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Hell and Gone Murder Line: Shannon Hercutt · Hell and Gone: Murder Line

0:08
Speaker 1: School of Humans. On August third, two thousand and nine,
0:14
Speaker 1: just before midnight, an on Star satellite service got a
0:17
Speaker 1: notification of an emergency from inside a Cadillac Escalade that
0:21
Speaker 1: had crashed. The vehicle had plunged off a cliff just
0:25
Speaker 1: off Walker Trail in Severe County, Tennessee. The on Star
0:29
Speaker 1: service called nine one one and police responded to the scene.
0:33
Speaker 1: They found a bent guard rail. The car was in
0:35
Speaker 1: the middle of the woods, so it was hard to
0:37
Speaker 1: get down to the crash scene. Deputies had to repel
0:41
Speaker 1: to the bottom of a one hundred and twenty five
0:43
Speaker 1: foot drop off. When they got down there, they saw
0:47
Speaker 1: the black two thousand and seven Cadillac Escalade. Inside the
0:51
Speaker 1: twisted metal wreckage of that car, they found the body
0:55
Speaker 1: of forty year old Shannon Hercut. At first, the Tennessee
0:59
Speaker 1: Highway Patrol said Shannon had died in a car accident.
1:02
Speaker 1: It seemed like a tragic fatality but nothing more than that.
1:06
Speaker 1: But a few days later, Shannon her Cut's manner of
1:09
Speaker 1: death was changed to homicide. Local authorities said someone had
1:13
Speaker 1: beaten her to death, then put her inside the car
1:16
Speaker 1: to stage the accident. Shannon was well known. She was
1:20
Speaker 1: friendly and outgoing, a successful and well liked local businesswoman,
1:25
Speaker 1: but according to her own family, she was also someone
1:28
Speaker 1: who had a lot of secrets. There had been family
1:31
Speaker 1: feuds and legal battles related to her business and possibly
1:36
Speaker 1: some people suggested maybe even a secret lover. Now, over
1:41
Speaker 1: the years, this case has been covered multiple times. It's
1:44
Speaker 1: been covered by local media, national media, and even doctor
1:47
Speaker 1: Phil And every time I hear about this story, the
1:51
Speaker 1: same narrative has been put forward. But as you all know,
1:55
Speaker 1: I want to go behind the scenes and see what
1:56
Speaker 1: we can do to take this case forward. Who killed
2:00
Speaker 1: Shannon her Cut? I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the last five
2:06
Speaker 1: years making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned
2:09
Speaker 1: there's no such thing as a small town where murder
2:12
Speaker 1: never happens. I've received hundreds of messages from people all
2:16
Speaker 1: around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder
2:20
Speaker 1: that's affected them, their families, and their communities. And now
2:24
Speaker 1: they have a new way to reach out. If you
2:27
Speaker 1: have a case you'd like me and my team to
2:29
Speaker 1: look into, you can reach out to us at our
2:32
Speaker 1: Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four
2:35
Speaker 1: four six ' one four five that's six seven eight, seven,
2:39
Speaker 1: four four, six ' one four or five. This is
2:43
Speaker 1: Helen Gone Murder line. I was contacted about the Shannon
3:35
Speaker 1: her Cut case by listener a while back. As always,
3:39
Speaker 1: we start with victimology. We want to know who Shannon
3:43
Speaker 1: was and what was going on in her life in
3:45
Speaker 1: the time period immediately before she died. Shannon her Cut
3:49
Speaker 1: was born in Severeville, Tennessee, on May twenty second, nineteen
3:53
Speaker 1: sixty nine. This is an area that gets a lot
3:56
Speaker 1: of tourists. It's in the Great Smoky Mountains and it's
3:59
Speaker 1: near Dollywood Dolly Parton's theme park. In Pigeon Forge, Shannon's mom, Patricia,
4:04
Speaker 1: ran a general store she opened up in the early nineties.
