Crime Junkie - MURDERED: Shawn Edwards Part 1

Episode Date: June 20, 2022

When 14-year-old Shawn Edwards is stabbed and beaten to death outside of a high school in Middletown, NY, the whole community is shocked. Why would anyone want to hurt – let alone murder – this friendly, popular kid? As the investigation unfolds, police try to separate fact from fiction, only to come up emptyhanded. It seems like everyone’s a suspect…but no one has a motive.Anyone with information about the homicide should call Middletown Police at 845-343-3151.Google Earth: Shawn Edwards For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-shawn-edwards-part-1/

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and the story I have for you today might be one of the most baffling cases we've ever covered. When a 14-year-old boy is stabbed and beaten to death outside of a high school early one morning in 1986, the whole community is shocked. As rumors fly in the small city of Middletown, New York, it seems like everyone is a suspect, yet no one has a motive. And even after months of interviews and research by our reporter Nina, there are still so many questions. But police think there are still people out there who might be able to give a grieving family the answers they've been seeking for far too long. This is the story of Sean Edwards.

It's a bitterly cold day on Wednesday, January 15, 1986, in Middletown, New York, and all Cynthia Edwards can think of is getting some rest. The mom of five has walking pneumonia, and by the time she gets home from work and running errands, she's exhausted. She's finally getting ready to lay down when the phone rings. But her youngest child, 14-year-old Sean, jumps to get it before she can. She tells him that better not be his school. You see, staff has recently started calling parents of kids who skip class, and she wants to make sure that he's not getting into any trouble. He laughs and assures his mom that it's not the school, but she listens for a second just to make sure. And when she's listening,

she overhears him say something about someone bothering his friend, Rob. So she warns him that he better not be fighting at school either, not even for a friend. And I can almost hear the exasperated teen voice when he says, I'm not, mom. But he follows it up with a request. Can he go meet his friend really quick? Cynthia says, no way. It is a school night. It's cold. You're not going anywhere. So Sean settles into the living room couch to watch a scary movie, and Cynthia heads to bed. Sean's sister, 21-year-old Kimberly, stays up to watch the movie with him. Well, sort of. She doesn't share her brother's love for horror movies, so she kind of half-watches from her room, closing her door when it gets too scary.

Now, at some point, Sean dozes off, and so does Kimberly. The house is quiet. Until Cynthia wakes up sometime around midnight and heads into the living room. Sean has his own little bedroom, but the living room really is his domain. So Cynthia is surprised to see the couch empty. And when she checks the rest of the house, Sean's nowhere to be found. She wastes no time. She immediately calls the police. It is not like Sean to sneak out, and she's already starting to panic. And this is going to come as no surprise to you, but police tell her to call back in 24 hours. They're sure that he's going to be home by morning. But Cynthia is not about to just sit around waiting. Even though she and her

husband Melvin are separated, she calls him, and he promises to go look for their son, although he doesn't think that it's that serious either. After all, boys will be boys. In the meantime, Cynthia goes out looking herself. Unlike Melvin, she's terrified, and the fear only grows as she and her other kids roam the streets searching for Sean throughout the early morning hours. Now, Kimberly stays home in case he comes back or calls while everyone is out. When the phone does ring, she quickly grabs it. But on the other line is silence and then a click. The strange thing is, this happens over and over again. Hang up after hang up. Whoever is on the other end of the line, never speaking a word. And Kimberly

doesn't know what to think. As Dawn approaches, there's still no sign of Sean. Cynthia has a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, but she can't afford to miss work. Her shift starts early and her sister picks her up for their half-hour commute around 5.30 a.m. usual. She tells her kids to call her at her work the minute Sean is back. Meanwhile, Middletown police officer Jerry Mish is almost done with his workday. He's on the overnight shift, and so far, thanks to the cold, it's been slow going. But around 6.15 a.m., the quiet is shattered when a dispatch comes through. A custodian arriving for work at Middletown High School just called police to report that someone is laying on the ground by a lower-level

entrance way, and the person might be drunk. These quote-unquote down and out calls are pretty common and not usually urgent, but it is 8 below zero, and in weather like this, a person could freeze to death. So officer Mish and a rookie he's training head right over. When they pull up to the school a few minutes later, they see the custodian waving them over to a side door off a building that houses the pool and gym. And they can just make out someone, a man, flat on his back in the doorway. But it's still dark out, and according to Times Herald Record Reporters Billy House and Lance Oliver, Vandals had smashed out the light over the gym doorways ages ago. So officer Mish doesn't get a good

