Exclusive interview with Lovely Varughese, who believes her son was murdered.

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By Deepak Chitnis

WASHINGTON, DC: The mother of Pravin Varughese, the Southern Illinois University (SIU) student who was found dead under unusual circumstances back in February, is accusing the local Carbondale police of trying to cover up her son’s death, saying that the cops are not pursuing legitimate leads and have introduced a number of inconsistencies that provide more questions than answers.

For a family still grieving from the tragic loss of their son, the lack of closure is not just frustrating – it’s downright painful. Lovely Varughese, Pravin’s mother, spoke with The American Bazaar to detail her experience with the case, outlining what she sees as several irregularities that, if handled properly, could help explain what really happened to her 19 year-old son on that cold February night.

“We just can’t trust the police anymore,” says Lovely. “They have told us lies after lies, and they never wanted us to talk to the media.”

But now, she says, she and her family are doing everything they can to get Pravin’s story out, and have even hired their own private investigator to dig into the case. Lovely talked through the entire experience, from the hours leading up to Pravin’s tragic death, all the way to the ongoing investigation that likely won’t end anytime soon.

RELATED STORY: SIU student Pravin Varughese found dead in Carbondale after missing for 6 days

Pravin was living with one of his cousins and another roommate in a townhouse not far from the SIU campus. A sophomore in college, Pravin was a dedicated athlete and an outgoing person, says his mother, who was in top physical shape and had a large group of friends. He was also a devoted son and brother, who would regularly visit his parents in Morton Grove, a suburb of Chicago, and his older sister at St. Louis University.

On the night of his disappearance – Wednesday, February 12 – Pravin had spoken with his parents over the phone, something he apparently did every day. Lovely says that Pravin didn’t tell them he was going to this party, as he had an exam the next day, but he accompanied a group of his friends, his cousin and his other roommate to this party.

“The police told us [his family] that he was drinking, but he was not drinking,” says Lovely. “The people who were there at the party, all the girls and boys, they told us he did not drink at the party.”

Pravin got to the party around 9:00 PM, and only stayed for a couple of hours, by just about all accounts.

Later that night, Pravin sent out a pair of tweets: at 11:00 PM, he posted “99% of the time I have no idea whats [sic] going on;” 17 minutes later, he tweeted “Bloody knuckles . . .guess I was in a fight #backdown,” something that investigators immediately latched onto as a possible reason for his disappearance and death that night.

Pravin’s mother, however, has a different story.

“There was a window in the kitchen of the house [where the party was], and he tried to put it up,” says Lovely. “While doing that, some broken glass fell on his hand, and so he had a cut on his hand. Even we believed that he may have been in a fight, but the people at the party told us what it really was, and if you know Pravin, you know that’s something he would do.”

The next day, Thursday, is when Lovely and her husband, Mathew, got the call that Pravin had been reported missing by one of his friends. The couple arrived in Carbondale on Friday morning, but was allegedly greeted with apathy from the Carbondale police, who said that this case was most likely a complete non-starter.

“They did not take [the case] seriously,” she says. “They thought it was just a typical college kid who went partying, got drunk, and disappeared. They said that college kids do this, they go missing but then come back in four or five days, and we told them from the beginning that that’s not Pravin. He would never, ever do that.”

When Pravin’s disappearance became prolonged, Friday and into Saturday, search efforts increased. Helicopters were dispatched to scour the Carbondale area, and search dogs were also used to help find the boy. Dogs were able to track Pravin’s scent from the party house to a small bridge located on a bike trail, which was the shortest route between the party and where Pravin lived, but his scent abruptly stopped at the bridge.

Carbondale police told Pravin’s parents – who, by this point, had been joined by their immediate and extended family, as well as other friends and well-wishers – not to speak to the media.

But by Saturday, nearly three full days after Pravin first went missing, Lovely says that she and her family just wanted to get the word out that their son was missing, hoping that someone would have information that could lead to his discovery. The next day, inundated with calls from local media, Pravin’s parents spoke to the press.

“At this point, the college students didn’t even know that [Pravin] was missing,” says Lovely.