4:06
Speaker 1: It was called Anti Bellams. Eventually, Shannon went out on
4:10
Speaker 1: her own. She opened up a real estate and rental business,
4:14
Speaker 1: also using the family business name. Shannon's business was called
4:18
Speaker 1: Anti Bellum's Realty and Rentals. It was in Pigeon Forge,
4:22
Speaker 1: near where she grew up. Opening this business was a
4:25
Speaker 1: very smart moved because over the years the demand for
4:29
Speaker 1: rental properties skyrocketed in that area, and Shannon did very
4:32
Speaker 1: well for herself. She was in charge of renting out
4:35
Speaker 1: around one hundred and thirty cabins. She also oversaw other projects,
4:39
Speaker 1: including the opening of a local playground called Mount Ton
4:42
Speaker 1: of Fun. In media reports, Shannon is described as single
4:47
Speaker 1: and happy. She never married and didn't have any children,
4:50
Speaker 1: but she had a lot of friends and was active
4:52
Speaker 1: in her town and in her church. One of her
4:56
Speaker 1: relatives in an interview, made a comment about Shannon being
4:59
Speaker 1: strong willed, which can sometimes mean if someone's very opinionated,
5:04
Speaker 1: perhaps that could could point to them getting into conflict
5:07
Speaker 1: with people. But a lot of people said that Shannon
5:09
Speaker 1: was generally very well liked at work and that the
5:12
Speaker 1: people who worked for her were very loyal to her,
5:15
Speaker 1: but her life wasn't perfect. At the time of her
5:18
Speaker 1: death in two thousand and nine, Shannon was dealing with
5:21
Speaker 1: difficult relationships with several different people. As we often see,
5:26
Speaker 1: big success sometimes brings business rivals or threats of lawsuits
5:30
Speaker 1: and people wanting money. One of the people Shannon was
5:34
Speaker 1: feuding with was her own father, Ted hercut again. Over
5:39
Speaker 1: the years, everything that I've read about this case has
5:43
Speaker 1: seemed to have the same narrative that a lot of
5:46
Speaker 1: people suspect Ted and that he totally denies that he's
5:49
Speaker 1: involved in his daughter's death. So now we fast forward
5:54
Speaker 1: to August third, two thousand and nine. In the hours
5:56
Speaker 1: immediately following that car crash. On that day, Ted Hircut
6:01
Speaker 1: had an alibi. At the time of Shannon's murder, He
6:04
Speaker 1: was almost four hundred miles away in Myrtle Beach, South
6:07
Speaker 1: Carolina with his wife, Shannon's stepmother, Anita. His other daughter,
6:12
Speaker 1: Shannon's sister, Penny Stevens, was also nearby vacationing with her
6:15
Speaker 1: young daughter. Later on, when Ted and Penny appeared on
6:20
Speaker 1: Doctor Phil in what was a very emotional and memorable episode,
6:25
Speaker 1: Ted told Doctor Phil that he got a call from
6:28
Speaker 1: his former son in law, a guy named Jerry Stevens,
6:30
Speaker 1: who used to be married to Penny and who apparently
6:33
Speaker 1: worked in law enforcement. Ted said Jerry called him to
6:36
Speaker 1: break the news that Shannon's body had been found. Penny
6:40
Speaker 1: got the news on the same day, and she later
6:42
Speaker 1: told reporters that when she heard what happened to her sister,
6:45
Speaker 1: she immediately thought that this could not have been an accident.
6:49
Speaker 1: Ted said he also immediately suspected this had not been
6:52
Speaker 1: a traffic accident. There were some details that just seemed off,
6:56
Speaker 1: like the fact that Shannon was not wearing her seat
6:58
Speaker 1: belt when the car crashed. Apparently she always made a
7:01
Speaker 1: point of wearing her seat belt. Her family also wondered
7:05
Speaker 1: why she would be driving in that area alone late
7:08
Speaker 1: at night, which was definitely not a part of her
7:10
Speaker 1: regular routine. But most crucially, when the car was found,
7:15
Speaker 1: both the driver's side and passenger window were down. Both
7:20
Speaker 1: Ted and Penny, his daughter, agreed Shannon would never have
7:24
Speaker 1: those windows down because she was obsessive about keeping her
7:28
Speaker 1: hair perfect, and obviously, in that high humidity, having both
7:33
Speaker 1: windows down with the wind blowing in her hair was
7:35
Speaker 1: just not something that they said Shannon would ever do.
7:38
Speaker 1: If she did have to go out after dark, she
7:40
Speaker 1: would have those windows up and she would have the
7:42
Speaker 1: ac blasting. Police ruled Shannon's death an accident, and they
7:48
Speaker 1: didn't want to do an autopsy, but Ted insisted. He
7:53
Speaker 1: refused to sign a form allowing Shannon to be buried.
