Murder: True Crime Stories - SPECIAL: The Halloween Nightmare 1

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

Halloween 1992 should have been filled with costumes and candy. Instead, 11-year-old Shauna Howe was abducted off a quiet street, and days later, her body was found under a bridge. We retrace the night she vanished, the frantic search that followed, and the haunting discovery that left Oil City, Pennsylvania forever changed. Murder: True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Don’t miss out on all things Murder: True Crime Stories! Instagram: @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crime House has the perfect news show for Spooky Season. Twisted Tales hosted by Heidi Wong. Each episode of Twisted Tales is perfect for late-night scares and daytime frights, revealing the disturbing real-life events that inspired the world's most terrifying blockbusters. And the ones too twisted to make it to screen. Twisted Tales is a crimehouse original powered by Pave Studios. Listen wherever you. you get your podcasts. New episodes out every Monday.

This is Crime House. Halloween is all about leaning into the scary stuff. Goblins and ghouls, masks and fake blood, kids dress up, neighbors decorate their houses, and for one night, the streets belong to trick-or-treaters. The fun comes from knowing it's all pretend that the monsters aren't real and everyone will go home safe at the end of the night. But in 1992,

11-year-old Shauna Howe had a very different experience. What should have been a night of fun and laughter ended in the worst way imaginable. For the small town of Oil City, Pennsylvania, the events of that evening changed Halloween forever because it was no longer make-believe. It was a living, breathing, nightmare, and no one was safe.

People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end, but you don't always know which part you're, on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios that comes out every Tuesday and Thursday. At Crime House, we want to express our gratitude to you, our community, for making this possible. Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following murder true crime stories wherever you get your podcasts.

And to enhance your murder true crime stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get ad-free listening, early access to every two-part series, and exciting bonus content. This is the first of two episodes on the 1992 abduction and murder of 11-year-old Shauna Howe. Today, I'll walk you through. the night Shana disappeared and the initial investigation. Oil City, Pennsylvania Authority spent

days searching for her until finally they made a tragic discovery. But even then, the case was far from over. Next time, I'll continue the investigation as detectives searched for Shana's assailant. After three years, it seemed like the perpetrator might never be found. That all changed when a new detective got involved. Thanks to his determination, Oil City was finally able to find justice for Shawna and reclaim Halloween. All that and more coming up. It was Halloween Week 1992 in Oil City, Pennsylvania. About 11,000 people lived in, in the small Rust Belt Town. It was the type of place where everybody knew their neighbors

and kids were free to roam the streets unsupervised. When it came to Halloween, that meant they often went trick-or-treating without their parents hovering over them. The holiday technically wasn't until Saturday, but the whole week leading up to it was filled with activities, and 11-year-old Shauna Howe was excited about every one of them, decorating her house, buying candy, and most of all, putting together her costume.

She loved Halloween. And this year, she decided to go as a gymnast. On the afternoon of Tuesday, October 27th, she came bounding down the stairs of her mom's place in a turquoise body suit. She was in a Girl Scouts troop, and they were having their weekly meeting that evening. In the spirit of Halloween, they were all surprised. supposed to come in costume. Shauna was one of four kids. She had two younger sisters and a brother.

Their parents were divorced and shared custody of the children. Despite the divorce, Shauna and her siblings seemed like happy, well-adjusted kids. Shauna was an outgoing girl with joyous energy. She had a page boy haircut and a slight gap between her two front teeth. Her mom, Lucy Howe, described her as, sassy, headstrong, and independent. So, Lucy thought nothing of sending Shana off to the Girl Scouts party on her own.

She gave her a hug and told her she loved her. Around 4.30 that afternoon, Shauna headed out. The Girl Scouts meeting finished on time at around 8 p.m. that night. Afterwards, Shana and her best friend, Joie L. started walking home. They lived a few streets apart, so they went most of the way together, four splitting up. Then Joey L turned one way and Shauna turned the other, skipping down First Street without a care in the world. A local man named Dan Payton happened to be walking on the other side of the street at the same time. He smiled when he saw her costume.