On Monday, Lovely and her husband were brought in by the Carbondale deputy police chief and, for the first time since the disappearance, SIU’s own police chief, who chided the couple for speaking to local media and told them that it could impair the investigation.

“They told us that they don’t appreciate that we talked to the media,” Lovely says. “We explained to them that we didn’t say anything about the police, we did not say anything bad, we just said that the police are doing everything they can. We just wanted to get the word out so people would look for him. But he went on and on and said that if we want to speak to the media, we have to go through the college, and we said ‘Ok.’”

By this point, helicopter and canine searches had already been called off, and Carbondale police allegedly told Pravin’s family on Saturday that these resources could no longer be tapped into. Through a family friend that has connections with the office of Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, the family was able to influence the Carbondale police to bring back the choppers and dogs to aid the search.

“They said on Monday that they would bring back the helicopters on Tuesday,” explains Lovely. “They said that they needed the helicopter so they could look into the woods, but even before that, on the first day we had asked them ‘Are there any woods?’ and they said ‘No, there is nothing here.’ They wouldn’t even consider looking in the woods.”

That night, after a vigil service organized on the SIU campus by Pravin’s friends and classmates, an Indian American psychology professor who knew Pravin approached the family, offering to take them to the house where the party was that Pravin was last seen at. She said that if the parents were to go and talk to the kids, they might divulge some information that they hadn’t given to the police.

“So we went to that house, but none of them there said they knew what happened,” says Pravin’s mother. “All they said they knew is that Pravin left the party around 11:15 or 11:30, something like that, and they all said that he wasn’t drinking, and that the bloody knuckles was probably from the window because there was no fight at the house.”

On the morning of Tuesday, February 18, Lovely says she and her husband received a visit at their hotel room from the SIU Dean of Students, Dr. Katie Sermersheim, who told them that the police had a new lead they were following up. According to Lovely, Sermersheim kept talking to them for about an hour – “she wouldn’t leave,” says Lovely – before getting a phone call.

“She gets this phone call and tells us ‘I have to go down and get somebody,’ and she comes back with the deputy [police] chief,” recounts Lovely. “And that’s when he told us that they found [Pravin].”

Lovely adds that “the sickening part is that he was found about 500 yards from our hotel. It’s really, really sickening if they found him there. And we don’t even believe he was really found there because they have been telling us different locations. They told us one location, showed us a different location, and have now told our private investigator a third location.”

RELATED STORY: Why did Pravin Varughese not use SIU’s ‘Steer Clear’ designated driver program that fateful Wednesday night?

After delivering the unfortunate news, the coroner approached the parents to inform them that they would now be starting the autopsy process, which was supposed to take around four or five days. When Lovely asked why it would take so long, the coroner explained that only a specific doctor could perform the procedure, and that he was currently out of town, his availability would need to be checked, and so on.

“We told them that we want to get out of Carbondale as soon as possible, we want our son’s body out of there as soon as possible, and we will cover the airfare for this doctor if that’s what it takes to get the autopsy done quickly,” says Lovely. “This guy isn’t coming from the other side of the world, he was coming from Indiana.”

The case then took a strange turn, however; according to Lovely, Carbondale police would not allow the family to see Pravin’s body, a highly unusual move considering that identification of a victim by his or her family is a crucial step in any investigation, and is certainly necessary before an autopsy can be performed.

“My daughter asked ‘When can we see [Pravin]?’ and the police said ‘Oh, you cannot see him. A funeral home of your choice will bring him back to Chicago and then you can see him.’ So then my daughter asked ‘So how did you know it was Pravin?’ And the police said ‘Because he matched all the descriptions, we don’t need you to identify him.’”

At that point, says Lovely, all hell broke loose. As a nurse, she says she knows what standard procedures are when a corpse is brought in, so she screamed at the police “You are not touching my son until we come and say that’s our son. I don’t want to go back to Chicago and open the casket, only to find that it’s someone else in there.”

Carbondale police insisted that certain phone calls had to be made before the family could see Pravin’s body, and when asked if there was any legal reason that prevented them from viewing the body, police said there wasn’t. Eventually, police agreed to allow only Pravin’s parents to identify the body, which angered the couple’s two daughters, Priya and Preethi. Finally, police said that an arrangement had been made to let them identify the body later that afternoon.

