Who Is the Turd Burglar on American Vandal? Let's Break Down Season 2's Biggest Mystery

While going through the Turd Burglar's Instagram account in episode four, Sam and Peter realise that whatever phone was used to type a caption on one of the photos was infected by Apple's infamous glitch from last year, a bug that changed the letter "i" to the letter "a" and a question mark in a box. They also go through all of the notes in the student union's tip jar about kids at St. Bernadine who fellow students think is responsible for the fecal terrorism, focusing on four students who were accused five or more times.

From there Sam and Peter crosscheck the names with their social media accounts, seeing which of said students had the glitch, and are able to narrow it down to three suspects: Paul Schnorrenberg, Drew Pankratz, and Jenna Hawthorne. But are any of those three actually the Turd Burglar? Well . . .

First up is Paul, St. Bernadine's most religious student. He's an outcast, of sorts, but is too busy harassing teachers about "sinful" books on the syllabus to notice. Although he had the glitch and was suspected by his classmates, Sam and Peter ultimately confirm that he is not the Turd Burglar.

Drew is a theatre kid who had graphic photos of him leaked earlier in the year that showed him wearing an adult diaper and a big bonnet, and posing provocatively for the camera. Because of that, Drew clearly has motive to get revenge on his classmates, who subsequently dub him "Diapey Drew" and throw diapers onstage at all of his performances. As it turns out, Drew is not only innocent, but was victimized by the Turd Burglar himself in an unexpected way (more on that later). So, no: he's not the culprit, either!

Before we dive into the case of Jenna Hawthorne we have to mention Lou, who ends up being one of Peter and Sam's biggest suspects about halfway through the season. Lou is on St. Bernadine's basketball team and is the ultimate wingman to the team's star player, DeMarcus Tillman, who's so good people call him "Mr. Untouchable." While Lou is nowhere near as talented as DeMarcus, he hopes that by catering to his friend's every whim he'll be able to ride his coattails into the NBA in some regard, likely as his agent or manager.

He ends up as a suspect when he's spotted using a special key card to gain access into the teacher's lounge in the middle of the school day. As you might recall, one of the Turd Burglar's "pranks" was switching out a normal chocolate in the teacher's lounge advent calendar with a chocolate-coated turd. Not only would Lou's key card have made it easy to pull this off, but he also had the glitch on his phone.

Later on in the season it's revealed by a former basketball player that Lou is insanely controlling of DeMarcus and willing to go to great lengths to keep DeMarcus's basketball career on track. For instance, when a teammate tells Sam and Peter that he saw a Turd Burglar calling card — literally a business card with a poop emoji on it — in DeMarcus's wallet, therefore incriminating him, Lou corners the teammate in the locker room and punches him in the face. By the end of the season, though, we know for sure that Lou was not the Turd Burglar. As for DeMarcus? Umm . . .

Don't worry, we'll unpack all of the DeMarcus stuff. But first we have to break down Jenna's involvement in all of this, because yes, she's the Turd Burglar . . . well, sort of.

Jenna is a wealthy student whose peers mock her after an Instagram faux pas involving Kendall Jenner, an incident that is so shameful it even causes her girlfriend to break up with her. So yes, she has motive. On top of that, Peter and Sam are able to uncover that just prior to the pep rally — aka the event where tons of students and faculty were blasted with cat poop via t-shirt cannons — Jenna got into a car accident with Lou. Lou shows them a photo of the damage to Jenna's car, which is their smoking gun. The t-shirts that were supposed to be shot out of the cannons instead of the poop can be seen in her passenger seat; that means Jenna's alibi that she was at her internship during the pep rally doesn't hold up and she was the one to stuff the t-shirt cannons with all those gross cat droppings.

When Sam and Peter finally put it all together, Jenna spills — yes, she's responsible for the pep rally incident, but only the pep rally incident. She was blackmailed into doing it by the true Turd Burglar, who catfished her using the stolen persona of a girl named "Brooke Wheeler." Jenna's online-only relationship with her got so serious that she ended up sending risqué photos, which "Brooke" then used to blackmail her into pulling off the pep rally prank. And Jenna wasn't the Turd Burglar's only catfishing victim.

