Dateline Originals - Dateline Missing in America - Ep. 17: The Night Shy Shy Disappeared

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

Shy’Kemmia Pate was last seen near her home in Unadilla, Georgia, on September 4, 1998. She was 8 years old. Several people reported seeing her that evening in the neighborhood. Dateline’s Josh Mankiewicz speaks with some of her loved ones, as well as Dooly County Sheriff’s Deputy Randy Lamberth, and Natalie Wilson of the Black and Missing Foundation. Shy’Kemmia would be 34 years old today. When she disappeared, she was wearing a neon green Atlanta Braves jersey with red lettering, Levi’s jeans, and had a leg brace. Anyone with information about her disappearance is asked to call the Dooly County Sheriff’s Office at 229-645-0920 or the Georgia Bureau of Investigation at 478-987-4545. Get more information and see age-progressed pictures of Shy’Kemmia Pate here: https://www.nbcnews.com/datelinemissing                                                        This episode was originally published on July 25, 2024.

She was Shy Shy to everyone who knew her. Full name? Shykemia Pate. The day was September 4th, 1998. Shy Shy was only eight. She had just started third grade. The little town she lived in was Unadilla, Georgia. And that Friday, a southern summer wasn't close to ending. It would be 90 degrees and muggy. That morning, Shyshy's mom, Veronica, walked her to school. Unadilla Elementary was just a couple of blocks away. And when they got there, Veronica says she told her youngest daughter what she always had. I love her and have a good day. and I'll see her when I got home. For Veronica, that moment remains the dividing line between life before and after.

Because when she got home that night, Shysha wasn't there. And that's when the world as Veronica had known it changed. And it still hasn't changed back. It's a storm that never stopped storming in your life. What Veronica calls the storm has been raging for more than 25 years. Has there been a day when you didn't wake up and think about where your daughter might be? I think about that every day and every night. It's about the worst thing a parent can go through.

It is. 26 birthdays have gone by since Shy Shy vanished. Today, she would be 34. And Veronica hasn't given up on finding her. Do you think she's still alive? I feel in my heart that she's still alive. In fact, Veronica believes she may have already found Shy Shy. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Dateline Missing in America.

This episode is The Night Shy Shy Disappeared. We first covered her story in November 2023 when Natalie Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, drew our attention to it. Natalie has a lot to say about this case. We just need one person to come forward with information that could help find her. We have seen miracles happen. Veronica has hoped for that miracle every day. And you just pray and ask God to teach you how to put one foot in front of the other, hold your head up and smile. Even when you can't smile, you still smile. Please listen closely because you or someone

you know might have information that could help Shasha's family find the answers they've been searching for. In Shai Shai's third grade school photo, her long braids are pulled to one side and tied with a bow. She beams at the camera with bright eyes and a wide smile. She is the picture of eight-year-old adorableness. Her mom, Veronica, says Shai Shai was a happy child who had a lot of fans, and she loved them back. Everybody loved her. She loved the school. She loved her pediatrician because she took good care. Shasha's pediatrician had an outsized role in her young life because chronic asthma and kidney disease often kept her out of school. That's a lot for a little girl to have to go through.

It is. Veronica says her daughter never fell behind in her schoolwork. She was very smart. You must have been very proud of her. I am, and I was. For Shysha and her classmates, Labor Day weekend 1998 kicked off that Friday at 3.30 when school got out. Shysha had big plans that night. She was going to a football game at the high school in nearby Vianna, Georgia. The plan was for me to bring her with me to the game. So yeah, she was excited about going.

That's LaSwanda Hickey, Shai Shai's sister. She was 17 at the time with three younger siblings, including Shai Shai, the baby. Through the eyes of teenage LaSwanda, Shai was a typical little sister. Pesty, aggravating, you know. And then there's also the side that, you know, looks up to you and wants to be like you and want to go where you go and do what you do. LaSwanda was in junior ROTC then

and part of the color guard that brought out the flags at football games. That afternoon, she decided to take a nap to rest up before the game. Before she dozed off, she pulled a big sister move. I may have said to her, you know, that I wasn't going to take her. I'm pretty sure I said, you know, you ain't going. And, you know, but it was jokes. Shai Shai went outside to play, and when LaSwanda woke up around 6 o'clock, she went to put gas in the car. As she drove, she saw Shai Shai on a neighbor's front porch.

