Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: I had info on the Cass County three triple black
Speaker 2: child murder case out of Atlanta, Texas, which is Cass County.
Speaker 2: Three little black girls were murdered about a year ago
Speaker 2: to cold case right now. Had some documentation from the
Speaker 2: police and a judge in Texas also at points at
Speaker 2: him and I have some information with the family, the
Speaker 2: mother and some other witnesses to the murders of these
Speaker 2: three girls.
Speaker 3: It was July twenty ninth, twenty twenty two, just another
Speaker 3: quiet summer night in Atlanta, Texas, a tiny town in
Speaker 3: East Texas. Atlanta is about a twenty five minute drive
Speaker 3: from Texarcana, which is right on the border with Arkansas.
Speaker 3: The sun had just gone down when twenty eight year
Speaker 3: old Shamanique Oliver got a panicked phone call. Shamanique is
Speaker 3: a single mom and a certified nurses aid. She works
Speaker 3: at a nursing home in Texarcana. She later told Nancy
Speaker 3: Grace that it had been a totally normal day. She
Speaker 3: was hanging out with her six children between the ages
Speaker 3: of one and ten years old at home. They watched TV,
Speaker 3: played and ate a meal together while Shamanique got ready
Speaker 3: for a shift. When Shamanique went to work that afternoon.
Speaker 3: She left her children in the care of their babysitter,
Speaker 3: a thirty one year old cousin of hers named Paris Props.
Speaker 3: She and the kids lived in a very rural area.
Speaker 3: The one story home is pretty secluded. There are neighbors around,
Speaker 3: but it's the kind of home where you can't really
Speaker 3: see the neighbors, and it's pretty wild out there. There
Speaker 3: are woods and fields behind the house, and the fields
Speaker 3: are blocked by barbour fences. Shamanique was helping change a
Speaker 3: patient later that evening. She was called to the nurses
Speaker 3: station a little after nine pm, and that's when her
Speaker 3: nightmare began. That's when she found out that three of
Speaker 3: her children, her three middle daughters, nine year old Zayaril
Speaker 3: Robinson Oliver, eight year old of Maya Hughes, and little
Speaker 3: five year old to Mari Robinson Oliver, were all missing.
Speaker 3: Law enforcement found the little girls a few hours later. Unfortunately, though,
Speaker 3: this was not a happy ending. Divers dragged their lifeless
Speaker 3: little bodies out of the neighboring pond. Initially, this was
Speaker 3: described as a drowning in the local media, but months
Speaker 3: later law enforcement in Texas said these three little girls
Speaker 3: had been murdered. The cause of death was exphyxiation. All
Speaker 3: three of these little girls had been strangled. There seemed
Speaker 3: to be a lot of misconceptions about this case. Some
Speaker 3: of them involved local rumors. Some of them involved politics,
Speaker 3: charges of racism, and of police not doing their jobs.
Speaker 3: If you listen to this podcast, you'll know that these
Speaker 3: are a lot of the things that often come with
Speaker 3: investigations in small towns. But once you look past all that,
Speaker 3: at the heart of this case, you have three dead
Speaker 3: little girls whose lives were over before they even started,
Speaker 3: and you have a family and an entire town crying
Speaker 3: out for justice and answers. I said back at the
Speaker 3: beginning that shau Minick's nightmare began on July twenty ninth,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: Two, but she never woke up.
Speaker 3: It's still going on, and in East Texas, there's a
Speaker 3: child killer still out there, and this person could strike
Speaker 3: again at any time. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen
Speaker 3: Gone murder line. Over the past five years of making
Speaker 3: my true crime podcast, Helling Gone, I've learned that there's
Speaker 3: no such thing as a small town where murder never happens.
Speaker 3: I have received hundreds of messages from people from all
Speaker 3: around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder
Speaker 3: that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you
Speaker 3: have a case you'd like me and my team to
Speaker 3: look into, you can reach out to us at our
Speaker 3: Hell and Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven
Speaker 3: four four, six one four five. That's six seven eight
Speaker 3: seven four four, six, one four or five. So to
Speaker 3: find out what happened to Shamanique's daughters, we have to
Speaker 3: make sense of the timeline. We need to go back
Speaker 3: and find out exactly what was going on and who
Speaker 3: was around that day. In her interview with Nancy Grace,
Speaker 3: Shamnique said that while she was getting dressed and preparing
Speaker 3: for her shift, the kids were behaving totally normally. She
Speaker 3: made sure they had something to eat, and they were
Speaker 3: playing and watching TV, just generally messing around. Shamanique said
Speaker 3: that all of her children were close, but that her
Speaker 3: three middle daughters, Syaril, Amaya, and Tamari were the best
Speaker 3: of friends. They liked to do things that all little
Speaker 3: girls like to do. They like to play outside and
Speaker 3: ride bikes together. They also love to hang out in
Speaker 3: the house and make TikTok videos. In the interview with
Speaker 3: Nancy Grace, Shamanique clarified that the last time that she
Speaker 3: spoke to her children was when she called them, and
Speaker 3: that was sometime between five and six pm. She asked
Speaker 3: them what they were going to do. They said they
Speaker 3: were going to stay in the house and finish eating
Speaker 3: and take a bath. Shamnique was adamant about the fact
Speaker 3: that they would not go outside. She said, quote, they
Speaker 3: know not to go outside when it gets dark because
Speaker 3: there's no lights.
