BALTIMORE -- After her son’s body was found facedown in a small rocky stream in the Sparks Glencoe area of Baltimore County on a cold March morning in 2021, Crystol Stallings expected — even hoped — that authorities would tell her he died of a drug overdose.

Stallings said he’d been doing well lately, but she knew that her son, William “Billy” Stallings, 29, had used heroin and had been in and out of multiple rehabs.

But authorities told her they couldn’t determine how he’d died.

“If they’d told me he died of an overdose, at least I’d have an answer,” Stallings, 53, told The Baltimore Sun.

Stallings is one of thousands who’ve mourned loved ones who died in Maryland over the past decade without a definitive explanation. In 2023, state medical examiners labeled the manner of death for nearly one of every five Maryland deaths they autopsied as “undetermined.” From 2015 to 2023, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner [OCME] categorized 14,813 deaths as undetermined.

Undetermined deaths cause ongoing anguish

For Stallings and others whose loved ones’ deaths are undetermined, the uncertainty produces ongoing anguish.

“I go to bed thinking about Amy, I wake up thinking about her,” said Mimi Gregory, a sister of Amy Metz, 43, whose body was found in Carroll County in the snow in January 2016. The OCME labeled Metz’s death as undetermined.

Cheryl Birhingham also finds it hard to come to terms with her son’s undetermined death. Nathan Birhingham, 31, was found dead in Carroll County in July 2015.

“I feel a sense of grief every morning when I wake up and see Nathan’s picture,” she said.

Losing a loved one suddenly is “a life-shattering loss,” said Melissa Murphy, a licensed clinical social worker and clinical director of Bethesda Therapy. Murphy has worked with many clients who never got an official reason for why their loved one died.

“Those are the hardest cases,” Murphy said.

“Not knowing a concrete reason [for the death] can be its own form of torture. It’s very easy for your mind to wander into all the potential scenarios for the loss,” Murphy said. “Some, [like Stallings has,] will go to great lengths to put together the puzzle pieces of how their child died.”

How did Billy die?

Stallings never stopped trying to solve that puzzle.

She took on the role of investigator the day her son died, tracking down witnesses and providing them to the police. She persuaded police to follow up on at least one of her leads, which investigators included in a follow-up report. Today, more than four years after Billy’s death, she’s continuing her personal crusade.

The OCME concluded in a six-page report that Billy died of “multiple injuries,” including “mixed drug toxicity and use, multiple abrasions, and evidence of hypothermia and drowning.” The autopsy concluded that the manner of death could not be determined.

The toxicology report said Billy tested positive for methadone, which Stallings said he was taking to try to recover from his heroin addiction, as well as cocaine, fentanyl, the anti-anxiety drug Alprazolam and benzoylecgonine, a cocaine metabolite.

Stephanie Moore, special assistant to Maryland’s chief medical examiner, said deaths are ruled undetermined if “there is no clear undisputed evidence that someone meant to do harm to (the person who died), that they meant to harm themselves, or that it was an accident.”

In police bodycam footage reviewed by The Sun, Billy’s girlfriend’s mother told police her boyfriend found Billy’s body in the stream. The boyfriend told police he ran into the house and told Billy’s girlfriend to call 911, according to the police report.

Stallings wants answers. How did Billy get there? Was it an accident? Did a fight lead to his death? What happened to her son?

A grieving mother’s relentless investigation

In the weeks following Billy’s death, Stallings emailed and called the police, urging them to interview witnesses. Investigators conducted multiple interviews and found no evidence of foul play. Nonetheless, Stallings believes they should keep investigating.

She certainly is.

She created a Facebook page, “Justice for William Stallings Jr.” The page has raised $11,000 for a reward for anyone who comes forward with information leading to an arrest and conviction in connection with her son’s death.

Stallings tracked down Facebook rumors that Billy and another man had fought the night before Billy died. She keeps screenshots of text messages from people who claim to know about the alleged fight.

Stallings believes the altercation, if it happened, could have played a role in his death.

“I’m not accusing the police of [misconduct],” Stallings said. “I’m accusing them of not doing enough.”

Confusing and contradictory witness statements

An updated police report from September 2021, reviewed by The Sun, included new, sometimes contradictory witness statements.

Four months after Billy’s death, police interviewed a witness Stallings provided. The witness told police a man “who was visibly intoxicated, admitted to getting into a physical fight with [Billy] on the evening prior to the discovery of his body.” That man was the boyfriend of Billy’s girlfriend’s mother.

The Sun is not naming the man because he has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

In the report, Billy’s girlfriend also told investigators that her mother, drunk, said her boyfriend had “killed” Billy. But in a follow-up police interview, her story changed. She said that her mother’s boyfriend had displayed a knife to intimidate her and that Billy and her mother’s boyfriend had argued, but never fought.

When an investigator interviewed the mother’s boyfriend, “he explained that at no time did he and [Billy] have any verbal or physical altercation,” the updated report said.

The Sun’s attempts to reach Billy’s girlfriend, the girlfriend’s mother, and her boyfriend for comment were unsuccessful.

A police investigator, Matthew Krauch, concluded no evidence of a crime existed. In response to questions from The Sun, Detective Trae A. Corbin reiterated Krauch’s conclusions.

Case closed.

“Sometimes you just have these weird cases”

Stallings’ suspicion that authorities were less than vigilant is common among the loved ones of people who die under unclear circumstances, said Dr. Constance R. DiAngelo, a pathologist based in Washington, D.C., who works for New Jersey’s medical examiner.

But some autopsies are legitimately unable to find a manner of death.

“Sometimes you just have these weird cases,” DiAngelo said. “Not everything is black and white or cut and dried.”

For example, the autopsy found abrasions on or near Billy’s forehead, right eyebrow, right ear, elbow, forearm and wrist. Stallings said those injuries could be evidence that her son was in a fight.

However, DiAngelo, who reviewed Billy’s autopsy for The Sun, said the report cannot determine whether Billy sustained the injuries from a fight, by falling from a steep culvert into a rocky stream, or whether he was pushed. With unreliable witnesses and without definitive evidence like camera footage, it is impossible to say what ultimately led to his death.

Keeping Billy’s memory alive

Stallings did everything she could to keep Billy alive, encouraging him as he cycled in and out of rehabs. In a tough-love move, three years before Billy died, she even took him to a funeral home and asked him to pick out his casket.

Now, Stallings does what she can to keep her son’s memory alive. At her home in Anne Arundel County, she’s put together a shrine to his memory in her living room with a votive candle, pictures of Billy and a print of a poem. She keeps an urn with his ashes. In the backyard, she placed a rock engraved with “Mothers Plant The Seeds Of Love That Bloom Forever,” under a planting of a willow tree.

“I go out there and talk to it,” she said.

On the anniversary of Billy’s death, family members gather near the tree and release 29 red balloons, one for each year of his life.

____

©2025 The Baltimore Sun. Visit at baltimoresun.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.