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Speaker 1: Long Shot is a production of McClatchy Studios and I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Previously on Return Man, It is coming to

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Speaker 1: Duncan a real threat. You have such a great speed

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Speaker 1: witness he could break one of a close game, and

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Speaker 1: you went, I want to jafter. Guys on the team

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Speaker 1: we run working on the day and don't just extra money.

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Speaker 1: You know, they look like we were so we were

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Speaker 1: trying to make a living of like by war. How

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Speaker 1: can you tell black people to be non violently and

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Speaker 1: at the same time condone the sinning of white killers

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Speaker 1: as well? What are you gonna call this book? Speedy?

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Speaker 1: From the cotton fields to Glory? He would have done

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Speaker 1: some good things in life. I was told repeatedly during

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Speaker 1: my reporting that Jim Duncan could be quite friendly and generous.

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Speaker 1: And you've been led eight kids, got going out having

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Speaker 1: been raised in poverty, he knew how it felt to

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Speaker 1: go hungry. You got the blowing it with what you

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Speaker 1: got to do. But in all the time I've looked

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Speaker 1: into Jim's life, I've been struck by how few people

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Speaker 1: said they really knew him that well. I just remember you,

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Speaker 1: the lanky cup guy, and I do remember being a

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Speaker 1: good guy. H Jeff Beaver was the quarterback for the

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Speaker 1: Capitol Colts team Jim played on. That always seemed a

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Speaker 1: little odd. It's a word that came up more than

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Speaker 1: once during interviews with his former teammates. Yeah. Ways, but

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Speaker 1: I just thought, everybody, you know, we all got a

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Speaker 1: long way and him on a great way by Jim Duncan.

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Speaker 1: As long as he did what he needed to do

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Speaker 1: in the field, that's all I was interested in. Eddie

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Speaker 1: Hinton was the cultural receiver who faced Jim every day

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Speaker 1: in practice. That didn't make sense to me, But you

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Speaker 1: know who was out of Saint Yeah you thinking, Yeah

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Speaker 1: for the next day look out at the Kansas City

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Speaker 1: forty nine yard line. I knew that Jim had had

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Speaker 1: some personal problems, but hey, we all Bill Curry was

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Speaker 1: the cold center and team captain during Jim's time in Baltimore.

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Speaker 1: Really good NFL team. You don't have a bunch of

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Speaker 1: really well adjusted Sunday school guys. But no one knew

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Speaker 1: just how far Jim would fall. Jim had some problems,

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Speaker 1: but I didn't remember what they were, and I did

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Speaker 1: not get involved. From the Herald, McClatchy studios and I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio, this is return man. I'm brought McCormick and

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Speaker 1: this is part three The Burden nine. He's Robs O'Brien.

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Speaker 1: That one offseason, Jim's life changed dramatically off the field.

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Speaker 1: Over the summer, he visited a friend from his college

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Speaker 1: days named Lawrence Acker. Duke Acker as he was known.

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Speaker 1: Your name had come up as a friend of his

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Speaker 1: and wondered if he had like a little while to

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Speaker 1: talk about him. Acker is in his seventies now and

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Speaker 1: lives down in Greenville, South Carolina, not far from Lancaster.

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Speaker 1: How did you guys meet? Was it in Greenville? You

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Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about? Right? Did you call him

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Speaker 1: butch maybe? Or a speedy He declined to lend his

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Speaker 1: voice to this podcast, but he told me that Jim

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Speaker 1: was a devoted and committed friend. He said that even

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Speaker 1: with all his football success, Jim turned his attention to

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Speaker 1: life outside of sports. He and Acker decided they would

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Speaker 1: finance a South Carolina franchise of a popular whig store

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Speaker 1: Jim had seen in Baltimore. Duke knew two women in

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Speaker 1: Greenville he thought would be perfect to run the business.

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Speaker 1: So the plan was for the women to go to

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Speaker 1: Baltimore for a little while to learn the ropes at

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Speaker 1: the store. Then they'd returned to open the new franchise

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Speaker 1: in Greenville. I found a couple more photos that I thought,

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Speaker 1: even one a seat, and I actually emailed these two

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Speaker 1: this morning. One of those women was twenty year old

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Speaker 1: Alice Marie Young, and over time Jim began to look

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Speaker 1: at her as more than just a business partner. Maryland

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Speaker 1: State has Um had a yearbook online that was like,

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Speaker 1: I think a sophomore year, so it was younger there.

