Story highlights Autopsy shock: Teen's organs removed, cavity filled with newspaper 
 
 "We thought we were burying Kendrick, not half of Kendrick," father says 
 
 Kendrick Johnson was found dead in a rolled-up gym mat in January 
 
 His death was ruled accidental; a private autopsy challenged that finding 
 
 The death of 17-year-old Kendrick Johnson was awful enough for his parents. Then came the doubts about investigators' conclusion that it was an accident. 
 
 But the discovery that their son's body and skull had been stuffed with newspaper before burial added a horrific new dimension to their anguish and further fueled their skepticism of the official findings. 
 
 "We have been let down again," his father, Kenneth Johnson, told CNN. "When we buried Kendrick, we thought we were burying Kendrick, not half of Kendrick." 
 
 Kendrick Johnson was found dead in a gym at Lowndes County High School in January. State medical examiners concluded that the three-sport athlete suffocated after getting stuck in a rolled-up gym mat while reaching for a sneaker. 
 
 Death was not accidental, family's autopsy finds 
 
 His parents, Kenneth and Jacquelyn Johnson, never have bought that explanation. They won a court order to have their son's body exhumed and a second autopsy performed in June. 
 
 During an autopsy, internal organs are removed and examined before being returned for burial. But when Dr. Bill Anderson, the private pathologist who conducted the second autopsy, opened up the teen's remains, the brain, heart, lungs, liver and other viscera were missing. Every organ from the pelvis to the skull was gone. 
 
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 "I'm not sure at this point who did not return the organs to the body," Anderson said. "But I know when we got the body, the organs were not there." 
 
 Two entities had custody of Kendrick Johnson's body after his death -- the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which conducted the first autopsy in January; and the Harrington Funeral Home in Valdosta, which handled the teen's embalming and burial. 
 
 GBI spokeswoman Sherry Lang told CNN that after the autopsy, "the organs were placed in Johnson's body, the body was closed, then the body was released to the funeral home." That's normal practice, Lang said. 
 
 The funeral home would not comment to CNN. But in a letter to the Johnsons' attorney, funeral home owner Antonio Harrington said his firm never received the teen's organs. Harrington wrote that the organs "were destroyed through natural process" due to the position of Kendrick Johnson's body when he died, and "discarded by the prosector before the body was sent back to Valdosta." A prosector dissects the body for pathological examination. 
 
 Scene points to foul play 
 
 Stuffing a body with old newsprint and department-store circulars -- "like he was a garbage can," as Jacquelyn Johnson put it -- isn't exactly standard practice in forensic pathology or the mortician's trade. Vernie Fountain, the founder of a Missouri embalming school, called it "not consistent with the standards of care" in the industry. And Dr. Gregory Schmunk, the president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, told CNN, "I have never heard of this practice." 
 
 Organs are typically placed in plastic bag, which is then put back into the body cavity after an autopsy, Schmunk told CNN in an e-mail. While individual organs may be kept back for further testing, he wrote, "This would not amount to all of the organs in any circumstance that I can imagine." 
 
 Funeral homes are licensed by the Georgia Secretary of State's office, which has opened an investigation into how Johnson's body was treated, said Jared Thomas, a spokesman for the agency. 
 
 Anderson, who was hired by the Johnson family for a second autopsy, found Kendrick Johnson had sustained a blow to the right side of his neck that was "consistent with inflicted injury." Challenging the state autopsy's finding of positional asphyxiation, he concluded the teen died as the result of "unexplained, apparent non-accidental, blunt force trauma." 
 
 And death scene imagery obtained exclusively by CNN has led a former FBI agent to question how Johnson died: "I think this young man met with foul play," said Harold Copus, now an Atlanta private investigator. 
 
 Lowndes County Sheriff Chris Prine refused to discuss the matter with CNN, calling Johnson's death a closed case. The U.S. Justice Department announced in September that it wouldn't open a civil rights investigation into the case. 
 
 But federal prosecutors in south Georgia have met with the family's representatives and are weighing whether to open their own probe, said Michael Moore, the U.S. attorney whose district includes Valdosta. 
 