7:56
Speaker 1: He also called a friend of his, a guy named
7:58
Speaker 1: Jerry Grubbs. Now. Jerry was a retired National Park Service
8:02
Speaker 1: ranger who also worked in law enforcement and later became
8:05
Speaker 1: a prime an investigator. Jerry said that he found physical
8:09
Speaker 1: evidence at that crime scene. Physical evidence, he said, was
8:12
Speaker 1: overlooked both by the Sheriff's office and the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
8:17
Speaker 1: In a video that Jerry posted on YouTube, he films
8:21
Speaker 1: the area where the car wrecked and says, based on
8:23
Speaker 1: how that car was found, he thinks that it basically
8:27
Speaker 1: did a straight drop. He said that if the car
8:30
Speaker 1: had been traveling at any rate of speed, it would
8:33
Speaker 1: have been airborne and it would have been found way
8:35
Speaker 1: deeper in the forest. There was also no real damage
8:38
Speaker 1: to the windshield and no skid marks from the tire
8:40
Speaker 1: tracks of the scene, which presumably meant that no one
8:44
Speaker 1: slammed on the brakes to try to avoid an accident. Later,
8:48
Speaker 1: a team went in and they found out through looking
8:50
Speaker 1: at the car's electrical system that Shannon had only been
8:53
Speaker 1: traveling at seven miles per hour before the crash. She
8:57
Speaker 1: wasn't even going fast enough for her air bags to deploy.
9:01
Speaker 1: Ted told reporters that Shannon's injuries did not appear to
9:04
Speaker 1: have come from the car craft gosh, he said at
9:07
Speaker 1: the time. Quote the paramedic said her head had a
9:10
Speaker 1: gash in it the size of a grapefruit, and there
9:13
Speaker 1: was nothing inside the car that could have made that
9:15
Speaker 1: gash end quote. At that point, the Sheriff's office investigators
9:21
Speaker 1: finally agreed to an autopsy, and when that autopsy came back,
9:25
Speaker 1: it became clear that Shannon's injuries had not happened in
9:28
Speaker 1: the car accident. Police said someone beat her to death
9:33
Speaker 1: at her home, put her inside that car, and pushed
9:36
Speaker 1: her over that hill. Cause of death was blunt forced
9:39
Speaker 1: trauma to Shannon's head, and the manner of death was
9:43
Speaker 1: changed from accident to homicide. Three days after Shannon's body
9:54
Speaker 1: was found, police finally went to her house to look around.
9:58
Speaker 1: Shannon's sister, Penny went to her house too. She was
10:01
Speaker 1: there to pick out an outfit for her sister to
10:04
Speaker 1: be buried in. She later told Knox News that when
10:07
Speaker 1: she arrived to that house, she saw that some things
10:10
Speaker 1: in her sister's residence seemed to be out of place.
10:14
Speaker 1: She saw a baseball bat in the back of Shannon's
10:16
Speaker 1: work truck. She also saw what appeared to be blood
10:19
Speaker 1: on the refrigerator that was in Shannon's garage, right by
10:23
Speaker 1: the handle. She told the news station, quote, I did
10:27
Speaker 1: notice two wine cooler type bottles on the floor busted,
10:31
Speaker 1: and that was it end quote. There were also no
10:34
Speaker 1: signs of forest entry. Police had a few theories at
10:38
Speaker 1: this point, but no real leads. They considered the possibility
10:41
Speaker 1: that it could have been an angry client of Shannon's,
10:43
Speaker 1: someone that she had a business to spete with, but
10:47
Speaker 1: Penny made it clear that she had another prime suspect
10:50
Speaker 1: in mind for Shannon's murder, their father, Ted Harcut. So
10:55
Speaker 1: let's go back and look at the family relationships. Penny
10:59
Speaker 1: and Ted appeared on The Doctor Phil's show in twenty fifteen,
11:02
Speaker 1: and on that show, it's immediately clear that there is
11:07
Speaker 1: a lot of animosity between Ted and Penny. She told
11:11
Speaker 1: Doctor Phil that since she was very young, her father
11:15
Speaker 1: had been behaving in extremely disturbing ways. She said he'd
11:19
Speaker 1: been emotionally abusive and that he was greedy and a
11:23
Speaker 1: pathological liar. And when Ted Hurcut came out and tried
11:26
Speaker 1: to hug his daughter on stage, she refused to touch
11:29
Speaker 1: him or have anything to do with him. Reading between
11:32
Speaker 1: the lines, it seems like the bad blood between Ted
11:37
Speaker 1: and Shannon got worse after Penny and Shannon's mother, Patricia
11:42
Speaker 1: passed away. That happened in two thousand and eight. Patricia
11:46
Speaker 1: died after a long battle with cancer. She had been
11:49
Speaker 1: divorced from Ted for several years by then. After Patricia's death,
11:56
Speaker 1: Shannon inherited a piece of land from her, a piece
11:58
Speaker 1: of land that was apparently worth about a million dollars.
