Dateline Originals - Internal Affairs - Ep. 5: Jailhouse Confidential

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Recorded phone calls from a suspect in jail reveal the ties that bind unraveling.This episode was originally published on October 11, 2022. 

The last hour of Heather Garris' life passed uneventfully. As she sat in her cluttered office in the credit union, everything seemed so familiar, so normal. She would have been comfortable in a blue swivel chair in the cockpit space of her maple veneer surround desk, a tall pink file cabinet across the room topped with stuffed animals. Elsewhere, amid the clutter of files and cookie tins, Coke cups and water bottles, were photos of family and friends

and a blue desk sign that simply read, Heather. It was around 5.30 in the afternoon. The trash can beneath her desk was full, her day almost done, when the phone just to the right of her computer terminal lit up with a familiar number. It was Victoria, her nine-year-old, wondering when Mom would be home and if she could help with a homework assignment. Shortly after that, Sarah Staley, a co-worker and family friend,

stuck her head in the door. Sarah would normally have been gone already, but on this day, she'd stayed a little late. Heather just wanted me to stay with her and hang out because we're having fun that day, messing around and stuff. With all of that going on, it's unlikely Heather noticed a black pickup cruising slowly past her big office window. Almost as if someone might be checking to see if Heather was still there. A small security camera on the ATM outside was also working and recorded it.

The time? 5.39 p.m. Heather Garris didn't know it, of course, but her life had exactly 36 minutes left. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. In this episode, you will hear about rising tensions within the Greeley Police Department as the search for Heather Garris' killer hits very close to home. He got mad, threw a fit, because I was interviewing his fiancée. You'll hear from the woman at the heart of our story, a woman who insisted she'd been set up to take the fall for a murder she

didn't commit. He was playing me. Oh, he was playing me. I didn't see it coming. And you'll hear how an intimate partnership crumbled under the weight of a scandal. I don't know what's going on with Michelle. She refused to talk to my investigator. What exactly was going on in Greeley in the early months of 2007? At the very least, it was sex and murder. And whatever else it was, it certainly had our attention. State line called me last. And I just said, I'm sorry. I can't talk to anybody. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Episode 5 of Internal Affairs, a podcast from Dateline.

Weld County paramedic Michelle Bush knew as soon as she pulled her ambulance into the credit union parking lot, that she was too late. It was established very quickly that there was not anything we would be able to do. A river of blood and brain matter on the asphalt. No pulse, no respiration. Michelle didn't need to be a paramedic to know she was looking at death. She knew the victim was Heather Garris, the wife of her friend Ig. She also knew who the primary suspect was. The name was on the police radio, on the lips of witnesses who stood just beyond the yellow tape. They were talking about Shauna Nelson.

Who else? Everyone, it seemed, knew that backstory. For Michelle Bush, though, there might even have been a brief moment of flashback to another night when the victim might have been her. Iggy had told me that Shauna was going to be mad at me for taking him home. It had been two and a half years since Michelle had had her own run-in with Shauna Nelson.

It had happened at a retirement party. One of Greeley's finest was calling it quits. Ig and Shauna were there, as was just about everybody else who had even a remote connection to Greeley law enforcement. One of the Greeley officers there that night was Fred Budd. Fred had just bought a Ford Mustang, and Michelle just loved Mustangs. So when the timing was right, Michelle says she asked Fred if she could take his new Mustang for a spin. I was trying to convince my husband to let me buy a Mustang,

so I wanted to drive that Mustang, and that was the premise of that. It was late in the evening when Fred finally gave Michelle the keys to his new ride. Ig Garris wanted to ride along, and so off they went. Ig didn't bother to tell Shawna he was leaving. I took the Mustang on to Highway 34 and drove out toward Promontory to see how fast it would go. How long they were out on that little joyride depends on who you ask. Michelle says 40 minutes. Ig says more than an hour. However long it was, at some point, Shauna became suspicious. Shortly before midnight, Ig says his phone started blowing up from people at the party

calling him to tell him that Shauna was drunk, loud, and livid. In the process of being gone with Michelle Bush, I started getting phone calls on my cell phone. And one call is from Fred Budd, and he says, Ig, Shauna is out of control. She's freaking out. You better not come back here. So to avoid making an embarrassing scene even worse,

Michelle says she dropped Egg at his house, then returned to the party, hoping to slip the keys back to Fred Budd without attracting any unwanted attention from Shauna. That's why I went to the window and knocked on it to have Fred Budd come outside. Once she saw the party breaking up and Shauna was nowhere in sight, Michelle went back inside. Big mistake.

