Dark Downeast - The Murders of Cynthia Kane-Clark & Dawn Shippee (Rhode Island)
Episode Date: August 29, 2024When friends Cynthia Kane-Clark and Dawn Shippee both turned up the victims of homicide, one after the other, in the same two month span, investigators were faced with a complex investigation. It’s ...now been over 20 years since the two women were killed in neighboring Rhode Island towns and police are still looking for answers. If you have information relating to the murder of Cyndi Kane-Clark or Dawn Shippee, please call the Cold Case Rhode Island tip line at 1-877-RI-SOLVE. View source material and photos for this episode at: darkdowneast.com/cynthiakaneclarkdawnshippee/ Dark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.Follow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-case
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When friends Cynthia Cain Clark and Don Shippey both turned up the victims of homicide,
one after the other, in the same two-month span, investigators were faced with a complex
investigation. It's now been over 20 years since the two women were killed in neighboring Rhode
Island towns, and police are still looking for answers.
I'm Kylie Lowe, and these are the cases
of Cynthia Cain Clark and Don Shippey
on Dark Down East.
In the fall of 2002, 27-year-old Cynthia Kane Clark, who went by Cindy, was getting back on her feet.
According to reporting by Megan Wims for the Providence Journal, Cindy's friend said she was a good-hearted, giving person.
But she also had a rough life.
Her childhood was spent between foster homes, and as an adult, her marriage ended had a rough life. Her childhood was spent between foster homes,
and as an adult, her marriage ended in a difficult divorce. Substance use disorder
had played a recurring role in her day-to-day, but she had recently sought treatment in a
rehabilitation program. When she completed the program, Cindy found a new apartment for herself,
where her kids could stay too. The apartment building sat at the corner of Washington and Nolan Streets
in the Arctic area of West Warwick, Rhode Island.
The building had three floors plus a walkout basement level where Cindy's unit was located.
One of the basement level doors led out to the large parking area behind the building.
News reports indicate that this parking lot was often
the scene of parties, people hanging out well into the early hours of the morning kind of thing.
West Warwick police records show that for the roughly six-month period that Cindy lived there,
officers occasionally responded to the address to break up a crowd or to tell people to keep
the noise down. However, on the morning of Saturday,
November 9th, 2002, police were called to the building for much more than a noise complaint.
According to reporting by WPRI, it was Cindy's young daughter who found her mother's body in
the apartment. When investigators arrived, it was obvious that Cindy was the victim of a
gunshot wound. From that moment, her death was treated as a homicide. Local police said that
it was Wes Warwick's first murder in about four years. The investigation into Cindy's murder began
swiftly but quietly. Police weren't saying if they had a list of suspects or much else about what the
search of the crime scene may have produced for clues as to who was responsible for the murder.
And although it had been reported that Cindy suffered an apparent gunshot wound,
that wasn't immediately ruled her cause of death. Police said that the medical examiner's office
could take as long as six months to determine the precise cause of death, pending toxicology results and other information. Neighbors in the building suggested that whatever
happened to Cindy had actually started the night before. One tenant in the building reported
hearing an argument in the parking area outside the apartment on Friday night. The neighbor said
he then saw a man with blood on his hands being
taken away in handcuffs. Other neighbors described Cindy and that same man as best friends and that
they were often seen on walks together with Cindy's kids. Police did not confirm these stories
from neighbors or comment on any police activity at the same building the night before Cindy was
found dead. I requested records from the West Warwick Police Department for any incidents at
Cindy's address on that Friday night, November 8th. The records clerk told me that they don't
have any record of an incident or police responding to the Washington Street building
on the night of November 8th. So maybe
this story about Cindy's male best friend in handcuffs isn't accurate. About five days later,
police were reassuring West Warwick residents that Cindy's death was not a random act. Police
chief Peter Brousseau said that it wasn't like someone was out there on a killing rampage. And yet, they also hadn't yet arrested anybody for the murder.
Police were continuing to follow a few leads but appealed to the public for more information
about the days and hours before Cindy was killed.
Meanwhile, police were interviewing possible witnesses as well as those closest to Cindy,
including a friend she reportedly met in the treatment program.
Her name was Dawn Shippey.
According to witness statements summarized in an affidavit by Detective Robert DeCarlo,
30-year-old Dawn Shippey met Cindy while they were both at a treatment facility in Providence
about five or six months before Cindy's death.