12:02
Speaker 1: Shannon and Ted got into a llegal battle for that land.
12:06
Speaker 1: They started fighting after Patricia's death, so about a year
12:10
Speaker 1: before Shannon was murdered. By the time of Shannon's death,
12:14
Speaker 1: Ted admitted that he and his daughter were estranged. They
12:17
Speaker 1: were not talking at all, They were only communicating through lawyers.
12:21
Speaker 1: So what was really going on when Shannon her cuts will?
12:25
Speaker 1: In two thousand and three, Shannon made a will and
12:27
Speaker 1: she left twenty nine percent of her state to her
12:30
Speaker 1: father Ted. But in two thousand and six, Shannon made
12:33
Speaker 1: another will, and in that will, she specifically mentioned that
12:37
Speaker 1: it was her wish that neither Ted nor his wife
12:39
Speaker 1: would inherit anything from her. Now, Penny claimed Ted was
12:43
Speaker 1: furious about that, about the fact that Shannon had cut
12:46
Speaker 1: him out of the will, but Ted has always totally
12:49
Speaker 1: denied that. Penny has always said that her father's motive
12:54
Speaker 1: in killing Shannon was money. But who really gained from
12:58
Speaker 1: Shannon's death? Because we know that Ted didn't inherit anything.
13:03
Speaker 1: Now explain this. Penny said that Ted didn't realize Shannon
13:07
Speaker 1: had changed her will, so he would have thought that
13:09
Speaker 1: he might inherit something from her. Ted said he never
13:12
Speaker 1: expected anything from his daughter's will and that he never
13:15
Speaker 1: needed any money from her. On Doctor Phil, Ted looked
13:19
Speaker 1: genuinely shocked when Penny stated bluntly she believed he had
13:22
Speaker 1: hired a hip man to kill her sister. I believe
13:26
Speaker 1: that Penny is sincere. I think she is convinced that
13:29
Speaker 1: her dad had something to do with Shannon's death and
13:31
Speaker 1: that she was afraid of him. And if you watch
13:35
Speaker 1: their interactions, it's clear, in my opinion, that there's something
13:39
Speaker 1: about Ted that seems off. At certain moments, he appears
13:43
Speaker 1: to be unhinged. I also think it's possible that he's
13:46
Speaker 1: lying about a few things, like the weird vandalism of
13:49
Speaker 1: Shannon's business that happened back in November of two thousand
13:52
Speaker 1: and nine, just a few months after Shannon's murder. On
13:55
Speaker 1: November twentieth, Pigeon Force police responded to shots fired at
14:01
Speaker 1: Shannon's business, Annie Bellham's Realty in Nightly Rentals. Someone had
14:05
Speaker 1: shown up there and started firing shots into the front door.
14:08
Speaker 1: They fired off eight rounds in all. Penny said her
14:12
Speaker 1: father had confessed to her that he was the one
14:15
Speaker 1: who shot up the business, and when Doctor Phil asked
14:19
Speaker 1: Ted about this, he kind of sidesteps the question. It
14:22
Speaker 1: does seem like he could be lying about vandalizing that business.
14:28
Speaker 1: The Doctor Phil's show had a lot more family drama on.
14:32
Speaker 1: They also had Ted's third wife, Jan, who he married
14:36
Speaker 1: in the summer of twenty fourteen. After just three weeks
14:39
Speaker 1: of marriage, Ted got in annulment and the marriage fell apart.
14:43
Speaker 1: Jan told Doctor Phil that Ted had what she called
14:47
Speaker 1: a dark side. Now, I've been on Doctor Phil before
14:51
Speaker 1: talking about the Ebbie Stepec case, and so I actually
14:54
Speaker 1: know a lot about how this process works. I spent
14:57
Speaker 1: several weeks with the producers doing in depth research and
15:00
Speaker 1: giving them information about what was going on with the case.
15:03
Speaker 1: And I knew this in advance of the information that
15:06
Speaker 1: I gave them. They only aired a tiny portion of it.
15:09
Speaker 1: They do that for a lot of reasons. First of all,
15:11
Speaker 1: there's very limited time to present the case, so you
15:14
Speaker 1: can't go too deep into the woods. But also, and
15:17
Speaker 1: this is not an insult to TV, producers, but their
15:20
Speaker 1: primary purpose is presenting the story and making good TV.
