True Crime Campfire - Sex, Lies and Audiotape: The Murder of Denita Smith

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

Some murders are born of sudden passion. Rage leaps up like a flame and then subsides, too late to undo the bloody damage done in that moment. But other murders are more of a slow burn--weeks or months of smoldering anger, stoked by careful planning. Every detail meticulously considered, for maximum damage, minimum risk. This is the story of one of those murders, and of a killer so clever, they came within the barest whisper of getting away with it.Sources:Oxygen's "Snapped," Episode "Shannon Crawley"Investigation Discovery's "Hear No Evil"NBC's Dateline, Episode "Internal Affairs"https://caselaw.findlaw.com/nc-court-of-appeals/1589180.htmlhttps://www.wral.com/news/local/story/7092468/Follow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/true-crime-campfire/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Some murders are born of sudden passion. Rage leaps up like a flame and then subsides too late to undo the bloody damage done in that moment. But other murders are more of a slow burn, weeks or months of smoldering anger stoked by careful planning. Every detail meticulously considered for maximum damage, minimum risk. This is the story of one of those murders, and of a killer so clever, they came within the barest whisper of getting away with it. This is Sex, Lies, and Audio tape, the murder of Danita Smith. So, campers, we're in Durham, North Carolina, January 4th, 2007. It's early morning at the campus crossings apartment complex.

When a 911 call comes in from a young man, a student at North Carolina Central University. He says he's just found a young woman collapsed at the foot of the stairs in his apartment building, and she's bleeding from the head. So he's talking to her on the phone. Come on, baby girl, come on, but she's not responding. Her purse is there, so the young man asks the 911 dispatcher whether he should look for her ID to get her name, and the dispatcher says, yeah, go ahead and do it.

So he gets out her wallet and looks at her campus ID. Her name is Danita Monique Smith. So he's talking to her, Denita, Denita, but still no response. So 911 says, help is on the way. And the dispatcher also gets in touch with the school. and they contact Anita's mother Sharon, who lives about 45 minutes away. And they tell her, you know, your daughter's collapsed, help is on the way, but you should probably get to her apartment complex,

which has got to be like one of the scariest things you can ever experience as a parent, I'm sure. So all Sharon knows that she's speeding toward Durham is that her daughter is in some kind of trouble. She says that from what the school told her, it sounded like she might have fallen down the stairs and been knocked unconscious, which I think was the first impression of the student who found her as well, because she was just at the foot of the stairs and she was bleeding from the head. So by the time Sharon arrived, a whole bunch of people had gathered because Word had spread really fast once the dispatcher called the University.

So a bunch of Danita's professors were there, which I think should tell you a lot about how well thought of this young woman was at her university because, I mean, I was always popular with my professors, but, you know, I don't know that a bunch of them would have come to my apartment to wait if word got around that I, you know, had fallen down the stairs or something. So she must have been really, really well regarded. And there was also a police officer there from the Greensboro PD. Now Greensboro is about an hour away from Durham. This cop was Danita's fiance, Jermere Stroud. He and Danita had just gotten engaged on Christmas Eve, so like about a week or so earlier. And she and her family thought of him as her prince charming. So everybody was

just sort of huddled around, worried, sick, trying to figure out what had happened. And it didn't take long for them to get the horrible news that Danita didn't make it. She was dead. And worse than that, she hadn't died from a fall down the stairs. She'd been murdered. Danita had died from a single gunshot wound to the back of her head and just left to die on that bright early morning in the stairwell of her apartment complex. And there's something especially creepy to me about broad daylight murders.

I don't know why. I don't know. It's just like monsters should live in the dark or something, you know? You're never, you don't put your keys between your hands, your fingers in broad daylight, walking to your car. Right. You feel safe. It's this bright, sunny world and suddenly this kind of darkness comes into it.

I think about that a lot, actually, because, you know, I'm a true crime obsessive from way back. And so sometimes it'll just occur to me that, you know, people who have been murdered, especially murdered by spouses or murdered in the, like home invasions and you know god like the victims of somebody like ramirez the serial killer the night stalker or btk or somebody like that you're just in your house where you normally just feel completely at ease and safe you might have the tv on you know watching Seinfeld or something for the 50,000th time if you're me and suddenly there is just this nightmare happening and that really creeps me out too

and I think it's for a similar reason to why broad daylight murders creep me out it's just wrong Yeah, you're robbed of your naivete basically Right, exactly And there's something kind of surreal about the thought of someone murdered In the bright early morning

So anyway So of course everybody was trying to absorb This unbelievable awful news They were just completely devastated Danita was much beloved and she was going to be horribly missed by those who knew her. So now, of course, the Durham police had to begin their investigation, and they began it where most detectives usually would,

with the person closest to Danita, her fiancé officer, Jermere Stroud. And it's always an uncomfortable prospect for police to have to investigate one of their own, even though Jermere was a Greensboro cop, not a Durham cop, but still, I mean, he's an officer. And I think that's understandable, you know, that it would be a really difficult thing to do. Right. But from the start, lead detective Sean Pate was determined to get the bottom of what had happened to this bright young woman no matter what. No matter where the investigation led him, he was going to go there. And Detective Pate brought Jermere in for an interview that same morning.