 "This is about getting to the facts and the truth, and we want the Johnson family and the community of Valdosta to have confidence in the process," Moore said. "I am cognizant of time, and we continue to move the process along." 
 
 Moore urged anyone with information about Johnson's death to contact his office. Johnson's parents have come to believe their son's death was no accident, and the macabre discovery about their son's body has only deepened that belief. 
 
 "It's unbearable, just about," Jacquelyn Johnson said. "The only thing that wakes you up in the morning is to just keep pushing." ||||| Story highlights Kendrick Johnson, 17, suffocated in gym mat, officials say 
 
 Surveillance footage captured Kendrick in the gym 
 
 A CNN open records request asked if others were present in surveillance footage 
 
 School attorney acknowledges footage shows others in the gym 
 
 Surveillance footage shows other minors inside a Georgia high school gym at about the same time authorities say Kendrick Johnson suffocated in a rolled-up mat while reaching for a sneaker, an attorney for the school told CNN on Friday. 
 
 The attorney's acknowledgement came in a response to a CNN open records request asking whether other minors were recorded in the footage inside the Lowndes County High School gym on January 10 between 1:09 p.m. and 1:20 p.m., a span of about 10 minutes after Johnson entered the gym. 
 
 "I answer your pointed question with 'yes,'" L. Warren Turner Jr.. the attorney, wrote in the letter. 
 
 CNN made the request after the school declined to release certain surveillance photos or video, citing state law that exempts the release of "education records of a minor child." 
 
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 Johnson, 17, was found dead at the gym in Valdosta on January 11, his body resting headfirst in the rolled wrestling mat, according to authorities. 
 
 A few still pictures, taken from surveillance cameras at the gym, are perhaps the last known images of Kendrick alive. They show him walking across the bare floor. Those images were released by the Lowndes County Sheriff's Office. 
 
 The next pictures of the teenager are far more horrifying: His body, clad in jeans and layered orange and white T-shirts, is wedged in the wrestling mat. His face is bloated with pooled blood, some of which poured out of his body and soaked his dreadlocks and spilled onto the floor. 
 
 A pair of orange-and-black gym shoes were found a few yards from the teen's body. 
 
 A Georgia Bureau of Investigation autopsy found that he died from positional asphyxia, and the sheriff's office determined the death was accidental. 
 
 The sheriff has declared the case closed, and the U.S. Justice Department said in September that it wouldn't open a civil rights investigation. But Michael Moore, the U.S. attorney for the district that includes Valdosta, is reviewing the case and weighing whether to open his own investigation. 
 
 Dr. Bill Anderson, the private pathologist hired by Johnson's family to conduct a second autopsy, found that Johnson had a blow to right side of his neck "consistent with inflicted injury." 
 
 A January 25 report by the Valdosta-Lowndes County Regional Crime Laboratory cited "no signs of blunt force trauma on Johnson's face or body." And the original autopsy results released by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation May 2 identified "no significant injuries."
– The plot has again thickened in the mysterious death of Georgia teen Kendrick Johnson: A second autopsy on the 17-year-old's exhumed body has found that before burial almost all of his organs were replaced with newspaper. Kendrick was found dead in a rolled-up wrestling mat at his school in January, in what was originally ruled an accidental asphyxiation. But his parents were suspicious and had him exhumed and examined by a private doctor. That doctor found evidence of "non-accidental" trauma, and now reveals that every organ from Kendrick's pelvis to skull—including his brain, lungs, heart, and liver—is missing, CNN reports. Newspapers were stuffed into the cavities the organs should have occupied "like he was a garbage can," his mother says. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which conducted the first autopsy, says it put all the organs back in afterward. But the funeral home that embalmed Kendrick tells the family's attorney that before it got the body the organs "were destroyed through natural process," and then "discarded by the prosecutor." The county sheriff, meanwhile, says the death is a closed case and refuses to discuss it. Yesterday, CNN revealed photos and video from the scene of Kendrick's death that raise serious questions about investigators' work, showing among other things blood stains on the wall that weren't investigated. "They know something happened in that gym," Kendrick's father says, "and they don't want it to come out." Click for more on the case.