Dateline Originals - Deadly Engagement - Ep. 5: Good Neighbors

Episode Date: November 13, 2025

A knife in a trash can raises questions about a key witness. This episode originally published on September 30, 2025. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

June 20th, 2008 was the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. To Shannon Crawley, it must have felt like the longest day of her life. According to her, the day began with a four-hour sexual assault in the pre-dawn hours. From that moment on, she had scarcely a moment to herself. In the hours after she reported the attack, she'd been poked and prodded by doctors and nurses, questioned by police. I'm with the police department, and I just want to talk to you about a few things, and it's going to be a long day in trying to straighten this out and get them taken care of you.

After she was released from the hospital, Shannon's mother and sisters hovered over her, like bees on a tulip. While out in the hall, she likely heard the crawly menfolk, murmuring softly to one another, making sounds of sympathy and concern. She was really not talking once that night. She was just very sore. That's Shannon's brother-in-law, Chris Williams. He and his wife, Brandy, Shannon's sister, had come down from New Jersey.

I think she had some issues with men being around her, so I just stayed back a little bit from, you know, engaged in any conversation about the incident. without mind. Through bits and snatches of conversation, the men had gotten a good idea of what Shannon said had happened. I sort of asked how she felt

and how she was doing, and she had pain if she needed anything, those sorts of things. That is Keith Crawley, Shannon's dad. I'd more or less let her spend time with her sisters and her mom. Just having out a woman, I think it's more important than me being in the way.

The story Shannon told was awful enough. But one detail Shannon seemed to recall most vividly was horrific. Use the knife to penetrate me. In this episode, you'll hear how the knife Shannon says was used to attack her was found at the home of the man she said raped her, her former lover, Jermere Stroud, a man who'd been engaged to Danita Smith. The woman Shannon stood accused of murdering 18 months earlier. Both worked for the police department.

I was a 911 dispatcher and he took a police officer. We met there. We dated. We broke up. You'll hear how within days of that knife's discovery, the sexual assault case against Jermere Stroud was suddenly in question. No one wants to be that officer that says, you know what, lady, you're lying. I just feel that this is the injustice.

It's just pure injustice. And you will hear how that knife helped strengthen the prosecution's case, as the date of Shannon Crawley's murder trial drew ever closer. It seemed obvious not only who was stalking whom, but who was trying to frame her at that point. I'm Josh Mancoitz, and this is Deadly Engagement, a podcast from Dateline. Episode 5. neighbors. Blue Stem Court is a little suburban cul-de-sac on the north side of Greensboro.

It's a quiet street with friendly neighbors and hedges that are almost never allowed to get out of control. In 2008, it was home to Jermere Stroud. Very little of note ever seemed to happen there. And then, one steeper. Thursday night in June. Something did. Thursday is Trash Day on Blue Stem Court. So there were a few empty bins

still out by the curb. One of them belonged to Jermere. At about 10.30 that night, one of his neighbors, out watering her flowers, heard a car enter the cul-de-sac. Yeah, I went all the way to the end of the cul-de-sac and took a little loop.

When came back and stopped at his trash can and threw something else. I just figured that he was throwing out a bottle or something. A guy who lived next to Stroud was outside, transferring some guy stuff to the new car he and his wife had just bought that day. He saw the same thing. I was messing in the car, and I heard it to thunk. And so I got out of the car and kind of peeked around the car.

I saw the vehicle driving off from Jermere's Caden. I was thinking to myself, well, you know, maybe they had a McDonald's bag or a drink or something. They're just trying to get rid of. The next day, an attentive neighbor on Blue Stem Court might have noticed a Charlotte police car parked in front of Jermere Stroud's house. And then later, seeing how Jermere's trash can was stalled. in the street, some thoughtful soul dragged it back up the drive and parked it by his back door.

Those are the kind of neighbors you want, and Jermere Stroud had them on Blue Stem Court. I just assumed that it was just one of my neighbors there and I put my trash cans back up in my house. Jermere did not give the question of who moved his trash can a second thought, maybe not even a first thought. at least not until Monday when he happened to take out the garbage. I lift up my trash can to eat again, boom, I look down, and I see this big A knife. And I'm like, okay, and considering all the circles things, it's unfolded.

And I'm like, that's just odd and weird. Odd and weird? Oh, yes. You see, days earlier, Jermere's former lover, Shannon Crawley, had accused him of raping her with a knife. That's not all. Shannon Crawley was at the time out on Bond, awaiting trial for the murder of Jermere's fiancé, Danita Smith.