Shawna was still there. It was while the people mainly doing the party were settling their bills, so we were all standing around the door, and she came in really fast from the main bar part and yelled,

Michelle, you f***ing whore, I'm going to kick your ass. Michelle recalls Shauna's face was as red as a ripe tomato. Her eyes were bulging. Her fists so tight the knuckles were white. If not for the intervention of two Greeley police officers, Michelle says, she felt sure she'd have been mauled by Shauna Nelson. She shouldn't have been surprised. Within Weld County law enforcement, Shauna Nelson had a reputation for being something of a drama queen, operatic almost, especially when drunk. She liked to have a good time, go out with people.

She tended to drink a lot. That's the voice of Jennifer Morrison. She worked with Shawna at Greeley Police Dispatch and eventually became her boss. Was she somebody you'd consider a friend? There were times that we were friendly, but I don't think I would consider her a friend just because she was so volatile. According to Jennifer, when Shauna was good,

she was very good, a top-notch dispatcher. But when she was bad, she was scary. She tended to have a lot of affairs. And when she was involved with someone, she would view that person's spouse as a threat to herself. So she would make statements about wanting to get rid of the other person. And what form did that take? You saw this happen a couple of times. There was one specific incident where she talked about hiding in the bushes outside of a woman's house and waiting for her to come out so that she could attack her. It'd scare you.

But when you consider how theatrical Shana was, it was hard to know whether these were serious threats or just Shana being Shawna. No one looks their best in a booking photo. So it's not surprising that when Shawna Nelson faced the intake camera at the Weld County Jail on the night of January 23, 2007, her face seemed to say it all. Her puffy blue eyes had a kind of thousand-yard stare,

one that seemed to look past the camera and into a murky, depressing future. Because her husband was a Weld County Sheriff's deputy, Shawna was put in a cell under protective custody. In other words, solitary confinement. Hello, this is a collect call from Shauna. We reviewed hundreds of Shauna Nelson's jail phone calls during our investigation of this case. Calls to family and friends, in which a fuller and more nuanced portrait of an accused killer emerged. Her first recorded call to the outside world went to her husband, Ken.

No TV. I only get an hour out of my cell a day. It's just a bunch of concrete there. Remember, it was Ken who'd stopped the truck she'd been driving on the night Shauna was arrested for the murder of Heather Garris. After seven long days in a jail cell, that moment seemed like something from the Paleolithic era. There's nothing like a murder beef to make a couple remember their vows. I just want to come home and be with you and tell you about me. There's nothing like a murder beef to make a couple remember their vows. In those early days of incarceration,

Shawna and Ken Nelson acted as a mutual support system in a way they probably hadn't for a while. Shawna seemed to be battling depression and despair. We're going to make it, Ken. mile. Shauna seemed to be battling depression and despair. Her husband offered his love and support as they both struggled to comprehend what had actually happened that night. It was the same question Ken Nelson would ask many times over those first few weeks. And the answer was always the same. Any of your memories coming back? No, nothing. Nothing. Why? I still, but I mean all those other times too that I've left out, I don't remember what I was doing.

The kids, of course, were a mess. Dylan, the eight-year-old, angry at the world. Six-year-old Jordan, crying, inconsolable. I've been over a week. I know, it's been a while, huh? inconsolable. Naturally, the burden of holding it all together had fallen on Ken. In addition to the two older children, he also had nine-month-old Christian to care for. That was Shauna's child from her affair with Ig. Of course, in addition to the emotional turmoil, I would do that. You're right. Of course, in addition to the emotional turmoil, there were practical matters to attend to. There were school schedules and homework to manage.