“The police chaplain was a very nice man, he was very helpful in getting us to see Pravin’s body,” credits Lovely.

The boy’s body was being kept in the local hospital; in its chaplain, a huge number of family, friends, supporters, and classmates had gathered to pray for Pravin. That afternoon, when it was time to see the body, Lovely says that the police did a complete 180-degree turnaround: after saying that no one could see the body just hours earlier, they suddenly let everyone see Pravin’s body.

“The same coroner who told us that morning that no one could see him, looks at everyone there and says ‘Oh, you all want to see him? Come on in!” says Lovely. “So we all went in there.”

Lovely says that the coroner would not let people near the body, and that Pravin could only be viewed from a distance. On top of that, only his head was being showed, not the entire body – somewhat odd, considering that Pravin had a “Fear God” tattoo on his chest that would have made identifying him even easier – but even then, Lovely says she knew something was wrong.

“They said they kept him far because they didn’t want anyone touching him or contaminating him, which was fine, but I told them that I still need to see him,” she explains. “And right away, we could see a big bruise on his right forehead.”

Lovely’s brother-in-law immediately asked the coroner what the bruise was, to which he replied that it was from frostbite.

“The coroner said ‘Oh, he was found face-down, and that’s frostbite,’ and we believed that,” says Lovely. “But the next day, [police] told us that he was found on his back. So you can see already where these inconsistencies are.”

Lovely says it was important for her to see Pravin right away, and from that brief look, she could tell that her son’s body looked “fresh.” She recalls that “he did not look like he had been out there in the cold for all those days, he had no swelling or anything like that.”

Just two hours after the body had been found, however, Carbondale police held a press conference in which they announced that Pravin had been found dead, and that foul play had been ruled out. They came to the conclusion that the boy froze to death that night in the woods, something they later confirmed to Pravin’s parents, citing hypothermia – that is the actual “cause of death” officially listed on Pravin’s death certificate.

“I don’t know how they can come up with all these conclusions without an autopsy,” wonders Lovely.

The next day, February 19 – now one week since Pravin initially went missing on the night of the 12th – Carbondale police laid out the sequence of events for Pravin’s family. According to them, says Lovely, Pravin went to the house party, got drunk, then left and went to a second party that no one knew he was going to. Lovely immediately disputed this, saying “Pravin never goes anywhere without telling his friends.”

It was at this point that information about a driver who picked up Pravin surfaced for the first time, says Lovely. Police says Pravin only stayed out on the porch at this second house party, which is why no one saw him, and that he got into a car driven by a man named Gaege Bethune – whose name was not divulged at first, requiring the family to get the name on their own.

Police went on to say that Pravin was getting a lift home from this man, but that Pravin was so drunk he couldn’t say where he lived. Police said that the two drove around “looking for drugs,” but eventually got into a fight that started in the car and ended by the side of the road.

At this point, said the police, Pravin took off from the dark green SUV and ran into the woods, where he ultimately froze to death and was found nearly a week later.

RELATED STORY: That night a trooper looked for Pravin Varughese, who was freezing to his death wearing only jeans, T-shirt

“We asked the police if they have this man in custody, and they said ‘No,” recalls Lovely. “We asked them why not, since this was the last person to see Pravin alive, and they said ‘Oh, we have no reason to suspect him, he came forward and told us everything he knows.’ So we asked if they could bring him back, should they need to, and they said ‘We can.’”

Police explained that they knew about Bethune through an anonymous tip received on Monday night. Lovely and her family later found out that this tipper is the driver’s cousin; Lovely said that they have discovered his name to be Jonathan Stanley.

But another inconsistency also emerged: did the driver really come to the police himself, or did they have to find and bring him in?

“Police told us that it took time for them to go find this driver, bring him into the police station, question him, and he is the guy who showed the police where he dropped off Pravin,” says Lovely. “That’s what they told us. But during his press conference, the police chief said that the driver came forward. So all these things are getting us so confused.”

Then came the issue of the reward money, as Pravin’s family had offered $15,000 to anyone who could furnish information leading to Pravin’s discovery. After telling Lovely and her family the sequence of events leading to Pravin’s death, he asked them to give the driver the money, as he had been hounding the police for the cash since he led them to the site of the body. The family refused, saying they needed more information to confirm that this man himself didn’t actually have anything to do with Pravin’s death.