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Speaker 1: I thought it was a great picture him though. Alice

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Speaker 1: declined to lend her voice to this podcast, but we

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Speaker 1: sat down together multiple times in the lobby of a

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Speaker 1: hotel near Greenville, and we spoke there for nearly four hours.

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Speaker 1: This is a Monday night football broadcast from like nineteen

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Speaker 1: and seventy was on YouTube. They showed like who he

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Speaker 1: was matched up against. I just stopped it and took

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Speaker 1: a picture that was interesting. Alice is in her seventies

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Speaker 1: now and still lives near Greenville. It's the hometown she

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Speaker 1: thought she'd be going back to during the fall of

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Speaker 1: seventy one after the training in Baltimore was finished, But

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Speaker 1: once she got to Charmed City, Jim called an audible.

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Speaker 1: He lived in Sutton Place in Baltimore. Um nice place, looted.

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Speaker 1: Jim asked her to stay and move in with him

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Speaker 1: at his Sutton Place apartment in Baltimore. The two had

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Speaker 1: only known each other for a few months, so it

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Speaker 1: may have been an impulsive thing for Jim to ask,

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Speaker 1: but Alice was just as taken with him and happy

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Speaker 1: to be impulsive right back. By that fall of seventy one,

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Speaker 1: a new NFL season was underway. Jim made plenty of

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Speaker 1: money with the Colts, so Alice didn't have to work.

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Speaker 1: She waited there in Baltimore for Jim to come home

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Speaker 1: from practices and road games. One of the things that

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Speaker 1: I've learned about him is that he compartmentalized his life.

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Speaker 1: But even a love struck twenty year old couldn't help.

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Speaker 1: But notice Jim had a funny way of keeping her

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Speaker 1: in the dark. Being the time that it was, it

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Speaker 1: was easier for him to keep things to himself. You

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Speaker 1: guys nowadays would have face time, text email. Whatever. Whatever

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Speaker 1: his issues, it may not have helped that Jim season

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Speaker 1: began with sky high expectations. The second alright, Jim Duncan,

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Speaker 1: that's the right quarterback and immediately fell to earth coming

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Speaker 1: up Hart Jim Ducan from his right cornerback position. Jim

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Speaker 1: missed almost the entire preseason with an ankle injury and

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Speaker 1: never seemed to fully recover. Lambs trailing to Botall Jim.

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Speaker 1: He started the first three games that year, but by

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Speaker 1: November Jim was clearly struggling. He looked lost trying to

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Speaker 1: cover an l A Ram receiver in this Monday night

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Speaker 1: game going touchdown. Duncan is complaining it was out of bounds.

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Speaker 1: Duncan is complaining because he wasn't covering. A news story

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Speaker 1: from that year said Jim was beaten in one on

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Speaker 1: one coverage six times during a close loss to the

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Speaker 1: Cleveland Browns. Jim told the reporter quote, after that, all

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Speaker 1: the lines started coming together. Another alarming story from that

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Speaker 1: season was reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer. One of Jim's teammates,

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Speaker 1: Roy Hilton, told the Inquirer that the two got into

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Speaker 1: an argument over a card game that turned into a

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Speaker 1: fist fight, which was surprising enough for a guy who

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Speaker 1: was said to be so likable. Hilton told the paper

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Speaker 1: that Jim left the room after getting punched, and when

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Speaker 1: Hilton left soon after Jim was waiting for him outside

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Speaker 1: with a loaded gun. The Inquirer wrote that other Colts

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Speaker 1: players took the gun from Jim before anything happened. No

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Speaker 1: one I interviewed for this podcast could confirm that happened.

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Speaker 1: And Hilton has passed away. But I asked Upton Bell

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Speaker 1: about it. He's the Colts executive who helped draft both players,

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Speaker 1: so he never got confirmation from Hilton. Now, and I'd

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Speaker 1: asked Eddie Hilton, and by Hilton was thought a bullshitter. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Hilton was a man of few words. If Hilton seven,

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Speaker 1: I believe it. If true, it would mean that by

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Speaker 1: late nineteen seventy one, Jim was in a dangerous place.