The roof leaked, and there were bills to pay. No, I feel like you need to pay, but I think you should cancel it. By late January, Ken was under investigation for evidence tampering and had been placed on administrative leave from the sheriff's department. And they're giving me a polygraph. What? Yeah. They accused me of when we stopped you going through the driver's side, getting the gun, taking it out and hiding it. What?

Yeah. And then told me I blatantly failed. Yeah, I told them, f*** you, I'm out of here, then arrest me or charge me. After the polygraph, Ken's security clearances were revoked, and he was removed from the Weld County Drug Task Force. In spite of it all, Shawna seemed to rally after those first few weeks of incarceration. She was transferred to a jail in neighboring Larimer County, where it was thought she'd be safer from inmates who might wish to exact revenge on a Weld County deputy's wife. It was in the Larimer County Jail that the staff began treating Shawna for depression. And she began to voice optimism

that her arrest had been a giant mistake, one that would soon be rectified. Her arrest, she said, had been a rush to judgment based on nothing more than the assumptions of a couple of Heather Garris' co- given. Her family believed her. Her friends offered encouragement. And her relationship with Ken actually seemed to be improving. I love you. Love you too. You're such a good man. I love you so much.

Something had to happen because Shawna was mingling with other inmates. That was an eye-opener. Though she tried to speak with Ken and the kids every day, there was rarely a day that Shauna didn't speak with her fiercest defender, her sister, Deb Smith. You're not trying to protect anybody, right? God, no. This is a nightmare being away from those kids. It is just slowly killing me. In reality, Deb Smith was not her sister. She was Shauna's first cousin. It's complicated, but when Shauna was born, her birth mother gave the baby to her sister, Deb's mother, to raise.

It wasn't until high school that Shauna actually learned that the woman who she thought was her mom was actually her biological aunt, and the woman she'd thought was her Aunt Bobby was actually her mother. I'm well aware that Bobbybie is my biological mother. I've known since I was 16. I don't think of her as anything, you know? She's not my mother. Whatever the hard biological facts, Deb and Shauna seem to share an unshakable sisterly bond.

Shauna, everybody is saying she's not condemned. I'd say that too. The bottom line is we love you. I know that. On Shauna's end, many of those conversations tended to turn towards self-reflection. According to Shauna, she

now realized that alcohol lay at the root of her troubles. Was the alcohol that bad? now realized that alcohol lay at the root of her troubles. I was two or three bottles of wine. Why? I don't know. Depression. Yeah. Self-medicating, I guess.

That's what me and Nick would do. We would go drink. We would get roaring drunk and talk and listen to the radio. While in jail, Shawna joined AA. She also told everyone she talked to that she'd found God and that she filled her days every Bible study I can. Just trying to get peace within myself. According to Shauna, all of that was making her a better person. Someone who would be a better wife and mother once she was released back into the world. I'm reading the Bible, like, all the time.

When I get out of here, I want to help others, you know, do volunteer stuff, Meals on Wheels, Habitat for Humanity. I want to do that kind of stuff. For her part, Deb Smith seemed to be laser-focused on the present and on drumming up support for Shawna. She'd been in close contact with an investigative reporter named Paula Woodward from Denver's NBC affiliate KUSA. I told you, Paula Woodward is just's NBC affiliate KUSA. Woodward was interested in the case, and like any good reporter, she was clearly cultivating Deb as a source. Deb was ready to take any help she could find.

But she also figured it wouldn't hurt to bring some national attention to Shawna's case. For these sisters, one name above all seemed to curdle in their mouths and sour their moods. Ignacio Garris. I cannot say his name. I think he is a son of a bitch. The way they saw it, Ig was the source of all this misery. A liar, a cad, a faithless husband, and a fickle lover. Shauna appeared astonished when she read transcripts of Ig's statements to police. I felt like I was blackmailing him into staying in it because I would tell Heather. And he, that's never how it was. That's never ever how it was. According to Shawna, Ig was not only lying about the nature of their relationship,

but Shawna told Deb that she now believed it was Ig who'd arranged to have his wife killed. Ig who had set Shawna up to take the fall. She had access to everything. I don't know. It's just... It wasn't fair, the sisters agreed. In their estimation, the evidence against Shawna was thin. No murder weapon. No DNA. Even the timing of things seemed off. There'd been just 10 minutes between the murder and the arrest.