They became friends,
close enough that when Dawn and her husband separated, she stayed with Cindy at her apartment
in West Warwick. But something happened during their few months of friendship. There's a record
of at least one argument breaking out loud enough for the police to show up. On October 13th, 2002, a West Warwick police officer
responded to Cindy's apartment building
around 2 a.m. for a noise disturbance call.
A brief narrative of the incident by the officer
states that Cindy was in an argument with her friend Don.
Both were intoxicated,
and Cindy wasn't letting Don get behind the wheel of a car.
The officer asked the women to keep it down
and both went back inside for the night.
A few hours later, West Warwick police responded
to a second noise complaint at the building,
but this time for reports of a loud party in the backyard.
Neither Cindy nor Don's name is referenced
in the report of the incident.
It's around this time in the weeks leading up to
Cindy's death that a witness says Don had started seeing the father of one of Cindy's children.
Cindy wasn't happy about it and reportedly told the man that if he didn't end things with Don,
she wasn't going to let him see their child anymore. And it sounds like the guy did try to break up with Don, which triggered
an argument between Don and the man. He told her to never come back. A witness, who happened to be
a different man Don had previously dated, said the argument and breakup left Don extremely upset
and convinced nobody liked her. The same witness also told police that the night before
Cindy was found dead in her apartment, he had spent the night with Don. The witness stated to
police that at several points during that night, he woke up to find Don fully clothed and standing
over the bed unable to sleep. The man went back to bed after Don said she was going to find a sleeping pill.
When he woke up a few hours later at 6am, he sensed something was off. He said that his car
keys were on the floor, not in his jeans where he'd left them, and the front seat of his car
was moved up closer to the steering wheel. He asked Don if she had driven his car somewhere, but she said no.
He also said he noticed that someone used his cell phone while he was sleeping.
Court documents state that when a West Warwick police detective interviewed Dawn a few days
into the investigation, she confirmed that this man, the witness, had spent the night at her house
the night of Cindy's murder. Dawn also stated that she'd been getting some strange prank phone calls
ever since Cindy was murdered,
and she thought they were coming from the father of Cindy's child.
She also told them that the father of Cindy's child
was at a friend's house on the night Cindy was killed.
Within a few hours of that interview,
Dawn called police to report
that she just got a phone call from an unknown woman
who said the father of Cindy's child just called
and asked that she call Dawn
because he wanted her to go find a gun
that he'd thrown into some bushes
at the friend's house he was staying at
on the night Cindy was shot.
It was quite the game of telephone,
but police followed up on Don's story. An extensive three-hour search for the gun the next day at the precise location Don reported
was unsuccessful. No gun. Meanwhile, police had encountered another potential problem with Don's
story. They knew that the father of Cindy's child was with intake
at the adult correctional institutions at the time he supposedly called the unknown woman,
so he wouldn't have actually been able to make that call.
Interestingly, a few hours after police searched the bushes and surrounding area for a firearm
allegedly connected to Cindy's
murder, a kid getting off the school bus nearby managed to stumble upon a.32 caliber gun in the
very spot that had been scoured by investigators earlier that day. Police stated in court documents
that if the gun had been there all along, they would have found it. The alleged love triangle between Don
and Cindy and the father of Cindy's child, the bizarre, possibly false reports about a phone call
and a gun in the bushes by Don, it was all part of mounting suspicion that Don may have had
something to do with Cindy's death. So two and a half weeks after Cindy was killed, police searched
Dawn's residence at Fairview Avenue in Coventry, Rhode Island. The search warrant indicates
investigators were looking for firearms, ammo, spent casings, and bullet fragments, as well as
metal grinding tools. As a result of the search, they found and seized a single spent round of ball ammunition, two vices, a pair of gardening gloves, and Dawn's father's truck.
What investigators learned from that evidence, what it told them about Cindy's murder and Dawn's possible involvement in the case, is unclear.
Because a month after the search of her home, Dawn was murdered too.
According to reporting by Megan Wims for the Providence Journal,
the last time 30-year-old Dawn Michelle Shippey was seen alive was on Friday, December 27, 2002.
She dropped her children off to see their father in Warwick
before heading to the Middle of Nowhere Diner in Exeter, Rhode Island, about 15 miles away.
She had breakfast with her father, Thomas
Menard, who went by Tom. About 24 hours later, on Saturday, December 28th, Tom reported Dawn
missing. Around noon that Sunday, December 29th, a fisherman in a slow-moving, shallow spot along
the Wood River in the Arcadia Management Area of Exeter, Rhode Island,
cast his line into the water typically stocked with Atlantic salmon and trout,
only to find something that didn't belong.