Enter Mr. Gesualdi. The St. Bernadine's teacher is introduced early on in the season as the man responsible for getting a student named Grayson Wentz expelled the previous year because Grayson harassed a classmate on Twitter using one of the computers in the school's computer lab. It's revealed that Mr. Gesualdi was also catfished by the Brooke Wheeler persona, to the point where he sent her nude photos of himself. The Turd Burglar used those photos to get Mr. Gesualdi to switch out the chocolate in the teacher's lounge advent calendar, not Lou.

As previously mentioned, all-star basketball player DeMarcus Tillman is seen with a Turd Burglar calling card in his wallet by multiple classmates. He's also highly suspected despite not having the glitch on his phone, because given his status as "Mr. Untouchable," he might have assumed he'd get away with pulling off a Turd Burglar-level stunt. There's ample evidence against him other than the card, too. First of all, he had access to the cafeteria because he's buddies with the cook and could've dosed the lemonade prior to the Brownout. He's also close with the English teacher whose classroom had the poop-filled Kurt Vonnegut piñata.

At the end of the day, DeMarcus is only responsible for one of the pranks, just like Jenna and Mr. Gesualdi: the piñata. He too was a victim of catfishing and sent "Brooke" pictures of his junk. Worried that if the photos got out his chances at playing college ball would be ruined, DeMarcus — who is basically this season's lovable dummy in the way Dylan Maxwell was in season one — agrees to the Turd Burglar's demands.

Kevin McClain is the number one suspect out of anyone at St. Bernadine's from the get-go, and is the reason why Sam and Peter find out about the Turd Burglar at all — the school's police officer coerces Kevin into giving a false confession and he's expelled. His childhood friend, Chloe, reaches out to the documentarians so they can investigate the crimes and get him justice.

Kevin — who a classmate describes as someone who's constantly "doing an impression of a smart guy" — is introduced as an odd-ball who gets bullied for his extreme passion for "teas around the world," his unique taste in music, and for being the school's Fruit Ninja (people record themselves randomly throwing fruit at him in the hallways to see if he'll be able to karate chop it away in time) (again: this show won a Peabody). Between his status as a bit of a weirdo and his lack of friends, he seems to have plenty of motive. But is he the true Turd Burglar? Nope.

Kevin is a victim of the catfishing scheme too, but not in the way DeMarcus, Jenna, or Mr. Gesualdi are. Brooke begins an online relationship with Kevin that gets so serious that she's able to convince him to poison the cafeteria's lemonade without needing naked photos to use as blackmail. He willingly does it to impress Brooke, but when he goes to a motel to meet up with her (armed with around 30 boxes of condoms, FYI), she never shows and he realises he was played. Who is Brooke Wheeler, really?

Grayson Wentz — the St. Bernadine's student expelled by Mr. Gesualdi — started working at a phone repair kiosk in the mall after getting kicked out of school, where he toiled away day in and day out, burning with resentment for his former classmates and the faculty. When a pretty college student named Abbey Samuels comes to his kiosk to get her phone fixed one day, he unlocks it and steals a ton of her photos and videos that he later uses to catfish vulnerable people at St. Bernadine — going by the name Brooke Wheeler.

Grayson is furious at how the kids at St. Bernadine pretend — in his opinion — to have such perfect lives on social media, even though they're "f*cking fake" and "f*cking plastic" in real life; his streak as the Turd Burglar begins as a way to show the world the "real" people behind those smiley Instagram photos. His final act as the Turd Burglar is to post all the graphic, private photos and videos he got out of people like Jenna and DeMarcus, even though he promised he wouldn't. In fact, Grayson also catfished Drew, by the way, which is how he got those photos of him in the diaper. When Drew refused to participate in the poop pranks, Grayson released the photos (as well as a wild naked video of Drew during the "dump").

In American Vandal's season two finale Grayson is seen on trial for multiple crimes. Mr. Gesualdi has his teaching licence revoked, and Jenna Hawthorne and DeMarcus Tillman both get community service (DeMarcus also escapes Lou's hold on him and decides to play basketball at Villanova). Kevin has his felony counts reduced from three to one, but is sentenced to nine months of house arrest because he was not blackmailed into perpetrating the Brownout. He says at the end of the show that he's enrolling in a public school for his senior year, and has high hopes for his future.

It's a far darker ending than the conclusion in season one, but it holds an important lesson about social media. As Peter notes in a voiceover in the final few minutes of the episode, "We're not the worst generation, we're just the most exposed."