It didn't seem possible. If this happened at 6.15 and Ken stopped you at 6.25, who got your name out of the media? The people at the bank just assumed it was me. Talk about it with the judge, don't you? Yeah. There's no way to get that far in that amount of time. And have time to stop and get rid of the weapon. I know. I've thought about it a lot.

It was in mid-February when the fault lines that had long existed in Shauna's marriage to Ken began to show. Now the couple's ritual I love you call and response was breaking down. Here's an example from Valentine's Day 2007. Well, I love you too. You don't love me anymore, do you? I didn't say that. The last 15 months, 7% of them were not loved. By March, smoldering resentments burst into open flame. In the process of being questioned by detectives,

Ken Nelson had learned a lot about his wife. Things he didn't know. Things that were hard to take. A lot of people admitted to something. They were asking me if I knew about it. What are you talking about? Five other affairs. What? No.

People are admitting to it. With who? You. Yes, it was all coming out now. Five affairs that Ken had apparently known nothing about. And that wasn't all. I thought you had already figured that out. No, I was like completely surprised when they asked me about that.

What was right before we broke up? Seven people that they asked me about, I knew about two. And they told me about that, I had no idea about that. I don't know of any other guys. I don't know what the guys are saying. Not only were guys talking about sexual encounters with Shawna, all of the guys were in local law enforcement. Cops, dispatchers, deputies. That was the final straw for the Nelsons of Greeley, Colorado.

A week later, Ken told Shawna he intended to file for divorce. He had an interview, he said, scheduled for a prison job out in Walla Walla, Washington at the end of the month. If he got the job, Ken told Shawna, he'd be moving there with the kids. I've been a good mother to those kids. I need them and they need me. They need both of us. It's a time that they don't need both of us clear across the country from each other. Ken was unmoved by Shauna's appeal and by the children's tears. In part because there was already a new woman on the horizon. A woman from his distant past.

They had recently reconnected, and as luck would have it, she just happened to live in Walla Walla, Washington. For the next two months, Shauna would toggle between bashing and blaming Ken, and despair at having been left behind. The bleak and uncertain future she'd seemed to be staring at on the day of her booking photo had now become even bleaker and maybe just a little bit more certain. You guys need to move on. Just don't even worry about me anymore. Why are you willing to give up?

Did you do this? No, but it doesn't matter. My life is over. It doesn't f***ing matter anymore. In the months after Shawna's arrest and Heather's burial, Ig Garris found no place to hide from his guilty conscience. He'd had an affair with an obsessed woman, and now, as a direct result, his wife was dead.

Did I approach this intelligently? No. Far from it. To know Shauna, you would not believe how she is, how strong-willed she is, how stone-cold she is. If anyone had a ringside seat to the Shauna and Ig drama and might have predicted its messy ending, it would have been Shauna's close friend, Michelle Moore. She'd first met Shauna back in the summer of 2004, at about the time the affair was beginning, and the two of them had hit it off immediately.

We were very close friends. I would describe it as a best friendship. That's the voice of Michelle Moore. We didn't always talk every day, but we saw each other a few times a week most times, and we talked often. Michelle had been a fresh-faced 23-year-old Weld County Sheriff's deputy back then. Like many young adults, Michelle liked to hit the bars after work, and even though Shauna was 10 years older, she still partied like a kid. Everybody who knew Shawna also knew Michelle. Now some,

like Shawna's sister Deb, didn't like her, didn't trust her, and thought she was a bad influence on Shawna. Michelle began an affair with a Greeley policeman while he was still married. And at that time, she had just become friends with Shauna. Just like everybody else in town, apparently. Exactly. Maybe she was just trying to fit in. I'm not. I like my husband. But anyway, Shauna, and she was complaining about Ken, about their marriage. It wasn't going well, and Michelle said to Shauna, I can just go in while Ken's asleep and shoot him in the head, and that would get rid of your problems. And Shauna got really angry and said, that's not funny.