look at him until he's standing over the man with his flashlight. And that's when he realizes the victim is a lot younger than he first thought. He's a teenager and only about 5'1", maybe 110 pounds. And this kid is not dressed for the weather at all. No gloves, no heavy coat, just sweatpants, a hoodie, and a light windbreaker football jacket. But despite the cold, he's still warm, and officer Mish thinks he feels a faint pulse. He immediately radios for an ambulance, but he sees a lot of blood around the teenager's stomach, so he lifts up his shirt to get a better look. And right away, it is clear, this is no simple down and out call. The young man on the ground had been

stabbed many times, to the point that his stomach was actually opened up. The officer can also see what looks like a big dash on the victim's head, even though he's wearing a durag. And he notices something interesting. Next to the boy is a pile of what looks like spit. I mean, it's not even frozen, so all signs point to this like just happening. The ambulance gets there a couple of minutes later, but it's too late. Whoever their victim is, he's gone, and police have a homicide to investigate. Officer Mish radios for detectives and in the meantime, state police investigators who heard the broadcast start showing up. They do this because they have more resources than smaller departments like Middletown,

so they process major crime scenes in the area. And there's plenty to work with here because the entranceway is littered with potential clues. I mean, there's blood everywhere, on the wall behind the victim, on a big rock near his body, in a little trail further down the side of the school. There's also chewed gum and cigarette butts. Though remember, it is 1986, so lots of schools at this time let students smoke on campus, so it's not a weird thing to find. But police collect all of it anyway. And as the sun comes up, they realize the crime scene is larger than they thought, with blood and evidence spread across the lower level school grounds and this loop of road, which kind of like is a circular

driveway that's next to the gym. And in the center of that loop is a grassy island with a railing around it. And on one side of the island, the railing is spotted with blood. And near the other side, police find a knife handle. Even though newspaper articles back then say it was a knife, everyone Nina interviewed today says it was just the handle. And another thing to know is that throughout the grass, there is blood and pieces of broken glass. So it's obvious to police that this horrific attack didn't happen all at once or even in one place and probably not even at the hands of one perpetrator considering the brutality. It seems like there was a fight that drifted over some distance and even a chase too. In

fact, they find blood more than 200 feet away from the victim's body, a small pool of it on a path near another side door that leads to a music room. Detectives wonder if the victim maybe stopped there for a minute and bled out. Maybe he was trying to hide or thought he had outpaced whoever was chasing him. And listen, I know this is hard to picture without seeing it, so we actually put together a Google Earth map of the school with some photos which you can find on our blog post. There have been a lot of renovations since the 1980s, but the area is still somewhat recognizable and you can really get a better sense of what I'm talking about. Anyway, police search nearby storm drains, starting

close to the school and working their way into surrounding neighborhoods, hoping to find the blade to go with the knife handle that they found, or really any weapon that might have been used. They also start knocking on doors asking residents if they saw or heard anything strange. Meanwhile, though, kids have actually started to arrive for school. And I was a little shocked by that, like someone is murdered on the campus and you don't even like close down for the day, but I assume it just all happened so fast. I do know at some point the district did close the school, but I don't know if it was just for a couple of hours or what, because the students were definitely there throughout the day. That

article by Lance Oliver and Billy House says that they were actually watching from the windows as police collected evidence early that morning. And mind you, the victim is still laying on the ground. He hasn't even been taken away by the medical examiner yet. And police still don't know who he is. But since he seems to be about high school age and he was found at the high school, a sergeant figures that his best chance at a quick ID is to go inside and look through yearbooks. Now, it's a good idea, but it actually doesn't help. Police then try having a few staff members ID this kid, but they don't recognize him either. So by 9am, still unidentified, he is brought to the hospital moored. But

they don't stay totally in the dark about who he is, because there is a clue about his identity, that football jacket he's wearing. It's a blue and white 1984 Middletown Junior High School team jacket with the name Sean embroidered on it. Police have a connection to that football team. Another sergeant is an assistant coach. He's off duty, so they call him at home and he tells them, yes, there is a Sean on the team, Sean Edwards, who plays running back and linebacker. And he's not a high school student. That's why they've had no luck. He's in eighth grade. Sure enough, a quick check of attendance records at the junior high prove that Sean never showed up that morning. And the coach slash sergeant