Speaker 1: Outside end quote.
Speaker 3: This is an important point because, at least in the
Speaker 3: beginning of the investigation, everything that came out about these
Speaker 3: little girl's disappearance made it sound like just a horrific accident,
Speaker 3: like the three little girls had gone outside, maybe for
Speaker 3: a summertime swim or something, and then somehow gotten into trouble.
Speaker 3: But Shamnique insists it would have been totally out of
Speaker 3: character for any of her children to go outside in
Speaker 3: the dark to a dark field. She's been saying that
Speaker 3: to anyone who would listen from the very beginning. Shamnique
Speaker 3: said her shift normally ended around ten PM, and her
Speaker 3: normal routine was that after she got off work, she
Speaker 3: would drive from the nursing home from work back to Atlanta,
Speaker 3: and again, just to clarify here, we're talking about a
Speaker 3: small town in Texas, Atlanta, Texas, not Atlanta, Georgia. It
Speaker 3: was only about twenty five minutes away, so normally she
Speaker 3: would have gotten home at around ten thirty pm. But
Speaker 3: that night she got that call, and when the call
Speaker 3: came in, it was from her neighbor's home phone. When
Speaker 3: Shamanique picked up her cousin, Paris, who had been staying
Speaker 3: with her at her house and helping her out with
Speaker 3: babysitting while she worked, told her that her kids were missing.
Speaker 3: Shamanique didn't get many details at that point. She said
Speaker 3: Paris didn't specify which kids were missing or exactly what
Speaker 3: had happened. Once she heard that her kids were missing,
Speaker 3: she jumped in the car and said she started driving fast.
Speaker 3: Shamanique was panicking. She called nine to one one and
Speaker 3: at the same time she was trying to call her aunt,
Speaker 3: who she said live nearby. She was trying to see
Speaker 3: if her aunt could meet her at her house. Shamanique
Speaker 3: said at that point she was terrified. She was trying
Speaker 3: to hold it together, trying to get home as quickly
Speaker 3: as she could, and through it all she really had
Speaker 3: no idea what was going on. She made it sound
Speaker 3: like the next events were kind of a blur.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 3: As we know from listening to this podcast, sometimes when
Speaker 3: people go missing, police don't come right away. Sometimes even
Speaker 3: when small children go missing, there's a delay. But fortunately
Speaker 3: that was not the case here. By the time Schamanique
Speaker 3: made it home, law enforcement was already there on the scene.
Speaker 3: There were rangers from the Texas Wildlife Department, Emergency Services personnel,
Speaker 3: and detectives from the Cass County Sheriff's Department. All of
Speaker 3: these people in law enforcement were scouring those dark woods.
Speaker 3: They were looking everywhere for those little girls. When Shamanique
Speaker 3: got home, the first thing she did was check on
Speaker 3: her three other children, who were fine and safe. The
Speaker 3: Texas Game Warden's got the call at around ten pm.
Speaker 3: They knew there were three children missing from a residence,
Speaker 3: so when they got there, they brought the canine unit
Speaker 3: with them. The dog alerted and started walking through those
Speaker 3: backwoods toward a pond. It was a pond that was
Speaker 3: back through the woods about two hundred yards away near
Speaker 3: a neighboring property. Again, this is where it's so important
Speaker 3: to try and clarify a location. And this is why
Speaker 3: it's so important to understand both the dynamics of the
Speaker 3: small town and of the crime scene, because just hearing
Speaker 3: the details on the news, you might think this was
Speaker 3: a local swimming hole or something. But I took a
Speaker 3: look at the footage that was filmed from local news stations,
Speaker 3: and that footage tells a very different story. Shamannique said
Speaker 3: she had lived in that spot pretty much her whole life,
Speaker 3: and she never knew there was a pond back there.
Speaker 3: To get to it, you had to go through a
Speaker 3: barbed wire fence and through a pretty dense wooded area.
Speaker 3: Looking at the pictures, that looked more like a swamp.
Speaker 3: Schamnique said her kids would not have known about that pond.
Speaker 3: As it got later and later, shal Manique became more
Speaker 3: and more frantic. She was focused on one thing and
Speaker 3: that was finding her daughters. She was out back in
Speaker 3: her yard while law enforcement continued their search, and then
Speaker 3: one of the canine dogs alerted and they saw something
Speaker 3: an overturned bike. In pictures in the news reports, you
Speaker 3: can see that it's a purple kid's bike with pink
Speaker 3: petals next to the bike was what looked like a
Speaker 3: blue scooter kind of tipped over, leaning in on the bike.