And I want to say she tried to flag me down. I'm not 100% sure if she tried to stop me or not, but I know I didn't stop. I kept going. And I got gas, and when I came back around to the house where I saw her on the porch to pick her up, they said she had left walking up the street. LaSwanda drove up the street looking for Shasha, but didn't see her. So she called her mom, Veronica, who wasn't home yet. I had to be at the game by 7.30. And so she said, well, it's fine. You know, she probably had somebody's house, a friend's house.

And, you know, we'll get her, you know, when we come back. In 1998, Unadilla's population barely topped 1,600. And Crumpler Avenue, where Shai Shai lived, was the kind of neighborhood where everyone knew everyone. Veronica and LaSwanda say it wasn't unusual for kids to end up at a neighbor's house playing with friends or even cousins. Did you ever worry about her going outside in that neighborhood? No, I didn't. People knew her. She knew them. She knew them. Everybody knew everybody. And you know, kids be out riding their bicycles, skating and everything. And you thought she was safe? Yes.

Veronica recalls getting home around 7.45 or so. And when Shai Shai wasn't there, she says at first she wasn't that worried. She figured her daughter was at a friend's house. So she started making calls. But Shai Shai didn't turn up. And then, when LaSwanda came home after the game and there was still no sign of her little sister, that's when it became clear something was seriously wrong. You call the police, which is what any parent would do in that situation.

And the police say, we have to wait 24 hours? Yes. I'm guessing you said to them, she's eight years old. Why do we have to wait 24 hours? Yes. What'd they say? He didn't ever say anything. How can they not jump to attention when an eight-year-old kid is missing?

They did. Veronica says it fell to Shai Shai's family and their neighbors to search in the dark up and down the street for their little girl. We was up all night and it was people sleeping out on my porch that night. I had a lot of people show up, but police never showed up till the next day. And it was probably after lunchtime by the time they came. You may already know what I'm about to tell you because it's mentioned so often in news stories. After 24 hours, the odds of finding an abducted child alive are slim and dropping. As night turned to dawn in Unadilla, those critical hours were slipping away.

When investigator Randy Lamberth walked into the Dooley County Sheriff's Office on Saturday morning, Shyshy Pate had already been missing nearly 14 hours. Our dispatch actually asked me if we found the little girl up in Unadilla. And when I said, what little girl? That's when we found out about it. This was roughly mid-morning the next day. So you lost a lot of time right there. Yes, sir. In 1998, the Dooley County Sheriff's Office was one of two law enforcement agencies serving Unadilla, Georgia. Veronica had called the Unadilla Police Department the night before. It was one of their officers who told her he had to wait 24 hours before entering Shai Shai's name into the missing person's database. Now the sheriff's office was playing catch-up. They brought in state, local, and federal agencies to help.

The search for Shy Shy started at Veronica's house and continued up and down Crumpler Avenue. They went from house to house doing consent searches, buildings, anywhere that a child could possibly be. These neighbors opened their houses to the officers and let them come through. And nobody found her? No, sir, they did not.

Several people told investigators they'd seen Shy Shy on Friday evening. One neighbor said she'd eaten a hot dog at her house. Others saw Shy Shy alone outside. We had pinpointed the location she was last seen at the intersection of proper Avenue and West street. She was last seen roughly eight 38 35. And this is right in front of her house,

right where she lived. It's about a half a block from where she lives at. This is a dangerous area, scary area. There was a club across the street from where she lived at. So a dangerous area, you could classify it as that with the drug traffic and other crimes that took place at the club area. The club he's talking about was called Roxy's, a family-owned business that wore a lot of hats.

Nightclub, pool parlor, and mom-and-pop store. Locals of all backgrounds and ages hung out there or just stopped by for a snack. Shasha and her siblings were regular customers. We would always go to the store part, even when we were little kids. And they sold, you know, things to kids, candy, chips, pickles, pig feet, you know, that kind of stuff. Deputy Lamberth and other investigators suspected Shai Shai would not have left with just anyone, that she was taken by someone she knew and probably trusted. Strangers stood out in Unadilla, and Lamberth says the drug dealers outside Roxy's

were always on the lookout for anyone they didn't know who might be an undercover cop. He also says even they cooperated with deputies looking for Shy Shy. They told us that there was an older white male came into the area, gave us a vehicle description. From there, we located him, identified him, and he was actually looking for a female who lived in the area there that has cleaned his house before. That's the only stranger that we was able to identify.

