Cold Case Files - Little Girl Lost

Episode Date: June 20, 2017

In 1992, Halloween was cancelled in Oil City, Pennsylvania. Just days before, an 11-year-old was kidnapped and brutally murdered. The small town is rocked when Shauna Howe's body is discovered under a bridge, and investigators scramble to figure out what kind of person could have committed such a horrific crime. For two decades, the case goes unsolved despite the killer's taunts, solid DNA evidence, and a haunting copy-cat murder. When one investigator finds a single overlooked detail 20 years later, he discovers who killed Shauna Howe.

Just a quick warning before you begin. This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence and sexual assault. It might not be appropriate for younger listeners or anyone who might be triggered by these topics. What do you see when you think of Halloween? Costumes? Candy? Parties? When the people of Oil City, Pennsylvania think of Halloween, they might think of death, sadness, and loss. How we see things is shaped by our experiences. They color our lenses. The lenses in Oil City were colored by the death of Shawna Howe in October of 1992. There are 120,000 unsolved murder cases in America. Each one is called a cold case, and only 1% are ever solved.

This is one of those rare cases. I'm Brooke, and this is Cold Case Files, the podcast, based on the hit show currently airing on A&E. On this particular Halloween, the one in 1992, there was no candy, no costumes, and plenty of tears to go around. Halloween was canceled, but it's not like the people in Oil City, Pennsylvania would have gone out anyway. Just days before, a little girl only 11 years old was killed. Her name was Shawna Howe. This is her mom, Lucy.

I remember that morning, Shawna come over and she says, Mom, I've got the Girl Scouts tonight. We've got the Halloween thing. We're going up to the nursing home. Shawna was a Girl Scout and they were meeting that night. They wore costumes. Shawna was dressed as a gymnast. She had on a teal and black leotard with matching tights and gloves.

Around 7.30, Shawna and her friend, Joey Al, left the meeting together. The two girls separated at the corner and Shawna walked down First Street alone. It was an October evening and already dark outside. Dan Patton, an Oil City local, heard a scream and saw a tall, skinny man wearing a ball cap. The man in the ball cap grabbed Shawna and put her into a small red car. October of 1992 was before cell phones, so Dan ran from door to door in the dark. He was desperate to deliver the message about what he saw and to find someone to call the police for help. Meanwhile at home, Lucy started to get worried. She didn't think the Girl Scout meeting would go so late, so she went to look for Shauna while her husband called local hospitals. She got back home after 10 p.m. and had no doubt that something bad had happened.

The police were called to the family home immediately. They suggested that maybe Shauna was just lost. But then the squawk of a police radio sounded in the room. It seemed that Dan Patton had been successful because it was his message that followed. Shawna had been taken. I want to give the police credit here. They started searching immediately. They looked all over. They talked to potential witnesses. They looked for a red car. They even did traffic stops, but they didn't find Shawna. Oil City had just under 12,000 residents, and it felt like every single one of them was out there searching. That's how this community responds.

There were hundreds of people out, volunteers, just walking and looking. That was Robert Wenner, a local police officer and part of the search. I looked for information on Shauna's biological father, and beyond his name, Robert, and the fact that he and Lucy had four children together, I couldn't find much else. So in this case, the weight of a missing child appears to be on Lucy alone. While the town was out searching, Shauna's mother was asked to wait at home in case someone tried to contact her. She described that experience as feeling trapped. I wanted to go out and search. You know, the cops are like, no, stay here in case somebody calls what if it's a kidnapping you know

and they want a ransom or something so they wouldn't let me out of the house you ever see like a caged lion just walking back and forth and back and forth that's what that living room feels like it's like walking around in circles because there's no place else to go. You just want to scream at the top of your lungs. Just let me out. But nobody would. The search continued into the next day, but it wasn't until two days later that they found something. A black and teal leotard.

Shauna's clothes were found under a bridge near a campsite. Her leotard. Her Halloween costume. But not Shauna. I'm going to introduce you to State Trooper Richard Graham. He's my favorite. I'll tell you why in just a few minutes. I was on patrol duty at the time. I was called down to the scene. When I arrived, I learned what had been discovered. It now had become very serious. They tested the gymnastic suit. There were several sentinel deposits on the suit. Shauna had been sexually assaulted,

and investigators had the DNA evidence to prove it. She was 11. On October 30, three days after her abduction, they found Shauna's body. She was at the bridge. Yeah, the same bridge where her clothes were found just the day before. The same area that had been thoroughly searched just 24 hours earlier. The final taunt by the killers was her shoes. They were found carefully placed on the bridge,

one facing left, one facing right. So, who killed Shauna Howe? Somebody was toying with us. Look what I did. Can you catch me? I think we should try. Evidence. We hear that word thrown around a lot in our favorite crime shows. But what does it mean?

