Every Town - The Night Halloween Died: The Shauna Howe Case

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

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Are you ready to dive into the unknown? Join me, Peyton Moreland, on Into the Dark, the true crime podcast from Ono Media with a hint of horror and mystery. Each week, I dive into a different case, breaking down the facts and pondering the age-old question, why do people do what they do? Now, sometimes the answer isn't so clear, and that's why I'll also explore conspiracy theories, hauntings, and all things spooky. From the Green River Killer to the Mothman incident, we will unravel all of the questions that keep us up at night. So don't miss out.

Subscribe now on your favorite podcast platform. New episodes drop every Wednesday. Into the dark, where true crime meets the eerie unknown. Every town has a dark side. Oil City, Pennsylvania, a working class town where everyone knows everyone. And where Halloween was for a time fairly rooted. costumes, candy, kids running through the streets after darn. But in 1992, something happened here that changed the town forever.

An event so disturbing and real that for the next 16 years, Halloween itself was erased. The memories it brought were too intense and terrifying to keep the tradition going. And at the center of it all, an 11-year-old girl who never made it home. And what happened to her is just about as senseless as any crime can get. Hey guys, it's Andrew, and welcome back to another episode of Everytown War today. We're headed over to PA, diving into the story of Shauna Howe, the little girl whose murder killed Halloween. Now, to understand the impact of what exactly happened in this case, you first have to understand where it happened, Oil City. As the name suggests, oil city was born straight out of black gold.

In the mid-19th century, the discovery of petroleum in nearby Oil Creek set off one of the first true oil booms in American history. It was beyond a stroke of luck. It was a revolution, and almost overnight, this sleepy patch at Pennsylvania wilderness was transformed into a roaring boomtown. Oil derogs dotted the hillsides, and the smell of crew, hung in the air, and fortunes were made just as quickly as they were lost. With the oil came infrastructure, railroads, refineries, and eventually steel. The city's economy diversified, jobs multiplied, and a new middle class took root. By the early 20th century, oil city was thriving, homed over 22,000 residents. Neighborhood sprang up to house oil barons and factory workers alike.

schools, churches, and shops gave the town a heartbeat. The streets there buzzed with energy, and for decades, oil city stood as a symbol of American industry and opportunity. But like many towns tied to single industries, its prosperity wasn't built to last. By the late 1980s and into the 1990s, the tide had really turned here. The American steel industry collapsed under the weight of global competition, and automation. Oil refineries consolidated or shut down entirely. And from there, factory after factory closed its doors, leaving behind empty buildings and unemployed workers. Locals used to joke darkly that you could track oil cities to climb by how many gas stations

closed each year. And that joke stopped being funny when there were barely any left. So by 1992, the town was a husk of what had it once been. The oil oil was a husk of what had it once been. The oil boom here was a distant memory. The steel mills had gone quiet, jobs were scarce, poverty rising, and families were doing what they could just to stay afloat. For the town's kids, there was still one thing to look forward to, Halloween, and no one loved it more than Shana Melinda Howe.

It was Tuesday, October 27th, just days before all hollow's Eve, and for 11-year-old Shana, was the best time of year. She was the kind of kid who made friends without trying, and Shauna had a natural brightness about her, equal parts charm and courage with a smile that stuck with you. She sang in the church choir,

earned badges with her Girl Scout troop, and adored everything about Halloween, the costumes, the candy, those spooky stories. It was her time to shine. I used to love Halloween. I used to love to love to do. dressed the kids up. Shawna loved Halloween too.

And remember that morning, Shawna come over and she says, Mom, I've got the Girl Scouts tonight. We've got the Halloween thing. We're going up to the nursing home. That afternoon, Shauna left Seven Street school with her Girl Scout troop

to sing at a local nursing home. Afterwards, the girls were headed to a Halloween party at the first Free Methodist Church. She didn't have a store-bought costume. Her family couldn't afford one. But she improvised and one is a gymnast. She wore a turquoise leotard

with black stripes, tights, sneakers, and a pair of silky gloves that stretched all the way past her elbows. She'd slipped the costume on under her school clothes that morning so she could go straight to the party without needing to stop at home. Her mother, Lucy Brown,

was working a shift at a pizza shop in nearby Franklin that night. And normally she'd arrange a ride for Shauna, especially since the girl was afraid of the dark, but in the busyness of the day it just slipped her mind. The walk home wasn't far, just a half mile, ten minutes, maybe less. Shawna had done it dozens of times before. But this time, she didn't make it back. At 8.30 p.m., Lucy's partner, John Brown realized something was wrong.