Shannon wasn't about yet. In May of 2007, Shannon, she was released in jail, and she issued a statement. stating to have gone to his part of me, blame me for being involved with the lawyers. On Saturday morning, the day after she said she'd been raped, Shannon Crawley said she was feeling a little better,

well enough at least to talk a bit about her ordeal. Shannon was still complaining about continued discomfort and bleeding. She stayed out because she wouldn't get in my bed. Shannon's mom, Anne. We tried to leave her alone, and she said she was bleeding, and she said it wasn't normal. The Crawley's thought it possible the medical team that had seen Shannon after the reported rape had missed something. Shannon had not allowed the medical staff to do more invasive diagnostic procedures because she'd said she was in too much pain.

Now the Crawley's wanted doctors to take a closer look. It made sense. It was Shannon who resisted. Because Shannon, to know, her concern was that people would think she did this to herself. And no one will believe that she was actually attacked. In the end, the Crawley family prevailed. So we convinced her finally to go to the hospital, and I told her her sisters would take her. That's Shannon's mom again.

They took it to the hospital. and texts me and told me that she saw that the doctor, his face didn't look good when she came out of the room. According to the Crawley sisters, a second and more thorough examination showed they were right. Shannon's bleeding had been caused by internal injuries that had gone undetected the day before. They did an internal exam and she had a lot of bruises inside and a lot of cuts. That's Shannon's brother-in-law, Chris Williams. They're going to make a note of an attitude, I guess, a previous report of the initial examination. The Crawley's were not sure what the hospital staff did for Shannon that night,

other than give her something for the pain. She was in extreme pain. She felt that everything was falling out. Shannon's mom, Anne. She just laid down. She cried. You know, she just, she cried. That's all she did, just cry. She was in a lot of pain, and she just cried a lot, you know. So she slept in my bed with her daughter.

That made her feel better when her daughter near her. In a strange way, that scene might well have reminded the crawlies of some more innocent times when Shannon was growing up. Shannon was Thumb sucker. She was the, she's the second oldest, but she really is the baby of the family. Easy to cry, very sensitive, stubborn. The overwhelming thing I think about her is just being very sensitive and interrogated. She's probably to drop her hat. For several days, Shannon rested and recuperated in the comforting cocoon of family,

surrounded by people who'd known her all her life, people who loved her, sheltered her, and who believed every word she'd told them about her former lover, Jermere Stroud. Well, that wasn't nearly enough. In the weeks and months to come, she would need to convince total strangers to believe her as well. For Jermere Stroud, that knife was absolutely the last straw.

For months, he'd heard how his former lover, Shannon Crawley, had been talking smack about him. That was unpleasant, but not unexpected. This was something else. And now Jermere had had enough. I have been accused of murdering my own fiancé, and then two weeks after I was supposed to marry the woman that she murdered, she's now accusing me a rape, and I knew I wasn't there. As he stared at the knife lying at the bottom of his trash can, his mind raced back and forth,

switching between memories and scenarios like a teenager with a remote. Three days earlier, cops from Charlotte had come to Jermere's house and questioned him about that alleged rape. And Jermere said he had told them everything. on duty till after midnight, then McDonald's, on the phone with a friend, then to bed. All of it checked out. Cops had the McDonald's receipt and phone records, a printout showing his cell hitting a tower in Greensboro, right around the time he was allegedly raping Shannon a hundred miles away.

After asking Greensboro police to come collect the knife, Jermere called the Charlotte Police. department. He was put through to the sex crimes unit. Detective Pam Zencon was the lead detective on this case, and she picked up. It was a folding blade type of blade. Right. Blade folds in, but it was, it was unfolded, just out. What kind of blade was it? Can you describe the blade? Um, it was, I don't know, it was at least, I don't know. It was at least, when I say a four inch blade, I'm talking at least minimum of four inches, something about the exposed part of the blade. Right. And it was kind of, it looked like a real fan.

Somebody you get the type of deal. Jermere told Detective Zencon he had never seen that knife before. He knew for certain he had not put it there. Jermere says once he saw it, he just shut the lid and started checking with his neighbors. So the first thing I deal was I caught my neighbor that was likely would be, you know, A guy kind of takes care of my mail and stuff when I'm out of town. Uh-huh. I said, you have to put my trash jeans up by this.

I'm up at my house. He said, now I wouldn't meet. Sir Jermere asked his neighbor who lived on the other side, a guy named Brandon. I said, hey, man, put my trash jeans up on my house. I said, now I didn't touch trash jeans. He said, but you know what? I didn't see something weird. I saw a guy, you know, I saw somebody pull up.