15:24
Speaker 1: It's not really solving a case. So instead of going
15:29
Speaker 1: deeper into suspects, what we got on Doctor Phil was
15:32
Speaker 1: more family drama. Because then Ted came on again and
15:36
Speaker 1: he said Jan had a criminal history and that she
15:38
Speaker 1: had stolen four hundred dollars from him and stolen his
15:41
Speaker 1: credit cards. There's a lot more family drama that plays
15:44
Speaker 1: out on the show that I'm not going to get into.
15:47
Speaker 1: But at the end of the episode, my takeaway was
15:50
Speaker 1: that Doctor Phil seemed to come to basically the same
15:52
Speaker 1: conclusion that I did. He said Ted may be an asshole,
15:57
Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean he's a killer or that he
15:59
Speaker 1: hired a hitman. He kept saying the same question I
16:02
Speaker 1: was asking, which is what's the actual evidence that at
16:06
Speaker 1: that moment in two thousand and nine, Ted would have
16:09
Speaker 1: had a motive to kill his daughter. With all of
16:12
Speaker 1: these cases, when you have so many crazy rumors flying around,
16:16
Speaker 1: and especially when there are complicated family dynamics and accusations,
16:21
Speaker 1: I always talk about how important it is to filter
16:24
Speaker 1: out what I call the noise of the case. And
16:28
Speaker 1: while we want to keep an open mind and not
16:30
Speaker 1: ignore any possibilities. I think that the Shannon Hercut case
16:33
Speaker 1: is a great example of this. We need to filter
16:36
Speaker 1: out all of the family drama and focus on the
16:39
Speaker 1: facts of the case. As we've said several times over
16:42
Speaker 1: the years, being a creep is not illegal, and it
16:45
Speaker 1: doesn't make you a killer. Ted has never been charged
16:49
Speaker 1: in connection with Shannon's murder. He's always denied having anything
16:53
Speaker 1: to do with it. I honestly think that at this
16:57
Speaker 1: point the evidence points away from him, and there are
16:59
Speaker 1: a few reasons why. First of all, Ted was one
17:02
Speaker 1: of the first people to demand that Shannon's body taken
17:05
Speaker 1: in for an autopsy. He got that expert Jerry Grubbs
17:09
Speaker 1: to go to the scene. He told anyone who would
17:11
Speaker 1: listen over the years that his daughter's death was not
17:13
Speaker 1: an accident, which does not seem like the actions of
17:16
Speaker 1: a person who killed his daughter. If Ted had been
17:20
Speaker 1: involved in Shannon's death, it seems like the last thing
17:23
Speaker 1: he would have done, especially after the death had already
17:26
Speaker 1: been ruled an accident and she was getting ready to
17:28
Speaker 1: be buried, is to go public and demand that police
17:32
Speaker 1: investigate the possibility of murder. Ted died in twenty seventeen,
17:37
Speaker 1: so if Ted was involved, whatever secrets he had would
17:40
Speaker 1: have died with him. Even now, police say they've never
17:46
Speaker 1: found any connection between Ted and Shannon's murder. If that's
17:50
Speaker 1: the case, that means that Shannon's killer is still out there.
17:54
Speaker 1: And though police have been pretty tight lipped about the
17:56
Speaker 1: investigation so far, one investigator has said they believe the
18:01
Speaker 1: evidence points to someone outside the family, but someone who
18:05
Speaker 1: knew Shannon. He also said they believe they know the
18:09
Speaker 1: killer's motive. He made this kind of cryptic comment. He said,
18:14
Speaker 1: if I told you what it was, it'd be obvious
18:16
Speaker 1: who I was talking about. So to sum up, I
18:20
Speaker 1: don't think that the evidence points to Ted, and at
18:23
Speaker 1: least one of the investigators on the case agrees. Let's
18:29
Speaker 1: move away from the family drama between Ted and his
18:31
Speaker 1: daughter Penny and back to what we know, Back to
18:34
Speaker 1: the crime scene. With the evidence. We know where the
18:38
Speaker 1: car crashed. We know that this was a staged crime scene.
18:42
Speaker 1: The real crime scene took place at Shannon's house, probably
18:46
Speaker 1: in her garage. Then the killer or killers tried to
18:50
Speaker 1: make it look like a car accident. The real crime
18:53
Speaker 1: scene took place at Shannon's house, probably in her garage.