officially identifies him around 1115am. Investigators finish processing the crime scene by lunchtime. The blood is washed away with a fire hose and students gather by the gym door searching the nearby grass and snow for any evidence that the cops might have missed. And that's when over at the warehouse where she works, Cynthia's supervisor calls her into his office and tells her that police need to speak with her right away. Since her sister drove them to work, she borrows a friend's car and rushes home. And that fear that has been building inside of her since the moment she saw that empty couch only grows stronger. Her son is missing and police won't tell her what's going on over the phone. Detectives meet her

at home and they bring her all the way to the station. And that's where they break the news. Her youngest child, her baby, is dead. Not only that, but he's the victim of a cold-blooded murder. And during the autopsy that was done that day, investigators find out just how cold-blooded it really was. Middletown detective Nicholas de Rosa told us that he's seen hundreds of autopsies, but never anything like this. Sean had been disemboweled. There were at least 15 stab and slash wounds to his back and stomach, but the stab wounds aren't even the worst of it. He might have actually survived those. It was the blow to the head that killed them, something the detective describes as beyond blunt force trauma. I

mean, his skull is in pieces. Police theorize that the damage could have been done with a baseball bat or a metal pipe or maybe steel-toed boots. There's also a bloody rock that was found at the scene and broken glass, although there were no glass fragments found in Sean's skull. The Orange County Coroner estimates that Sean had been dead for maybe an hour when his body was found by the custodian around 6.10 a.m. Based on Officer Mishk's recollections, it seems like it could be less time than that. But it's impossible to piece together an accurate timeline of those hours leading up to the murder. Police think that Sean left his house sometime around 11 p.m., but they don't know what he was doing for the seven

or so hours that he was MIA or where he was doing it. I mean, there were only a handful of spots even open that late in Middletown in the 1980s, a couple of diners, convenience stores, and police can't play Sean at any of them. They also don't know how Sean even got to the school. He didn't ride his bike, which was still at home, and he's 14, so not only does he not have a car, none of his friends do either. But everyone, cops, family, friends, agree on one thing. He didn't walk. The high school is almost two miles from the Edwards home. It would have been like 45 minutes on foot. One thing police knew from just living in the area is that lots of teenagers were taking

cabs around Middletown, and they knew that Sean did too. So detectives were questioning drivers from two local companies, but they all say that they don't know anything about him taking a taxi that night. But two cab drivers who asked not to be identified tell reporters Lance Oliver and Billy House that they heard Sean did take a cab Wednesday to a shopping plaza near the high school that has a movie theater. And at first, listen, I'm like, okay, well, if the cab driver is lying, maybe he's involved. But this is why I have a podcast and not a badge because it turns out it was actually one of Sean's brothers who called the cab to the shopping plaza. He picked up some food and came right

back to the house. Plus, detectives learned something interesting when they speak with one of Sean's neighbors, an elderly woman who lives a couple of houses down. Her adult son has a medical condition that requires constant care. And because of that, she's awake most nights. And she tells police that she definitely would have heard a car pull up outside of Sean's house. But she didn't hear a thing that night. So if he did catch a ride, he must have gone down the block or something to meet up with the driver. But no one knows who that driver might be, because no one knows who Sean was with that night. He had a few crushes, but there was no girlfriend in the picture. So nothing

to pursue on that end. And all his friends say that they weren't with him and they didn't see or hear from him. Sean's family figures that if anyone knows what's going on, it's his friend, Billy. But Billy says that he doesn't know what happened or where Sean might have been. He even takes a polygraph, which he passes. Through the rumor mill, police hear that there might have been a party. But when they tracked down people who were there, no one had seen Sean and most of them don't even know who he is. But here's the thing, I mean, Sean had to have been somewhere, right? The weird thing is, police did a premise check at the high school between 410 and 420 AM. It was

part of their regular routine. And apparently at that time, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Now to be fair, I don't know how thorough that check was. Like if the officer like went around the whole school, maybe just pulled up to the main entrance or what. But it's hard to believe that Sean or anyone would just be hanging around outside the school for hours again in the freezing cold. And by the way, Sean hated the cold. Why would he leave the house in the dead of winter with just a sweatshirt and a lightweight nylon windbreaker? But there is something interesting about that windbreaker. His sister says that Sean was already wearing it while he was on the couch watching the movie. So even though