The first thing he asked was, obviously, where were you at the time of Dena's murder? People had heard gunshots, so they knew approximately when the crime had happened. And Jermere had said, I was home of sleep in bed. So this was early morning around 7 a.m. when it happens so he was just still in bed which is not that great as alibis go obviously right but of course most people aren't thinking that they'll need a murder alibi at any given moment so there you go speak for yourself we should really all just be videotaping ourselves at all times you know just in case yeah that sounds like the plot of like a cyberpunk dystopian future

but that's actually what's happening right now we have robots that clean our houses everywhere already. We might as well have one for our own benefit. Well, you have the nest cameras. My friend, I don't, but I'm very paranoid about that. I don't. We don't have an Alexa. We don't want like creepy surveillance robots in our house. I was cat sitting for my friend. And every time I would like just go up to her nest camera and stare in it for a little while. Like paranormal activity. That's what I would do. If I was house sitting for somebody with one of those cameras, I would in the middle of the night, I would go and just like stand. in the middle of the living room, in the dark, right in front of the camera, and just stand there with like blank doll eyes, just staring directly at the camera just to creep them out. See, I talk in my sleep, so I don't need that, that creepiness. Oh, even creepier. Right. I do too.

I'm a notorious sleep talker. And I will just tell you one, my favorite funniest story, we've told you guys that we're nerds, right? So the best sleep talking story that I've ever heard about myself is, according to my husband, obviously I have no memory of this. One night I sat up in bed, said Mr. Tuvok to the bridge and then laughed as if I had just figured out how nerdy and ridiculous that was and then just lay back down and went to sleep. Now, for those of you who are not familiar, Mr. Tuvok is the Vulcan from Star Trek Voyager. Yeah. So therein lies the difference between you and I, because my favorite sleep talking

story is one, sometimes I speak in French in my sleep for no reason. Oh, that's adorable. Two, one time my mom and I were sharing a room and I sat straight up in bed and I just go, you, bitch, lay back down and fall asleep. That must have been surreal for your mom. She was like, you just cussed at me. I was like, I don't know. Excuse me?

The hell did I do to you at three o'clock in the morning? that is hysterical So, all right, anywho So his alibi wasn't great But Jermere did seem devastated about Danita's death he was crying He seemed just totally bereft And it seemed genuine to Detective Pate

But of course, people can be really good actors And really good liars So he certainly hadn't ruled him out Other investigators were interviewing Other people close to Danita While Detective Pate was talking to Jermere So her mom Sharon, her best friend some of her professors, and the picture that they all painted was of a loving, close relationship.

Danita's family and friends all liked Jermere, which is usually a pretty good sign. Because as we've said before, if everybody in your life who cares about you hates the person you're dating, that's usually a red flag. Yeah, so this was a green flag. For once. This was a green flag. For once, it's a green flag. Yeah.

So, Danita and Jermere was sort of like a power couple at their university. They were both African American and their friends jokingly were. referred to them as Barack and Michelle Obama, which I think is just adorable. And, you know, they went to church together on Sundays. They were just sort of an envied couple. They seemed to have an enviable relationship. So the investigators are getting all this really good feedback about Jermere on that first day. And Detective Pate was getting a pretty good feeling about him, too.

His reactions seemed normal for someone who just lost his fiancé. But Jermier was such a huge mess emotionally during that first interview that they didn't really get a lot out of him that day. which was frustrating because it's so important for investigators to get as much out of people as they can as close to the murder as possible because the further you get from the event, memories start to fade, plus they want to get to you before you have a chance to get your story straight or commiserate with other people or whatever. But they just didn't get a lot out of Jermir during that first interview other than his crappy alibi and some information about how deeply he loved Anita and a denial. He said he had nothing to do with her murder. so for now they sent him on his way with the understanding that you know we're going to want to talk to you again very soon but we're going to give you a chance to go home and kind of collect yourself so after they finished with jermere they learned that the 911 call that i described to you earlier wasn't the only one that had come in about denita that morning there'd been another 911 call too and the second one had come in from a maintenance worker at the apartment complex and this guy had a really interesting story to tell so this maintenance worker had heard a gunshot and then just a moment later he'd seen a young woman come tearing around the corner of the building in a burgundy SUV and when he saw her he put his hand up and signaled for her to stop so

she stopped and he asked her did you hear that gunshot now this woman she seemed really nervous and she was holding her hands up in a really odd way it almost looked like she was trying to cover her face so that he couldn't see it which was obviously really weird and suspicious and she said yeah i heard the shots so the maintenance worker said well we should call the police did you see anything and she said no not really i just heard the shots and she seemed really eager to get away so he said well why are you so nervous and she said well you heard the shots didn't you like i guess just i'm scared aren't you i want to get away from here so the maintenance guy said okay well you stay right there i'll call a police we're witnesses so they're going to need to talk to us and as soon as he