Speaker 3: After the dog alerted and the police found the bike,
Speaker 3: they saw something else. The dogs were pulling toward that pond,
Speaker 3: and police saw a pair of tennis shoes next to
Speaker 3: the waterline. Then they saw footprints in the mud leading
Speaker 3: down to the water, and the family confirmed a law
Speaker 3: enforcement that that pair of little tennis shoes belonged to
Speaker 3: Shamanique's five year old daughter Tomory. And there was something
Speaker 3: else that was very strange about those shoes. On Nancy
Speaker 3: Grace Shamanique said, Tomorri's shoes quote were found out there
Speaker 3: stacked on top of each other, Chris Crossway, like you
Speaker 3: would pack them in a suitcase end quote. She said emphatically.
Speaker 3: My kids never do that.
Speaker 1: Never.
Speaker 3: Divers went into the water and then in the early
Speaker 3: morning hours of July thirtieth, at around two am, they
Speaker 3: found Shamanique's eight year old daughter, Amaya. Amaya was the first,
Speaker 3: but unfortunately not the last. In the end, investigators found
Speaker 3: all three girls dead in that pond. They pulled their
Speaker 3: little bodies out of the water one by one and
Speaker 3: sent them for autopsis. After hearing that Amaya's body had
Speaker 3: been found. Shamanique had to be taken to the hospital.
Speaker 3: She later learned that she was having a heart attack.
Speaker 3: She had already had one hard episode after her mother
Speaker 3: died from COVID, and now she had lost three daughters
Speaker 3: in one night. After Shamanique's three daughters were found dead
Speaker 3: in that pond, the story made local news. At first,
Speaker 3: the media reports indicated that these deaths were being investigated
Speaker 3: as a drowning, which, while horrific, is something that made
Speaker 3: it sound like it might have been an unavoidable accident.
Speaker 3: But that's not what happened here. Looking back in hindsight,
Speaker 3: I think that these reports might have come out because
Speaker 3: of some comments made early on by the Cass County
Speaker 3: Sheriff's office. Cass County Sheriff Larry Rowe told a local newspaper,
Speaker 3: The Gazette, quote, we have no idea what the girls
Speaker 3: were doing there end quote. And then a lieutenant game
Speaker 3: Warden named Jason Jones told a local news station KTL
Speaker 3: that it was unknown whether the little girls were swimmers
Speaker 3: or not. There was another comment made by someone in
Speaker 3: law enforcement about none of the little girls having life
Speaker 3: jackets on, so all of those comments taken together definitely,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, led toward the story being reported as
Speaker 3: a drowning, at least initially. Very quickly, this case was
Speaker 3: turned over from the local police department to the Texas Rangers.
Speaker 3: The officer assigned to that case was named Josh Mason. Now,
Speaker 3: the Texas Rangers are unique organization. Officially, they're the Texas
Speaker 3: State law enforcement units. So like Arkansas has the Arkansas
Speaker 3: State Police, in Texas, they're a little bit unique because
Speaker 3: they have the Rangers. The Texas Rangers originally actually defended
Speaker 3: the frontier back in the eighteen hundreds, and they do
Speaker 3: have a complicated and sometimes brutal legacy. Author Doug Swanson
Speaker 3: wrote about the alleged war crimes that the Texas Rangers
Speaker 3: committed back in the day in his book, which is
Speaker 3: called Cult of Glory, and he told NPR that back
Speaker 3: in the day they did murder a lot of Mexicans
Speaker 3: and Mexican Americans and had a strange idea of frontier justice.
Speaker 3: But over the years, the Texas Rangers have modernized. They've
Speaker 3: actually become one of the country's most elite detective units.
Speaker 3: The Texas Rangers have solved a lot of cold cases.
Speaker 3: It was actually a Texas Ranger who got the notorious
Speaker 3: serial killer Samuel Little to confess, but there have also
Speaker 3: been allegations over the years that in some cases they
Speaker 3: have coerce confessions. Samuel Little did confess to a lot
Speaker 3: of murders, but some of those murders were based on
Speaker 3: very little evidence, and a lot of people believe that
Speaker 3: the Rangers let him confess to crimes even when there
Speaker 3: was not necessarily evidence to back it up, because they
Speaker 3: wanted to close those cases. I'm not going to go
Speaker 3: too far into the weeds on them. If you're interested
Speaker 3: in Texas Ranger history, you can see they've had a
Speaker 3: lot of successes and some controversies, just like many law
Speaker 3: enforcement organizations. I'm bringing this up to make the point that,
Speaker 3: unlike some of the cases I cover, this was not
Speaker 3: a case of just some small town police department with
Speaker 3: no resources doing everything themselves. They did do the right thing.
Speaker 3: They called for outside help, they brought in the Rangers.
