Deborah Tipton settles down to study the evidence once again. She pores over the [pages] containing text messages from her dead son. Getting hazed bad now and need Xanax. I didn't even sleep last night and was shaking ... What could they do that's so bad in two hours. They're just going to yell at us a bunch and maybe make us work out or eat something nasty. They can't kill us." Tipton has struggled to untangle the last hours of her son's life ever since March 26, 2012. Robert [was] a junior at High Point University in North Carolina. The authorities would later rule his death an accident, a drug overdose, another example of fraternity partying run amok. Case closed. To his mother, however, it remains very much open. Her singular quest to solve it may test the power of America's college fraternities, which ... tap into an unrivaled alumni network of presidents, members of Congress, corporate executives and Wall Street investors. Tipton says she has found plenty to make her question the official story. Autopsy photos showed ... bruises on his face, around his neck and on his legs and buttocks, as well as a jagged gash on his head. A police detective had jotted down notes. "Bruises?'" she scrawled. "Talk to Frat Brothers." Tipton says the university is covering up the truth. Parents like Deborah Tipton are fighting to pierce the veil of secrecy that has protected fraternities for two centuries on American college campuses. Grieving families are pushing to investigate deaths once dismissed as roughhousing gone wrong.