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Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Throughout the rest of Jim's Ugly

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Speaker 1: V Football season, Alice remembers his behavior at home becoming

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Speaker 1: increasingly odd. Sometimes it was little things like the two

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Speaker 1: sets of curtains he insisted on using to keep the

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Speaker 1: bedroom pitch black. But Alice told me that sometimes the

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Speaker 1: episodes were more frightening. It's another one of those things that,

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Speaker 1: as much as you want to get into it, did

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Speaker 1: he like become like abusing? She told me, Jim was

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Speaker 1: never abusive, but that he would sometimes grab her with

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Speaker 1: a fire in his eyes that came out of nowhere. Clearly,

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Speaker 1: the Colts noticed it too late. That nineteen season, team

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Speaker 1: executives told Jim they were sending him to a doctor

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Speaker 1: to be tested for something that could explain his looking

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Speaker 1: lost on the field and his erratic behavior off of it.

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Speaker 1: I talked to a ct expert at UM Southern count

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Speaker 1: and you know, there are seven year old NFL players

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Speaker 1: that have died that they were able to do the

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Speaker 1: autopsy on the brain and they found that they had

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Speaker 1: ct Today, listeners will recognize similarities between Jim's worsening mental

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Speaker 1: state in a neurodegenerative disease called chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE.

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Speaker 1: Researchers at Boston University examined the brains of one hundred

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Speaker 1: and eleven deceased NFL players. They found signs of the

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Speaker 1: disease ct and a hundred and ten. Jim's confusion on defense,

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Speaker 1: his impulsiveness and aggressiveness at home, even light sensitivity. They're

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Speaker 1: all symptoms broadly associated with CTE, which in recent years

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Speaker 1: has become increasingly associated with repeated hits to the head

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Speaker 1: that NFL players suffered doc getness, but whoting it was

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Speaker 1: auto bounds. Dunt get his complaining because he wasn't covering.

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Speaker 1: Since we've known that people exposed to many concussions developed

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Speaker 1: brain changes, and those brain changes couldn't lead them to

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Speaker 1: be demented, just like someone with Alzheimer's disease, but a

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Speaker 1: much younger age. Jeff Viktorov is an associate professor of

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Speaker 1: clinical neurology at the University of Southern California. He wrote

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Speaker 1: a groundbreaking textbook on concussions and traumatic en cephalopathy. Ten

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Speaker 1: years ago, we knew that NFL full players or others

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Speaker 1: who exposed multiple concussions during adulthood would be at risk

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Speaker 1: for various kinds of bad brain change. In the last

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Speaker 1: ten years, we now know that if a kid started

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Speaker 1: playing football before age twelve and then joined the NFL,

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Speaker 1: he's much more likely to suffer those brain changes. What

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Speaker 1: that means, if you kind of do the math, is

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Speaker 1: that almost every boy who plays football before age twelve

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Speaker 1: has to experience some degree of permanent brain damage. High

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Speaker 1: school football players typically have five brain rattling experiences every season.

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Speaker 1: Damas today is cheap, we'll kick it off you're guys

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Speaker 1: had all the Baltimore coach number thirty five Jim dum

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Speaker 1: ball game is under way. Many of Duncan's former college

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Speaker 1: and proteinmates told me horror stories about their own football

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Speaker 1: related head injuries. You know they wouldn't wear those things

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Speaker 1: like the corn field Eddie Hitton, the Colts receiver Jim

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Speaker 1: Face in practice, talked about getting hit so hard in

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Speaker 1: the game for the next few downs. He saw two

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Speaker 1: footballs on every play, and the quarterback and throw the ball.

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Speaker 1: I saw kiland I've reached and maybe always seem granted

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Speaker 1: right one. Jim would have been especially vulnerable to head injuries.

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Speaker 1: Jim Duncan numb the thirty five vat FO Baltimore. He

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Speaker 1: played offense, defense, and special teams from childhood through college,

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Speaker 1: so he was on the field almost the entire game.