It means the facts used to prove that something happened. The things that people find when they're looking. Really looking to solve a crime. We're going to talk about the evidence which comes in three forms. Witnesses, exhibits, and stipulations. In case your crime-solving vocabulary is rusty, like mine was, let's break those down. Witnesses are basically people who saw things and are willing to talk about them. The thing about witnesses is that they aren't always as reliable as you might think. In fact, hundreds of studies in the past 30 years have shown that incorrect procedures lead to false identifications. Exhibits are the

tangibles in an investigation. Things you can touch or look at, like a black and teal leotard or an 11-year-old girl's body. They're also the things that you can see or hear, like a 911 recording or a security tape. Scientific evidence is also an exhibit. For example, the results of a DNA test or an autopsy report. Stipulations are facts that everyone agrees on, like it was dark outside or it was a Wednesday. Stipulations are usually made to spare the jury from having to hear testimony about something that no one disputes. Other times, stipulation is strategic. An attorney may stipulate that their client did or said something to avoid giving it attention. Sometimes, you have to look really closely to find the evidence, and even then, things can get

missed. Other times, clues are found that appear to be evidence but turn out to be just a red herring. You know, something that feels like a clue, but is really unrelated. I told you earlier that State Trooper Graham was my favorite. And as promised, I'm going to tell you why. I'm slow. He's dyslexic. He describes himself as slow, but his partner in the background fills us in. He has dyslexia.

That's why he's my favorite. He turns what some might consider a weakness into a superpower. He looks at things differently. Because of his dyslexia, not in spite of it, he is very thorough. Graham had been on the scene as a trooper when Shauna's body was found. It really got to him. How could it not? Eventually, he became a detective,

and on top of 72 other cases, he still looked at the files for Shauna Howe every night. But what did he find? Shauna's leotard, her Halloween costume, was found with an unknown perpetrator's DNA on it. They sent it to be tested at the lab, but the problem with DNA unknown perpetrator's DNA on it. They sent it to be tested at the lab, but the problem with DNA is that it's only helpful if you already have a match. At the time, DNA tests were not cotton swabs in the mouth or any of the other convenient collection methods we see on TV. It meant a blood test, a needle, a trip to the lab. Law enforcement started mass DNA testing.

Here's the opinion of Charles Daly, a police investigator, in 1992. If you didn't do anything wrong, let's get your name out of it. I couldn't tell you how many of those we did over that couple of years period. All the DNA tests came back negative. It was negative with all of them. It was negative with all of them. I don't think that's okay. DNA is objective, but scientists are human. Not that there's anything wrong with being human, but we make mistakes. When a lab mass tests people's DNA without first

using other means to investigate them, not only is it a violation of privacy, but there's more room for errors like mix-ups or cross-contamination. Errors lead to unfair or improper convictions. I'm just relaying the facts, not endorsing the process. They tested all of the men they could think of, over a hundred total, including Shauna's stepdad and even her brother, who was barely a teenager at the time. Yeah, we took a DNA sample from the boy. He was probably old enough.

They weren't a match. They weren't even really suspects. No other types of evidence even suggested that her family was involved. It seems maybe DNA was not going to be very useful in this case. So they had to look elsewhere. Because of the nature of the DNA, we know it was a man. One man's DNA meant one man committed this crime. That was the result of three FBI profiles.

So that was the information police used when they began their search. We know there was a red car and the driver was a tall, skinny guy who was wearing a ball cap. That takes us somewhere. Actually, it takes us to someone's? Some people? We have some suspects. Suspect number one, Bill Crabtree. He was my guess.

He's the man who found Shauna as he was leaving a campsite. But my guess was wrong. He was eliminated by DNA. Also, we should add Ted Walker as our number two suspect. He worked at the local pizza shop and knew Shauna. He would try to hug her and the other girls when they stopped by. Oh yeah, and Walker also owned a red car. The thing is, he was also eliminated by DNA. Suspects three and four were preceded by their reputations for similar crimes. Jim and Tim O'Brien were ruled out quickly. An officer remembered them being in jail the night Shauna went missing.

Two more suspects crossed off the list. He said, it's basically a cold case. It's basically dead. It's Halloween again, five years later, almost to the day that Shauna went missing. And there's another kidnapping. Sine Freeman was four years old, much younger than Shauna. Sine was described as friendly and smart. She was last seen at the edge of the woods playing with her friends. The town once again rallied to search for their missing child. During the course of the search, on a hunch, Officer Wenner talked to a young man that he had described as not looking right, whatever that might mean. I said, I'm asking for your help because I think something bad happened. He laid his head in my chest and started to cry,

and he's like, she's hurt bad. She's bleeding bad. And I said, I've seen a lot of people bleed bad and live. You got to get me to her. We discovered Shanae buried in a shallow grave. It appears that this time his hunch paid off. The man, who was actually a 17-year-old boy, led him to Shanae. She'd been thrown off an embankment exactly five years after Shauna's death. Her murderer was 17-year-old Nicholas Bowen. Could he also be the one that hurt Shauna?