The kids seemed to be getting dressed up for Halloween earlier every year, but then Dan saw something that made him slow his steps. A tall, thin man in dark clothes and a baseball cap was heading directly toward Shana. Dan barely had time to register the unsettling flutter in his stomach before. Suddenly, the man in the baseball cap grabbed Shana. She screamed, and the man covered her mouth with his hand. Then he carried her off and turned down another street, disappearing around the corner. Dan took off running, trying to catch up with them.

But by the time he made it around the corner, the man was getting into a small red car. Dan couldn't see where Shauna was, but he assumed she was already in the vehicle. The car hit the gas and peeled down the street before Dan could get a good look at the license plate. But he was pretty sure it had been a Pennsylvania plate. panicked. Dan started knocking on doors, trying to find help. This was before cell phone, so he needed to get a landline. Finally, someone answered and called the cops. Officers showed up at the scene of the abduction about 15 to 20 minutes later. Dan told them everything he'd seen. But since he didn't recognize Shauna or the stranger in the baseball hat, it wasn't much to go on. Around that same time, at 8.30 p.m., Shana's mom, Lucy, called the house to check in. She was out for the evening, but her live-in boyfriend, John Brown, was home. He answered and said that Shana wasn't back yet.

Lucy found this odd. The Girl Scouts meeting should have been over by 8 p.m., and Shana was supposed to come straight home. Still, she didn't jump to any conclusions. well, maybe Shauna had gotten distracted, comparing costumes with her friends. Lucy called back an hour later, around 9.30 p.m. John said Shauna still wasn't back. That was when Lucy started to worry. She told John to call the hospital to see if there had been any accidents.

She would be home as soon as possible. She arrived about half an hour later. When Lucy learned that Shauna was still, MIA, She picked up the phone and called the police. Officer Robert Wenner was on patrol duty that night. He drove to the house and talked to Lucy, making sure to get all the details. At that point, it still seemed possible that Shauna might have just gone to a friend's house. But then Wenner's radio crackled to life and a report came in.

There was a man at the station who'd witnessed a child being abducted. The victim was a young girl wearing a turquoise bodysuit. And that was how Lucy learned her daughter had been kidnapped. Local officers immediately jumped into action. Around 25 of them went out looking for Shauna. In a town with a population of less than 12,000, that was a lot of manpower. Some officers set up roadblocks and stopped every passing car. they asked if anyone had witnessed anything strange or if they'd seen the reported red car

driving around. Other policemen patrolled the city in grid patterns, driving up and down every street and alley, searching for the 11-year-old. The silent, terrifying truth hovered over all of them. With every passing hour, it was less and less likely they would find Shauna alive. by morning news of her abduction had spread throughout the community hundreds of civilian volunteers joined the search for her it seemed like nearly the whole town was on the hunt everyone except for shana's mother lucy police told her to stay home and wait she needed to be there in case the kidnapper called it was possible they might want a ransom for lucy's return the phone never rang Lucy paced back and forth, wishing she was out on the street searching herself, but all she could do was sit tight and pray that someone would find Shana. The authorities looked for her everywhere. They searched backyards and parks and the wooded areas around town, but there was no sign of Shana. Then, on Thursday, October 29th, two days after Shana's disappearance, a local man spent,

spotted something under a bridge. He was out camping in an area called Coulter's Hole about eight miles from downtown. It was a spot where locals swam in the river and had picnics. It was also known as a place where teenagers went to drink and smoke. The man had left his campsite and was about to drive home when he noticed what looked like a piece of turquoise fabric in the brush. Everyone in town had heard about Shauna's disappearance, and they knew she was wearing a gymnastics leotard that night. The man quickly called the police and reported his discovery. The police showed up and confirmed the fabric was a child's turquoise body suit. It was damp and looked like it had been left in the bushes overnight. Officers called John Brown,

Lucy Howe's boyfriend, to identify it. They didn't want to upset Lucy unless it was absolutely necessary. When John arrived, he confirmed that it was Shauna's gymnastics costume. Silence fell over the officers at Coulter's Hole. No one wanted to say what they were all thinking, that it was becoming more and more likely that something unspeakable had happened to Shawna Howe. On October 27th, 1992, a witness saw 11-year-old Shauna Howe get abducted off a street corner in Oil City, Pennsylvania. Two days later, authorities found her Halloween costume in the undergrowth below a bridge. After closer inspection, authorities found a stain on the turquoise body suit.

