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