An HIV scientist whose three friends were found dead in his backyard after they watched a Kansas City Chiefs game was initially handcuffed while questioned by police, new video reveals.

The bodies of David Harrington, 37, Ricky Johnson, 38, and Clayton McGeeney, 36, were discovered in Jordan Willis’ backyard in Kansas City, Missouri nearly three weeks ago.

Medical examiners are yet to reveal the cause of death, with toxicology reports expected to take up to five more weeks. Police have previously said they are not treating the case as a homicide and Willis has not been charged with any crime.

McGeeney’s fiancée found their bodies in the backyard two days after the game and then called the police who cuffed and detained Willis on his front stoop, according to video obtained by NewsNation’s National Correspondent Alex Caprariello, who reported exclusively on the show Banfield.

Ashton Brady, the neighbor who recorded the video, said he saw McGeeney’s fiancée emerge from the backyard, with police arriving on the scene about ten minutes later.

‘The police searched the house, went to the backyards, everything, and I had no idea what had happened,’ Brady said.

‘The next morning I saw the news. I just was kind of in disbelief I watched that happen.’

Caprariello reported Willis, who was in his underwear and holding a wine glass when police arrived, was eventually uncuffed, put into a police car and driven away.

Willis, 38, is an HIV researcher and protein scientist who lives and works in the home on NW 83rd Terrace, Kansas City, Missouri.

He is an accomplished scientist, whose research into COVID and HIV has been praised in the medical world. In interviews, he described his two pit-bull mixes – Sadie and Daisy, as the ‘light of his life’.

The men did not return home or contact their families after the Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers game on January 7 and Willis didn’t contact anyone to say where they were or what had happened.

For two days, the families of the victims say they visited Willis’ home, called him and sent him Facebook messages asking where they were. He did not respond.

Brady said: ‘We had just moved in. But that week, we had never seen those cars there. And then all of a sudden that whole weekend there was cars parked right in front of our drive, and they never left and they stayed there until the police came.’

The grieving families of the three men are demanding investigators tell them how they died.

Johnson’s brother Jonathan Price said he is making discoveries of his own, including the fact that one of the men ‘was not lying down but found in a lawn chair on the back porch, away from the others’.

Harrington’s mother, Jennifer Marquez, has issued an urgent plea to Willis, saying: ‘I know he is scared but he was there, he participated in whatever happened that night, he had to know and he is the only one left that knows what happened.’

She told News Nation Anchor Natasha Zouves: ‘I want Jordan to come forward and say you know this wasn’t meant to happen but this is what happened. I did this or I saw this, you know, just tell us.’

Willis has claimed via his attorney John Picerno that he didn’t see the messages and was asleep for ‘a lot of’ the time between his friends leaving and answering the door to police.

He claims he said goodbye to his friends – two of whom he’d known since high school – then ‘crashed’ on the couch.

A short time later, he says he went upstairs to bed, leaving the doors unlocked. The three men, he says, then returned to the property and at some stage, went outside.

Picerno says he did not hear the victims’ loved ones banging on his door because he sleeps with headphones and a fan on. He also claims he did not see their Facebook messages until after the police showed up.

He does not know how the men died and says he never suggested that they ‘froze’ to death outside in the cold weather, as had been reported in the days following their deaths.

A source close to Willis told Fox last week: ‘Not only is the whole country accusing him of murdering his friends without factual details, evidence or any charges at this time, but he also lost three close friends.

‘He didn’t get to say goodbye or go to their funerals due to the circumstances of these wild speculations and accusations.

‘No one seems to be willing to wait for the results of the toxicology report or wait for any other facts from the police department from a case that is still under investigation to make these speculations.’

There was a fifth man in attendance at the viewing party, Alex Weamer-Lee.

He is a high school friend of the victims, but says he left at midnight after the football finished and when everyone was alive.