If you subtract 5 from 17, that would have made Nicholas only 12 at the time of Shauna's murder. Old enough to be traumatized, but was he old enough to rape? I don't think that adds up, and neither did police. Nicholas Bowen pleaded guilty to Sinead's murder on September 30, 1998. He was sentenced to life in prison. All the while, Detective Graham used his superpower to look at the evidence every night. He went over every document in the file from autopsy to suspects, and then he found something. He looked very closely. In the picture of Shauna's body, he saw something that didn't make sense.

It was a mark on her cheek that wasn't even mentioned in the autopsy. It looked like a shoe print on her face. Graham and his partner, Betsy Ross, went to see a prominent medical examiner, because who better to explain an autopsy than an M.E.? Beyond confirming their theory about the shoe print, they gained some insight into the killer. He said somehow they held her in captivity for a couple of days, but there's no evidence of any restraints. Shauna had been violently raped, but also was not restrained. She had a shoe print on her face. What do you see when you put those things together? That suggested to him that it was quite possible that more than one person was

involved. For many years, I always believed that it probably was just one person. The FBI profilers had gotten it wrong three separate times. The profiles, plus the eyewitness testimony, and the one sample of DNA, had all pointed to one person. So what does our list look like now? Let's think this through. DNA was not useful in finding suspects, but it was used to eliminate them. Well, it would have been if there was only one perpetrator. I think this puts those suspects that were eliminated by DNA back on the list. We have Bill Crabtree, red car owner and also a fan of camping. He was ruled out by the DNA evidence in the original sweep. Back on the list. There's also Ted Walker, the pizza shop hugger who liked to hang out with the neighborhood kids in his home. He self-reported

having a learning disability called an intellectual disorder in the DSM-5. Basically, he had a low IQ. Not only was he ruled back in by DNA, but he also had a red car connection. Back on the list. What about the brothers, Jim and Tim O'Brien? They had a cold, hard alibi. They had been in jail the night Shauna was taken. Right?

Detective Graham's superpower once again proved beneficial. That's when I realized I had never seen a report documenting that they had been in jail on the night of the abduction. The investigators didn't look. They didn't question the alibi. But Detective Graham discovered the O'Briens had bonded out. Back on the list they go. Four suspects.

Three failed FBI profiles. Two non-DNA matches. One more minute till we have some answers. It's time for us to solve this. When officers looked into the red car another time, they received an unlikely hit. The fire department reported that the remains of a red car were found in the area. It had been set on fire and burned shortly after Shawna's death. And guess who that car was registered to? Not Bill Crabtree. It was Ted Walker. Walker is re-interviewed by police. How is it that you first learned of Shawna Howe's abduction? Tim and Jim O'Brien came and told me.

Did you hear those names? Out of the 12,000 people who lived in Oil City in 1992, Walker mentioned our two other suspects by name. After Walker's interview, Graham located the O'Briens, which wasn't too difficult as they were both incarcerated. Tim for sexual assault and Jim for attempted kidnapping by way of his trunk. After some coaxing, the brothers gave a DNA sample. Jim O'Brien was a match. Jim O'Brien, Tim O'Brien, and Ted Walker. These three men were all a part of Shauna's murder. Detective Ross described Jim as an alpha male and Tim as a follower. But then she goes on to say this. Then we have Ted Walker who plays the dummy,

but he's not the dummy at all. I mean, as far as I'm concerned, Ted could have been the mastermind right behind Jimmy. I couldn't find any additional information about the O'Brien brothers, giving me no reason to doubt Detective Ross's statement. But Jim's mother stated that she believed the DNA evidence was planted. She explained that her son liked to camp and the police must have gotten his DNA from an item left at the campsite. Was this a desperate mother trying to protect her child? Or could it have been a defense mechanism not allowing her to believe that her son was capable of such malice? There's something about Ted Walker's interview that doesn't sit right with me. Could it appear that he was playing dumb through the lens of an eager detective?

Sure. Could looking through the lens of a social worker color him as someone who's struggling to understand his current situation? That's also possible. Listen to a bit of Ted Walker's interview with police. We're going to take this back to 1992. We know that a witness saw somebody walk up to Shawna Howe. Isn't that right? Right.