turned away to call the police on his cell phone she just peeled off out of the park lot and just drove off hell-bent for leather out of that apartment complex, so she was not staying around to wait for police. But despite her holding her hands up over her face, he had gotten a fairly good look at her, and he'd also gotten a good look at the car. He knew it was a burgundy Ford SUV, and he also noticed that she was wearing a shirt that had some kind of an emblem on it, like some kind of official logo. He noticed that she had her hair up in a ponytail and was wearing a baseball cap. She was a black woman, young, attractive. She seemed distraught, but also nervous. And just like I said before, acting really suspiciously, it really bothered him in particular that

she hadn't seemed to want him to see her face. So he relayed all of this to police. And of course, Detective Pate was immediately intrigued by this new development. Like there might be a woman involved in this? Interesting. So he called Jermere, who was in his patrol car on route back to Greensboro. And he says, do you know anybody who drives a burgundy Ford SUV? And Dremere's response was, oh my God, I'm turning around now. So, yeah, so dun, dun, done, like something, we're about to get some interesting information, right? Oh my God, I'm coming back. So, of course, Detective Pate knew this was going to be something good. So Jumir came back for another interview. What had him so worried? Well, he most definitely did know somebody.

with a burgundy SUV. And her name was Shannon Crawley. Katie, tell us about Shannon. Okay. So, Shannon Crawley was a co-worker of Jermeres at the Greensboro PD. She was a 911 dispatcher, oddly enough. He'd known her for a few years. And until about a year before Danita's murder, according to Jermere, she'd been his girlfriend, his side chick. Bech. Nice, Jermere, you dickhead. Real fucking nice. Yeah. That's real nice. Nice. Nice. Nice cheating. your girlfriend there. Your fiancée. Sorry. God. So Danina, bless her heart, didn't know anything about this relationship. Interestingly enough, Shannon had known about Danita because one day she'd come

over to Jermere's house to help him move and she'd seen a picture of Danita and Jermere goes, yeah, that's my girlfriend. So he'd been honest with Shannon about Danita, but he hadn't had the stones to tell Danita about Shannon. Oh, for Pete's sakes. Which I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You want me to help you move? I know, right, the nerve. Oh, my God. So, anyway, Shannon and Jermere had met at the Police Academy when Jermere was training to be an officer and she was trained to be a dispatcher. As part of the training, they had to roleplay different 911 call scenarios and they'd been partnered together for that. And they had immediate chemistry. So much so that their classmates noticed it and teased them about it. They'd banter back and forth, joke around,

give each other a hard time. There was definite sexual tension from the get-go. So they started hooking up. But it wasn't a great romance. The people who knew the two of them said they were friends with benefits. Jermere never brought Shannon Flowers or a teddy bear on Valentine's Day. He didn't take her out for fancy dinners. It was that kind of thing where if he was bored and didn't have anything to do. He'd call Shannon up and he'd go over to her house and they'd order pizza and bang. Oh, true romance. Oh, my God. That is so, like, sort of tawdry, isn't yeah, it is? Which I'm sure was part of the appeal. Sure. But, you know, I'm just hearing that Edda James song, at last. So romantic. Hey, I don't have anything better to do. You want to

get a pizza and do it? Because I live a whole hour away from my girlfriend. friend, fiancee. Right. Germere and Danita at this time were living in different towns. He was in Greensboro and she was in Durham. And he had gotten his job in Greensboro with the police department, but she was still in school. So she wasn't going to move. So it was easier for him to, you know, him to move and commute between the two places. So Shannon was basically his side piece. Although I really kind of hate that phrase, just it's gross. It sounds kind of. Yeah, dehumanizing, doesn't it? Side piece, like your piece of meat or something. Right.

Mistress, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. But basically, she was his buddy with benefits. So he saw the relationship this way. He did. That's not necessarily the way she saw the situation. And we'll see more about that in a little bit. But it was steamy.

It was hot and sweaty. It was sexually motivated. And this went on for a while. And then in late 2005, Shannon got pregnant. She already had two children from a previous relationship, and she was a single mom, raising them on her own while she worked at her job as a 911 dispatcher. And when she got pregnant with Jermere's baby, she said, I'm pregnant. What do we do? And Jermere's response was, I don't want to have a baby with you.

Ouch. Yeah. Which maybe you should have used contraception if you didn't want to have a baby with her. Right, thank you. So wrap it up, then, Jermere. If you don't want to have a baby with her, then how about you put on a condom? I mean, I guess we don't know for sure that he didn't because they're not 100% effective. We can assume.

You know, I'm going to go out on a limb and say possibly that there was no condom involved. And then he has the nerve to say, I don't want to have a baby with you. So, no, no, campers. phrasing is important here because he didn't say I don't want to have a baby he didn't say I don't want to have a baby right now

it was I don't want to have a baby with you out and that by all accounts cut Shannon Crawley to the quick she's already got two kids she's raising by herself and now the guy she's into tells her I don't want to have a baby with you

to Shannon this seemed to mean I do want to have a baby with Danita now campers it's time to get real with Katie right now I know what's coming already they're not going to leave their significant other if you are in a situation

with somebody in a relationship especially somebody who's engaged he's put a ring on her finger well I guess he hadn't by then because they'd only recently gotten engaged when she was murdered. But still, it's a serious, allegedly committed relationship. She was committed.