Shauna should have been home an hour earlier, so he got in his car and drove up and down the streets. retracing the route she could have taken from the church to their home. Nothing. He checked inside the church, but the party was over, and the other kids had long since gone home. By 9.30, Lucy called home for the second time to check in, but Shauna still hadn't returned. That's when the reality began to set in that there was a real problem.

Lucy then phoned her ex-husband, and Shauna's biological father, Robert, who lived nearby hoping she made her way there, somehow. Lucy calls, and I said, you know, Shawna ain't home yet. What time's that girl stout stuff? She says that should have been over.

I started getting worried. I mean, even the latest party for the Girl Scouts wouldn't last that late. The next logical step from there had Lucy calling the parents of Shauna's best friend who will call Beth, because her name was never released. Now, Beth was also a member

of the same Girl Scouts troop. And they said the two girls had walked part of the way home together at around 8 p.m. When he came to par ways, Shauna told Beth she was scared of the dark and asked her to walk with her. Beth offered for Shauna to walk back to her place and get her dad to drop her home, but Shauna said no, deciding to brave the remaining ten minutes to her home alone. Finally, at 10 p.m., two long hours after anyone at last seen or heard from Shauna, Lucy called the police, and her daughter was officially missing. Only then did investigators connect her disappearance to something disturbing

reported earlier that very same evening. At 8.06 p.m., right around the time, Shawna should have been walking home. A man named Dan Padden was out for a stroll along Reed Street. He saw a little girl walking on the other side of the street. He then sees a tall, skinny guy, wearing a ball cap. He hears a short scream. She was grabbed and taken into a car that left immediately.

Dan thought it was a small red car. And panicked, Dan raced to nearby houses, pounding on doors and shouting that a little girl had just been kidnapped. One resident then dialed police. But with no child reported missing, officers weren't sure what to make of it in the moment. Or was this really a stranger abduction or a misunderstanding? And maybe a father picking up his daughter. Well, by the time Lucy's call came in later that night,

the horrifying connection was undeniable. An 11-year-old girl had been snatched off the street, and it was Shauna. Oil City Police scrambled, and roadblocks went up, and every station within 100 miles was alerted, and troopers fanned out across the region. Volunteers poured out into the streets, friends, neighbors, even strangers, scouring alleys, backyards, and patches of woods with flashlights cutting through the October dark. By morning the entire town knew, Shauna Howe was gone.

And no matter what the outcome, Royal City would never be the same. And two days later on October 29th, search parties push beyond the city limit. from Shauna's uncle Keith led one group toward Colter's hole, a secluded swimming spot teenagers favored when the weather was warm. As they crossed an abandoned railway bridge, one searcher glanced down into the creek bed. A flash of turquoise caught his eye that was Shauna's leotard. Her stepfather confirmed it at the scene, and police swarmed, volunteers combed the woods, but Shauna was nowhere in sight.

The next morning, October 30th at 9 a.m., a camper walked beneath that same railway trestle. I just walked out on the bridge, and I looked on and there she was. She wasn't there the day before, because we were out there. And it was Shauna. She was dressed in shorts, knee-high socks and a short-sleeved t-shirt, twisted inside out and backwards. Lucy confirmed the shirt and shorts were Shauna's,

but the socks? she had never seen them before. Shana had no shoes on, her bare feet were partly submerged in the shallow stream below the trestle, and by the looks of it, she had been thrown from that bridge, a 30-foot drop.

The autopsy confirmed the cause of death, blunt-forced trauma to her head and chest. She was alive when she fell, and may have fought for some time before finally succumbing to her injuries. Her knees were scraped, consistent with being forced against a rough flooring surface. Evidence she had been held captive before the end and had unthinkable acts forced upon her.

Her sneakers were later found on the bridge above, almost deliberately staged. Nearby investigators uncovered a lollipop wrapper and an abandoned campsite, small, sinister details that made the horror feel even more deliberate. And for Oil City, the discovery shattered any sense of safety. The town was shaken to its core. As Shawna's disappearance shifted into a homicide investigation, Halloween was of course officially cancelled. A set of costumes and candy, hundreds of residents gathered for a silent candlelit vigil

in her memory. The whole thing left such a deep scar that for the next 16 years, trick-or-treating after dark was banned in Oil City and Times. entirely. One resident later recalled, the fear was constant, but we didn't let our kids out of our sight. We kept the doors locked. Halloween was over. Shana's murder didn't just devastate her family. It robbed an entire generation of their childhood traditions. The police were able to pull DNA evidence of the perpetrator from Shana's clothing, but there was no match in any database. At the time, in the previous 15 months,

Oil City had already seen three homicides, each committed by a family member. Investigators, wary of history repeating itself, then collected DNA from every male in Shana's family, even her 12-year-old brother. All that came back negative. So they then turned their focus outward, relying on that witness description and some leads that flowed in because of that. ...falled in and said that the description fit the guy named Ted White. Ted Walker met Shauna, let the pizza shop. If Walker was working, for some reason, he'd always want to give the girls a hug.