his mom told him he couldn't go out, something about that makes me think that maybe he was planning to. Although if he was, it doesn't seem like he was planning to be out long. But even why he went out is a mystery to this very day. And the true key to unlocking it could be the phone call that Sean got just before he sneaked out. In my mind, someone lured him out of the house, find the caller, and maybe you've got your guy. And that's what makes something Detective DeRosa told us so heartbreaking, because investigators discussed getting what's known as a phone dump. But for some reason it doesn't happen. Detective DeRosa told us quote, for $500 you contact the phone company and they'll give

you the last 24 hours of phone calls that came in and went out of that house. They wanted us to do some more work first. And that would have been fine. We were going to continue working. But in the meantime, you have 24 hours to capture this. After that, it's gone. End quote. But you see that phone dump, for whatever reason, never happened. Detective DeRosa says in his opinion, he thinks it didn't happen for financial reasons. Whoever was in charge of making those decisions didn't want to spend the money. Middletown detective Sergeant Jason Jennings confirmed that no phone dump was done back then. But he says he doesn't know why. Again, that guy Rob that Cynthia heard Sean mention on the phone

might be a dead end. She doesn't remember him hanging out with anyone by that name. So without the phone records to help them narrow their focus, police try to look for someone who maybe had it out for Sean, but they can't find anyone. I mean, this kid had no enemies. He was well liked, kind of a class clown, friendly and charismatic. No one knows why someone would want to hurt him, let alone kill him. But something was bothering him because several of his friends tell detectives that over the past couple of months, Sean had started carrying kitchen or hunting knives around with him for protection. And he was saying that his life was in danger. But none of his friends know why he felt that way.

And this is literally a crime junkie life rule that if, again, you have a secret, something like this, something big that you fear you have to tell someone. And honestly, I have to believe he did. It is unreal for me to think that he was telling this to people and carrying around weapons and nobody had any idea why. I just think people to this day haven't come forward to give information. Meanwhile, without much solid info to go on, rumors begin flying. And lots of these rumors involve allegations that Sean was selling drugs. Carl Debois, another detective on the case, says drug involvement often comes up as an early theory when a homicide involves young people. Even though in Sean's case, there's

really nothing pointing to it besides the rumors. Police didn't find any drug paraphernalia at the scene, and Sean's name had never come across any officer's desk because he had never been in trouble with the law. I mean, he had never been in trouble, period. His sister says that he was still very much a kid, even as he was starting to grow up. Like one minute, he'd be playing with his toy trucks, and the next minute, he'd be out in the football field with his teammates. His sister Kimberly told us, quote, he was the best of all five of us. He was the most gentlest one, the most happiest one, the one that listened to everything mom said. That was the only night that he disobeyed mom in

his life one time, and that one time cost him his life, end quote. According to Lance Oliver's reporting, more than a dozen friends and classmates who spoke with reporters are adamant that Sean did not use or sell drugs, and when his blood tests came back, there were no traces of anything in his system. But one rumor in particular is super persistent. Word around town is that Sean had ripped off a Colombian drug dealer named Nelson, and the rumor was that Nelson killed him in retaliation. Now, investigators say that Nelson is kind of quote unquote nerdy. So if Sean did owe him money or stole drugs from him, he'd get others to do his dirty work for him. And from what police are hearing, those others

might include two guys who were right down the street from the high school around the time Sean was murdered. 18 year old Eddie Devlin and 17 year old Joseph Salgado, who also goes by Jose, but lots of people just calling Joey. Eddie and Joey were at a nearby convenience store with another friend, one of their girlfriends works over nights there as a cashier, and apparently they would just go hang out for hours. I'm not sure if Eddie had a criminal history by then, but Joey does. Based on court records, he had gotten in trouble as a juvenile for something to do with tombstones and burning the American flag. But police say he also has a reputation for being violent, and he and Nelson definitely know one another.

Others question Eddie and Joey a couple of times, but they can't connect the dots to Sean and the girlfriend who works at the store tells police that Eddie and Joey were there all night. They didn't leave to Sean's heartbroken family. Honestly, all of this drug gossip is just salt in the wound. They don't believe the stories for a minute. And for all the extra grief that the rumors bring, none of them have panned out by the time he's laid to rest on Monday, January 20. According to Billy House's reporting, 150 friends and relatives gather to say goodbye on that cold and rainy afternoon. Inside the Middletowns Second Baptist Church, the pastor implores everyone to have faith and tells them that

