To get to Grant Town, you have to cross Paw Paw Creek on a one-lane bridge that has been festooned with white, pink and red plastic flowers as a memorial to Warren from his friends. On a recent night, with the full moon overhead, bullfrogs croak. Crickets chirp. Fireflies twinkle. The power plant roars. It's a town where local commerce isn't much more than two Pepsi machines, a phone booth and a lawn mower repair shop on Main Street. People know the details of each other's lives; anyone, for example, can tell you that the lawn mower repair shop is run by Larry "LaLa" Merico, previously a coal miner, then the town cop, then a writer for the local newspaper, penning a column called "LaLa's Porch." ("One of the Pepsi machines doesn't work," Merico says. But the two machines "make the town feel a lot bigger.")

Before it was even time for the fireworks show this past Fourth of July, the town was already abuzz about the death of J.R. Warren. Four days later, Warren's body was laid out at Mount Beulah Baptist Church in an open casket, as demanded by his father, who wanted people to see what had happened to his son: his lips sliced with blood-dried cuts, his cheeks bruised, his forehead swollen and protruding as if a water balloon had been tucked inside.

Through his death, the country has learned that Warren was a developmentally challenged young man who was also gay, and who lived in a town with a sign that reads: "Grant Town, A Growing Progressive Community." But the country knows very little about what really happened to Warren during the night that led to his death.

Lawyers, officials and immediate family members involved in the case declined to comment for this story. But by all accounts, Warren left his house around 11:30 p.m. on July 3. His mother told friends she reminded him that he had a curfew, and that he had told her he'd be back in an hour. He left his house on Paw Paw Street, which is called "Black Bottom" by some of the town's white residents because it's at the bottom of town, and most of Grant Town's black residents live there in small bungalows with tiny yards.

Warren walked up to Main Street and made a right turn up to 101 View Ave., a one-level wood frame house famous around town as the home where Olympic gold medal gymnast Mary Lou Retton's father, Ronnie, grew up.

Sources close to the investigation say that a boy Warren knew, 17-year-old David Parker, summoned him over to his family house. The house was empty while David, along with Jason, 15, and Jared Wilson, 17, were painting it.

The three boys had hung out together since childhood. David and Jared were second cousins, and Jared and Jason were cousins through Jason's older half-brother. The two older boys had earned quite a reputation in the neighborhood and school as troublemakers, David in particular.

David had asked Warren to bring two specific items with him to the house: cigarettes and Xanax tablets. According to sources familiar with the investigation, Warren recently had been prescribed Xanax, an anti-anxiety drug. It was like Warren, say people who knew him, to be "a people pleaser," even fulfilling the requests of someone like David, whom many in the neighborhood recall having heard call Warren "faggot" and "queer."

When Warren showed up, the boys began to crush the Xanax, and then started to snort it as a way to get high. There can be adverse effects to taking Xanax, including hostility, irritability and excitability, if it hasn't been prescribed correctly. Those effects can be aggravated further when the drug is snorted, a more potent way of ingesting the drug. And when it's mixed with volatile personalities and alcohol -- which it's understood David, Jared and Jason were consuming -- the consequences can be unpredictable and violent.

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