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There’s something beneath the surface of Houston’s waters, as city police pull body after body from the bayous. Now one family is demanding answers about how a 22-year-old ended up dead with no wounds, no drugs and no explanation.
Kenneth Cutting Jr. vanished after a night out in downtown Houston in June 2024. Days later, police pulled his body from Buffalo Bayou — part of the city’s 2,500 miles of waterways — and about a mile and a half upstream from where two roommates last saw him alive, according to his cousin, Lauren Freeman.
Cutting’s cause and manner of death were listed as undetermined. The autopsy found no external injuries and the toxicology report listed no drugs in his system.
“Something happened to my son,” Kenneth Cutting Sr. told Fox News Digital Thursday. “My son didn’t fall into the bayou and drown.”
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Kenneth Cutting Jr. in this undated family photo. He was last seen alive on June 28, 2024, and later washed up in Houston’s Buffalo Bayou on July 1 of that year. His cause and manner of death were undetermined after an autopsy, and the toxicology report found no drugs in his system. (Courtesy of the Cutting family)
The family is speaking out as Houston officials face growing scrutiny over a surge of bodies — 16 so far this year — pulled from the bayous. Mayor John Whitmire has publicly dismissed talk of a serial killer, calling drownings “not a new phenomenon” at a news briefing last month. He blamed drugs, alcohol and homelessness.
“Unfortunately the homeless, when they pass, often end up in the bayou,” he said.
Freeman called that explanation “gaslighting” but agreed that the problem has been happening for years. Whitmire’s office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
“All them people didn’t commit suicide or fall into the bayou accidentally and drown,” Cutting Sr. said. “It’s ridiculous. There’s been so many of ’em in the last three years.”
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Kenneth Cutting Jr., left, took this selfie image at a bar in downtown Houston shortly before he vanished on June 28, 2024. (Courtesy of the Cutting family)
According to Freeman, her cousin wasn’t homeless or using drugs. She also pointed to another, more recent case. Jade McKissic, a 20-year-old University of Houston student, was found dead in Brays Bayou just days after she disappeared on Sept. 11, according to FOX 26 Houston.
McKissic also left a bar by herself before she vanished. And like Cutting Jr., she didn’t have her phone on her. Her autopsy also found no external signs of trauma, according to the station, and she was recovered from the water about 2.5 miles from where she was last seen.
“Either there’s a serial killer on the loose, or the scum of society have realized they can start dumping bodies in the bayou in the midst of the heat and they start decomposing so nobody gets caught,” Freeman said. “You just can’t stab them or shoot them.”
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The Sims Bayou Greenway near the Houston Botanic Garden and the Glenbrook Park is shown in Houston, Friday, April 4, 2025. (Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
Surveillance video reviewed by Fox News Digital shows Cutting leaving Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar in downtown Houston around 11:45 p.m. on June 28, 2024. While out front, he borrowed someone’s phone and made two calls. They were to his own phone, which he had lost, according to his father and cousin. A few minutes later he stormed out of view, yelling “f— off” at one of his companions.
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At some point, he rejoined the group, and they were heading east on Interstate 10 — the opposite direction from their home in Katy, according to his father, who said he received a text message about the incident from the roommates around 2 a.m. but didn’t see it until he woke up at 8 that morning.
HPD Police Chief Noe Diaz listens as Mayor John Whitmire comments on a recent number of bodies found in Houston bayous during a news conference in Houston, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025. (Kirk Sides/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
The family says Cutting’s roommates claimed he “went crazy” and demanded to get out of their car near one of Houston’s roughest neighborhoods. After he went missing, the family met with the roommates, who at that point had his phone, wallet and shirt, Freeman said.
She described her cousin as a “small human,” standing about 4 feet 10 inches tall and weighing around 115 pounds. By the time police recovered him from the bayou on July 1, he weighed in at just 89 pounds.
“Police told me that they think it was an accidental death, and I said, I don’t think my son fell in the bayou and drowned,” Cutting Sr. said. “First of all, he knew how to swim. Second of all, he shouldn’t have been nowhere near that bayou.”
He said his son didn’t appear to be blackout drunk in the surveillance video and noted that the toxicology report found no drugs in his system.
The Bayou running through Piney Point Village on Friday, April 18, 2025, in Houston. (Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images)
“This 22-year-old male, whose decomposing remains were recovered from a bayou, showed no apparent traumatic injuries, no serious natural disease and no commonly abused drugs in his tissues,” wrote Dr. Edward Kilbane, who performed the autopsy.
He found “orthopedic hardware” in Cutting’s neck, but the family wasn’t sure why that was there. He had “food particles” in his esophagus but an empty stomach. The body was identified through fingerprints.
“This is on my mind every day, you know,” Cutting Sr. said. “What would help is some closure, finding out exactly what happened to my son.”
To achieve that, the family is imploring city leaders to get back to investigating the case.
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Jade McKissic, a 20-year-old University of Houston student, was found dead in a bayou after vanishing from a city bar last month. (Texas Center for the Missing)
Joseph Giacalone, a retired NYPD sergeant and criminal justice professor at Penn State Lehigh Valley, has been following the surge in bodies recovered in the city.
Police are responsible for investigating each case separately, he said, whether or not there’s a serial killer on the loose. And regardless, there’s clearly more going on than deaths among the homeless, as the mayor had suggested.
“It may be a domestic issue, it also could be a suicide, but the homeless people have nothing to do with it,” Giacalone said. “So it was a reckless statement at best.”
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Fox News Digital has reached out to city police for comment.
“Maybe somebody from that bar that night heard or saw something that they would like to come forward with now,” Giacalone said. “Undetermined means kick back to the investigators for more information so that the medical examiner can make a better informed decision. You treat it like a homicide until proven otherwise.”