
The other interesting thing about CJ, is that he's not a student at FAMU at the time.
He had been studying at Tallahassee Community College.
And that made him eligible to march in the 100.
But then, he'd have problems with his financial aid,
and he wasn't in school at either institution.
But, you know, he just didn't tell anybody and kept marching in the 100.
And then participating at Crossing Bus C.
He wasn't a student anywhere.
It's extraordinary.
[Keon] It's unfortunate that the marching band that he loved,
that he led by as an example,
turned around and brutally beat him and murdered him.
The most disheartening thing was how FAMU handled the whole thing.
Within the Florida A&M Marching 100,
they had an epidemic of violent behaviors.
People wanna call it hazing, but it's so past that.
As a band director, my dear friend, Dr. Julian White,
brought a lot of success at the Florida A&M University, Marching 100.
But some band programs have been more successful
in stopping hazing than others.
What have I done to eradicate hazing?
Uh, if I... see--
If I have innuendos or suspicion of hazing,
I will suspend the person from the band.
But I'll let them know just what the consequences are regarding hazing.
I'll have them to sign a document indicating that they will not participate
in hazing, uh, as a hazer or hazee.
We were hearing those same written that that every school gives you.
We have policies in place.
We are totally against what they called hazing.
But the school knew what happened to my son.
The school knew the violence that was going on in this band.
[woman reporter] In 1998, FAMU clarinet player,
Ivery Luckey's organs collapsed,
after he was beaten by 25-30 people.
He took about 300 blows in one night.
Robert did not get justice.
We did not get justice.
What we got was a lot of lies.
It was a cover-up.
[Peter] Prior to Robert Champion dying,
I mean, there were a lot of signs of hazing in the band.
There was an incident where someone was paddled 300 times.
In that situation, as bad as it was,
nobody died.
Dr. White could have shut that band down.
Because... the epidemic was out of control.
The school knew there was a culture of hazing,
out in Bus C ritual.
They knew about it. They failed to do anything about it.
[Keon] Just the week before the Florida Classic,
Dr. White suspended 26 band members for hazing.
[Detective Voyles] The students have to sign a documentation
that you can't do this. Don't do this. It's dangerous.
So, the school knows that stuff is happening.
The way I knew that this school knew about the violence
that went on in that band,
was because of the complaints.
The thousand and thousand letters,
that had been sent to not only the president,
but the band director too,
from parents of students in the band.
[Peter] The administration is definitely
overly concerned about the death of Robert Champion,
as a PR incident, that threaten their own jobs.
Rather than just addressing the underlying problem, the hazing.
An outsider might perceive some of what FAMU did as a cover-up.
[Keon] I feel like, because a lot of organizations that have been involved
in these hazing incidents, generates so much revenue for the universities,
that they almost kind of, maybe turn a blind eye, right?
Because who wants to mess up their cash cow?
[Pam] We got news that they were suspending the band for one year.
And I thought, [scoffs] really?
You wanna suspend them for one year?
If a Greek organization at FAMU is found to be doing hazing,
even if no one is injured, the school will shut down that for eternity.
For seven to ten years.
Knowing the violence that goes on in that band,
and not doing anything, says I condone it.
Their negligence was just...
I don't even see how the people can look themselves in the face.
I've seen other colleges where something like this is happened,
and that group is disbanded forever.
But to say, it's gone forever, because of this group of students,
I don't think that's fair.
It's an institution. We should not erase that institution.
[Peter] Robert Champion's hazing death was a major event for the entire HBCU community.
There were a lot of schools that re-examined their policies.
Everyone didn't wanna be the next school to have one of these types of tragedies.
My husband and I said something need to be done.
And we decided to have a foundation.
The name, Robert D. Champion Drum Major for Change,
was given to the foundation.
The message was to eradicate hazing.
Hazing is something that definitely needs to be eradicated
throughout all colleges and universities.
I mean, we've seen several stories about
hazing incidents have even taken place even after Robert's death, right.
So, I mean, there's clearly... There's clearly something that needs to be done.
We got to get the core system to take this serious.
It's murder.
Dante Martin received the stiffest penalty.
Because he was the ring leader
of the hazing death of Robert Champion,
he was sentenced to 77 months
for felony hazing and manslaughter.
Caleb Jackson received a four year sentence.
Jessie Baskin was sentenced to just under a year,
because of his involvement.
Benjamin McNamee received probation.
[Pam] Probation is what they got.
None of 'em got felony attached to them.
Which is the law in Florida says,
hazing with death is a felony.
Not one of the 'em got that.
[Keon] A lot of fellow members of the band...
kind of isolated me, because of how everything took place.
And, for people to turn their back on me,
the way that they did, didn't really sit well with me,
Nobody wanted to step up and say anything for Robert.
So I feel as though it was my duty to have his back,
the same way that he had my back plenty times.
If Robert was here right now,
he'd probably be in a classroom teaching music.
[Pam] What I like the world to know about my son, Robert...
is that he was more than any man I know.
To stand up against a culture
that has been in this band for over half a century.
To be the only one.
So he stood tall.
He was a young man...
that was pursuing his dream.
They cut his dream short.
He didn't deserve what they did to him.
[crowd cheering]
This cheerleader went missing, like, out of the blue
she just disappeared.
REPORTER: Alicia Duvall was seen getting into a small black SUV.
WOMAN: Was there jealousy?
Was there rage? We wanted to know more.
Do not put your hands in your pockets!
You need to stop calling and texting my 14-year-old sister.