Pennsylvania family of Marine found shot in Alabama wants death investigation reopened

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A Pennsylvania family wants authorities to reopen the investigation on the 2016 death of their Marine son, who was found shot in the head inside his Alabama apartment, after a medical examiner changed the cause of death from "suicide" to "undetermined." 

The family of Ryan Presutti, a machine gunner who served tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, say he had stocked his pickup truck with road trip supplies, including snacks and treats for his dog, in preparation for a 13-hour drive from rural Alabama to his hometown of Kennett Square, a suburb outside Philadelphia, in time for his 37th birthday on July 17, 2016, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. 

But that day his family couldn’t reach him by phone and Presutti was later found dead inside his trailer with a gunshot wound to the head. William Trump, a former New Jersey State Police detective turned private investigator hired by the family in 2019, told the newspaper he has found new evidence in recent months suggesting that the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office mishandled the investigation of Presutti’s death. 

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Shortly after his death, Presutti’s body had been flown back to Pennsylvania and buried with military honors at Washington Crossing National Cemetery in Bucks County. A year later, Mike West, coroner in Limestone County, Alabama, changed Presutti’s cause of death from suicide to undetermined. 

Trump said Presutti was shot with a .45 caliber Kimber gun owned by a police officer in a different Alabama county. The private investigator described how the officer told him he did not recall what he had done with the weapon, which is worth roughly $1,500. 

When Trump called the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office seeking to have the gun released to the Presutti family from evidence storage, he said they didn’t know where the weapon was. The office located the gun and handed it over last year, but Trump said that a forensics consultant concluded the weapon appeared to have been wiped down and did not show fingerprints. 

"No way in hell it would have been cleaned here," Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely insisted about the weapon in an interview with the Inquirer, saying he only has a key to the evidence locker. "We’re not magicians and we’re not Columbo, but we take our jobs seriously and call it as we see it."

He could not explain why an autopsy was never performed on the body. Only a toxicology report was put together that showed Presutti had consumed a small amount of methamphetamine. 

Fox News has reached out to both West and Blakely for comment. Separately, Blakely is scheduled to stand trial this month for ethics and theft charges after allegedly gambling away public funds at a Mississippi casino, AL.com reported. 

Forensics Pieces, a forensic consultant agency based in Pensacola, Florida, said in an August 2020 report conducted for the family that Presutti’s body appeared to have been moved after the shooting, and the location of the gun was "not consistent with the location expected from a self-inflicted gunshot wound." It also said sheriff’s investigators and the coroner’s office likely confused the head entry wound for the exit wound. 

"The entire case demands additional investigation," Forensic Pieces president Jan Johnson, a former analyst for the FBI and Florida Department of Law Enforcement, wrote in the report for the family, according to the Inquirer. 

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Jeremy Cameron, who owned the property where Presutti's trailer was located and lived just yards away, said he was the first to find the body and call police. The sheriff’s office later seized methamphetamine, marijuana and pills from the property while conducting a search warrant and Cameron and his girlfriend, Shavonna Sue Barton, were arrested on drug distribution charges, AL.com reported. 

It’s unclear if the couple was ever investigated as persons of interest in connection to Presutti’s death.