In the fall of 2006, months before Heather Garris was murdered, Michelle Moore left the sheriff's department and began a new career as an insurance agent. She was now living in a Greeley suburb with her boyfriend, Greeley detective Tim Young. She and Shawna were still close. In fact, the day before Heather Garris was murdered, Michelle and Shawna had spent the afternoon together, ran some errands, attended a Girl Scout meeting,

where Shawna talked about fire safety, and then they capped the evening with dinner and drinks. Situation normal, as far as anyone could tell. But no, something had changed. Because the next day, the day of the murder, well, on that day, Michelle Moore simply went dark. Couldn't be reached, at least not by Shauna. I was with a client of mine writing an insurance policy.

Once again, the voice of Michelle Moore. At the time, it was 321. I got a voicemail from Shauna. I was working and doing some things, and the voicemail said that she was going to relax and just take a bath. I didn't call her. I just went on with my day. According to Michelle, she was at home and settling in for the evening when her boyfriend, Greeley detective Tim Young, came home.

I knew that something had happened because my boyfriend came bursting through the door and he grabbed my arm and took me back in the bedroom and he said, Michelle, Shauna just shot Heather. Michelle Moore was questioned twice by detectives in the week after the murder. Not much to say, she told them. Yes, she'd known about Shauna's affair with Ig and its ugly breakup. But Michelle insisted she'd never heard Shauna make any threats to harm Heather Garris. When Shauna later read Michelle's police statement

in jail, she told her sister Deb Smith that even though her friend wasn't taking her calls, at least she wasn't lying. Shauna may have trusted that Michelle Moore would have her back. Her sister, as always, remained skeptical. She's not your friend. What do you mean by that? I can't talk about it right now. Well, you need to tell me something. I just don't think that she's on the up and up. Well, you need to tell me something. I don't know what to tell you. For once in these last 10 years, trust me, she is not your friend. In June 2007, six months after the murder of Heather Garris,

Michelle Moore was called down to the Greeley Police Department for a third interview. Again, she stuck to her story. Shauna was doing really well, in my eyes. She was a beast. She had made a decision that, again, you know, he chose to be with her. Screw that. Detectives suspected Michelle knew more about the killing than she was saying. It wasn't until November 2007 that they learned

what it was. With Shauna's trial date fast approaching, Michelle called them. She wanted to go over her testimony, she said, so that she wouldn't be blindsided at trial. After being told that this was the time to come clean if she had something to say, Michelle hung up the phone and then called back. Guilt does an amazing thing to people's psyche. That's the voice of Detective Mike Brill. As I recall, she came to the police department with Tim driving. He discovered I was doing the interview. He got mad, threw a fit. I wasn't present for it. I was told about it because I was interviewing his fiancée, I guess.

And he left. What were his reasons? I don't know. This time, when Michelle entered the interrogation room, her story changed. And it changed in ways that gave detectives yet another suspect. Next time on Internal Affairs. She said, I'm guilty of a lot of things as far as the affairs and bad choices.

She said, I am not guilty of murder. We're not angry with Shauna Nelson because she wanted to terminate a sexual relationship with you. There wasn't a sexual relationship. Does the defense have any evidence to present? Yes, Your Honor. We've called Sean and Nelson. You're ashamed of yourself? Oh, yes.

I loathe. I loathe myself. Internal Affairs is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Tim Beacham is the producer. David Varga and Jonathan Moser are audio editors. Matt Sullivan is assistant audio editor. Susan Nall is senior producer.

Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Liz Cole is executive producer. And David Corvo is senior executive producer. Liz Cole is executive producer. And David Corvo is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, Bryson Barnes is technical director. Sound mixing by Bob Mallory. Nina Bisbano is associate producer.