no matter what, there's a higher court waiting for whoever killed Sean. Outside of the church, detectives are keeping track of people coming and going. A frustrated lieutenant tells the time Herald record that police haven't ruled out anything. Because how can they rule something out if they don't have anything solid to begin with? But behind the scenes, they have started to develop some more plausible theories and suspects, which takes the investigation in drastically different directions. And one of those directions is very close to home. Sean's dad, Melvin. When Cynthia called Melvin that night, he was supposed to drive around looking for Sean. But instead, he apparently went to have coffee at a diner about a half

mile from the high school. He stayed there for a while and then possibly checked a couple of places. Detective DeRosa says some investigators thought that Melvin did find Sean and that he was so angry about his son sneaking out he killed him. Now, I don't know how close Melvin is with his kids at this point. Kimberly says Cynthia was really a single mother, to some extent, even before she and Melvin separated in 1983. So it doesn't sound like he was very involved in a day to day sentence. But whatever faults he may have had as a parent, his family says that he was never violent. And they don't think that he has anything to do with this. Plus, Melvin is in his mid forties. He's short and heavy set. Kimberly

says that he was also a heavy smoker. And Sean was young and athletic. Everyone says he ran like the wind, so it's hard to picture his father being able to catch up with him even if he wanted to. He also didn't seem angry that night. And he's honestly grief stricken after Sean's death. But a state police investigator assigned to work with Middletown PD really latches on to this idea. Melvin's boots are even collected and sent out for lab testing with the rest of the evidence found at the scene. When Melvin is questioned, he insists he had nothing to do with this. And on January 28th, he agrees to take a polygraph. But the results are not great. Even though he doesn't outright fail, the person conducting

the polygraph says he doesn't think Melvin is telling the truth when he denies guilty knowledge of the crime. And a woman named Betty, who he's been dating, tells detectives that she's worried about him because he's acting really odd, paranoid, and convinced that police are following him everywhere. Which like, they probably were. I don't think it's unreasonable for him to think that, although he's hardly the only focus of the investigation. Police are being inundated with tips from the community, and playing what seems like an endless, aggravating game of telephone that goes nowhere. Everyone they interview heard

something from someone who heard it from someone else, and tracking all of these rumors to their source keeps them running in circles. But at the tail end of January, a lead comes in that actually seems legit. That's when one of Sean's classmates, a girl that he was friendly with, gets an anonymous death threat in the mail. According to reporter Billy House, the note warns the girl not to talk about the murder. And get this, there's what looks like dried blood on this note. And it's spelled out with letters cut from newspapers and magazines, you know, like a classic ransom style note. The girl's mom is understandably terrified and hides her daughter somewhere in New Jersey.

But Sergeant Jennings says that when police delve into the threat, they find out that the person behind it is actually the girl who received it. She admits that she sent it to herself. Police don't have time to even dwell on this red herring, because another promising lead comes in from multiple people. A teenage boy in a neighboring school district has been going around bragging to his friends that he was the one who killed Sean. Detectives swoop in to interrogate him, but he says he didn't really kill Sean, he was just trying to look tough and quote, just having a little fun and quote.

He passes a polygraph and his parents say that he was home with them all night. So police are pretty confident that he was just bluffing, making some horrible hoax. And it's on to the next lead. This time from a self-proclaimed psychic, one of several who have reached out. She says that she was reading the local newspaper when a premonition hit her. Sean's killer is the man in a photo on page 17. She says his eyes give him away. And detectives actually check him out. I mean, at this point, why not? But once again, it ends up being nothing. Investigators pull attendance records from the high school. If students are involved,

they might not have shown up for class later that day. We're not sure how many kids were there on Thursday, January 16th because of how chaotic it was. But the next day, Friday, January 17th, 311 students were either absent or late, mostly absent. Based on enrollment, it's nearly one in five. Too many to actually draw any conclusions from. Nothing really happens then until late in February when a new lead emerges. And investigators think this one might have some merit. A tipster says that they saw a 1975 gray Chevrolet Camaro idling in a park about a block and a half from Sean's house between 11pm and midnight on January 15th, right around the time they think he snuck out. Not only that, apparently

the car matches the description of a car seen by another person hours later between 5 and 6am parked right near the high school. And this car is easy to spot because it has custom license plates that say Mr. Fig. So on Friday, February 21st, police issue an all points bulletin for this car, along with a press release. But in a bizarre twist, they publicly walk it back a couple of days later after a 34 year old man named John Fig. Lucy figures out that they're talking about his car. John tells reporter Lance Oliver that he only learned police were looking for the Camaro when his wife read about the license plate description in the Times Herald record.