They sent the body suit to the crime lab for testing. Technicians confirmed the stain was from semen. and they were able to extract enough of it to get a DNA profile. If detectives found a suspect, they could test it for a match. But first, and most importantly, they needed to find Shana. She could still be out there somewhere, hopefully still alive. October 30th was gray, misty, and miserable. Authorities had been searching for Shana for three days with no leads.

Then that Friday morning, the phone rang at the station. A man named Bill Crabtree was on the line. He thought he'd found Shauna. He said he'd just left Coulter's hole, the area where Shauna's body suit had been found the day before. He said, there was a body in the creek below a railroad bridge. The officer who answered the call was confused. law enforcement had combed that entire area just 24 hours earlier and found nothing. Still, officers raced to the scene to see for themselves.

They arrived just before 9 a.m. And sure enough, in the creek, a few hundred feet away from where Shauna's body suit had been found, there was a body, floating face up in the water, stuck between a rock and a log. the body was small and clearly female there were no other missing 11-year-old girls in the area it had to be shana since detectives had searched the area the day before they reasoned the kidnapper must have come to the bridge overnight to kill shana and dispose of her body and before long they found another piece of evidence to support this theory up on the bridge was a pair of shoes they seemed like shana's size. They also looked like they'd been placed there deliberately, the toes facing different directions, like someone had staged them. And there was also a reinforcing support bar below the bridge that appeared to have blood on it. To detectives, it seemed obvious that Shauna had been thrown from the bridge and hit the bar on the way down. The only other piece of evidence they found was a

candy wrapper discarded nearby, although they didn't think much of it at the time. Besides that, there were no other clues at the scene. They had to turn to the autopsy for answers. By November 1st, the results of Shauna's autopsy were in. They determined the cause of death was blunt forced trauma to the chest and trauma injuries to the head. They also said that Shauna had scuffs and scrapes on her knees, almost like car. carpet burns. These could indicate she'd been kept in a small area where she had to crawl

around. The medical examiner also confirmed that Shauna had been alive when she was thrown from the bridge. She had used her arm to break her fall, dislocating her shoulder in the process. She'd likely hit the piece of rebar the detectives had spotted on her way down. That combined with the impact of the fall onto the Rocky Creek bed had left her with fatal chest and head injuries. But her death hadn't been instantaneous. Shauna had probably been alive for about five to ten minutes before she died. It was and is horrifying to think about,

and it only pushed detectives to ramp up their investigation into her killer. Without any clear leads, authorities set out to interview everyone in Shana's orbit. After all, child abductions by total strangers are rare. It's much more likely that the person responsible knew Shana beforehand. Detectives started with her family. The same day they found Shana's body, they brought her mom, Lucy, in for questioning. They also interviewed her boyfriend, John Brown, and took DNA samples from him. It must have felt intrusive, but Lucy and John were cooperative.

They knew they weren't responsible for Shauna's death. The police could take whatever they wanted. But then officers asked for DNA samples from Shauna's brother, who wasn't much older than Shauna herself. Lucy thought it was ridiculous to drag a child into this ugliness. She was about to refuse and make a scene, but then her son told her he wanted to help. So Lucy relented.