18:57
Speaker 1: We know this because Shannon's sister Penny saw smears of
19:01
Speaker 1: blood on the outside refrigerator that's in the garage. That's
19:06
Speaker 1: also where she found the two broken wine cooler bottles.
19:10
Speaker 1: Shannon was beaten to death, then the killer or killers
19:14
Speaker 1: put her in her own car and tried to make
19:15
Speaker 1: it look like a car accident. Like the investigator said
19:19
Speaker 1: to me, the crime scene and manner of death point
19:22
Speaker 1: to someone who knew Shannon. Well, there are a couple
19:25
Speaker 1: of possibilities. It could have been a crime of passion.
19:28
Speaker 1: But from my other podcast, Red Caller, I know that
19:32
Speaker 1: sometimes fraud detection homicides, murders where the motive was money
19:36
Speaker 1: can also look like crimes of passion. So let's explore
19:39
Speaker 1: the hit man theory. A lot of people have made
19:42
Speaker 1: the comment that if this was a planned hit, it
19:45
Speaker 1: was a very sloppy job. Apparently that's not that uncommon, though.
19:50
Speaker 1: Former FBI criminal profiler Frank Perry, who wrote the book
19:54
Speaker 1: Red Caller and White Collar Crime, which was about red
19:57
Speaker 1: collar criminals and had a whole chapter about committing murder
20:00
Speaker 1: for hire, wrote that often killers who commit white collar
20:05
Speaker 1: crime and then who kill to cover up their fraud
20:08
Speaker 1: often When they hire killers, they kind of go cheap.
20:12
Speaker 1: They don't have much money, so they'll go with really
20:15
Speaker 1: amateur killers instead of hiring professionals like the mob does.
20:20
Speaker 1: They hire people who basically are unemployed grifters, people who
20:23
Speaker 1: are floating around doing illegal or semi illegal kind of stuff.
20:27
Speaker 1: And often when they do hire these amateurs, the amateurs
20:31
Speaker 1: will tell a lot of people what they've done, and
20:33
Speaker 1: that's how they get caught. If this had been a
20:36
Speaker 1: professional hit, the killer would not have left behind so
20:40
Speaker 1: many obvious signs of staging. They would have cleaned up
20:43
Speaker 1: Shannon's garage. But most crucially, the thing that makes me
20:47
Speaker 1: move away from the hit man theory is the fact
20:50
Speaker 1: that I went back through the literature when red collar
20:54
Speaker 1: criminals hire hitmen, every single example I could find involves
20:59
Speaker 1: the killer bringing their own weapon. It's not impossible for
21:03
Speaker 1: a hit man to come to someone's house and not
21:06
Speaker 1: bring a weapon and then stop to drink a wine
21:08
Speaker 1: cooler with a victim, but it seems very unlikely. The
21:12
Speaker 1: only exception to this would be, of course, if the
21:15
Speaker 1: hip man was someone Shannon knew. The hip man theory
21:19
Speaker 1: isn't impossible. We have to keep an open mind. But
21:22
Speaker 1: in my opinion, with everything that we know, it seems
21:24
Speaker 1: more and more unlikely whether a killer is financially motivated
21:30
Speaker 1: or whether they're motivated by something else like jealousy or rage.
21:34
Speaker 1: The reason why they kill is to solve a problem
21:37
Speaker 1: because they're losing control over a situation. So if the
21:42
Speaker 1: motive for Shannon's murder was financial, we need to look
21:45
Speaker 1: at who could have benefited financially from Shannon's death. After
21:50
Speaker 1: Shannon died, Penny Stevens, her sister, and a first cousin
21:53
Speaker 1: of theirs named John Madwell inherited Shannon's real estate business,
21:58
Speaker 1: Annie Bellams. They started running the company together and according
22:02
Speaker 1: to the last information that I found, the company is
22:04
Speaker 1: still around as of a few years ago. At lease
22:07
Speaker 1: the cousin, John Madwell was running the business with his wife.
22:11
Speaker 1: I just want to be clear, I don't think for
22:13
Speaker 1: a second that Penny was involved in her sister's murder.
22:16
Speaker 1: I think she comes across as genuinely distraught, someone who
22:19
Speaker 1: loved her sister and wants to get justice for her.
