MEMPHIS - A University of Alabama football booster died when he hit his head in an accidental fall at home, rather than being slain as first thought, Memphis police said Thursday.
Police initially described the death of 65-year-old Logan Young as a bloody slaying after a fierce struggle but quit calling it a homicide a day later.
"We treated it as a homicide, the most serious, and put the puzzle together," Police Director Larry Godwin said.
Homicide Lt. Joe Scott said police believe Young tripped while carrying a salad and soft drink up a set of stairs to a bedroom TV area and hit his head on a decorative iron railing.
The fall onto the railing opened a large gash across the top of Young's head and he dropped to the floor bleeding profusely, Scott said at a news conference.
After lying on the floor for some time, Young got up and walked bleeding through several rooms of his spacious, two-story house before ending up in his second-floor bedroom, Scott said. His housekeeper found the body beside his bed Tuesday morning.
"There was a lot of blood," Scott said.
The medical examiner listed the probable cause of death as "blunt force trauma due to fall down stairs." Results of routine drug and alcohol tests will not be available for several weeks.
Young, who was divorced and lived alone, apparently tried to slow the bleeding with towels from the kitchen downstairs and a bathroom upstairs, and two towels soaked with blood were found on the bed.
Police displayed a large drawing of the home's interior depicting a trail of bloody footprints and several sites of heavy bleeding, including at the kitchen and bathroom sinks where Young may have attempted to tend to his wound.
Young walked past several telephones but didn't try to place an emergency call, Scott said.
Young, a multimillionaire and longtime Crimson Tide booster, was convicted last year of bribing a high school football coach to steer a top recruit to Alabama. An appeal of the federal conviction on money laundering and conspiracy charges was pending when he died.
A recruiting scandal focused on Young played a part in an NCAA investigation that led to sanctions against Alabama in 2002.
The death investigation is considered ongoing pending results from forensic tests, Godwin said, but investigators are confident of their conclusions.
Scott said investigators began to alter their homicide theory when they could find no blood splatters consistent with an attacker swinging a club, knife or other weapon.
They found no signs of a break-in and money and other valuables in plain view were not disturbed, he said.
Crime scene crews spent most of two days in Young's residence, a stone Tudor house in one of Memphis' most exclusive neighborhoods. Young's son, Logan Young III, 39, lived with his father occasionally but was not at the residence at the time of the accident, Scott said.
Police believe Young died late Monday night or early Tuesday.
Young had a history of alcohol abuse, but lawyers who represented him at the bribery trial said he recently had a kidney transplant and had quit drinking.