There, in about three feet of water, he spotted the half-submerged body of a woman.
When investigators responded to the scene off Route 165,
just about a thousand feet south of the Department of Environmental Management checkpoint,
they noted that the woman's forehead was cut and bloodied, and she had bruises on her knees and
cuts on the back of her head and ear, as well as her left palm. It wasn't immediately clear
what caused her death. That would be for the medical examiner to
determine. But it soon became obvious who this woman was. She matched the description of Dawn
Shippey, who had been reported missing the day before. The diner where she was last seen alive
was less than five miles away from the spot where her remains were recovered. As the yellow crime scene tape went up,
investigators combed the area for evidence and clues as to what happened to the woman.
They noted blood in the snow near where she was found,
and about three miles away from the scene,
police located Dawn's abandoned Dodge Caravan.
There was blood on the steering wheel and behind the front passenger seat.
Two coffee cups sat in the center console, which were collected as evidence.
Rhode Island State Police were handling Dawn's case, and given the circumstances of where and
how her body was discovered, foul play was suspected from the jump. Meanwhile, West Warwick police were still investigating Cindy's
murder a few towns over. Now with a person of interest in that case, also the victim of an
apparent homicide, the investigations got significantly more complicated. As of early
January 2003, three detectives were still working Cindy's case. They'd interviewed over 60 people,
and following Dawn's death, investigators returned to her residence for a second search.
They collected discharge paperwork from a psychiatric hospital, apparently for Dawn,
and a copy of Cindy's obituary that had been cut from the newspaper, among other items. Though what significance those
items held in Cindy's case aren't immediately obvious. Now, Dawn's residence at Fairview Avenue
in Coventry, where she had lived with her estranged husband and their children, was owned by Dawn's
father, Tom. Tom had lived in the same house with Dawn and her family at one point too, though he had
since moved in with his girlfriend in West Warwick. From the investigation into Dawn's murder,
state police could see that Dawn and Tom had talked on the phone several times leading up
to the day he reported her missing, and he was among the last people, if not the very last person, to see her alive.
When reporters from the Providence Journal spoke to Tom in the wake of the discovery of Dawn's body,
he was reportedly shaken and confused by it all.
Tom remarked that she was a healthy, strong girl,
and a really good kid that gave him wonderful grandchildren.
We don't know what's happened, he said.
Within a few months, though,
Tom himself was at the center of the investigation.
As reported by Keys News,
on Wednesday, March 12, 2003,
Tom Menard was on vacation with his girlfriend in Key West, Florida,
having a poolside martini,
when detectives interrupted the evening.
Law enforcement had been staking out the guest house
at a South Street property to make sure he was home
before approaching their suspect in the yard around 8 p.m.
Tom was placed under arrest
on weapon and drug charges out of Rhode Island,
charges that resulted from the investigation
into the murder of his daughter, Dawn.
A search warrant issued the day before Tom's arrest
states that Rhode Island State Police
searched Tom's home for any and all clothing
he wore on December 27th, 2002.
That would have been the day, he says,
he last saw Dawn alive.
Police were also after videos, written documents, receipts, firearms, cigarettes,
and blunt force weapons that might pertain to Don's death.
An additional search warrant issued the same day indicated that police also searched Tom's Chevy pickup
for any and all human blood, hair fibers, fingerprints, saliva,
blunt force instruments, dirt, dust, soil, documents, receipts, or any other evidence
pertaining to the death of Don Shippey. According to reporting by Megan Wims for
the Providence Journal, during those searches, police found and seized a black club, a knife, camel cigarettes, and a small bag of white rocks,
among other items. Investigators also found a small amount of weed, prescription painkillers,
and a.44 caliber snub-nosed revolver in a drawer next to Tom's bed.
Don's cause of death still had not been publicly released by the medical examiner's office at the time of this search.
However, the revolver was of particular interest to her murder investigation.
According to an affidavit prepared by State Police Detective Benjamin Barney, Dawn had told her stepsister that if anything ever happened to her, quote, Tom did it, end quote. She had given her
stepsister a photo of a gun that matched the revolver seized in the search of Tom's house.
Police had also collected Tom's hair, blood, and fingerprint samples as part of the investigation,
and an affidavit shows that his fingerprints were found on one of the coffee
cups found in Dawn's Dodge Caravan that was abandoned a few miles away from the site of her
remains. The other cup had Dawn's fingerprints on it. These were all compelling, if not alarming,
details, but the arrest of Tom wasn't for the murder of his daughter. These were drug charges for the weed and prescription
painkiller found at his house and firearms charges because in Rhode Island, those who have been
convicted of a crime of violence either within Rhode Island or elsewhere cannot possess a firearm.
