Private investigator: ‘Questions need to be answered’ in GVSU student’s death

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — New questions are being raised about the death of a Grand Valley State University student while he visited Michigan State University in October 2021.

Brendan Santo, 18, was found dead in the Red Cedar River a few months later. The county’s medical examiner ruled the death an accidental drowning and the case was closed. But now, a private investigator says that should not have happened.

“The family deserves closure,” Ryan Robison, a licensed private detective and certified fraud examiner looking into Santo’s death, told News 8 Tuesday. “It’s almost like they’re reliving the loss of their son again. We don’t know what happened to him.”

Santo went to MSU to visit friends for the football game against University of Michigan. He was last seen leaving Yakeley Hall just before midnight Oct. 29 and walking near Michigan Avenue and Beal Street. That’s when he disappeared . Authorities launched a search .

Robison said his wife Katie had followed the case closely and encouraged him to get involved.

“It had been so long and there was a desperation to get him found and get him back home,” he said.

Robison started working with the Santo family in January 2022. Later that month, he found Santo’s body in the Red Cedar River .

By March 2022, the Ingham County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Santo died from an accidental drowning. The office listed acute ethanol intoxication as a contributing factor since his blood alcohol content was 0.22.

“I don’t think he died as a result of alcohol,” Robison said.

In February 2024, Robison received the police reports and autopsy results through a Freedom of Information Act request. He showed the autopsy to his wife, who has a master’s in science and experience in the medical field.

“Within the first minute or two of her looking at it, she said to me, ‘I’m not finding any signs of what I’d expect in drowning,’” he said. “‘I don’t see anything that points to the fact that Brendan drowned.'”

The autopsy results revealed there was no water in Santo’s lungs and the weight of his lungs was normal, Robison said his wife Katie told him — there was no water referenced in his stomach or sinuses, either.

Robison brought the autopsy results to Chief Oakland County Medical Examiner Ljubisa Dragovic, who is unaffiliated with the case.

“He said, ‘Well, I can tell you this, he didn’t drown,” Robison said. “There was no proof in the report or any sign of drowning.”

Dragovic also told Detroit NBC affiliate WDIV this week that drowning should not have been confirmed as a cause of death. He agreed with Robison that the case shouldn’t have been closed and instead should have been left undetermined.

“A person may be dead before being placed in the body of water,” Dragovic told WDIV. “Generally, the careful evaluation of all the possible and available materials there lead you to a conclusion. If it is not possible to conclude, then the case is best left undetermined, not closed, because there is a good suspicion that someone might have generated some less-visible or less-apparent injury in a decomposed situation, decomposed remains being found and foul play cannot be safely excluded.”

Robison also reached out to two other chief medical examiners out of state to get their opinions on the autopsy results.

“They both essentially said the same thing,” he said.

Police originally said Santo’s cellphone last pinged just after midnight the night he vanished. The belief was he drowned around then. But police reports obtained by News 8 show his phone also pinged around 2:40 a.m. and didn’t have a location associated with it.

“It obviously brings up a lot of concerns because now we’re two and a half hours after they believe that Brendan was in the water,” Robison said.

The police report also noted that a blue GVSU lanyard was found near the intersection of Clippert Street and Kalamazoo Street a few days after Santo went missing, close to where his body was ultimately found.

“The reason I think that’s so important is that’s not an area where students would normally be,” Robison said.

While Robison can’t say yet whether he believes there’s foul play, he wants investigators to take a fresh look at the case.

“The questions need to be answered because that’s kind of what we’re left with,” he said.

Robison wants Michigan State Police to review the case and the autopsy and for the state attorney general to investigate the case as well.

A Michigan State University spokesperson said there has been no new evidence presented to indicate the possibility of any criminal activity. The spokesperson also said the investigation was comprehensive and included MSU Department of Police and Public Safety, the FBI and Michigan State Police.

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