And you kind of ruled him out? That is correct, sir. Aerial and ground searches that weekend covered a five-mile radius around Crumpler Avenue and Roxy's. Dogs and four-wheelers scoured fields and woods. The search area was later expanded by another five miles, but there was still no trace of Shai Shai. If investigators were right and Shai Shai was taken by a familiar face, that also meant her abductor might be hiding in plain sight. Who that was, of course, remained a mystery. Investigators had persons of interest on their radar,

but as weeks stretched into months, they seemed no closer to finding the little girl. Beam me up, Scotty. It's basically, that's almost like what happened. One second she's there, one second she's gone. Correct. At the Pate House on Crumpler Avenue, there was no escaping Shy Shy's absence.

LaSwanda, Shy Shy's big sister, says their mom, Veronica, could barely function. I remember my mom crying a lot, sitting, you know, by the door, like sleeping by the door, not locking the door, waiting for her to come back. Laswanda had just started her senior year of high school. Her brother was a freshman, her sister in middle school. Neighbors stepped in to keep the household running. You know, help out at the house,

cook for us, because she was kind of, in a way, debilitated. You know, she really kind of wasn't herself for a long time. Veronica told me she slept by that unlocked front door for two years.

Because you thought maybe your daughter was going to walk back in. Walk back in that door. Mm-hmm. All that time, LaSwanda couldn't help but blame herself

for Shasha's disappearance. I felt like had I just stopped when I saw her on the porch, then she would have been with me instead of going back after I got gas. You know, so had I stopped when I saw her, then maybe none of this would have ever happened. Investigator Lamberth says in the year after Shai Shai went missing, dozens of tips came in from across the country. The FBI checked the out-of-state leads,

but with each passing year, there were fewer tips to chase. Then, three years after Shai Shai's disappearance, the town of Unadilla was in the headlines when a string of sexual assaults rattled the community. The victims were young girls, three of them raped, including a 12-year-old. In July 2002, 20-year-old Quentin Kendrick, one of Shai Shai's neighbors, pleaded guilty to 16 criminal charges,

including multiple counts of rape and kidnapping in those attacks. He was sentenced to life in prison. Quentin Kendrick's name was already in Randy Lamberth's files. He was one of the people who told police he'd seen Shy Shy shortly before her disappearance. In fact, he was one of the ones that last saw her. Kendrick and Shai Shai's family lived about 200 yards apart. In the months after Shai Shai disappeared, investigators searched an abandoned well next to Kendrick's property. After his arrest on the rape charges, they went back and did a more thorough search of that well.

They did not find any human remains. I mean, he's somebody that's going to get on police radar, somebody with that situation. That's true. We have another person of interest in the case as well, who was the first person of interest. Quentin was not at the time. This other person, he was really hitting the radar heavy and still does. So, and nothing has actually been ruled out on either one of them. Investigator Lamberth won't say who the other person of interest is or when Quentin Kendrick became a person of interest. What's good about that is that it suggests some real progress. That, to me, says, do you think maybe this is close enough for you to either make an arrest or maybe learn where she is?

That's what we're hoping. We're hoping that we can continue to develop enough that we can push and maybe define where Shai Shai may be located. After his arrest on those rape charges, Quentin Kendrick told the Macon Telegraph he had nothing to do with Shai Shai's disappearance. Veronica grew up with his mother, his aunts, and his uncles. And she says Quentin played basketball in the street with her son. You never worried about him being around Shy?

No. I mean, her brother and him was friends, you know, but that was it. You never saw him show any interest in Shy? No. Not even her sister. She was 12 and her sister was 17. Sounds like you think he's not involved. No, I don't think he's involved. In 2008, Veronica moved away from Crumpler Avenue to another city 16 miles away. In the math of the missing, she'd survived a decade of missed school pictures. Instead, she watched her daughter grow up in age-progressed photos created by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. In an image showing what Shashai might have looked like as a 16-year-old, the braids she wore in third grade are gone.