Right. So if you are, if you are not the significant other, if you are the secret, they're not serious about you. It doesn't matter what they tell you. Drop them. Well, Anne, like, he didn't even take her on dates. Right. You know, it's not like a situation where, oh, you know, he's torn between two lovers. Like, she was very clearly his booty call.

Right. He wasn't given her gifts. He wasn't taking her out. a dinner in a movie. He was coming over and they were having sex. Exactly. That is a, you know, if that's what you want, fine. You know, if that's all you need. But Shannon clearly wanted something more than that. Right. And thought, you know, she could lure him away from Danita. Right. Which is just not going to happen because you may think you have the power in that relationship, but the power and the ball is entirely with them, with the other person. So save yourself some grief and just drop them. Or lower your expectations. Either way, they're not going to leave

their significant other. So Shannon, with Jermere's full support, had an abortion. And that was pretty much the end of their relationship, as you might imagine. And from Jemir's side, there were no hard feelings. He thought they were good. But according to Shannon's people, not so much. So let's put a pin in that for a few minutes. and talk a little bit about the two women at the center of this story, Shannon and Danita. So Shannon Crawley was beautiful and intelligent. She's one of those people that excel at pretty much everything they do. In school, she'd been a high achiever.

Her family have been on several different TV shows about the case. Her parents, Keith and Anne. Keith is a former cop, oddly enough. And they clearly adore her and have always doted on her. And they also seem to have expected a lot of her. And she seems to have delivered. She got great grades in school. She was Homecoming Queen, super popular, class president in middle school.

She was a dancer. She was involved in a ton of extracurricular activities. I'm exhausted just listening to that. Yeah, that's a lot of stuff. But in her late teens, she got pregnant for the first time. And her parents weren't thrilled about it, but they were supportive. And they were proud of the fact that Shannon stepped up and took responsibility, both with her first baby and then she got pregnant again not long after the first baby was born.

She got a job. She worked hard. The fathers weren't involved, so she really had to hustle, as most single moms do. And she provided for her kids. And by all accounts, she was a great mom. So when she met Jermere, she may have been thinking, this is great. I'm going to have a father for my kids. And when Jermere said, I don't want to have a baby with you, that must have brought that dream crashing down. Ouch. So that's Shannon Crawley in a nutshell. Now, let's talk about Danita. So I know most murder victims tend to be described this way, but it seems clear to me that Danita Smith genuinely, genuinely was a special person, an exceptional person. You can feel it in, I think there's a 48 hours mystery about this case and a couple of other

shows about it that I've seen and in everyone you can just feel it just radiating from the screen how much these people adored her and how much they miss her and you know you always do but there's something about her in particular when you see pictures of her she just glowed you know she just had a light about her she sparkles 100% in every picture absolutely yeah she's gorgeous too she was a photojournalism major her specialty was sports and dance photography she liked to take pictures of people in motion. You know, like dynamic scenes, and she was really good at it. And she didn't have a lot of training when she first started, but she knocked it out of the park from day one anyway and just kept getting better. So much so that she'd won a super

competitive fellowship at the New York Times. So she was stoked about that. I can imagine. That's amazing. And she was getting ready to finish her program when she died, and she planned to go back to get her Ph.D. Eventually, she wanted to travel the world and take photographs. So she had big dreams. And she was close to her family, and her best friend, Edith, described her as a light in the dark world, someone who could always lift you out of bad moods. I would love to be described that way. Me too. You know, like if I got hit by a boss or something, that would be, I would mean a lot to me. If I come across as a light in the dark world, you know, that's a beautiful description. It really is.

Danita and Jermere had met at North Carolina Central University. They were both in marching band, so that's where they bonded. They were students together until he graduated and went to the Police Academy in Greensboro. And after that, they were a long-distance relationship. Sort of. I mean, okay, it was only about an hour away. They saw each other on weekends. Why this wasn't enough for Jermere and why he felt the need to Tomcat around elsewhere.

Right. I can't even fathom. Your, your girlfriend is an hour's drive away. Seriously, you see her on weekends, and that's not enough for you. You got to go, you know, get a girl on the side. It's crazy to me. Seriously, man? I don't, I just, oh.

Frustrating. It's ridiculous. So, like you were saying earlier, they were sort of a power couple on campus. Everyone admired them and saw them as role models. Danita's mom told 48 hours that she'd tried to not like Jermere, that whole nobody's good enough for my baby thing. I think most parents do this. She had her mom radar on full tilt, trying to find any reason to reject this guy.

But as she put it, she failed. Dremere was a perfect gentleman. He was polite, respectful, seemed to genuinely value Danita, and she told her friends the same thing. She felt protected with him. It's so sad knowing he was cheating on her for at least part of their time together, but Danita didn't know that. To her, he was the love of her life. They both wanted a family.