I saw he saw him lay models with Bewick come down to the older end of my cul-de-exam. circle around, pull up to my house, stop school now, and somebody got out, put something in my trash can and throw off. I said, oh, what time of night was this? He didn't recall the time directly, and I told him, I said, don't worry about telling it to me, I'll make sure you talk to all. Later, Jermere says he asked one more neighbor, a woman named Jessica, if she had been the one who moved his trash can, and bingo.

She said, I put this trash can at your house. I said, okay, thank you. She said, yeah, they were out there after trash day. old, so I just figured I, you know, get them out of the street and pull them up there for you. I said, great. I said, did you happen to leave a knife in there or anything? She goes, oh, gosh, no, the knife. I said, no, she said, no, I didn't leave anything in there.

She said, but you know what was weird, though? I did see somebody pull up. It was kind of weird. Somebody just kind of pulled up, got out, drop something in there. I just thought it was kind of strange if they would do that, and they pulled off. The neighbors described the person they saw as either a white male or a light-skinned blackmail. The car he drove, they described as being greenish gray, or possibly blue, a late model vehicle.

Kind of rounded and bubbly, Jessica said. Brandon said it looked like a Buick. Jermere could not think of anyone he knew who matched that description and who drove a car like that. However, the timing was suspicious. Jessica and Brandon had seen the man drop something into Jermere's empty trash can on Thursday night. That was four or five hours before Shannon had claimed her rapist grabbed her in the backyard

of her mother's home in Charlotte. One neighbor, Jessica, who said she saw it was a white male. Number one, we get white males that would be involved in there. So she had somebody else working with her. Number two, somebody is providing her with my schedule. Somehow when she killed my fiance, she knew that I would be homeless. alone and dead by myself. When she called me back in January,

she knew I would be home alone and dead by myself. When this knife got dropped, I assumed somebody knew that I would be at work, and when this alleged weight thing happened, she knew that I was home alone and dead by myself. You know what I mean? That's not a pattern that an idiot couldn't get up on, you know what I mean? Right.

The detective and Jermere spoke several times over the next few days. Hi, Jermere. Hey, this is Detective Zincan. Pam, Sincan. How are you doing? Yeah, I'm right. Hey, I got a quick question for you. I spoke to your neighbors. The one thing I do need to ask you, just to say I did,

when you located the knife and the trash, you lifted the lid, and then what happened? What did you do? In those calls, Jermere sometimes vented his frustrations over the slow pace of the investigation. All I can do is think from my end. And from my end, I'm thinking, and I don't know what you all had. From my end, I'm thinking, this was so ridiculously obvious, I didn't do it.

You know what? If it was that ridiculous, obvious, then I wouldn't have been working on this case for almost over two weeks. Okay? So, you know what? Maybe you should go into investigations, okay? Because nothing's that ridiculously obvious, all right? I'm just doing my job. Jermere told the detective that, after all he'd been through,

What he most wanted was Shannon Crawley to be arrested for falsely accusing him of rape. One of the worst things you could ever accuse a man of is rape. That's just nasty. Okay. And not being prosecuted is good enough for everybody else, but cleared is what I want. Cops have a slang term for evidence like that knife

that seems to conveniently fall from the sky and implicate a suspect. They call it snowflaking to Jermere. This felt like a blizzard. It was then that Jermere suggested, speaking cop-to-cop, that Shannon Crawley would likely get away with this slander because he said, everyone knows cops are not in the business of arresting women

who say they are rape victims. I understand you all's position. That's the why y'all can. that, but I kind of feel like it's a political thing keeping you all from doing it. That suggestion was a step too far for Detective ZenCon. Well, Jemir, let me tell you something right now. I don't appreciate that. Okay, law enforcement, law enforcement, I don't appreciate what you just said to me. Okay? I have worked very hard on this case and I'm still working hard on this case.