Speaker 3: The Texas Rangers were there from day one. When those
Speaker 3: bodies were pulled out of the water. On August second,
Speaker 3: the Texas Rangers released a statement they said, quote at
Speaker 3: the request of the cass County Sheriff's Office the Texas
Speaker 3: Rangers are investigating the drowning deaths of the three juveniles,
Speaker 3: ages five, eight, and nine. The drowning occurred July thirtieth,
Speaker 3: around two am at a private pond off State Highway
Speaker 3: seventy seven. The three siblings had been reported missing around
Speaker 3: ten pm the previous night. This is an ongoing investigation
Speaker 3: and additional information will be released when it's available. Police
Speaker 3: did not give out much information, which is totally normal
Speaker 3: in cases like this. And remember this was two days
Speaker 3: after the girl's bodies had been found. And that statement
Speaker 3: did two things. Number one, it reinforced the public perception
Speaker 3: that these had been drownings. And also, I'm noticing, in
Speaker 3: my opinion, the wordings seemed strange. They said the drowning
Speaker 3: occurred rather than saying the bodies were recovered at two am,
Speaker 3: and whether it was on purpose or not, this later
Speaker 3: caused a lot of confusion. This statement seemed to assume
Speaker 3: a cause of death and also a time of death,
Speaker 3: which is not normally standard protocol in these investigations. For
Speaker 3: the next few months, there was basically nothing on the
Speaker 3: news about these deaths. It was not until eight months
Speaker 3: later that the Cass County District Attorney, Courtney Shelton, announced
Speaker 3: that they were investigating the deaths as a high homicide.
Speaker 3: On March twenty ninth, twenty twenty three, Courtney Shelton said
Speaker 3: in a statement, quote autopsy reports concluded the manner of
Speaker 3: death for all three girls with homicide, indicating evidence of strangulation.
Speaker 3: The girls also suffered lacerations to their faces. Multiple witness
Speaker 3: statements have been obtained, DNA testing is ongoing, and the
Speaker 3: investigation will continue end quote. So now everyone knew that
Speaker 3: three young girls had been strangled and put into that pond.
Speaker 3: The rangers were now investigating the case as a homicide,
Speaker 3: and there was a child killer on the loose in Atlanta, Texas.
Speaker 3: It had been eight months since the all of her sisters'
Speaker 3: bodies were found in a pond. The district attorney had
Speaker 3: announced that the girls had not drowned, as everyone initially
Speaker 3: thought that their deaths were being investigated as homicides, and
Speaker 3: after months of silence, Shone Monique started speaking out. She
Speaker 3: told The Daily Beast that strangers on social media had
Speaker 3: put horribly abusive things. They were writing that she was
Speaker 3: a deadbeat mom. Some of them writing that her kids
Speaker 3: were better off dead. I think at this point a
Speaker 3: lot of people were wondering why she had been silent
Speaker 3: all this time, But it turned out according to Shamanique,
Speaker 3: she told The Daily Beast she suspected foul play from
Speaker 3: the jump. She also said, quote fuck everyone else's feelings,
Speaker 3: I want answers end quote. She wondered, just like everyone
Speaker 3: else did, why investigators had waited so long to tell
Speaker 3: the public about these homicides. It's possible that they held
Speaker 3: information back in the beginning because they were focusing on
Speaker 3: a suspect, trying to make a case against someone, and
Speaker 3: then after several months, maybe they hit a dead end.
Speaker 3: Maybe they thought that they were going to get more
Speaker 3: DNA or other types of physical evidence from the pond,
Speaker 3: and because the little girl's bodies had been there for
Speaker 3: several hours, they weren't able to. This is all just speculation,
Speaker 3: but the bottom line is that there had been months
Speaker 3: with no arrest, months where a child killer was on
Speaker 3: the loose and the public was totally unaware. At the
Speaker 3: end of the press release, the district Attorney asked anyone
Speaker 3: with new information that would help lead to an arrest
Speaker 3: to contact the Texas rangers. So to me, the fact
Speaker 3: that the DA issued this press release and that the
Speaker 3: police made a point of asking the public for information
Speaker 3: means that somewhere there is a missing piece and they
Speaker 3: know someone knows something. So now that we know that
Speaker 3: those little girls did not walk out of that house
Speaker 3: into that pond by themselves, we know that the crime
Speaker 3: could have begun somewhere else, possibly inside the home. So
Speaker 3: what could have happened inside that one story house. Let's
Speaker 3: go back again to the night that the kids went missing,
Speaker 3: July twenty ninth. Ana is at work, she's changing a patient.
Speaker 3: She goes to the nursing station. She gets a call
Speaker 3: from her cousin Paris. And now I'm just going to
Speaker 3: point out something else that she told Nancy Grace, because
Speaker 3: it seemed like even at this point, she wonders why
Speaker 3: he's just now letting her know about this. She also
Speaker 3: wondered why he was calling her from the neighbor's house,
Speaker 3: why he hadn't first called.
