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Dan Wetzel
Throughout the summer of 2003, America was focused on an evolving true-crime mystery down in Waco, Texas.
“Good Morning America.” CNN. Newspapers. ESPN. The story was everywhere.
All eyes were on what began as the missing person case of Baylor basketball player Patrick Dennehy. It later turned into a murder who-done-it after his body was found with two gunshot wounds to the head while decaying in a gravel pit outside of Waco. His car was found in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with the plates removed.
Soon, teammate Carlton Dotson confessed to the crime. The story became even more disgraceful when secret tapes emerged of Baylor coach Dave Bliss trying to frame Dennehy, the deceased, as a drug dealer amid an NCAA investigation into payments to players.
The scandal has faded so far from public consciousness, though, that few knew and it is believed no media reported that Dotson had been approved for parole on March 25, 2024 — after serving a little more than half of his 35-year sentence.
That continued until a KWTX-TV story in Waco earlier this month detailed that Dotson was out — some 15 months after approval and seven months after Dotson’s completion of a treatment program on Nov. 19 gained him full release.
It was shocking to many of the original participants in the story, including Abar Rouse, the one-time Baylor assistant coach, who recorded Bliss’ comments and, in a sad testament to the warped values of college basketball, lost his coaching career because he did the right thing by speaking out.
“I was stunned to hear about the parole,” Rouse told ESPN this week. “I had no idea.”
In addition to completing the treatment program and general parole requirements, Dotson, now 43, is in what Texas calls its “Super-Intensive Supervision Program,” which seeks to “minimize the threat to the community from dangerous offenders released on parole or mandatory supervision,” a spokesperson for the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles told ESPN.
Back in 2003, about seven weeks after Dennehy went missing, law enforcement arrested and charged Dotson with shooting his friend and teammate. Authorities said Dotson claimed demons were after him because he was “Jesus, the son of God.”
At the time of Dotson’s trial in 2005, when he pleaded guilty, the Dennehy family objected to his 35-year sentence, saying it was too short. They eventually decided to no longer fight Dotson’s possible release, finding admirable grace in the face of decades of loss and mourning.
“Over the years, Patrick’s sister, Wynn, and I have opposed Carlton’s parole,” Dennehy’s stepfather, Brian Brabazon, told ESPN this week. “In 2023, we softened our stance, as we think Patrick may have, and told [the Texas Department of Criminal Justice] we still felt he should do all this time, but we would let the parole board make their own decision.”
Brabazon knew of Dotson’s release because the TDCJ informed the family at the time and updates them whenever Dotson changes his address. Brabazon said Dotson is living in Houston, although he has bounced around Texas, including a stint in Waco, since getting out. Attempts to reach Dotson were unsuccessful.
If possible, Brabazon said, he would like to speak to Dotson, if only for a measure of closure.
“I haven’t reached out to him, but when we were looking for Patrick [in 2003], I spoke to Dotson on the phone and I asked what happened,” Brabazon said. “He told me if we could meet in person, he would tell me. I’m still waiting for his explanation.”
MEANWHILE, THERE IS Rouse, who’s life and career path was abruptly upended by the tragedy. A former Baylor student manager, he spent years climbing the coaching ladder at junior colleges in Iowa and North Carolina before, at age 27, landing what he thought was his big break — a spot on Bliss’ staff at Division I Baylor.
“Every young coach wants to be a head coach, lead their team to a championship and see their kids graduate,” Rouse said. ” I had that same aspiration.”
His first day was June 1. By June 12, Dennehy was missing. As the hunt for Dennehy and eventually his killer overtook everything, Bliss was focused on fending off an NCAA investigation into money being paid to players, including Dotson and Dennehy.
The plan was to tell authorities that Dennehy was a drug dealer and thus flush with cash. Rouse, perhaps alone at Baylor, acted with honor, when he went to a local Wal-Mart, bought a simple tape recorder and “wired myself” for subsequent conversations involving Bliss.
New on the job, he said he had little idea of how the program ran and thought no one would believe his word against a veteran coach if he didn’t have proof.