That's just heartbreaking to me, isn't it? I mean, it's just that she was just happily going along and planning for her future and thinking that he was being as honest with her and as genuine with her as she was being with him. And little did she know that he wasn't. And he didn't have the courage to tell her that. It hurts, especially because she was such a lovely person. Yeah. Why he couldn't just be honest with her, I don't understand.

But anywho, I don't have a lot of background on Jermere other than that he was handsome and gregarious and his colleagues really liked him. So we were talking about Shannon's pregnancy. So this was where their relationship ended. And for a while, it was just sort of done. They'd see each other at work and say hi in the halls and stuff, but that was it. But then, Jermere went to this church retreat, and the pastor at the retreat encouraged everybody there to make amends to anyone that they had wrong. It's almost like part of a 12-step program or something, like a face-your-demon sort of thing. And for some reason, Jermere called Shannon, which just floors me.

Like, why the hell didn't you call Danita if you were going to call somebody and confess to her about the cheating? Like, if this is at all sincere and you really want to be a better man and make amends, to people you've wronged, wouldn't you start with, you know, your serious girlfriend on whom you were cheating for over a year and got another woman pregnant on and everything? Oh, yeah. You'd think it's probably because he knew that there was a chance he'd lose Anita. A hundred percent. Yeah, I'm sure that's why he didn't do it. And this way it kind of assuaged his conscience without actually any real risk to himself.

Yeah, yeah. I think that was exactly what it was. So instead he called Shannon and they ended up having a marathon 12-hour phone conversation, which is just astonishing. I don't want to do anything for 12 hours straight, except maybe sleep, much less talk on the phone, but there you go. And he apologized to her for everything. I don't really know what specifically, but I assume just for not wanting to parent with her, whatever the wrongs that he perceived he'd done to her were. And after that, surprise, surprise, their relationship started it up again. Now, according to Jermere, it was never romantic or sexual again, but they started a friendship. And according to Jermere, she started leaning on him really heavily, emotionally at that

point. So at first it was little things, like she'd call and ask him to come over and fix something at her house, but then it really started to ramp up, just more and more calls, more and more requests and demands. Why this would surprise Jermere, I can't imagine. So just a little PSA, note to Jermere, if you don't want to be involved with someone, maybe don't have a 12-hour-long emotional conversation with them and then jump to every time they call you for something. Just a thought. Yeah. Because that sends a message, you see. This, I mean, this is kind of a microcosm of what we talk about with trusting your little voice. Yes. Oh, sure, sure. Where you need to trust your instincts and just because you don't want to hurt her feelings,

doesn't mean that what you're doing is right. Yeah, it definitely does. And it also reminds me of, remember when we were talking about the sinister minister, Matt Baker, and I said, you know, a lot of pain and suffering in the story could have been avoided if people hadn't been so focused on never wanting to upset each other. Sometimes you have to upset people. Break a few eggs. Yeah, sometimes you've got to break a few eggs to make an omelet.

And Jermere, if he didn't want the contact from Shannon, all he had to do is say, hey, I don't want to have contact with you anymore. That's an uncomfortable conversation. Of course it is. Sometimes we have to do uncomfortable things, Jermere. Yeah. Anyway. So this renewal of their relationship, friendship,

whatever, seems to have really reactivated Shannon's feelings for Jermere, which is unfortunate, as you'll soon see. And as the date of DeNita's murder approach, that started ramping up more and more. And at one point, for example, Shannon joined Jermere's church. shortly after that she bought a house in his neighborhood now does anybody besides me detect a whiff of boiling bunny in the air perhaps yeah and it's funny to me because i when um i sent the notes for this to katy earlier today she was like what is what is bunning you know bunny boiling mean she wasn't familiar with that reference because you know as we've said before there's a little bit of an age difference between the two of us so i'm 13 years older than you, I think, right? Something like that. You'd never know it most of the time.

It's literally only cultural references that ever remind us. And I'm usually really good with cultural references. Yeah, you usually are completely on board. She didn't get the boiling bunny. So for the youngans listening, or, you know, olds who just didn't watch a lot of movies in the 80s, this is a reference to the famous thriller Fatal Attraction, starring Michael Douglas and Glenn Close.

It's a great movie. and Glenn Close plays a side chick to Michael Douglas. He has like a one weekend stand with her when his wife and daughter are out of town and she just becomes obsessed and starts stalking him and stalking his family. And there's this terrible scene. Remember, it's just an actor bunny and no actual bunnies were harmed. But there's this terrible scene where the little girl had just gotten a new pet bunny and the crazy

thwarted stalker mistress lady breaks into their house and boils the poor little thing in a pot. Yeah, it was really sad, but he's just an actor bunny. So, yeah.

