There are several theories about what happened to Michael Jansson outside Biology Bar in the early hours of Friday, March 9. No one–not his parents, his friends, the bouncers at the club, or the police–can agree on any of them. This much can be said with certainty: that night Jansson, a skinny 21-year-old from Lincolnwood, went to a party at the nightclub hosted by Phunky Pharaohs, promoters of club events attended mostly by young South Asians.
One reason for Jansson’s hermitlike existence might have been a conviction on a drug possession charge two years earlier. It should have been a relatively minor blemish on his record, but he’d repeatedly violated the terms of his sentence–by avoiding his probation officer for months at a time, failing drug tests, and missing court dates. A warrant was put out for his arrest last June, and in early January he was picked up by the Chicago police. His lawyer told him that if he didn’t straighten out soon he could face serious jail time.
None of Jansson’s friends saw what started the argument he got into, but Padavil witnessed the denouement: “He came up to me and said he was coming out of the bathroom or something and some guy bumped into him, looked at him wrong or something. They had their words and stuff, so he came and got me. ‘Show me the dude. Maybe I know him. I can squash it, you know what I mean? Peace it out?’ When we come up to the dude, next thing you know, Mike’s just talking hard to the guy. They’re talking hard to each other. Bouncers get in the middle of it. Bouncers grab both parties, and they escort the other guy out. Indian kid. Skinny kid. He was with other people. I think they were leaving already–they had their jackets. I’d say four or five. They kicked them out. They kicked Mike out.”
Roberts says he never told anyone to take a walk, but he did flag down a squad car because the Indian guy and his friends kept cruising past the club entrance, giving Jansson the stinkeye. “It was like a four-door Infiniti, but I don’t know which model it was,” he says. “I know it was either pearl or white, and I know they drove past the club a couple of times. That’s why I informed the police officer that drives past. I told them the situation. I told them this guy was sitting outside trying to gather his thoughts, and if he could just check on that car that keeps driving past because they were trying to antagonize him. I know the police went in the direction that they went. Now whether they went to go say something to them, or if they pulled them over, I don’t know.”
“We thought that the police maybe told him to leave,” says Lind.
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“Right when we came out of the club and realized he wasn’t there I started to call him,” says Chollampel, who was sure Jansson still had his cell phone. “I called at least three, four–four or five times,” using a friend’s cell phone. He didn’t answer, and eventually it sank in that they were stranded. “Luckily, we knew the people that were throwing the party,” says Chollampel. “We went with them to get breakfast, and one of my friends came back to our neighborhood. One of the first things we did was roll by Mike’s house. We were looking for [Lind’s] car. We stopped by his mom’s house. Nobody answered the door. So then we went to his sister’s house. She opened the door, and we said, ‘Do you know where Mike is?’ She said, ‘I thought he was with you.’ We told her what happened, and I guess at that time we didn’t really think much of it–like he just didn’t get home yet. But my girlfriend’s house keys were with the keys for her car. After we dropped Fari off at the house, me and my girlfriend went back out to Biology Bar. We drove my van up and down all the streets, maybe like a four-, five-block radius. And nothing. I saw a cop, so I waved him down. I said, ‘My friend is missing. He had my girlfriend’s car. Have you seen anything? Have there been any incidents?’ The police officer said, ‘No. This whole area’s been quiet all night.’ Then he pointed out the police station a couple blocks away. I went through all the accident reports that day. I told them the license-plate number and the make and model of the car. Nothing was reported. So we ended up just going to our friend’s house early that morning, because [Lind] didn’t have keys.”
Padavil says he had no intention of meeting anyone anywhere, much less in K-Town, the west-side neighborhood where the caller said he regularly hung out. Padavil had to be at work at 2 PM, and since Chollampel was supposed to give him a ride, he would explain the situation and let his cousin take it from there.