And Tom was a felon. Back in August of 1981, Tom was charged with arson for burning down a bar he owned in
Wilcox, Arizona. He was convicted of that charge and served four years in prison. Arson is considered
a violent crime under Rhode Island state law, so with the discovery of a revolver in his side table
drawer, Tom was charged with possession of a firearm after committing a violent felony,
which carried a two-to-ten-year prison sentence. He was extradited and transported back to Rhode
Island from Florida for his initial court appearance. He posted bail and was released
to await further proceedings. The arson charge in Tom's past is interesting. Fire seemed to follow Tom wherever he went.
Not only that, this wasn't the first time he was one degree of separation away from a homicide case either.
As Robert Ciapponelli reports for the Providence Journal,
that less than three years earlier, on November 30th, 2000, Tom Menard woke up to the
sound of smoke detectors blaring their unmistakable alarm and flames climbing the carpeted stairs from
the finished basement of his house on Fairview Avenue. He tried to snuff out the fire, but was
no match for the blaze, so he grabbed the phone to dial 911 sometime after 10 p.m. At the time, Dawn, her husband, and
their kids lived upstairs in that house. But luckily, they were all able to safely escape along
with Tom as firefighters arrived on the scene and began knocking down the flames that leapt from the
front door. By 1.30 a.m., the fire was fully extinguished. Around 3.30 a.m., Don's
husband, who had been at the hospital with their youngest child for a precautionary evaluation,
returned to the house and went inside to grab some of their things before going to stay with
the rest of the family at a friend's house. A few hours later, just after 9 a.m. on December 1st, a second fire broke out at the Fairview Avenue house.
Reports state that this second fire seemed strange to fire officials, since no one was home and the utilities had been turned off.
Both fires originated from the basement, but the second started in a different location than the first, though it was unclear
at that point the cause for either of the fires. The house sustained smoke damage to the second
floor and fire damage in the cellar in the first floor, but the fire chief thought it was salvageable
and didn't need to be condemned. Tom wasn't so sure, and they'd lost almost everything in the fires. But he was just happy everyone was okay, he said.
An affidavit states that there were reportedly two more fires on separate occasions at the same house during the summer of 2002,
and that Tom and possibly Dawn were under suspicion of arson.
Neither were charged in connection with any fires at the Fairview Avenue house.
However, police learned that Don and Tom had previously argued over the insurance payouts
for at least one of the fires.
There's something else I learned about Tom Menard's past.
Before the fires at his home in Rhode Island, and even before his arson conviction in Arizona,
Tom had also been arrested and arraigned on charges of first-degree murder and robbery
alongside his brother Bruce Dumaine.
The pair were accused of killing a man named Frank Malloy in Tucson, Arizona, back in August
of 1976.
According to reporting in the Arizona Daily Star by Jay Gonzalez,
Frank's wife reported him missing on August 28th
after he left home with thousands of dollars in cash the night before
and never returned.
About 11 days later,
a man walking in the woods discovered Frank's body in a shallow grave.
Frank died of two gunshot wounds to his torso
and three to his head.
Police zeroed in on Tom and his brother Bruce
based on phone calls between Frank and Tom
on the night Frank disappeared.
However, the charges against Tom were later dropped
due to lack of evidence,
and he went on to testify against his brother.
Tom stated that he had set up a meeting with Frank on the night he disappeared because
he'd lent Frank $1,000 to finance an alleged drug deal and hadn't been paid back. The plan
was to meet at a local restaurant so Tom could get the money back. He brought his brother along,
but when they got there,
the restaurant was closed, so the three men went to a bar instead. After that,
Frank was never seen alive again. Other witnesses testified at trial that Bruce confessed to killing Frank during a seance-type ritual intended to summon Frank Malloy's spirit. Witnesses to the
confession said that
Bruce claimed he did it for the money
and he was very sorry he did it.
He was ultimately convicted of first-degree murder
and armed robbery and received a life sentence.
It appears Tom left Arizona after that
and settled down in Rhode Island
at the Fairview Avenue home that he renovated himself,
the same house that nearly burned down several times,
and where Dawn was living when she was reported missing by her father in December of 2002.
In October of 2003, Tom Menard was finally arraigned on the possession of a firearm by a convicted felon,
possession of a painkiller, and possession of marijuana charges.