And it just, it's, I think an interesting reference for me because this case is starting to look more and more like a real life fatal attraction, you know,

buying a house in his neighborhood and everything. And there's definitely a true crime trope that we see a lot of if I can't have you, I'm going to blow up your life. Right. And the romantic rivalry thing and just, yeah, listen. Love triangles can be dangerous. There's, there's too many, too many people out there, y'all, to blow up somebody's life. Yeah, there's plenty of fish in the sea. And, you know, sometimes it's,

if I can't have you, nobody can. And sometimes it's just if I can't have you, I'm going to make your life a living hell. Yeah. So, Jermere started thinking, oh, crap, what did I do here? This was a mistake. And, of course, rather than sit her down and tell her the truth, I want you to stop calling me, Jermere just kept picking up the phone. And he didn't say to her, this is creepy, that you just bought a house in my neighborhood. He didn't, in his words, want to be the bad guy.

So this just ramped up and up and up. And Jermere finally got so sick of all the calls that he went to internal affairs. Now, if you watch law and order, you know that internal affairs or IA is exactly what it sounds like. It's the department within the police that handles internal issues. So officer involved shootings, a problem between two police officers or two law enforcement personnel, anything they need to handle in-house. So Jermere went to speak to them. He didn't file a formal report, but he did let them know, this woman is driving me crazy. She won't stop calling me.

And he got some advice, which he does not seem to have taken, bless his heart, because he still never went to Shannon and told her in clear terms, leave me alone. He never did that. So all this was going on at the time of Danita's murder, and when Detective Pate called him that morning and asked him about that burgundy SUV, Jermere's immediate reaction was, oh, my God, Shannon. And when Detective Pate asked Jermere if he thought Shannon could have done this, Jermere said yes.

So, yeah, major development. So obviously now Pate had to go and talk with Shannon, So he drove up to Greensboro, went to the 911 call center where she worked, and he sat down with her. And she was very friendly, very open, very cooperative. She agreed to talk. She didn't ask for a lawyer or anything like that. And it's possible that she might not have had any inkling at this point that they had any suspicions of her. If she had, I doubt she'd have been so open and willing to talk without an attorney. But she probably didn't realize that she was under the microscope. So Shannon corroborated most of Dramere's account of their relationship, meeting at the academy, the pregnancy, the abortion, the end of their relationship, this marathon phone call, and how their friendship got reactivated after that, et cetera.

And she said, yeah, you know, we haven't been involved for about a year. And in fact, it was almost a year to the day from when she had had the termination of her pregnancy. So then Detective Pate asked her, do you have a gun or have you ever owned a gun? And her answer was very clear and unequivocal. God, no. I would never have a gun in my house. I hate guns. I'm scared of guns. I'd be terrified to have one in the house because of my kids. I've never even touched a gun in my life. Hi, I'm Darren Marler. Host of the Weird Darkness podcast. I want to talk about the most important tool in my podcast belt. Spreaker is the all-in-one platform that makes it easy to record, host, and distribute your show everywhere from Apple Podcasts to Spotify. But the real game changer for me was Spreeker's monetization. Spreaker offers dynamic ad insertion. That means you can automatically insert ads into your episodes. No editing required. And with Spreeker's programmatic ads, they'll bring the ads to you, and you get paid for every download.

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So big, like, she's just allergic to guns. So he's like, okay, well, where were you at the time of Danita's murder? And she said, oh, I was taking one of my kids to the pediatrician. So Paid Al also asked her, do you think Jermere is capable of committing murder? and have you ever had occasion to be afraid of him or anything? And she said, no way, Jermere's my friend. He'd never heard anybody. I've never been afraid of him.

He's a nice guy. So all that seemed to check out at that point. Shannon was open and cooperative and she didn't seem to be trying to hide anything. She readily offered up her alibi. She was calm, nothing nervous or sketchy about her at all. So it was looking pretty good for her. And, you know, most people are not psychopaths, sociopaths, most people are not capable of staying totally cool and collected under pressure.

If they've just committed a murder, most people would be scared, shitless and really nervous, and it would be really obvious. So police look at people's demeanor and reactions in these situations, and Shannon was just cool as a fridge full of cucumbers. Butter wouldn't have melted in her mouth, as my grandma used to say. So Pate said, okay, we're going to put a pen in this for now. We'll go check out your alibi, and we'll be in touch with what we need to. and then on his way out of the 911 call center

somebody slipped a note into Detective Pate's hand and just as he was about to walk out the front door he opened this little piece of paper and read it and it said I would like to speak with you in private Isn't that creepy? That's like from a Poirot or something or like an Agatha Christie like somebody slips you a note

and it also reminds me of Jonestown when the visiting senators came to try and sort of suss out what was going on and that poor cult member slipped a note to one of the visiting Senator's aides trying to get rescued. And then the kid went he passed a note, he passed a note, he passed a note. Oh God, yes. Oh, because cults teach you

to inform on each other. Yep. So sad. So anyway, Pake took this co-worker of Shannon's into a private room and the guy said, look, I just think you need to know something. I recently sold Shannon a gun. She asked me for a gun and I sold her one. Now, what did Shannon just

told him? Oh, I've never touched a gun. I hate guns. I'm scared of guns. Uh-huh. Really? Well, that's not what your co-worker says. And the coworker also spun this elaborate tale that the reason why Shannon asked to buy a gun is because her ex-boyfriend, a cop named Jermere Stroud, had been stalking her. He said, look, this guy's been calling her at work. He's been following her around the neighborhood. he's been threatening her. She's scared to death of this guy. You need to look at him. And apparently, Shannon had been confiding this in her co-worker for months, saying she was afraid for her life. You know, you've got to help me, he's going to kill me, he's going to kill my kids,