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Speaker 1: In the NFL, he was best known for returning kickoffs,

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Speaker 1: perhaps the game's most dangerous play. They hit the sleep

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Speaker 1: under the corner that dot, that's time Doting will come

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Speaker 1: out with him. Tackler's from the opposing team charged sixty

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Speaker 1: yards at full speed to hit him as hard as

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Speaker 1: they could. He is beyond the point of five Baltimore's

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Speaker 1: wall verst than that at their own by seven dog.

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Speaker 1: It's almost guaranteed any child or adults who rattles his

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Speaker 1: brain enough to say, WHOA, I lost it there for

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Speaker 1: a second has had an injurious impact on the part

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Speaker 1: of the brain that controls emotions. Your subject may have

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Speaker 1: experienced significant changes in an ability to understand what was

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Speaker 1: threatening and not threatening, what he should respond with violent

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Speaker 1: behavior too, and all that would be a normal and

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Speaker 1: expected reaction to multiple concussions. No one can say for

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Speaker 1: sure that Jim was suffering from CTE. Diagnosing that requires

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Speaker 1: preserving the patient's brain within twenty four hours of their death,

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Speaker 1: and no one did that in Jim's case. CTE wasn't

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Speaker 1: even a diagnosable condition until the early two thousand's. But

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Speaker 1: in hindsight, for Alice, that would explain a lot. It's

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Speaker 1: completely reasonable. He was twenty six at least, probably played

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Speaker 1: fifteen years and may have played, you know, probably around

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Speaker 1: there fifteen years of football. A lot of things on

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Speaker 1: your brain equipment is rudimentary. It pains me that there's

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Speaker 1: no way to prove it, but I really feel there,

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Speaker 1: and I mean, you've just given me even more She

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Speaker 1: told me quote that would explain his actions and the

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Speaker 1: changes in him. I've heard from other women who have

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Speaker 1: husbands who went through the same things, especially when the

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Speaker 1: women say that they couldn't live with them anymore. They

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Speaker 1: got to the point that they had to move away

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Speaker 1: having gone through a lot of things with Jim. That

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Speaker 1: is what I saw. All the evidence is there. Jim

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Speaker 1: played in eleven games for the Colts that seventy one season,

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Speaker 1: but he only returned three kicks that year, and he

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Speaker 1: fumbled twice. The Colts never got an official diagnosis for

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Speaker 1: what they thought was wrong with him, at least none

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Speaker 1: that Alice heard that off season. In early nine, the

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Speaker 1: Colts traded Jim to the New Orleans Saints for an

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Speaker 1: offensive lineman and draft picks. In a few months, Jim

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Speaker 1: would report to training camp with the Saints, but in

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Speaker 1: the meantime, he and Alice headed back to South Carolina.

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Speaker 1: In late January two, Jim and Alice moved into one

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Speaker 1: of the bedrooms of the house he built in Lancaster.

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Speaker 1: His mother, Ellerie Clyburne, lived there, along with a handful

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Speaker 1: of Jim's youngest brothers and sisters, including Moral United Clyburne.

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Speaker 1: Jim's youngest brother, who recently had been born, Carl mar

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Speaker 1: who came off the bench following Andrew D Johnny United.

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Speaker 1: He was the last of Jim's seven siblings. In honor

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Speaker 1: of the greatest season of Jim's life and the two

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Speaker 1: quarterbacks who had helped engineer it, Jim chose the name

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Speaker 1: for his youngest brother. There's a great failing to the

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Speaker 1: side on the wedding side, and that I just set

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Speaker 1: about Jim. That Orange Bowl in Miami must have felt

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Speaker 1: farther away than ever. And Acker, Jim's partner in the

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Speaker 1: whig business, told me quote, although I felt like I

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Speaker 1: was his best friend, I don't know that I knew

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Speaker 1: exactly where his head was all the time. For months,

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Speaker 1: the two had forged ahead with trying to launch that

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Speaker 1: whig shop. They'd renovated a storefront in a Greenville strip

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Speaker 1: mall and bought inventory, paying for at least half of

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Speaker 1: it with Jim's money. Exactly how much was spent is

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Speaker 1: another piece of this story without an easy answer. It's

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Speaker 1: also not clear Jim's family and friends understood what his

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Speaker 1: financial situation really was, and that it probably wasn't as

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Speaker 1: good as they thought. Defense that wait for the Baltimore

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Speaker 1: Colt Jim doctor on the right side as a taxi

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Speaker 1: squad player in nineteen sixty eight. Jim was paid so

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Speaker 1: little he needed a second job in the off season.