And when he finds out he is livid, he says he doesn't know anything about the murder, but he just went to speak with police after seeing the newspaper and it was the first time that they had talked to him about Sean's case. In fact, he says he didn't even buy the car until a couple of weeks after Sean was killed. Now there are a couple of conflicting accounts when it comes to this car. According to the Times Herald record, a guy named Chris used to own the Camaro. And Chris told reporters that he had recently sold it to a man who offered to pay in cash. But Chris couldn't remember the buyer's name or exactly when he sold it to him.

John, meanwhile, told the newspaper that he had gotten the car on January 28th and the license plates a couple of weeks after that. He also says that police told him that they didn't give reporters the information about the car and they aren't responsible for what the newspaper prints. We got some different info from Sergeant Jennings. Now he says that John told police he bought the car on January 25th. And when detectives interviewed the person who sold it to him, who is apparently a woman, not a guy named Chris, she kind of corroborated the date of sale. Not to the day exactly, but that time period. She also says that the car wasn't running when John bought it, which seems to be backed up by another

person, a guy who's been fixing the car for John. That guy told police that the car was up on jackstands without a transmission until at least January 20th and that it was at his own house for a couple of weeks before that. And listen, if this mishmash of conflicting dates and stories wasn't confusing enough, after all this crap hits the fan, police tell local radio station that the Mr. Fig car does not factor into Sean's murder after all, but they're still looking for similar cars. Now we know that there was some back and forth between local and state police about this. It sounds like the information wasn't supposed to ever even be released and the local department heads are trying to distance themselves from

it. But despite what investigators are telling the public and John, they are absolutely still looking at him because police consider him to be a major player in the local drug scene. Detective Barry Bernstein told us, quote, we believed at one time that Sean might have been a dealer for him, that he may have crossed Fig and either Fig had him killed or killed him himself, end quote. But for all these rumors that Sean was selling drugs, police can't find one person who ever admittedly bought any from him. And while people might be lying to hide their own drug use, we're talking about dozens upon dozens of interviews. It's hard to believe that they wouldn't be able to find a single person

to confirm this. You can't really be a drug dealer if you know no one knows you're a drug dealer or no one's buying your drugs. And Cynthia can't believe that no one knows what happened to her son. She thinks Sean's friends seemed scared. But whether they're scared because they know more than they're willing to admit or because their friend had been murdered or both, that isn't clear. People are always telling Kimberly that they've heard rumors that Sean saw something that he wasn't supposed to see, which if true could be why he had been afraid recently. But no one can say what this thing he saw might be. Now all along, Melvin, his dad, is still under suspicion. So police decide to set up

a second polygraph for him in December of 1986. They know he works a lot, including late hours and taking a polygraph when you're tired can skew the results. So they tell him to stay home the night before and get some sleep. Bright and early on a Saturday morning, detectives arrive at Melvin's to bring him to New York City for the test just like planned. But when they arrive, his car is gone. And so is he. Neighbors say that he didn't come home the night before. And when they call his job, he answers the phone. Melvin explains that he had to work a couple of extra hours. But since he wasn't supposed to be there to begin with, the story doesn't add up for police. Now he still takes the polygraph,

but it's inconclusive. So police decide to dig deeper. Melvin at the time is dating a woman named Diane, who just happens to be Detective DeRosa's former grade school classmate because why not, right? And Diane says that Melvin calls her pretty frequently. Detective DeRosa hadn't bought into the Melvin theory in the first place, but the polygraph thing did make him a little suspicious. So he asked Diane if police can record her conversations with Melvin. Maybe he'll admit to something. She agrees, but they don't learn anything useful. Melvin tells Diane that police are suspicious of him, but that he didn't do anything to his son. And at the end of the day, most everyone in law enforcement believes

him. The general theory is that more than one person was involved in Sean's murder. And whoever did this is probably around Sean's age, someone fast like him because he's not just going to stand there and let someone stab him. So despite all their work, the first anniversary of Sean's murder comes and goes with no answers. Cynthia spends the day putting reward posters up around town, but as time passes, fewer leads come in and things quiet down for a while. Until the summer of 1987, when an unrelated and horrific home invasion puts an early suspect back in the hot seat, I'm going to tell you all about that in part two. You can either listen right now in the fan club or I'll be back in your feeds with

part two next week. But if you want to listen early again, you can listen right now in the fan club. You can sign up on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. To see all the photos and source material for this week's episode, visit our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. Don't forget to check us out on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast, and I'll be back next week with part two of Sean's story. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?