He pleaded not guilty to all counts and then soon after filed a motion for dismissal.
His attorney argued that in the state of Arizona where Tom was convicted of arson,
that charge is not considered a violent crime like it is in Rhode Island. So then, Tom shouldn't be
charged with possession of a firearm after a violent felony
if Arizona didn't consider him to be a violent felon.
A Superior Court judge actually granted
that defense motion to dismiss the firearm possession charge,
but did not dismiss the drug-related charges.
The Attorney General's Office appealed this decision,
arguing that since Tom was a Rhode
Island resident, the laws of that state are what mattered, not Arizona where he was convicted.
The state Supreme Court finally ruled on the case in 2006, and the gun charge against Tom
was reinstated. It was sent back to Kent County Superior Court for trial, along with the two other pending charges for marijuana and prescription painkiller possession.
According to court records, the drug charges were ultimately dismissed, and Tom ended up pleading no contest to an amended charge of carrying a pistol without a license.
The case was closed in 2007.
Updates regarding the investigations
into both Cindy Kane Clark and Don Shippey's murders
had noticeably dropped off during this time.
Both cases were still active, though,
according to state police.
In January of 2004,
Major Stephen O'Donnell told Megan Wims
of the Providence Journal
that he believed they even had enough to get an indictment, but nothing else.
Not enough to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.
He wouldn't name a suspect, though it wasn't hard to read between the lines.
All while the drug and gun charges against Tom were pending, he was involved in a lawsuit of his own.
It turns out that Tom held a life insurance policy on his daughter Dawn.
And after she was found dead, he intended to collect on that policy. On April 16th, 2003, Tom Menard submitted a claim for for Dawn, which stated that her cause of death was pending further studies.
That line triggered an investigation by the insurance company, which revealed that Dawn's death was considered a homicide and the Rhode Island State Police investigation was ongoing. On May 8, 2003, the insurance company received a written
letter from State Police Sergeant Kevin P. Hopkins stating that Mr. Thomas Leo Menard is a suspect
in the homicide of his daughter, Dawn Shippey. With that, the insurance company couldn't determine if
Tom was entitled to the proceeds of the life insurance policy,
despite being the primary beneficiary.
Because under Rhode Island law, a beneficiary who murders the insured person
is disqualified from receiving the payout.
The contingent beneficiary, Don's mother, was deceased,
and so if Tom was disqualified, the proceeds should go to Don's estate and the
heirs of that estate. With that, on September 1st, 2006, the Prudential Insurance Company of America
filed a complaint for interpleader relief in Rhode Island District Court. Interpleader relief is a
legal mechanism that helps resolve complex disputes over property or funds by involving the
court to determine the rightful claimant as a way to protect the stakeholder, in this case the
insurance company, from multiple liabilities. Tom filed a counterclaim to this suit, saying the
policy was sold and issued to him for his daughter Dawn on or around August 23rd, 1989.
She would have been around 17 years old at the time. Tom maintained the payments and he had
always been the primary beneficiary. He claimed that Dawn's death was in fact an accidental death
and according to the terms of the policy, he was entitled to the face amount of $50,000
plus the accidental death benefit of $50,000 for a total of $100,000 plus interest. He demanded
that the court order the insurance company to pay him what he was contractually owed.
But the insurance company was trying to conduct further investigation into Tom as a suspect for Don's murder, and they wanted him deposed.
His deposition was scheduled for June 4, 2007, and they set forth a list of interrogatories, or formal questions they had for Tom.
The list included, did Tom's attorney inform him that state police considered him the number one suspect in Don's death?
Did Tom have an alibi for the night of Don's death?
What was he doing on Saturday, December 28th through 11.47 a.m. on Sunday, December 29th?
And the questions just continued in that vein. The day before the deposition was scheduled, Tom's legal team notified
the insurance company's legal team that they weren't available and would need to reschedule.
So a second date was set for a few weeks out. But before that date came, Tom filed for a
protective order to, in essence, protect himself from having to answer any questions. At a hearing on the protective order,
Tom's attorney argued that the insurance company
was only trying to investigate the murder of Don Shippey
and Tom's possible involvement in it now
to bolster their original refusal to pay
back when Tom first filed for payment back in 2003,
which, according to cited precedents in court filings, you can't do that. You can't use
new information to back up a claim made in the past, they said. A judge ultimately denied Tom's
motion for protective order and said that he could be deposed at a later date, with the understanding
that he could also invoke his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination and could object to questions that might be covered by attorney-client privilege.