22:22
Speaker 1: And she's also been the one who has been very
22:25
Speaker 1: vocal about keeping her sister's case in the public eye
22:27
Speaker 1: over the years. But I think there's someone we might
22:31
Speaker 1: be overlooking. Was there someone who was involved in a
22:36
Speaker 1: business deal with Shannon? Again, this is pure speculation because
22:40
Speaker 1: no one has ever suggested this, But could Shannon have
22:43
Speaker 1: found herself caught up in some kind of fraudulent behavior
22:47
Speaker 1: or was someone defrauding her and she was threatening to
22:49
Speaker 1: go to law enforcement or to sue that person. I'm
22:52
Speaker 1: making this point because right now, when you look at
22:55
Speaker 1: the evidence, there's no obvious windfall. We need to follow
22:59
Speaker 1: the money on this case. We need to see if
23:01
Speaker 1: there were any lawsuits pending exactly what was going on
23:04
Speaker 1: in Shannon's business at the time of her death. In
23:08
Speaker 1: addition to the money trail, we need to go back
23:11
Speaker 1: again to the stage crime scene, which in my opinion,
23:14
Speaker 1: is our biggest clue so far. In a publication called
23:19
Speaker 1: Collision or Collusion Homicides Staged as Car Accidents by Claire Ferguson,
23:23
Speaker 1: which was published in the National Library of Health, the
23:26
Speaker 1: author describes sixteen homicides that were staged as car accidents.
23:30
Speaker 1: The descriptive analysis examined common staging behaviors and victim, offender
23:35
Speaker 1: and offense characteristics. Her findings indicate that staged car accidents
23:42
Speaker 1: present differently than real accidents, and in a nutshell, every
23:46
Speaker 1: single thing that she mentioned sounded like it could have
23:49
Speaker 1: been taken straight out of Shannon's case. The article read quote.
23:54
Speaker 1: They often involve single vehicle, slow speed downhill scenes with
23:58
Speaker 1: middle aged female victims. Physical damage to vehicles is usually minimal,
24:03
Speaker 1: except for fire damage. Common offender behaviors include transporting the
24:07
Speaker 1: body to a vehicle, mutilation of the body, arson, and cleanup.
24:11
Speaker 1: The results suggest these efforts are often unsophisticated and potentially
24:15
Speaker 1: identifiable to investigators and physicians. I think we need to
24:21
Speaker 1: focus more on Shannon's private life. We've heard from her sister,
24:25
Speaker 1: and her sister said that Shannon did not tell her
24:29
Speaker 1: and her mother a lot about certain aspects of her life,
24:31
Speaker 1: that Shannon had been a private person. While investigators were
24:37
Speaker 1: focusing on the car crash scene, the real crime scene,
24:40
Speaker 1: in my opinion, was back at Shannon's house. Of course,
24:43
Speaker 1: it wasn't properly processed in the beginning as a crime scene. Remember,
24:47
Speaker 1: Penny arrived at the house when the police started their investigation.
24:51
Speaker 1: Both Ted and Penny said there were two broken wine
24:55
Speaker 1: cooler bottles on the floor of the garage. Which were
24:58
Speaker 1: totally out of place because Shannon was a neat freak.
25:01
Speaker 1: Her family members said, Shannon never would have left her
25:04
Speaker 1: house looking like that. I wonder if Shannon was seeing someone,
25:08
Speaker 1: maybe a current or ex boyfriend, someone who hasn't been
25:11
Speaker 1: mentioned as a person of interest at all, and with
25:13
Speaker 1: all this family drama, someone who's been flying under the
25:16
Speaker 1: radar all this time. Shannon was officially single, but again,
25:21
Speaker 1: her sister Penny told reporters that Shannon was secretive about
25:24
Speaker 1: certain aspects of her personal life, that she didn't tell
25:27
Speaker 1: certain things to her or to their mom. So what
25:31
Speaker 1: do we know about crime scene staging? Again, we have
25:34
Speaker 1: no access to the police case file, So we have
25:37
Speaker 1: to go back to my bookshelf. We need to go
25:40
Speaker 1: back to what we know about crime scene staging. According
25:43
Speaker 1: to the excellent book Crime Scene Staging, Dynamics and Homicidal
25:47
Speaker 1: Cases by doctor Laura Petler, the most commonly staged crime
25:51
Speaker 1: scenes are done in cases of domestic violence or intimate
25:54
Speaker 1: partner homicides. Crime Scene staging happens basically to serve the
25:59
Speaker 1: killer's needs, not the victims. It happens because the victim
26:03
Speaker 1: and the offender had a relationship with each other. We
26:06
Speaker 1: can also surmise the killer knew the area, at least
26:09
Speaker 1: they knew it well enough to know where there was
26:11
Speaker 1: a cliff a place where they could push that escalade off.
