An autopsy has ruled that 23-year-old Alonzo Brooks' death was a homicide, less than one year after federal authorities exhumed the body of the Unsolved Mysteries case study.
Releasing a statement on Monday, the Federal Bureau of Investigations said that after an autopsy at the Dover Air Force Base - conducted by an Armed Forces Medical Examiner - looked specifically at the injuries to Brooks' body, the coroner found that they were not consistent with "standard decomposition".
We aren't yet prithee to any further discoveries from the autopsy.
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However, acting U.S. Attorney Duston Slinkard said: "We knew that Alonzo Brooks died under very suspicious circumstances."
"This new examination by a team of the world's best forensic pathologists and experts establishes it was no accident. Alonzo Brooks was killed. We are doing everything we can, and will spare no resources, to bring those responsible to justice."
The case of the 23-year-old who went missing after a party in 2004 was featured in episode four of the hit true crime reboot Unsolved Mysteries, in an episode named No Ride Home.
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It told the story of Brooks, who didn't return to his home in Gardner, Kansas, on the night of a party he attended with friends, 50 miles south in the small town of La Cygne.
According to friends, Alonzo was the only black man at the party and during the night tensions arose between him and some of the other attendees.
After miscommunications about how Alonzo would be getting home, he was left at the party and didn't manage to find his way back.
The following day, frantic searches commenced and friends took Alonzo's best friend Rodney back to the location of the party, where they found Alonzo's two shoes and hat at separate locations by the side of the road.
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Over the next month, police searched the area of the party, spoke to witnesses in the small, predominantly-white town and even conducted searches of the nearby creek with no luck.
Eventually, police allowed the desperate Brooks family to conduct their own search, and within an hour of setting off, they found his body by the side of the creek.
The new autopsy result comes as a previous autopsy found the cause of death to be "undetermined", but evidence suggested he hadn't floated up the creek, which police thought may explain why his body had appeared in a place they insist they'd searched.
Alonzo's friends and family believe his body was placed there after the fact and that his murder was a hate crime.
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While the 2004 case was left inactive for many years before gaining fresh notoriety on Unsolved Mysteries, the FBI announced last June that it was investigating Brooks' death "as a potential racially-motivated crime."
The FBI put out a reward offer of $100,000 (£78,820) for tips that could lead to an arrest, and subsequently exhumed his body in July.
Discussing the resurgence in conversation around the case, the FBI said: "Alonzo Brooks was probably [the case] we've received the most emails on.
"Lots of theories that we had already heard when we were producing the episodes, but there are some new names that have come in and that we forwarded onto the FBI.
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"There were a lot of people there at that party, somebody witnessed what happened. We just hope that they'll come forward."
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