And the girls would run from Walker so that he couldn't touch them. We know he's familiar with the family and that he had a small red card. But his DNA didn't match. And two doors down from the Reed and West First intersection lived Michael Kirkowitz. The day after Shaana's body was found, he abruptly fled town. Suspicious, of course, but in the end, a dead end. And so from there, the tip started to get stale. Years slipped by, and fear settled over Oil City like a fog.

The streets here grew quiet at night and doors stayed locked, and the case went cold. That is, until 1995. Three years after Shauna's murder, a 22-year-old woman leaving a bar, in Oil City was ambushed. I get a call from Officer Tom McClellan. He said, Wunner, we need you down here. Somebody just tried to abduct a girl.

I said, what? They tried to kidnap her. They beat her up pretty bad. She's down here. I need you down here. She was walking down the street. He stalked her. He followed her out and tried to bushwhack her.

It's a violent attack. And they're trying to put somebody in the trunk of a car. Who's capable of doing something like this? Her attacker was a man named James O'Brien. And James and his brother Tim were no strangers to police. Both carried long rap sheets, including assaults against adults and children. And sometimes they even work together to pull off their crimes. A couple of very bad apples in a town just trying to survive. James was convicted of the attempted kidnapping that night and sent to prison. And Tim at the time

was already behind bars for plying a 16-year-old girl with alcohol and taking photos over. Naturally, suspicion then turned toward the O'Brien's in Shauna Howe's case. But investigators hit a wall because both brothers were supposedly in custody the night Shawna was killed. Case closed, at least on that lead. Except that no one ever bothered to double check that. So I asked Chuck Daly. Hey, Chuck, do you ever look at the O'Brien's? And Chuck said, yeah, they were in jail, they couldn't have. That's when I realized I had never seen a report documenting that they had been in jail on the night of the abduction.

So that's when I get a hold of trooper John McLean, who was a friend of mine. I told him, I'd like for you to get on them to check if the O'Brien's were in jail when Sean was abducted. And then he came back to me and said, Rick, they weren't there. They had bonded up. Neil Bryant were very free the night Shauna Howe was murdered. When detectives revisited Shana's case, more disturbing truths came to light. A faint shoe print was visible on her cheek, evidence of a violent assault. Yet there were no ligature marks on her wrists or ankles.

Investigators concluded she had likely been held captive without restraints. A chilling detail that suggested more than one perpetrator was involved. Detectives knew that if they could identify the source of the DNA fact that, on Shauna, well, they would certainly have their killer. When Tim O'Brien was asked to provide his, he hesitated. He wanted a lawyer. Eventually, the sample was taken, and it came back negative. But his reaction left detectives unsettled. I mean, why the hesitation? At the early 2000s, advances in DNA testing gave investigators some new hope. In January of 2002, a formal request was made for a sample

from James O'Brien. The detectives had enough circumstantial evidence to get a judge to sign off. And this time, unlike Tim, there was no asking. They were just going to take it. That same month, a former cellmate of Tim's told police that Timothy had confessed about what he had done to a girl a few years back that matched Shauna's case to a T. He boasted about forcing a girl from off the street and into the trunk of his car before were throwing her from a bridge.

By February of 2002, the results of James' DNA test came back, and this time there was no doubt. The DNA was his, and it matched what was found on Shauna and tragically inside of her as well. When confronted, James denied everything, and Tim clammed up and lawyered up. But investigators needed the full story because at this point, they believed the brothers hadn't acted alone. They didn't match the witness's description from the night of the abduction. So, detectives turned their attention back to a familiar name, Ted Walker. You remember the pizza guy who liked to get pretty handsy with the local girls. What they found out was not only was he known to Shauna, who thought he was a creep,

but the O'Brien brothers had been staying at his place right around the time of her abduction. Nearly a decade after Shauna's murder, Dan Patton spotted a familiar. your face in a news article. And he called police immediately, saying he was 90% certain that Ted Walker was the man he'd seen snatched Shauna that night. A Walker had been questioned multiple times over the years, but his story always shifted. And now with the O'Brien's DNA, tying them directly to the crime, pressure finally broke him.