I need a gun for protection. And what kind of gun was it he'd sold her? A Smith and Wesson 38 caliber. And now the antennae were really vibrating because you know what Pate had just found out from the medical examiner? Danita Smith had been shot once in the head with a thither. 38 caliber weapon. Whoa. Yeah. Now we had two conflicting stories. On one hand, Jermere is telling him, look, this woman has been driving me crazy. She's been calling me nonstop. She joined my church. She bought a house in my neighborhood. She can't let go of me. I had to go to IA about it because it was affecting my work. And on and on and on. And on the other story, Shannon's co-worker is saying she bought.

a gun for protection against this guy because she's scared to death of him. So Detective Pate had to try to sort all this out. And very intelligently, I think, he opted not to confront Shannon with these discrepancies just yet. He hadn't even had a chance to check her alibi. Instead, he talked to Jermere again. He said, look, here's what I'm getting from Shannon's co-worker. Jermere's reaction was, oh my God, no. I'm not stalking her. She's the one harassing her. She's the one harassing me. I had to go to internal affairs about her. Jermere absolutely denied stalking or harassing

Shannon. Far from it. He was trying to shake her. He wanted to be with Danita. So Detective Pate took a picture of Shannon and showed it to the maintenance guy who had the run in with the woman in the Burgundy SUV on the morning of the murder. And unfortunately, the guy said,

I didn't get a look at her face. She was covering it. I can tell you it was young black woman. the hair was the same length, but I can't tell you for sure that it was her. But he'd gotten a great look at that vehicle, and when Pate showed him a picture of Shannon's SUV, he immediately said, yep, that's the same kind of car. He also got a clear look at what the woman was wearing. And when Pate showed him a picture of the logo that the 911 dispatchers in Greensboro wore on

their uniforms, the guy said, yep, that's the same emblem I saw on her shirt, which just a note, maybe don't wear your uniform to crimes. Avoid that. Murder advice from true crime campfire. Well, main murder advice is don't kill anybody, but I mean, if you're going to. He got a god. Don't wear your work a uniform. Be like wearing your name tag for work.

Exactly. Oh, God. Pretty boneheaded. It's very boneheaded. Things, as you might imagine, campers, aren't looking great. for all Shannon. And when Pate dug a little deeper, he found out that Shannon had been late to work that morning when Danita was killed.

She told her supervisor she needed to take her kid to the doctor that morning, and she'd gotten permission. She'd clocked in at about 10 a.m. that day, which was plenty of time. Greensboro's about 45 minutes to an hour away from Durham, so that's plenty of time to commit the murder and get back. When they searched Shannon's house, they found. found work shirts with the same emblem on them, but they didn't find a gun, and they didn't find any bullets. When they asked Shannon if she'd been to Durham the day of or around

Danita's murder, Shannon said, no. I've passed through Durham before, but I've never been there to stay. I haven't been there recently, and I certainly wasn't there that day. But when they checked her cell phone records, they showed that Shannon had been in Durham. Not on the day of the murder. They couldn't prove that, I mean, but on the day prior. On that day, there was a cell phone ping that put her right smack in the middle of Danita's neighborhood. So now they've got her lying about the gun, lying about having been to Durham recently, and we also have her telling a totally different story about her relationship with Jermere than her co-worker is telling. Those are some major inconsistencies.

They also found out that Jermere's cell phone records, police radio, and work logs showed him nowhere near Durham on the day of Dena's murder. This corroborated his alibi. but her alibi was falling apart. Her pediatrician's office said she hadn't shown up that morning. She'd made an appointment for her kid, but she hadn't kept it. Not good. Not good. And when they searched Shannon's SUV,

guess what they found on the steering wheel and the gear shift? Three little letters. G.S.R. gunshot residue all over the steering wheel and the gear shift. Routro. I don't want to have a baby with you. That's what Jermere had said. In her initial interview with Detective Pate, she'd told him that story.

And he could see in her eyes how much it was still hurting, how much it rankled. And now he's wondering, was this the motive for Danita's murder? They still didn't have a lot of things they would. wish they had, though. They didn't have DNA. They didn't have fingerprints. They didn't even have a murder weapon. They had a very compelling story from Shannon's co-worker about her buying a gun of the same caliber that killed Danita, but they still hadn't found it or any ammunition. This was a hit and run murder, one shot and done. Not a lot of forensics, but they did feel that what they did have, the GSR, the co-worker story, the cell tower ping, a pretty solid

motive, they did have enough to arrest Shannon for the crime. They picked her up at her sister's home, and Shannon took it with almost unearthly calm. As she followed the detectives down the driveway to their squad car, she turned to look at her family on the front steps and said, raise them as if they were your own. Wow. Yeah. That isn't a reaction, detectives feel, of an innocent person. Shannon seemed resigned to having been caught. She wasn't kicking and screaming and protesting her innocence. It was, raise him like your own.