And if I find fact enough to say that it didn't happen, I will do that. Okay. If we can find out that she is lying, then we'll make. make an arrest. But you just can't decide, you just can't get a feeling or one of those officer's senses that someone's lying. How long have you been in the, you said you've been in a cop five years and I've got to explain this to you? No, ma'am, I didn't say. That's your feeling. You can't arrest people on feelings. You should know that. Well, I know that. Okay. Then why are you thinking I need to right now? Well, if you know this, if you notice, I didn't say that I think the one of the things that

make y'all have to be so careful about doing that, and do you guys have to make sure y'all have a mold of evidence, which means if I can, if I can produce any kind of information that can help you all come to that determination, I will, which lets you know that I know that y'all don't have enough to be able to find that fact. So, you know nothing because I am telling you nothing,

just like I'm not telling her anything. Okay, you're the suspect in this case. And so I am not sharing information with you. Now, I will get information from you if you want to give it, but I'm not going to give you any information. information. Okay. And you did make a comment about me not making an arrest for political reasons. And that is incorrect. I am doing my investigation and you will know the result of that investigation when it's done. I don't appreciate that comment. Well, I apologize for

offending you because my attention was definitely not to offend you. Well, apology accepted. But just know, because we have done nothing but work on this case and try to figure out what we can do to the fullest. And I'm not whining about how much I've been working on this case because it is my job. But I can assure you that I have been doing my job. A few days after that phone call, Detective ZenCon got her hands on a critical piece of information she'd been waiting for. The results of the rape kit were in.

The one performed after Shannon said Jermere had raped her repeatedly. The lab reported finding not a trace of Jermere Stroud's DNA, not on Shannon. not on Shannon's clothes, and not on the knife found in Jermere's trash bin. It is likely an audible sigh of relief was heard, miles away in Durham, where the district attorney had been eagerly waiting to hear, whether the key witness in his murder case would be charged with raping the defendant. There was no semen on the vaginal swab.

That's Durham County prosecutor David Sachs. There's a little blood on one of the swabs, but nothing that would be conclusive proof that the rape had occurred. She indicated that there should have been Jemir's DNA on her. And it wasn't there. It just wasn't there. They tested her clothes. They tested her, the underwear, everything they could,

and it just was not there. And the damage, which you would think would be caused by his using a knife. Correct. that wasn't really there either. Clearly not seeing all the medical personnel confirmed for both the Charlotte Police and for us that they did not see that kind of injury to her. That would have occurred. Durham County Detective Sean Pate,

who had spent hours interviewing Shannon and then later arrested her for the murder of Danita Smith, was not surprised to hear that her latest accusation against Jermere Stroud had turned to vapor. Again, that was with the Charlotte Police Department. I know it took them, if I remember correctly, about 10 days to figure out this never occurred. And which, being honest with you,

is very, very fast for a rape because no one wants to be that officer that says, you know what, lady, you're lying. No one wants to be that person. I mean, you're supposed to start by believing. In the end, Jermere was not charged with rape. and Shannon was not charged with filing a false report. However, that was not the end of the finger pointing.

Oh, no. Soon, the fingers were pointing at police. As far as Shannon Crawley was, concerned. The evidence meant nothing. Not the rape kit results, not the medical reports, none of it. Jermere Stroud, she said, had raped her with a knife. And if the cops couldn't find evidence to support that, well, then that proved what she and her family had long believed. The cops were covering up for Jermere, one of their own. She knew what she knew. And that was that.

I believe that after, for whatever reason, they contacted the Durham police, I feel that it was completely inappropriate for them to even involve Durham. It had nothing to do with that case. But when they did, their whole story changed. The way they treated me, everything changed after that. And they made me feel like I made this up, and I know that I didn't. I mean, clearly it's got something to do with that case. I mean, it's the guy that you say is the actual killer trying to intimidate you.

It made them change their position on what happened to me. How they treated me initially is not how they ended up treating me after they talked to the Durham police. You think the Durham police sort of what convinced them that you're a liar? Yes. Yes, because everything changed after that. But why would the rape kit come back inconclusive? Why wouldn't Jermere's DNA be found? I'm sure he did that on purpose.

How was he going to explain why he had attacked him? me. When you say he, you mean your mayor? Yes. So what? He did what on purpose? He's a police officer. He made sure that his DNA would not be found. But when they found the knife, they found the knife in his trash can. He had an excuse for that. Oh, someone must have put it there. He's got a neighbor that says, oh, well, I saw someone drive by and put the knife in his trash can. Okay, well, his cell phone records put him on the phone at the time that you say this assault was going on. And I don't believe that he was ever talking to anyone on the phone. I know where he was that night. As for Shannon's parents, the Crawleys, well, they trusted Shannon, and they believed

the fix was in. After they talked to prosecutors, yeah, he called down there and everything changed. Everything changed. Everything changed. This is what, one big conspiracy? It sounds like it. It sounds like it, but We got to look at the way it is. So many things that just don't hold them together. Yeah. Yeah. To the Crawley's, it seemed a clear case of the blue wall. Police officers covering for another police officer.