Speaker 1: Nine to one to one.
Speaker 3: On July twenty ninth, according to the historical data I
Speaker 3: found on the internet, on that date in Texarcana, sunset
Speaker 3: was at eight eighteen pm. Remember this is the middle
Speaker 3: of the summer, so it didn't get fully dark until
Speaker 3: about thirty minutes after that. Still, it raises red flags
Speaker 3: for me that a babysitter in a small house didn't
Speaker 3: notice three kids were missing until after dark. Later, a
Speaker 3: local news station interviewed a neighbor, a woman named Josephine Webster.
Speaker 3: She told this local news station KTLA that the guy
Speaker 3: presents summably, meaning Paris, who was staying in Shamanique's house,
Speaker 3: came over and asked her for her house phone. So
Speaker 3: I'm wondering the same thing that it sounds like sham
Speaker 3: Minique was why did he get the neighbor to call
Speaker 3: nine one one? Did he not have a cell phone?
Speaker 3: Because the first thing that I would have done if
Speaker 3: I was babysitting and someone's children were missing was call
Speaker 3: their mom right that second. By the way, Josephine said
Speaker 3: she was driving home at around nine point thirty when
Speaker 3: she saw Paris. Now, remember, Shamanique said she got the
Speaker 3: call a little after.
Speaker 1: Nine p m.
Speaker 3: Just a few minutes time difference, But as we know,
Speaker 3: in cases like this, those few minutes, those tiny details
Speaker 3: can be crucial. There are some indications that very early
Speaker 3: on in the investigation. Police were asking some of the
Speaker 3: same questions that Shamanique was, and that rather than focusing
Speaker 3: on sex offenders who were passing through the area, they
Speaker 3: might be focusing on someone much closer to home. Shamanique
Speaker 3: gave Nancy Gray some more details that I believe could
Speaker 3: be crucial to this case. She said that right after
Speaker 3: the authorities told her they found her little eight year
Speaker 3: old Amaya's body, she saw something else. She said that
Speaker 3: the divers pulled some tangled clothes out of the pond. Later,
Speaker 3: investigators showed her photos of what they found. She recognized
Speaker 3: that clothing as jackets that belonged to her children. But
Speaker 3: the strange thing was, according to Shamanique, these jackets were
Speaker 3: ones that her kids had outgrown. She said they had
Speaker 3: thrown them into the trash at home. This again raises
Speaker 3: a huge red flag because that suggests that someone else,
Speaker 3: probably the killer, had been inside the house because someone
Speaker 3: had to fish those jackets out of the trash. I
Speaker 3: don't think that's something the little girls would have done
Speaker 3: on their own. Shamanique said something else that was chilling
Speaker 3: to me. She said the jackets were quote tied together
Speaker 3: like a rope end quote.
Speaker 1: This is getting really dark.
Speaker 3: But this is unfortunately where my mind has to go
Speaker 3: to try and figure out what happened those little girls.
Speaker 3: What were those jackets for? Were they put there to
Speaker 3: tie the girls up, or to tie them together so
Speaker 3: their bodies would sink? Or did whatever bad thing happen
Speaker 3: to them happen first in the house and then somehow
Speaker 3: the killer dragged the bodies out to the pond using
Speaker 3: those jackets. The Cass County DA's press release referred to
Speaker 3: the fact that the little girl's injuries were much more
Speaker 3: extensive than had been initially reported. Local news stations had
Speaker 3: reported that the little girl's spaces were bruised and that
Speaker 3: they had lacerations on their faces, deep cuts and bruises.
Speaker 3: Shamanique gave Nancy Grace more disturbing details. She said that
Speaker 3: investigators had showed her photos of her daughter's bodies. Shamanique
Speaker 3: said that Tamari had what she described as a busted lip,
Speaker 3: but that her nine year old had extensive injuries and
Speaker 3: were not just talking about a few cuts. She said
Speaker 3: that they, presumably meaning the people who prepared her daughter
Speaker 3: for burial, had to quote reconstruct one side of her face.
Speaker 3: It looked like she took a beating on one side
Speaker 3: of her face and it pulled her skin off end quote.
Speaker 3: When the investigators talked to Shamanique, they also broke the
Speaker 3: devastating news to her that they believed that all three
Speaker 3: of her girls had been molested. Now, at this point,
Speaker 3: a lot of people wondered why it took so long
Speaker 3: to release autopsy results. There was some confusion here, and
Speaker 3: I think it's really important to differentiate between what was
Speaker 3: being told to the family and what was being made public.
Speaker 3: Revolt Black News Weekly has been doing a lot of
Speaker 3: reporting on this case. Urbienne said they contacted the cass
Speaker 3: County DA office. They said that they were told the
Speaker 3: autopsy had been delayed, but then when the press release
Speaker 3: came out, it made it clear that authorities had known
Speaker 3: from the beginning that homicide was the cause of death,
Speaker 3: that they never thought this was some kind of accidental drowning.