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Speaker 1: In Baltimore, Jim made about fifteen thousand dollars a season

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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine, nineteen seventy and nineteen seventy one.

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Speaker 1: That's about a hundred thousand a year in today's dollars.

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Speaker 1: Jim also earned a fifteen thousand dollar bonus for winning

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventy Super Bowl, So in total, Jim was

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Speaker 1: paid a little more than sixty thousand dollars by the Colts,

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Speaker 1: or a max of about four hundred thousand in today's money.

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Speaker 1: We were very free with his money. You know, at

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Speaker 1: that time he made like a thousand, which was a

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Speaker 1: lot of money. In seven one of my early conversations

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Speaker 1: with Jim's brother, Elroy, underscored how generous Jim was and

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Speaker 1: how much confusion there was about his finances. He most

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Speaker 1: of the time when he was the daddy, you know,

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Speaker 1: all arrest I was. He took care of me when

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Speaker 1: I was in college. You know, in the pro whether

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Speaker 1: Jim misled people about his money didn't have a firm

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Speaker 1: grasp on it himself or was just the subject of

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Speaker 1: wishful thinking. He had already bought his mother a house

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Speaker 1: in Baltimore. Jim had lived in a high rise on

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Speaker 1: Park Avenue and bought a Lincoln Mark three luxury car.

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Speaker 1: He'd even given away a prize possession for any football player,

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Speaker 1: the championship ring each Colt received for winning the nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy Super Bowl. That giant fourteen carrot gold ring had

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Speaker 1: a nearly one carrot diamond on top, surrounded by a

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Speaker 1: white gold horse shoe embedded with seven blue sapphires. It

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Speaker 1: was probably worth about two thousand dollars at the time,

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Speaker 1: and Alice said he just gave it to his aunt.

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Speaker 1: I really wonder if he was having money problems, because

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Speaker 1: I don't think a Super Bowl ring with disappearance about

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Speaker 1: at time. It was another way Alice was kept in

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Speaker 1: the dark. He was able to keep things from his brother,

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Speaker 1: his mom, from you, and I think he carried all

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Speaker 1: of it, all of it. Jim gave the Lincoln Mark

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Speaker 1: three to Elroy, and once Jim and Alice moved back

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Speaker 1: to Lancaster, he bought a smaller Canary yellow black top

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Speaker 1: VW Bug. But that wig business seemed to drag Jim

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Speaker 1: deeper into a financial hole. There were stories that I

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Speaker 1: found that said he had lost a lot of money.

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Speaker 1: Did Jim like invest a lot in that company? When

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Speaker 1: I asked Acker about how much Jim might have lost,

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Speaker 1: he told me, quote, I'm not a money type man,

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Speaker 1: so I can't really say he lost some money and

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Speaker 1: I lost some money. But at one point in Jim

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Speaker 1: told a reporter he lost as much as sixty dollars

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Speaker 1: in that business, which would have been nearly all of

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Speaker 1: his NFL earnings right there. I don't want to be

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Speaker 1: accusatory or anything. Did I mean, did you keep up

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Speaker 1: with him much after the business to work out? Or

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Speaker 1: did you guys kind of just go your separate ways.

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Speaker 1: There's a long history of pro athletes sinking money into

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Speaker 1: failed businesses, often run by their friends. But when we spoke,

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Speaker 1: Acker clearly disputed any implication he might have taken advantage

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Speaker 1: of his friend. He told me, quote, I can tell

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Speaker 1: you without a doubt, there wasn't a whole lot of

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Speaker 1: money lost in the venture. Hell I bought as many

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Speaker 1: lunches and dinners as he did we'll be back in

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Speaker 1: a moment. For James Edward Duncan and Alice Marie Young,

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Speaker 1: April Fool's Day two was no joke. Alice had become

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Speaker 1: one of the few remaining rays of light in Jim's

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Speaker 1: life as his football career started spiraling. By all accounts,

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Speaker 1: Jim lavished gifts on his family and friends, maybe Alice

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Speaker 1: most of all, and she'll remember the red, white and

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Speaker 1: blue dress Jim gave her that spring for the rest

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Speaker 1: of her life. That April one in Lancaster, they'd row

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Speaker 1: from the house Jim had built at the end of

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Speaker 1: Islam Street to the courthouse at the center of town.