Her hair is straightened. She still flashes that big smile. There were also some other photos, ones that popped up on Facebook. And they were about to send investigators racing across three states on a stealth mission. The young lady, once we introduced ourself, she was shocked. In January 2012, deputies at the Dooley County Sheriff's Office got a call,

one that looked like it could be their lucky break. A tipster pointed them to photos of a young woman that had been posted on Facebook. The tipster believed the woman, who lived in Michigan, was Shy Shy Pate. Investigator Randy Lamberth looked at the photos and saw enough of a resemblance to pursue that lead. So you get in the car and off you go to Detroit. That is correct. How long a drive is that? It was about 12, 12 and a half hours. So that says to me that you're taking this pretty seriously. You think there's at least a good chance that maybe you're finally going to find Shy Shy. That is correct.

In the 13 plus years he'd been working Shy Shy's case, Lamberth had checked out dozens of tips without success. He hadn't told Veronica about this one because he didn't want to raise any false hopes. Plus, the three law enforcement officers wanted to protect the element of surprise. And they did pull off the surprise. Rotondo Freeman was at work when she received a call she didn't expect, asking her to come to a police department just outside Detroit. Rotondo is Veronica's sister, and thus, Shy Shy's aunt. She was the one who'd posted those photos on Facebook.

And she told the road-weary cops, it wasn't Shy Shy in those photos. It was another member of the family. She's my little cousin. Me and her mother is first cousins. So she does look kind of like Shy. Yes. Deputy Lamberth says they talked with the girl in the Facebook photos and confirmed she wasn't Shy Shy. It turned out to be all a big misunderstanding.

But Rotondo says she was glad the investigators came all that way. When I seen them and when they told me why they was there, it gave me the strength to know that they still looking. It made you feel better to know that they were still looking, even though the reason that they were there turned out to be not legitimate. Correct. Right. By 2016, Rotondo had moved from Michigan back to Georgia. And she decided to organize a 5K walk to bring attention to Shai Shai's case and other missing children in the state.

The route started in front of Veronica's old house and ended near the intersection where Shy Shy was last seen. Rotondo even had t-shirts made up with Shy Shy's third grade school photo on the front. Randy Lamberth came to the walk. By then, he'd been working the case for nearly two decades. You talk about Shy Shy as being my little girl, in your words. You're right. Why is that? Why isn't this just another case?

I mean, she's a child. Child's going to touch everybody. And it's something that I would like to, one day, to be able to bring her home. This long ago stopped being just another case to you, didn't it, Randy? That is correct. That is correct. You'd like to close this? Yes.

For Shysha's family, the searching never really stops. It's like every time you go somewhere, you're constantly looking for her because you don't know exactly what she would look like today. We don't know if we don't pass her in the store, has she passed us and not knowing who we were.

And just not knowing is the hardest thing. There's another unknown that still haunts them. Could Shy Shy's abductor be someone they might still see at the grocery store? If Shy knew and trusted that person, you probably also knew and trusted that person. Knew and trusted that person, correct. What's it like to know that you probably know the murderer or the abductor or the person that's had her all these years? You can't even trust people these days because you don't know.

You don't know if a person is looking at your face, smiling at you, and they know where Shai at, or they know who took her, or somebody in their family took her. We don't know. It's hard. The endless search for answers would lead the family in all kinds of directions. In 2022, Shai Shai's mom, Veronica, got a Facebook friend request that she ignored at first. Her grandson did accept it, and that led to a phone call between Veronica and a woman in Missouri.

And in that first phone call, the woman dropped a bombshell. She said she was shy. Yes, she said she was shy. There was more. The caller told Veronica she'd been abducted, forced to use another name, and had been abused by the people who raised her. Veronica says the woman didn't ask for money, but instead had a message for the family. She said, if we never see each other again, I just want you to know that I ain't dead. And she said, I just want to ease the pain that's in your heart. And you believed that, at least right then you did. I did. I still believe it to this day.

I don't have a way of proving it. You believe her because you wanted to believe her? Because this is the phone call you always wanted to get? I actually believed her because it was like when I heard the voice on the phone, it was like the pain, like my heart just got relieved. So who did the caller say had kidnapped her back in 1998? According to Veronica, the woman said she'd blocked out those traumatic details. Investigators spoke to local authorities in Missouri and interviewed the woman themselves. We ended up talking with the young lady as well, but she was not giving us answers that could confirm anything. Things you've held back to weed out imposters.