And who was that person the witness saw? Me. Right. So you walk up to her, and as you're approaching her, you ask her what? She was selling Girl Cops. Okay. And why did you ask her that? Because I like working girl's coffee. Right. I know that. Did it sound like he was acting to you? Do you think he was playing the dummy? Personally, I believe that he doesn't

quite understand the importance of the situation, though I can't say for sure. But I do think it would have been useful to have a better understanding of his level of comprehension. This is how I imagine the night of the crime using the evidence, but it's not pretty. It was a small town. It was a safe town. Life was simple. It's dark, but there's a streetlight every block or so. Shana and her friend walk out of Girl Scouts. They're wearing costumes. They just had candy and probably were feeling pretty happy. They say see you later as they split up. They lived on different roads. Shawna wasn't looking for a stranger. She wasn't aware of who was in the shadows.

A tall skinny guy, Ted Walker, grabs her and passes her to the other men in the car like an object. It turns out that Jim O'Brien also used to work at the pizza shop. Maybe that was when he first noticed Walker. I imagine, after seeing the interviews and reading his appeals, that Ted Walker might have been an easy person to persuade. I can't say for sure in this case, but often people who are described as manipulative identify and befriend those that might be able to help them in the future. We picked Halloween night. It was only supposed to be a prank. We picked Halloween night. It was only supposed to be a prank. Does that sound believable to you?

Do I think Walker believed it? Yes. Do I think it was fed to him by someone else's truth? Also yes. Do I think Walker had the capacity to make it stop once things were set in motion? No. Jimmy O'Brien was described as the leader, the dominant of the two brothers. Maybe the brothers were riled up about being arrested and needed to let off some steam. Maybe they just made a bad choice. I have to tell myself there's a reason. Not a justification, but rather an explanation.

Despite the motive, though, they convinced Walker to help them, and he let them use his home. For two days, they kept her there. They did terrible things to her. Eleven-year-old Shawna was alone while the entire town was searching for her. She probably cried. I wonder if she has to go home.

I wonder, what were they thinking? At what point can a person make a choice to discard a little girl, toss her off a bridge like she's a piece of litter from the car? I guess, in this case, that point is in three days. Because on day number two, her clothes were found, but not her body. On day number three, her body was found in the same spot. Her knees were scuffed up. Was it from the carpet in the trunk of the car? Is that where Shauna spent her last night? Was that why the car was burned? She was alive for ten minutes after being cast off the bridge.

For ten minutes, she laid there, alone, broken, naked, bleeding, but alive. For ten minutes, they could have saved her, but they didn't. I wonder if they even look back. I don't know if Shauna got justice. I'm not sure what justice is anymore. Can there be justice when a child is murdered? What I do know is that her family was able to get peace, to grieve, and to have closure. I think about her every day. I miss her every day. But I can say I love you, Shauna, and go on with my day. I'm not frozen in that time anymore.

I love my daughter. I miss her with everything that's in me. But she's not in pain. What they did to her can't hurt her anymore. And I know I still love her to this day. And that's not going to go away, no matter what. I also know that Jim O'Brien was found guilty of kidnapping, second-degree murder, and third-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Jim O'Brien denied his involvement in Shauna's murder repeatedly. He claimed that the DNA evidence was only a partial match. His exact words were, If that DNA was my DNA, it would match. It wouldn't be similar. If it's mine, it should say it's mine, not that it's similar to mine. Tim O'Brien, like his brother, was found guilty of kidnapping, second-degree murder, and third-degree murder. He also received a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. No physical evidence ever linked Tim

O'Brien to Shauna's murder. Ted Walker was convicted of kidnapping and third-degree murder. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about Walker, but I do believe he was easily manipulated, and I don't think prison is the place that would ultimately teach him to make better choices. Humans have a hard time looking at things without bias. We see the things we're seeking. If we're looking for a monster, we might imagine that someone with an intellectual disorder is just playing dumb. If we're looking for one man, we might miss three. Sometimes, we have to really open our eyes just to see what's right in front of us.

Like a shoe print on the face of a little girl. I'm glad for Shauna, but the other thing is I just feel sad. I feel sad that this happened to her, that she didn't get to grow up and live a normal life. And sometimes, detectives wielding superpowers solve cold cases. If you'd like to see more about Shauna or the people in her story, check out Cold Case Files at aetb.com. And you can catch brand new episodes

of Cold Case Files Thursdays at 10 on A&E. If you'd like to learn more about what colors the way I look at the justice system, you can listen to Actual Innocence. It's a podcast about wrongful convictions told by the people who know it best, the exonerated. It's available on your podcast app. Also, if you like what you hear, please leave us a rating and review on your podcast app.

It helps us to stay on the charts where people can find us. Thanks for listening.