Speaker 3: Rolling Stone reached out to the District Attorney's office and
Speaker 3: the DA. Courtney Shelton clarified a few things for Rolling Stone,
Speaker 3: including the timeline. Courtney Shelton said that at least since
Speaker 3: early August of twenty twenty two, just a few days
Speaker 3: after the little girl's bodies were pulled out of that pond.
Speaker 3: The DA's office had the autopsy results, and they knew
Speaker 3: this had been a homicide. She said that investigators had
Speaker 3: told Shamanique that it was a homicide from the beginning too.
Speaker 3: Courtney Shelton said that on August fourth, Josh Mason, the
Speaker 3: Texas ranger in charge of the investigation quote, met with
Speaker 3: Shamanique Oliver, the mother of the children, and her father
Speaker 3: and notified them that the deaths of all three children
Speaker 3: were not accidents. Anne provided both of them with details
Speaker 3: from the preliminary autopsy report, stating that the cause of
Speaker 3: death was homicide end quote. Police got a lot of
Speaker 3: criticism after that press release because a lot of people
Speaker 3: wondered why it took them so long to make their
Speaker 3: manner of death public and failed to warn the community
Speaker 3: that there was a dangerous sexual predator and a child
Speaker 3: killer at large, and a lot of people, including Shamanique
Speaker 3: and the local Black Panther chapter, wondered if the investigation
Speaker 3: would have unfolded differently if police were investigating the death
Speaker 3: of three little white girls. Let's go back again. Let's
Speaker 3: look at the victim's pattern of life and start with
Speaker 3: the last people to see these little girls. We cannot
Speaker 3: overlook the fact that these children were being looked after
Speaker 3: by Paris Props. Paris was Shamanique's cousin. Her mother and
Speaker 3: Paris's mother are sisters. Is a male cousin in his
Speaker 3: early thirties. Shamanique said he had been staying with her
Speaker 3: at her house and regularly babysite the children. Now, Shamanique
Speaker 3: told urbn she had never had a problem with Paris
Speaker 3: before when he was babysitting kids. But she also shared
Speaker 3: something else that I found shocking, something she later repeated
Speaker 3: to Nancy Grace. She said that her four year old
Speaker 3: daughter told her and told police that her three sisters
Speaker 3: walked into the woods with Paris Props. Yet, Shamanique said
Speaker 3: police talk to Paris the day after the girls went
Speaker 3: missing and never questioned him again. Now, I'm just being
Speaker 3: logical here. I'm not trying to imply anything. I'm literally
Speaker 3: just following the investigation's logical threat. We know that investigators
Speaker 3: told Shamanique that they believed her daughters had been molested,
Speaker 3: and we know that children are much more likely to
Speaker 3: be molested by someone they know or by relative than
Speaker 3: a stranger. So any mail, whether they were relative or not,
Speaker 3: any male who was staying in that home with those
Speaker 3: children would need to be closely looked at by law enforcement.
Speaker 3: So let's take a closer look at Paris Props, because
Speaker 3: there's been very little said about him. Most news reports
Speaker 3: don't mention his name. There weren't any other males there
Speaker 3: that night. We don't know a lot about the children's fathers,
Speaker 3: but Shaminique has said that she was a single mom
Speaker 3: and that the children's fathers had no contact with her
Speaker 3: or with their children. I don't know if Chamanique was
Speaker 3: ever suspicious of her cousin Paris, but it definitely seems
Speaker 3: like by what she said publicly. Once the Texas Rangers
Speaker 3: talked to her and her father, once they laid out
Speaker 3: the case for her in early August, it seems clear
Speaker 3: that something changed her mind. We don't know exactly what
Speaker 3: the rangers told her, but we do know that after
Speaker 3: they told Shamanique what they believed was going on, she
Speaker 3: tried to run out the door. She said she remembers
Speaker 3: thinking she was going to go out and hurt her cousin,
Speaker 3: meaning Paris. Shamanique also had said something else that's crucial.
Speaker 3: She said Paris has not been cooperative with the investigation.
Speaker 3: She said Paris has not talked to her about it,
Speaker 3: and that he moved out of her house and went
Speaker 3: to live with his mom, Lemisha. She said he won't
Speaker 3: talk to her and he won't talk to the police.
