RALEIGH, N.C. — University police got their first inkling that something was wrong at North Carolina State’s Sigma Nu fraternity on the evening of Sept. 9. And even then, it was only because the fraternity brothers set off the smoke alarm.

Police hadn’t yet seen the videos on fraternity leaders’ phones that would confirm their worst suspicions — including the ones from last semester, of pledges being forced to vomit into one another’s mouths and inhale dangerous amounts of nitrous oxide. They also didn’t know there was a new pledge marshal in charge, who police say expressed “his intention to intensify hazing activities beyond those previously conducted.”

They hadn’t seen the video from just five nights before the alarm, of Sigma Nu pledges interacting with female sex workers who police say were hitting one another with an “unidentified object.”

Those descriptions from a university police detective, based on evidence obtained from fraternity members’ phones, come from newly public search warrants.

Chapter members have not responded to inquiries from The News & Observer. Their national fraternity denounced the “significant and severe violations of the Fraternity’s principles, law, policies, and membership requirements” and called for accountability for “those responsible for the heinous and grievous acts found by police.”

Sept. 9: A puzzle to put together

When police showed up at the fraternity house to respond to the fire alarm that night in early September, several brothers were sitting on the front porch with their house director George Ciporkin, who escorted police to the fire alarm panel. Police detected heavy smoke emanating from the house’s activity room. When they entered, they found the floor soaked with water and a fire pit containing unburned kindling. They found several boxes of matches, burned matches, charred cardboard, a puzzle box, and puzzle pieces strewn across the floor. The floor was charred and warm to the touch.

Police saw a pair of fraternity brothers carrying a Blackstone grill from inside the house out to the back patio — an act one anonymous report alleges was staged to cover up the true source of the smoke.

Surveillance video described by police reveals that a large group walked away from the house on foot immediately after the alarm and did not return that night.

Sept. 15: Anonymous reports allege hospitalizations

Just six days later, on Sept. 15, three anonymous reports came in through the university’s student conduct reporting portal. Those reports said that multiple pledges had been hospitalized and more were scared for their lives. They said that members of the fraternity were high on cocaine and crack, forcing the pledges to eat one another’s vomit and run through broken glass. And crucially: fraternity leaders were telling the pledges to lie about everything — to their doctors, to the police, and to university officials, the reports said.

One anonymous description of the hazing clarified the smoke alarm scene. Pledges were forced to put together a jigsaw puzzle in the pitch dark using only matches for light.

Sept. 17: Huffing nitrous oxide

The brush with police on the night of the fire alarm didn’t put a stop to the hazing at Sigma Nu, police say: A video taken on a Sigma Nu leader’s phone on Sept. 17 shows a pledge being forced to maintain a wall sit while huffing nitrous oxide. Over the next week, more anonymous reports came in, this time obviously from pledges themselves. One said that leaders held an emergency meeting the night of the fire and told pledges to lie about what happened.

“They told us to say that we were just hanging out,” the report said. “... We were actually getting hazed obviously.”

If there were efforts to get pledges to lie, they were successful. One pledge even told police it was he who thought of the idea to put together a puzzle in the pitch dark.

Sept. 26: Kicking a pledge in the ribs

As the police investigation got underway, the hazing at Sigma Nu continued, according to evidence cited by police. A video taken on a Sigma Nu leader’s phone on Sept. 26 shows a pledge being forced to maintain a plank position with a “white powdery substance” in front of his face. In the video, a fraternity brother is seen kicking him in the ribs.

Four days later, the police executed a search warrant of NC State’s network connectivity logs to ascertain who was in the house the night of the fire alarm. Police say those logs — which came back to police on Oct. 14 — confirmed that many of the brothers who told police they were elsewhere on the night of the fire were actually at the Sigma Nu house. In fact, 26 current members and 31 pledges were there that night.

Oct. 17: Cutting cocaine

Still, the bad behavior at Sigma Nu didn’t stop. A video taken on a Sigma Nu leader’s phone on Oct. 17 and described by police shows Sigma Nu members cutting and snorting cocaine inside the fraternity house.

On Oct. 22, police seized and searched the phones of four Sigma Nu members: two leaders and two pledges. The search revealed not only the video evidence, police say, but also the use of racial slurs, deliberate efforts to cover up the injuries pledges sustained, the coordination of hazing activities, and the widespread use of drugs in the house.

After news broke the next week of the chapter’s suspension and the criminal investigation, brothers briefly hung a white sheet scrawled with the words “relax pal” from a second-floor balcony of the fraternity house.

Police executed a search warrant of the Sigma Nu house itself on Oct. 30. They seized cellphones, laptops, tablets, cameras, drug paraphernalia, pill bottles, a “white powdery substance in a plastic baggie,” marijuana, and more.

Sigma Nu brothers could face criminal charges for the conduct that took place in the house, The News & Observer previously reported. The university’s oldest fraternity is no longer operational, and can’t come back to campus for at least four years. Brothers must be fully moved out by Tuesday. The criminal and university investigations remain ongoing.

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