He admitted to loring Shauna in. According to Walker, the O'Brien brothers wanted to pull off a prank to kidnap a child in public just to embarrass the police. Walker said he approached Shauna, asked her for a hug, and then handed her over to Tim, who forced her into their car. Walker insisted that he went straight home afterward and never saw her again. Investigators, though, didn't believe him. Under questioning, with all the evidence laid out end-to-end in front of him in the

weight of more than a decade of hiding his secrets, Walker realized his lies had finally caught up to him. and his best option was to strike a deal, so he pled guilty to kidnapping and third-degree murder, agreeing to serve 20 to 40 years in prison. In exchange for testifying against the O'Brien brothers, Walker avoided the harsher charges of first- or second-degree murder and charges that could have meant life in prison or even the death penalty. In 2004, James and Tim O'Brien were formally charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy In court, Ted testified that the brothers had long fantasized about abducting a child on Halloween night,

snatching someone in plain sight just to ensure police attention. As the holiday drew near, their talk of the plan grew more frequent and more intense. On October 27th, 1992, well, Ted drove to the A-plus convenience store for coffee and a pack of smokes. And there, he says he spotted the O'Brien's in one of their fixer uppercers. cars, a red Chevy Chevi-Chevette, they had taken without permission. Suspicious, he followed them to the intersection of West First and Reed Street, where both cars pulled over. When Ted approached, the brothers told them they were ready to go through with the plan that

night, and they didn't care who the victim was. And just then, 11-year-old Shauna Howe appeared. Wrong place, wrong time, walking alone, down the dark street she had always been afraid of. And Ted approached her, asking if she was selling Girl Scout cookies. He then asked for a hug, and as she stepped closer, he scooped her up and shoved her towards Tim, who stood at the open passenger door of the Chevette. And James was already behind the wheel, and the front seat had been pulled forward, leaving just enough room for the man to push Shauna into the back. Once the brothers had her inside, Ted circled the block in his own car. By the time he returned, he

the chivet was gone. He stopped for more coffee and a loaf of bread, then headed home. And minutes later, the O'Brien arrived at his house with Shauna in their arms. And they carried her upstairs while Ted stood in the kitchen, preparing dinner for his son. He later claimed he thought it was still just a joke, and that Shauna would be returned safely, but then he heard the sound of a girl crying from upstairs. What happened, I think? is they assaulted her upstairs.

Then they left, and that's when they were not to coders' hold. But this body suit, I think they took her and they assaulted her again. After that, Ted grabbed his child and left the house. When he returned later that night, the O'Brien's and Shauna were gone. Later on that evening, the O'Brien brothers returned to Ted's house only this time, without Shauna. Ted said that he threw them out after that, Bearing that they might have done something terrible.

But few believed his story. You're probably one of them. It sounded more like he was trying to show everyone that he wasn't the bad guy in all this, rather than his story being the actual truth. The defense argued exactly that, that Ted Walker was the real killer, spinning lies to save himself. Prosecutors, however, had hard evidence on their side. The DNA, and they had to.

a jailhouse confession in which Timothy O'Brien allegedly admitted to throwing the girl off the bridge. And so, after two weeks of testimony and 17 hours of jury deliberation, the verdict was read. On October 18, 2004, nearly 12 years after Shawna Howe was murdered, James and Tim were found guilty, and they were sentenced to life in prison. And Ted Walker went to prison too, but for the amount he pled to. At long last, Shauna Howe's killers were behind bars. In 2022, Ted Walker died in prison of natural causes.

That plea deal didn't exactly work for him because in the end, he spent the rest of his life locked away. But justice didn't erase the shadow, Shauna's murder had cast, and for 16 years, Halloween and Oil City was canceled. It wasn't until 2008 that a 10-year-old guy, girl petitioned city council to bring it back. With 175 signatures, her plea was simple. Please, let's have Halloween again. The council voted unanimously. In that October, for the first time

since Shawna's tragic end, children once again filled the streets of Oil City, dressed in costumes, laughing under porch lights, and trick-or-treating after dark. But Shauna's name has never faded, and her story still lingers in this small town. The next time you see kids racing door-to-door, latching buckets of candy, remember, Shauna Howe. Here's an oil city, Pennsylvania. One little girl's murder turned Halloween itself into a ghost for almost two decades. So that's a wrap on today's episode of Everytown.

Thank you so much for tuning in. If you want more from us, check out our feature film called An Angry Boy, which is available on all rental platforms right now. It's a dark revenge thriller that I know you can. guys will like. Remember to come on back here next week. Same place, same time for another episode of Every Town, filled with strange and mysterious stories. Because you never know, maybe your town will be next.