At that point, Lovely demanded to see the site where Pravin’s body was found, saying that it was important for her to lay a cross on the site of her son’s death. After some back-and-forth, police took her and the family to the woods later that day (still Wednesday the 19th), located behind a shopping center near the road, that was dense with “vines and thorns,” says Lovely.

“Nobody in their right mind would walk through there at midnight,” says Lovely. “If this place is so hard to walk in during daylight and when someone is sober, how could Pravin have gone through here at night and when he was drunk?”

Lovely recalled that it took police nearly half an hour of walking through these woods before arriving at the spot where they found Pravin’s body. The walk to get to this spot was treacherous, Lovely explains, as she and her husband were “slipping and falling” constantly on their trek to get to the place in question.

That day, the family left Carbondale and returned to Chicago to begin making arrangements for their son’s memorial services. The following day, Pravin’s body arrived at the family’s chosen funeral home, so his family went there to receive the body.

“When the body arrived, the funeral home director went into the room to examine the body,” recalls Lovely. “But when he came out, he looked at me and said ‘Lovely, you’re a nurse, right?’ I said ‘Yes.’ And he goes ‘You better go see him, this is not a frost-bitten body; he has injuries.’”

Lovely and her husband, who didn’t want to see the body, went into the room and examined Pravin’s corpse. “Every single injury he had on his body, I saw with my own eyes,” says Lovely. “There were bruises on his arm, his legs, his head – he was beaten. He had a long mark on his back, and it was pretty clear that he had been beaten up. That’s when we decided to get the second autopsy, and the funeral home director arranged it.”

The results of that, as well as a brand-new toxicology report, came in about two weeks after that. Those involved with the autopsy and toxicology reports, including Pravin’s parents, still expected there to be traces of alcohol and/or drugs in the boy’s system, as that’s what the Carbondale police had told them.

“There was nothing,” says Lovely.

What’s more, the pathologist who conducted the second autopsy explained to Lovely that standard procedure for a toxicology report means taking the subject’s eye fluid, as that is arguably the best way to test for illicit substances in the bloodstream. The second toxicology’s eye fluid test came back negative, but when they wanted to compare it to the first autopsy’s eye fluid results, they discovered that such a test had never been done.

Now, Pravin’s family is scrambling to show that Carbondale police, in their eyes, completely botched the investigation. While their private investigator continues looking into the case, Lovely and her husband are imploring the local police to find a more conclusive reason for their son’s death.

Specifically, Pravin’s family wants police to look harder at Bethune, who they feel was instrumental in their son’s death. Lovely explained that Bethune had left Illinois for Georgia, but had since returned to Illinois at the insistence of the Carbondale police. Bethune also allegedly has a troubled past, as Lovely shared a story she heard in which Bethune, a high school dropout, was suspended because he beat up one of his own teachers.

Days before Pravin’s disappearance, says Lovely, Bethune’s Facebook cover photo was an image of the very same SUV that Pravin supposedly got into and was driven around in on the night he disappeared. Bethune’s social media presence has since become completely non-existent, and his Facebook account has been deleted.

There’s also the matter of the state trooper, who was reported even back in February as having pulled over Bethune near the woods where he dropped off Pravin. Bethune had told the trooper he picked up an African-American man, according to Lovely, and that the man was drunk and belligerent. The trooper did not report finding Pravin or anyone else, and did not bring Bethune in for questioning.

Lovely says the most frustrating part of this whole experience has been the Carbondale police, who she accuses of being duplicitous and uninterested in solving her son’s case. She says the local community has had their fair share of problems with the local police, who have been accused of corruption in the past, and that the entire community is incensed about how the Pravin case has been mishandled.

“What makes me so mad is that [the police] all knew that this had happened when they looked us straight in the face and said that there was no foul play and no injuries whatsoever,” says Lovely.

Pravin’s family continues to work their way through the shrouds of mystery, hoping to find some closure to this traumatizing situation, made all the more difficult by the circumstances surrounding the untimely demise of a promising young man.