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Speaker 1: Jim and Alice had known each other for less than

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Speaker 1: a year. Alice was twenty one years old, and Jim's

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Speaker 1: life had become a whirlwind. Alice told me that just

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Speaker 1: about the only person at the courthouse that day was

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Speaker 1: the probate judge. Jim hadn't even told her why he'd

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Speaker 1: asked her to wear that special dress, or why he'd

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Speaker 1: brought her to the courthouse in the first place. Finally,

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Speaker 1: Alice told me Jim had simply said, we're going to

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Speaker 1: get married today. As she remembers it, it wasn't really

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Speaker 1: a question. I thought it would have a witness on

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Speaker 1: her living. Alice show me their marriage license. The witness

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Speaker 1: appears to have been that judge's secretary. Okay, Sandra, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Sandra Estridge was your witness. Romantic. As rough as the

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Speaker 1: prior NFL season had been for Jim with the Colts,

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Speaker 1: according to Alice, he was in rush to report to

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Speaker 1: the Gulf Coast. So you lived in Lancashire, so in

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Speaker 1: seventy two, like after you've gotten ready. They had been

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Speaker 1: living on a street with Jim's family for the previous

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Speaker 1: few months, which would put a strain on any couple,

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Speaker 1: but Jim's reluctance to play for the Saints, or maybe

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Speaker 1: just play football anymore at all, became another source of

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Speaker 1: ongoing arguments. Alice told me she was far less worried

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Speaker 1: about Jim leaving football than she was about the two

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Speaker 1: of them making a life together some place other than

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Speaker 1: in that family home in Lancaster. But for Jim's family,

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Speaker 1: his quitting the game would mean the end of those

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Speaker 1: NFL paychecks for him and the relatives he'd been supporting.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and and you know you think that your

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Speaker 1: brother makes four times more than he makes. That's a

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Speaker 1: simple misunderstanding. Alice told me. She said to Jim, quote,

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Speaker 1: you make up your mind what you want to do.

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Speaker 1: Leave front of the corner. Duckling will come out whatever.

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Speaker 1: It's fine with me, whether you play football or not,

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Speaker 1: but let it be your to Asian. The storm clouds

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Speaker 1: were engulfing Jim's life and the stunning end was approaching

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Speaker 1: for more than just his NFL career. And I'm part

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Speaker 1: four of Return Man. He made something kind of thing

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Speaker 1: with about ideas never realized and having money would create

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Speaker 1: so many problems. They're nothing bad that I could tell

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Speaker 1: you about what other than he could love one el

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Speaker 1: Ray told me that Jim had a kid. Did you

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Speaker 1: know that he was dating a few of the local

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Speaker 1: white girls. It was something that some people were obviously

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Speaker 1: threatened by. I'm working on a story. Have you got

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Speaker 1: some time to talk? I'm Brett McCormick. Return Man is

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Speaker 1: a production of The Herald, McClatchy Studios and I Heart Radio.

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Speaker 1: It's produced by Matt Walsh, Karat Tabor Cotta, Stevens, Rachel Wise,

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Speaker 1: and David Coburn. The executive produce Surfer. I Heart Radio

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Speaker 1: is Sean Titone. For lots more on this story, go

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Speaker 1: to Harold online dot com slash return Man. If you

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Speaker 1: have any additional information about Jim Duncan's life or death,

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Speaker 1: email us at return Man at Harold online dot com.

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Speaker 1: To continue supporting this kind of work, visit Harold online

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00:23:18,760 --> 00:23:23,199
Speaker 1: dot com slash Podcasts and consider a digital subscription. And

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Speaker 1: for more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I

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Speaker 1: heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

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Speaker 1: your favorite shows