The deposition was scheduled now, a third time, for July 25th. Again, Tom's attorney wasn't
available that day, so it was rescheduled again. But a few days prior, Tom filed for another protective order, stating that he hurt
his knee at work and he was not well enough to testify at length in a deposition at that time.
The insurance company fought this protective order, saying that they'd seen no supporting
documentation that Tom was so incapacitated that he couldn't answer any questions. And they even
offered to do the deposition at his house
so he could be where he was most comfortable.
The court again denied Tom's motion,
and he was ordered to appear for a deposition.
Meanwhile, simultaneous to the effort
to get Tom to answer questions
about the murder of his daughter,
the insurance company was asking similar questions
of the attorney General's office
and Rhode Island State Police.
The AG and State Police mostly claimed
law enforcement and other privileges in their responses,
which eventually led to in-camera review
of certain investigative materials.
This meant that files produced by state police and the AG's office
relating to the investigation of Don's murder could be viewed in private by the court, and a
summary of the contents could be released to the parties of the suit, but not the public.
The summaries of the case file documents seem to have answered questions put forth by the insurance company to investigators.
Questions like, did Tom ever refuse to answer a question while being interviewed by police in
connection with Don's murder? Did he ever refuse to meet police as part of the investigation?
Did he ever refuse to provide information or evidence? Did state police ever conclude that Tom wasn't cooperating fully with the investigation?
The specific answers to those questions were, of course, redacted from court filings.
But in January of 2008, less than a month after that in-camera review of confidential materials,
the life insurance case was settled.
The terms of the settlement are sealed, but it appears that proceeds of the life insurance
policy held on Don Shippey were distributed to somebody or multiple somebodies as a result of
the settlement. It's unclear from the available court documents
if Tom Menard was ever actually deposed
as part of the life insurance suit.
But one of the only answers Tom ever gave
to the interrogatories relevant to the topic of his daughter's murder
was in response to this question.
Describe in full and complete detail
your activities on Saturday, December 28, 2002 from the moment you awoke and on Sunday, December 29, 2002 from the moment you awoke until 11.47 a.m.
December 28, 2002 would have been the day Tom reported his daughter missing.
The 29th was the day she was found.
Tom's answer to the question was, quote,
I do not recall my actions from almost five years ago, end quote.
To be clear, although Rhode Island State Police
identified Thomas Menard as a suspect for Dawn's death,
he has never been charged with murder for her death.
Although the revolver seized from his home
was once at the center of police scrutiny in Dawn's murder,
the medical examiner's office ultimately ruled her cause of death to be
cranial and cervical spinal cord injuries due to blunt force trauma,
hypothermia, and freshwater drowning.
Not a gunshot wound.
However, Don's friend Cindy Kane Clark did die from brain injuries and skull fractures resulting from a gunshot wound.
And Tom Menard's name has been discussed in connection with Cindy's case too.
The.32 caliber revolver found in the bushes as part of the investigation into Cindy's death
was believed to be connected to Tom in some way.
However, it's impossible to ignore the fact that Dawn was once considered a suspect for Cindy's murder.
She and Cindy had gotten into arguments.
There was that situation with Dawn dating the father of Cindy's child
and other evidence that cast suspicion her way.
I'm not sure the status of that now,
if Dawn is still a suspect after her death.
In recent years, whenever Dawn's case gets any publicity,
investigators only say that her case could be connected to Cindy's murder,
but do not elaborate further.
West Warwick Police Detective Sergeant Thomas Nye told WPRI in 2019,
quote, In the years since she lost her mom, Cindy's daughter Katie has yearned to know why someone would take her mother's life,
who she remembers as a good person who loved her two young children.
Dawn's family members remember her generous and caring heart.
A poem by one of Dawn's children was published in a local newspaper a year after she was killed.
It reads, quote,
My mom is high up in heaven and she is now at peace.
No more pain or troubles, no more grief.
Even though I can't see her, I know she's watching me.
That's where all the angels live and I know that's where she'll be.
I can remember, pray, and keep her in my heart, for she and I will never be apart. End quote.
Police need the missing pieces that have eluded both investigations for over 20 years.
If you have information relating to the murder of Cindy Kane Clark or Don Shippey, please call the Cold Case Rhode Island tip line at 1-877-RISOLVE.
Thank you for listening to Dark Down East.
You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast.
This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones
and for those who are still searching for answers.
I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time.
I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.
Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck.
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