Speaker 3: Neither Paris nor his mother have spoken publicly about this,
Speaker 3: but if you look through his mother's social media, it's
Speaker 3: obvious that she and her son have had issues before
Speaker 3: with law enforcement. Back in twenty twenty one, Lemisha Paris's
Speaker 3: mom was posting comments on Facebook that are public comments,
Speaker 3: and she was talking about an incident in which she
Speaker 3: referred to Paris having an altercation with the police and
Speaker 3: getting his teeth knocked out. His mom said they meaning
Speaker 3: the police hid Paris in another county, and she talks
Speaker 3: about wanting to follow a lawsity against police. My source,
Speaker 3: the person who called into this podcast to tell me
Speaker 3: about the case, said that he believed that Paris had
Speaker 3: filed a lawsuit against police. But I've been looking through
Speaker 3: court records and I haven't found any record of that,
Speaker 3: so I don't know if the suit was ever filed,
Speaker 3: or if it's something they thought about doing. His mom's
Speaker 3: comments just seemed to indicate they were looking for a lawyer,
Speaker 3: but they hadn't found one yet. Shamanique said that since
Speaker 3: Paris me back with his mother, that his mother and
Speaker 3: he are both actively trying to keep a police away
Speaker 3: and they are not talking. Paris does have a criminal record.
Speaker 3: I found some gun charges and drug charges. They were
Speaker 3: mainly for small amounts of marijuana, meaning less than two ounces,
Speaker 3: And of course I must point out none of these
Speaker 3: things indicate that he's a murderer. Obviously, everyone is innocent
Speaker 3: until proven guilty. I'm just trying to understand Paris and
Speaker 3: the family dynamics since they're there's been so little reporting
Speaker 3: out there about it. Paris did have a brother named
Speaker 3: Kevin Shepherd, and Kevin Shepherd is a convicted killer. Again,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to go too far into the details
Speaker 3: on Kevin's case, because, of course, anyone's family members crimes
Speaker 3: are not a reflection of them. It's a completely separate issue.
Speaker 3: But I think it's important because it might explain a
Speaker 3: why Paris might not want to talk to the police
Speaker 3: and beat. Some of his mother, Lasha's comments on social
Speaker 3: media and her general attitude towards law enforcement. In twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two, Paris's brother, Kevin Shepherd, got life in prison
Speaker 3: for killing Donny Coombs and Cynthia Arnold, a couple who
Speaker 3: went missing in September of twenty eighteen. Cynthia was a
Speaker 3: mother who, at the age of forty, had a run
Speaker 3: of bad luck. She lost her job, she got a divorce,
Speaker 3: and she started getting into methamphetamines. That's when she met
Speaker 3: her boyfriend Donnie Coombs. He was also into drugs. In
Speaker 3: September of twenty eighteen, a sheriff's office investigator in a
Speaker 3: neighboring county, Marion County, said that she responded to a
Speaker 3: call and found a burning red truck on a remote
Speaker 3: county road. By the time the flames had been extinguished,
Speaker 3: that fire had burned so hot the truck rims had
Speaker 3: melted to the road. That truck belonged to Kevin Shepherd.
Speaker 3: Inside the truck, police found the bodies of Donnie and Cynthia.
Speaker 3: When this first happened, it seemed like the police had
Speaker 3: suspicions that Kevin might have been involved, but they didn't
Speaker 3: have enough evidence until an eyewitness came forward in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 3: This witness said she was hanging out with Kevin in
Speaker 3: late September of twenty eighteen. She said Kevin took her
Speaker 3: to an area with no running water or electricity. Donnie
Speaker 3: and Cynthia were there too, and this person said that
Speaker 3: all of them were doing drugs. Then she said she
Speaker 3: was horrified when Kevin basically said watch this, and then,
Speaker 3: according to this witness, Kevin shot both victims in the
Speaker 3: head and then dragged their bodies to a fire pit
Speaker 3: and burned them. The FBI and local law enforcement went
Speaker 3: to that location. They checked the fire pit and they
Speaker 3: found traces of human bone. Kevin got life without the
Speaker 3: possibility of parole. He's currently behind bars serving out his sentence,
Speaker 3: and prosecutors said the motive in that case was the
Speaker 3: fact that Donnie, one of the victims, was supposedly going
Speaker 3: to testify against Kevin's uncle, a man named Gary Shepherd,
Speaker 3: in a felony theft case. Gary is also facing charges,
Speaker 3: but his trial has not started yet. According to KSLA,
Speaker 3: when Lemisha Parris's mother was asked about the jury's decision,
Speaker 3: she said, quote, I kind of figured it was going
Speaker 3: to go this way because we live in Cass County,
Speaker 3: and that's how they operate.
Speaker 1: End quote. Lemisia said that the.
Speaker 3: Family planned to appeal the jury's verdict. I've not spoken
Speaker 3: to Lemesha or to Paris, and obviously anyone has the
Speaker 3: right to not speak to police without an attorney. In fact,
Speaker 3: that's what I would advise most people to do. But
Speaker 3: I can say that it's a red flag to me
Speaker 3: that Lemisha seems to put all the blame on law enforcement.
Speaker 3: I was looking through criminal records and I found something
Speaker 3: else that I thought was interesting in Paris's criminal record.