That is correct. They also had her submit to a DNA test. And that basically came back negative. You're confident that was her DNA? I mean, she swabbed it in the presence of somebody else? The investigator there from Missouri at her home is the one that actually obtained the swabbing. Right, so it's not her.

That is correct. Veronica says she doesn't trust the swab test and would like to see a blood test done. She also says that caller knew things that only Shai Shai would know, because they're not public. At one point, she and other family members did a video call with the woman. When you see her on the video call, do you think that's her? You think that's Shai? I felt like it was. Yeah, I felt it and I could believe it was. Shy Shy's sister, LaSwanda, is not convinced. Not without solid proof. You know, my mom was very excited about it.

She wants it to be her. So I had to kind of like explain to my mom that she needs to be careful because you never know what people are up to. Deputy Lamberth told us the woman later recanted some of her claims and stopped answering calls. Natalie Wilson from the Black and Missing Foundation says her organization is familiar with scams targeting families of the missing. We are seeing an increase or an uptick in individuals or I'm assuming organizations that are taking advantage of families, you know, reaching out to them saying, I know where your loved one is, you know, you need to pay a ransom.

They are also, you know, acting as though they are investigators. And they're telling these families, you know, I can hook you up with someone that can give you a loan for $10,000 and pay me that $10,000 and I'll help you find your missing loved ones. Natalie drew our attention to Shasha's story after she met with Veronica in the summer of 2023. My heart bleeds for Veronica. She wants to just find her daughter and she's holding on to hope. That was her baby. I mean, Shai is the baby in the family. And when I talked to Veronica, she blames herself for what happened. I think that Veronica does feel some guilt about this, which I think she absolutely should not feel. I don't think she did anything wrong.

But that is normal, isn't it? For families to feel that they should have been more vigilant, they should have paid more attention. When in fact, they really actually, this was done to them, not by them. Absolutely. You know, families, what do they call it? The Monday morning quarterback, and I should have done this differently, you know, to protect my loved one. But she needs to hold her head up high because she continues to pound a pavement to find her daughter and to keep her, you know, her disappearance in the forefront. More than 25 years have passed since Shai Shai Pate vanished in the dark, and Randy Lamberth caught her case 14 hours late.

There's no way to know this for sure, but I feel like if Shai had been from a rich family that maybe was a different color, this might have been all hands on deck a lot sooner. You know, I agree with you. And what we are finding as we work with families is that oftentimes race, your zip code, your economic status, even your education. They are many times barriers to law enforcement resources, media coverage, and community engagement. And that is something that we are trying to change the narrative that these are our missing mothers, our fathers, our children. Today, Veronica has nine grandchildren. They call her Nana. And the hardest part is

when they turn eight years old, I'll be praying to ask God to let them get past eight. Once they get past eight, it looks like a little weight left after my heart. Veronica, you think you're going to see Shia again one day?

I believe in my heart that I will. Laswanda is now a mom with three children of her own. She tells them about the aunt they have never met, her baby sister. And she told us she has a message for Shai Shai. If she's listening or if she hears this story, I would want her to know and understand that we had no idea where to go. And we still don't. We still love her.

We miss her tremendously. And we never gave up hope. Here's where you can help. Shasha's full name is Shykemia Shires-Pate. She would be 34 years old today. You can view age-progressed photos of her on our website. On September 4th, 1998, she was wearing a neon green Atlanta Braves jersey with red lettering, Levi's jeans, and she had a leg brace.

She had several medical conditions, including asthma. Anyone with information about Shaikimi's disappearance is asked to call the Dooley County Sheriff's Office at 229-645-0920 or the Georgia Bureau of Investigation at 478-987-4545. To learn more about other people we've covered in our Missing in America series, go to datelinemissinginamerica.com. There, you'll be able to submit cases you think we should cover in the future. Thanks for listening. See you Fridays on Dateline on NBC.

Missing in America is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Kate Vydek is the producer of this episode. Brian Drew is the audio editor. Keanu Reid is associate producer. Bradley Davis is senior producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer. And Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Bob Mallory. Rison Barnes is head of audio production.