Cops will protect other cops. You know what department they're in. Shannon's father, Keith Crawley, Sr., was himself once a sheriff's deputy in another state. There are always that few. Not many. There's always that few. that we'll cover up for a cop who don't even know it. You were in law enforcement.

Yes. You cover up crimes by other officers? No, I never did. The Crawley's absolutely believed their daughter. But it seems her lawyers may have had their doubts. Six months after Shannon accused Jermere of rape, and just a month before her murder trial was set to begin, Shannon's attorneys withdrew from her case.

In their court filing, they cited a, quote, ethical dilemma, unquote, stemming from the bar associations candor toward the tribunal rule. Essentially, that's an ethics rule that says lawyers can't knowingly lie to the court or allow their client or one of their witnesses to present testimony which the attorney knows is false. What was the precise nature of this ethical dilemma? We don't know. We do know the late withdrawal of Shannon's attorneys caused her murder trial to be postponed.

The Crawley's did not mention an ethical issue when I spoke with them years later. In their telling, it all boiled down to money. The first attorneys, one in particular, kept asking for more and more and more and more money. And when he realized there wasn't anymore to give, That's how he wanted to back out of the case. After, yeah.

After he'd spent all the amount. The court ended up appointing Shannon a new attorney. He was appointed by the state after we had already spent him all there was to spend. Two years after her daughter's death, Sharon Smith was emotionally spent. It had taken months for the sharp pain of losing Danita to dissipate. into a constant dull throb. It was an ache that never went away. It took longer still for her thoughts to turn from the horror of Danita's death

to wistful memories of her short but exceptional life. She touched a lot of people in the 25 years that she was on the earth. That is Sharon Smith, Danita's mom. I did not realize it, but she did. And she accomplished more in her 25 years than what some of us do in the lifetime. And although the family has marked Danita's birthdays with photos of her posted on social media, Danita has never aged. She is forever 25. There are no new pictures of her celebrating life's achievements.

No photos of Danita proudly holding. her own children. Unfortunately, I didn't get to plan her wedding or see her come down the aisle or the excitement of her having her children or even see her go across the stage for the second time to get her masters. Denita was gone, but far from forgotten.

In the years since Danita's death, her mother turned her attention to the case being built against Danita's accused killer. frequently calling both the detective who had arrested Shannon Crawley and the prosecutor she hoped would put Shannon away for life. Denise's mother was in constant contact with our office and with me personally. Durham County Prosecutor David Sacks. She would call me up and we would talk and I would let her know where things stood

and what we were doing and what the next steps were and things of that nature. And this took a long time to get to trial and so there were a lot of conversations. with Bryn Smith. Early on, a lot of those discussions centered on Sharon's would-be son-in-law, Jermere Stroud, and Danita's accused killer, Shannon Crawley. Do you ever worry they had the wrong person?

Shannon versus Jermere. Well, Shannon versus... Anyone? Anybody. Anybody. At first I did. At first I did. When Sharon learned, Shannon had said it was Jermere who killed DeNita.

Sharon says, she initially believed her. I was very angry. I was very angry because I had gotten to know Jamir, welcomed him in my home, and if he had went down, if the evidence supported it, evidence supported it.

By January 2010, the prosecutor was ready to take his case against Shannon Crawley to trial. He was confident he had the evidence to get, a conviction. What he was not sure about was how his key witness Jermere Stroud would come off in front of a jury. What became very hard was to deal with his mannerisms. I have a very specific memory of sitting down with Danita's mother, and we actually watched together Jumir's videotaped interview because I wanted her to see what I was dealing with, because you would watch his interview and it just it would just strike you that he's hiding something or something and she had

the same impression and she was like that's not that's just not the jume here i know it was an odd position to be in after three years of investigation the d a was plainly worried that if this approaching day of reckoning became yet another round of he said she said the prosecution could still lose comes across squirrelly sometimes just comes to call squirrely sometimes just comes to squirrely. There's just something not right, you know. Next time. The whole trial was basically us saying that Shannon Crawley committed this murder and the defense saying, Jemir Stride, did this murder. The tone was definitely, you know, somber. Shannon's family here and, you know, you got DeNitas people on the other side. You know,

Tense is a good word for it. I do know that my belief is that Jumeir is going to pay for this one day. This podcast is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Tim Beecham is the producer. Marshall Housefeld, Brian Drew, Deb Brown, and Billy Ray are audio editors. Kimberly Flores Gainer is associate producer. Adam Gourfane is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer.

And Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Rich Cutler. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production. Thank you.