The police didn't stop there, though. They also took DNA samples from Shauna's uncles who'd been helping with the search. All the samples were tested. None of them was a match to the DNA found on the body suit. So detectives moved on to anyone Shana knew from school. They talked to all of her fellow Girl Scouts and their parents. But even after all that questioning, they weren't any closer to. to a killer. At that point, detectives had to work with the information they did have,

which meant revisiting some previous clues. One of the first suspects outside of the family was Bill Crabtree, the man who found Shauna's body. Coincidentally, he also drove a small red car, just like the kidnapper's vehicle. Police questioned Bill about why he was at culture's whole the morning of October 30th. But he swore up and down that he'd just been camping. They searched his car to see if there was any evidence of Shauna being in it. They took a DNA sample too. But there was nothing in the car and his DNA wasn't a match. So Bill got ruled out. But he wasn't the only good Samaritan under the microscope. Detectives also questioned Dan Peyton, the witness who reported Sean his abduction. Dan said he was interrogated twice,

and the way the detectives spoke to him made him feel like he was being considered a suspect, although thankfully for Dan, it went no further than that. Once Dan and Bill were both cleared, detectives moved on to other, more likely suspects. One was a local man named Michael Pruitt. He lived a few doors down from where Shauna had been abducted, and he had suddenly left town the day after her body was found. Detective searched his house and discovered a small cubbyhole under his stairway. They thought it might be the place Shauna was kept before she was killed, where she'd gotten the abrasions that the medical examiner noted during the autopsy. The police gathered DNA samples from the house and sent them off to the crime lab.

They were convinced they had the right man. It seemed like all the pieces were falling together. But then the tests came back negative. Michael Pruitt wasn't a match either. And so another prime suspect was ruled out. Just as they were about to lose hope, detectives got one more promising lead. Somebody called the station and suggested that another local man named Ted Walker might have something to do with it. Walker, who was around 34 years old, worked at the pizza shop in town

that Shauna had frequented. Apparently Walker always tried to hug the young girls who came in for slices. The frightened girls would run away from him. Walker also happened to drive a small red car. Those were two red flags against Walker, so the police went to check him out. But they tried to keep their expectations low. They'd been down this road before. And sure enough, once again, the DNA testing came up clear. Walker wasn't their man. The nightmare just kept going. Days turned into weeks, which turned into months. Eventually, A whole year had passed, then two. And despite testing over 100 DNA samples, investigators didn't get a single hit.

It was starting to seem like they might never solve the case. But then, three years after Shauna's murder, there was another violent kidnapping in Oil City, and detectives wondered if Shauna's killer had struck. Again. Hi, I'm Karina Bimisturfer, host of Morning Cup of Murder, your daily true crime podcast. Yes, you heard me right, daily true crime. Every day, Morning Cup of Murder tells you a straightforward, short-form story about murder, true crime, cold cases, disappearances, serial killers, cults, and more. And I do that all in

under 15 minutes. With over three years of stories and over 20 million downloads, the Morning Cup of Murder podcast has become a staple of so many people's daily routines. So, why not add it to yours? Stream Morning Cup of Murder everywhere you listen to podcasts, and remember, stay safe. In October 1992, 11-year-old Shauna Howe was abducted and murdered. While detectives had several initial suspects, none of them matched the DNA sample taken from the body suit Sean was wearing when she disappeared, so no arrests were made. Nearly three years passed before Shawna's case got a new life. It was the night of July 30th, 1995.

Officer Robert Winner was enjoyed. his night off when he got a call from the station. He needed to come in right away. There was a woman who just escaped a violent abduction attempt. Winner sat up straight, listening as the other officer on the line rattled off the details. The woman had been at a local tavern where she met a man. Unbeknownst to her, this man followed her home after she left. Before she got to her front door, he jumped out of his car, grabbed her, and tried to force her into his trunk. When she fought back, he shoved her to the ground, trying to bash her head against the concrete. He only let up when another car drove by and he got spooked.

That was when the woman managed to escape. Most disturbing of all. The attack happened on the same route Shauna Howe had taken home. three years earlier. But this time, the police had a clear suspect. 23-year-old James O'Brien, aka Jimmy. Wenner had been suspicious of Jimmy and his brother, 29-year-old Tim, since Shauna's murder. The O'Brien's were local oil city men with a checkered history of arrests and violence. According to Wenner, Jimmy in particular was pure evil. And this new report was so similar to Shauna's kidnapping. Winter couldn't

help thinking the two events might be related. Winter looked into it and it turned out that detectives on Shauna's case had investigated the brothers back in 1992. Apparently, both Jimmy and Tim had been in jail at the time, so they'd been ruled out. Person can't be in two places at once. All winner could do was arrest Jimmy O'Brien for the abduction attempt on the woman at the bar. Jimmy was convicted soon after and sent back to jail. But while he was in prison, another young girl went missing from Oil City. It was two years later on October 29, 1997, almost five years to the day since Shauna's body was found. Halloween was just around the corner.