26:15
Speaker 1: The area where she was found walk or trail is
26:18
Speaker 1: over five miles away from Shannon's house, so that means
26:22
Speaker 1: whoever did this presumably put Shannon in the car and
26:26
Speaker 1: then drove her vehicle to the spot where they pushed
26:28
Speaker 1: it off. This is a huge risk. The killer would
26:33
Speaker 1: have to feel reasonably confident that they weren't going to
26:35
Speaker 1: pass anybody on the road, or if they did that
26:38
Speaker 1: they wouldn't look out of place in that car. Doctor Pettler,
26:42
Speaker 1: in her book points out that while there are words
26:45
Speaker 1: for crimes like matricide and patricide, there's no real term
26:49
Speaker 1: that covers a person who was intimately involved with the
26:52
Speaker 1: victim but not married to them. She says she refers
26:56
Speaker 1: to these murders as intimacides someone who was intimately involved
27:01
Speaker 1: with the victim, and this can include close friends who
27:03
Speaker 1: are crashing on a couch, or potentially people who are
27:07
Speaker 1: dating the victim were sexually involved with them, also ex partners.
27:11
Speaker 1: Another study of homicides staged as car accidents. Investigated one
27:15
Speaker 1: hundred and fifteen cases. Now, admittedly this is not a
27:19
Speaker 1: huge group and definitely a lot more research is needed
27:22
Speaker 1: in this area. But again, they found in over eighty
27:26
Speaker 1: percent of the cases the killer was the domestic partner
27:30
Speaker 1: or former domestic partner the victim. In a lot of
27:33
Speaker 1: these cases, the killer used blunt force and basically beat
27:38
Speaker 1: the victim to death. In Shannon's case, police were very
27:44
Speaker 1: quick to classify her death as an accident based on
27:47
Speaker 1: the crime scene, and this is a common mistake that
27:50
Speaker 1: law enforcement make a lot. They focus on crime scene
27:53
Speaker 1: analysis very early on. They need to go back to victimology.
27:59
Speaker 1: They need to get more knowledge about what's actually going
28:02
Speaker 1: on with the victim at the time of death. And
28:05
Speaker 1: so when we're trying to figure out what happened to
28:07
Speaker 1: Shannon her cut, we need to keep an open mind
28:09
Speaker 1: and always be curious. We need to ask ourselves why
28:14
Speaker 1: would someone stage the scene that way? Because they did
28:16
Speaker 1: it for a reason. Maybe it was because they didn't
28:19
Speaker 1: want to be the person who would have to report
28:21
Speaker 1: her missing or to find her body. Maybe it was
28:24
Speaker 1: because they didn't want to have their nine to one
28:26
Speaker 1: one call analyzed. So we need to know more about
28:31
Speaker 1: who was in Shannon's close circle, maybe an ex boyfriend
28:35
Speaker 1: or former lover, maybe someone who, if they were the
28:39
Speaker 1: person who found her body, would have aroused suspicion with
28:41
Speaker 1: the police. We need to talk to the people closest
28:45
Speaker 1: to her, who was Shannon's best friend, who was in
28:48
Speaker 1: her circle, who knew about her personal relationships. If that
28:51
Speaker 1: person is out there, we haven't heard from them yet.
28:55
Speaker 1: Severe County investigators have said this case is still open
28:59
Speaker 1: and still actively being investigated. There is still a forty
29:03
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars reward in place, still available for any
29:06
Speaker 1: information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of
29:09
Speaker 1: whoever killed Shannon Hercut. Anyone who has information, I ask
29:14
Speaker 1: that you please reach out to the Severe County Sheriff's
29:16
Speaker 1: Office Criminal Investigation Division at eight sixty five four two
29:20
Speaker 1: eight one eight nine nine or TBI at one eight
29:25
Speaker 1: hundred TBI fined. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone
29:31
Speaker 1: Murder Line. If you have a case you'd like me
29:45
Speaker 1: and my team to look into, you can reach out
29:47
Speaker 1: to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at
29:50
Speaker 1: six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
29:54
Speaker 1: Helen Gone is a production of School of Humans and
29:57
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend
30:01
Speaker 1: and produced by Gabby Watts. Music is by Ben Solee
30:05
Speaker 1: and this episode was scored by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers
30:09
Speaker 1: are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you
30:15
Speaker 1: have a case you'd like me and my team to
30:17
Speaker 1: look into, you can reach out to us at our
30:19
Speaker 1: Hell and Gone murder line at six seven eight seven
30:23
Speaker 1: four four six one four five. School of Humans