Speaker 3: In another case, he pleaded guilty to possession of a
Speaker 3: dangerous drug called Gaba pinton. It's an anti epilepsy drug,
Speaker 3: but it's a drug that has been used in some
Speaker 3: cases as a date rape drug. So obviously my mind
Speaker 3: goes back to that dark place, back to that house,
Speaker 3: into the dark things that could have happened there. If
Speaker 3: the house was the real crime scene and the bike
Speaker 3: was put by the pond to stage something, then we
Speaker 3: have to ask ourselves. Could the killer have tried to
Speaker 3: put the girls to sleep? Was one of them more
Speaker 3: badly injured than the others because she tried to wake
Speaker 3: up and intervene. Remember Josephine, the neighbor who the local
Speaker 3: news station talked to. The reporter who interviewed her, Rading
Speaker 3: Edwards really seemed to care deeply about this case. Radin said, quote,
Speaker 3: I would like to see it come to an end.
Speaker 3: Somebody needs to go to jail for this end quote.
Speaker 1: We see this story over and over.
Speaker 3: The news organization contacts law enforcement, they ask for a comment.
Speaker 3: Law enforcement says we're not giving out any details, and
Speaker 3: often the news reports stopped there.
Speaker 1: But in this.
Speaker 3: Case, the reporters did a good thing.
Speaker 1: They went that extra step.
Speaker 3: They drove out to that area and they obviously started
Speaker 3: canvassing and knocking on doors. That's when Raydin interviewed Josephine,
Speaker 3: the neighbor. Josephine confirmed what had already been reported on
Speaker 3: the news. She talked about Paris coming to her house
Speaker 3: using her phone and calling Shamanique, and then she added
Speaker 3: another crucial detail, one that threw a lot more shade
Speaker 3: on Paris props. Josephine told the news channel quote, he
Speaker 3: was wet, and I noticed that it looked like all
Speaker 3: the way down, not sweat, it looked like water.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 3: So this, I have to say, blows my mind. The
Speaker 3: sores who have been talking to about the case. The
Speaker 3: one who called the podcast says that Shamanique is wondering
Speaker 3: the same thing that a lot of people are. Why
Speaker 3: hasn't Paris been questioned more thoroughly and why hasn't there
Speaker 3: been an arrest. Paris's mother has posted something else that's
Speaker 3: interesting on social media. She put a photo of a
Speaker 3: warrant the police had compelling Paris to give his DNA
Speaker 3: to law enforcement and allowing them to use force to
Speaker 3: get the DNA if necessary. I would love to know
Speaker 3: what happened without warrant, because my source says they believe
Speaker 3: that the search warrant was never ex secuted. But Paris's
Speaker 3: mother claimed in her post that Paris has voluntarily given
Speaker 3: his DNA. So if the authorities were able to do testing,
Speaker 3: and if they have Paris's DNA, why haven't.
Speaker 1: They ruled anyone in or out.
Speaker 3: Obviously I don't have access to the case file, but
Speaker 3: there could be a few reasons why. One thought, again,
Speaker 3: is that because the girl's bodies were in the water
Speaker 3: for several hours, the DNA may have degraded. Maybe police
Speaker 3: didn't have quite enough for an arrest and they needed
Speaker 3: to push for a confession, but Paris and the people
Speaker 3: around him are not talking. The Daily Beast asked Da
Speaker 3: Shelton about Paris. She said that he had been questioned
Speaker 3: and that quote, he was the last person known to
Speaker 3: be with the children prior to their deaths. However, all
Speaker 3: possible leads are being followed.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 3: The New Black Panthers leader Kwan Alex told Rolling Stone, quote,
Speaker 3: we do believe that the root is racism. If these
Speaker 3: were three beautiful, little, blond haired, blue eyed, white children
Speaker 3: from a suburban community in Cass County, they would have
Speaker 3: handled this entire investigation completely different. End quote. Whatever has
Speaker 3: happened up to now, in my opinion, the focus should
Speaker 3: be on what happens next because Shamanique's neighbors and everyone
Speaker 3: else in Cass County is rightfully terrified there could be
Speaker 3: a sexual predator and child serial killer hiding in plain sight.
Speaker 3: Someone out there knows something. The Texas Rangers, the Cass
Speaker 3: County Sheriff's Office, and the Cass County District Attorney's office
Speaker 3: are asking for any new information that would lead to
Speaker 3: an interest in this case. If you know something, if
Speaker 3: you have any detail, no matter how small, that could
Speaker 3: help this mother learn what happened to her three children.
Speaker 3: Please call Texas Ranger Josh Mason. At nine o three
Speaker 3: two five five five seven two seven, Shamanique told The
Speaker 3: Daily Beast quote all on want is justice for my babies.
Speaker 1: End quote.
Speaker 3: Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of
Speaker 3: Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me
Speaker 3: Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Music contributed by
Speaker 3: Ben Sale and this episode was scored and mixed by
Speaker 3: Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C.
Speaker 1: Crowley.
Speaker 3: If you have a case you'd like me and my
Speaker 3: team to look into, you can reach out to us
Speaker 3: at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight
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