Ever since Shauna's murder, police had extra patrols out for the holiday and festivities were restricted to daylight hours, because as everyone knew, there was still a killer on the loose. Four-year-old Shanae Freeman was playing in her backyard with another little girl and boy, while her mom chatted with a friend inside. As the three kids messed around, the boy caught himself on something, so he ran inside for a bandstander. That was when a man appeared and abducted Cheney in broad daylight. The other little girl saw it happen. When Cheney's mom learned her daughter was gone, she immediately began looking for her. Soon news spread through the town that it had happened again. Another girl had gone missing just before Halloween.

The community joined the search, just like they had with Shana. But as the evening settled in and it started getting darker outside, many wondered if Chenet was destined for the same fate. The Oil City Police weren't about to let that happen. They fanned out, questioning anyone who might know where Chenet was. That included speaking with every volunteer in the growing search parties. 17-year-old Nicholas Bowen was among them. Officer Winner watched Bowen give Cheney's mother a hug.

But something about the way he was acting seemed off. So, Wenner decided to speak with Bowen himself. And as they talked, Winner became even more suspicious about Bowen's body language. It seemed like he was hiding something. So Winner pressed, he put a hand on Bowen's arm and told him he really needed his help to find out what happened to Chenay. And all of a sudden, Bowen crumbled. He confessed that he knew where she was

and that she was badly hurt and bleeding. Winter kept his cool, telling Bowen that he had seen a lot of people who'd lost a lot of blood and still lived. If Bowen could bring Wenner to to her, they could make sure she was okay. Bowen agreed, then he led Wenner to a shallow grave where he had buried the four-year-old. He had covered her with leaves just a few hundred feet away from her home. Tragically, by the time they got there, it was too late. Shenei was already dead. An autopsy later determined she'd been sexually assault. then hit on the head. Her cause of death was blunt force trauma.

Officer Wenner arrested Bowen, and he was charged with murder. The news quickly spread throughout town, and people wondered if he was responsible for Shauna's death too. But the police weren't so convinced. He would have been 12 years old at the time of Shauna's murder. They determined that he couldn't have been the perpetrator. presumably because he wouldn't have been old enough to drive the red car spotted at the scene. Shauna's mom, Lucy Howe, was devastated.

There had been a moment of hope that her family's ordeal would come to an end. She and her now husband, John Brown, had reached out to the Freemans to offer support through Cheney's disappearance. Unfortunately, Lucy and John knew exactly what they were going through. Although the truth was grim, Sheney's parents got what Lucy Howe still longed for, closure. It had been five long, excruciating years since Shauna was killed. And while the Freemans now knew what happened to their daughter, Lucy was still in the dark.

It didn't seem like she would get an answer anytime soon. As time passed, detectives retired or got reassigned. But not everyone was giving up. Eventually, a new investigator with a fresh perspective would come onto the scene and change the case forever. Because it turned out, Shawna's killer was much closer to home than anyone had ever imagined. Thanks so much for listening.

I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder, True Crime Stories. Come back next time for part two on the abduction and murder of Shauna Howe and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crimehouse, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. forget to rate, review, and follow, murder true crime stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your murder, true crime stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad-free,

and instead of having to wait for each episode of a two-part series, you'll get access to both at once, plus exciting bonus content. We'll be back on Thursday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Protofsky, Rachel Engelman, Lori Marinelli, Sarah Camp, Alex Burns, Honeyas Saeed, and Russell Nash. Thank you for joining us. Twisted Tales with Heidi Wong is perfect for spooky season. Dive into the real-life events behind the world's most terrifying blockbusters and beyond.

Twisted Tales is a crime house original. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes out every Monday.