“We’re talking about perjury, asking people to smear or defame an innocent young man who had been killed,” Rouse said. “You’re breaking laws, you’re altering a murder investigation.”
He eventually turned in the tapes of Bliss discussing the plan and coaching players on what to say to the NCAA. Bliss and Baylor’s athletic director quickly resigned, and Baylor went with a fresh start, hiring Scott Drew and a new staff with no ties to the school. Drew has led the program to prominence, including the 2021 national title.
Rouse said he understood Baylor’s decision but didn’t anticipate being blackballed across the industry as he looked for assistant coaching jobs elsewhere.
To many head coaches, the fact that he recorded his boss mattered more than the potential crimes he was trying to document.
He briefly worked as a grad assistant at Division II Midwestern State under mentor Jeff Ray, but the low-paying job could only last so long. A once-promising young coach found no one else willing to even interview him. He admits to battling anger and sleepless nights.
“My question to those coaches was: What if that was their child?” Rouse said. “Would they still feel like that was OK? … When I walked into a kid’s house and recruited him, one of the things I did to reassure parents was tell them I was going to watch over them like they were my own. Well, some of us mean it and some of us don’t.”
If nothing else, Rouse exposed the complete lack of ethics coaches such as Bliss, now 81, and retired, possessed. Bliss initially apologized but then, in the 2017 Showtime documentary “Disgraced,” repeated many of the same lies about Dennehy.
“The situation with Carlton and Patrick had to come about to see that, for some people, there’s no limit, there’s no red line,” Rouse continued. “There’s nothing that they won’t do in order to secure victories, to get the next recruit.”
He now counts getting away from college basketball as a blessing of sorts because he turned to a career in, of all things, corrections, joining the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Now 49, the married father of four and grandfather of seven lives in Victorville, California, where he works as an assistant warden at one of the three sprawling federal facilities there.
“Sometimes I do wonder: Had I continued in coaching would I truly be happy?” Rouse said. “I’m happy now. I’m happy doing what I do, working with the people that I work with, working with people of integrity, working for an agency of integrity.
“I’m proud of it,” he continued. “I serve with pride. I don’t know if that would necessarily be true if I was in college basketball.”
He’s previously walked prison tiers, run recreational programs and taught inmate classes from Louisiana to Mississippi. At the ADX Supermax in Florence, Colorado — the “Alcatraz of the Rockies” — he supervised educational offerings for the country’s most dangerous offenders.
Every day is a new challenge. There are no roaring March Madness crowds, but there is a far greater purpose than winning games.
“You know, I’m a coach,” Rouse said. “I’ve always been a motivator. I’m going to be the guy out there doing extra and so that you can get other people to do extra. You’re basically coaching a team in this agency. You’re working with your staff; you’re working with the [inmates].”
The integrity that cost him his coaching career is nonnegotiable in his current role. Anything less endangers everyone and everything.
“Not having it can kill people,” Rouse said. “People can die. That’s not just specifically the Bureau of Prisons; that’s any prison. We always tell new troops: We run into danger; we don’t run from it.
“Integrity is one of our core values. That is what drew me into the agency and has sustained me through any tough time that I’ve had. ‘Fair, firm and consistent.’ It just so happens to line up with my background and what I believed as a human being.”
He was home with his wife two weekends ago when he heard of Dotson’s parole. He found himself taken by emotion at all that happened in 2003 and since.
“It just all came back,” Rouse said. “I thought, obviously, of Patrick and Patrick’s family. I thought about Pat’s mom, his sister, his stepdad and how hurt they’re going to be.
“I also believe in rehabilitation though. You can’t work in prison if you don’t believe in rehabilitation. … Is [Dotson] rehabilitated? Is he ready to function? Did he get what he needed inside to be able to function?
“One kid is gone and, and that’s a tragedy. And the kid that did it is now out. And how do you feel about that?”
The answer isn’t simple. Not for Rouse, not for Dennehy’s family, not for anyone.
For most of America, a once all-consuming story has faded from memory. For those in it, however, the impact never ends.
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