Shannon didn't seem to expect to be coming home. Yeah, I would call that consciousness of guilt. A hundred percent. Wouldn't you? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's, we can't be sure, obviously. Right.

But that's, that I agree with the detectives is an odd reaction. I mean, she didn't even say, I didn't do this. Right. It was just, okay. There are so many steps between being arrested for a crime and being convicted of it. And for her to just be like, all right, these kids are yours now. Right out of the gate, exactly. Like, obviously did not expect to be coming back to her children.

Right. When they got her to the station, all she'd say was, I didn't do this. You need to worry about where Jermere Stroud was that day, which they were. Yeah, they've looked into that. And, you know, he also doesn't have a great alibi, but it's not looking good. Yeah. Gunshot residue in your car and everything. Right.

So hundreds of people turned out for Danita's funeral a couple days later. They called it a homegoing ceremony. That is both heartbreaking and also kind of sweet. I've never heard a funeral referred to as a homegoing ceremony before. It's really sad. I know. God, this one is a really rough one because she just seemed like such a amazing person. Jermere was there crying the whole time. One of the hardest things for Deneda's family was that they just found out that Jermere had betrayed her

and that that betrayal might have set this murder in motion. Oh, my God. Wow. I don't know about you. but I think I'd have a really hard time for giving that. Yes, I definitely think I would too. So not only did they lose their loved one, but this was a big part of the pain for them. And I think that's so sad.

They lost her, and then they had this horrible betrayal. And a betrayal, by the way, that Danita never even knew about. And that's the part of this that's really just a punch in the gut, isn't it? that this sweet, smart, loving, talented woman was lying in her casket now because of something that she hadn't even known was going on. It's not like she and Shannon were in a fight. No. She didn't even know Shannon existed. She'd never seen the woman. She'd never heard her name. She was completely innocent in all of this. Right.

And that's just a gut punch for me. It's... It's so unfair, you know? It's unfair. It's 100% unfair. And it... I don't want to... I think... Both things are forgivable, but this might be unforgivable. Yeah, it's rough, definitely. It's tough.

Shannon's family were extremely supportive of their daughter. From watching them on various true crime shows, it's clear to me that there is nothing. Anybody could say or show them that would convince them that Shannon's guilty. Oh, yeah. I mean, they, in my opinion, anyway, are doing some pretty significant mental gymnastics to get around the obvious evidence against her. Right. And because Jermere was a cop, the Durham PD wanted to be extra careful not to be seen as going easy on one of their own. And as a matter of fact, Shannon's father, who is a retired cop, beats this drum on all the shows I've seen him on.

He argues that the reason the police went after Shannon was to avoid going after a fellow officer. But in reality, the Durham PD interviewed the crap out of Jermere. Time and time again, checked the hell out of his elbow. by looked at him hard. He seemed genuinely devastated by Danita's death. He was cooperative, although Detective Pate did say that you had to ask the question for him to give you the answer. He wasn't one to volunteer a lot of information.

He wasn't a chatty-cathy. And the police were thinking, Jermere had just proposed to Danita before she was murdered. They'd only been engaged like a week and a half, two weeks. What would be the motive? He hadn't been involved romantically or sexually with Shannon for over a year. They both agreed on that. Yeah, even Shannon said, like, we've just been friends ever since the abortion. Right.

He and Danita had walked into church together on Christmas Eve, and Danita had been glowing, showing off her new engagement ring to everybody, with Jermere looking proud as a peacock beside her. And guess who was sitting in the back row that Christmas Eve, watching the whole thing, probably fuming. Miss Shannon Crawley. Oh, boy. Now, according to her parents, she wasn't there that night,

but according to everybody else they talked to, she was. So I think we can be confident to say that she was there and saw Danita showing off that ring. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and believe, like, everybody else. Yeah, yeah. And not her extremely biased family on this one. Now, we have to ask, was that when this whole thing really started to come to a head? Or was it earlier? We know Shannon had been stewing for a while, maybe even a year

since they'd broken up, or maybe since that 12-hour phone call. Yeah, so detectives were talking to everybody they could, and when they talked to Shannon's family, they told a very different story from just about everybody else. They corroborated the co-worker story about Dremere's alleged harassment and stalking, said Shannon was scared of him. And Dramir, as I saw, said categorically denied this, and I think it's important to remember that Shannon had recently joined his church and bought a house in his neighborhood. Yeah. Why would she do that if she was terrified of him?

If he was stalking her, wouldn't she be trying to get further away, not closer? But according to Shannon's family, no, no, no, he was a big, scary bad wolf, and Shannon was his innocent and terrified victim. So we have these conflicting stories. And after Shannon stood behind bars for a few days, she got out on bail, and a few days later, she sent word to detectives that she was ready to talk. She showed up with an attorney this time, and she said, look, I've been framed here. And again, in the second interview slash interrogation, she was cool as a cucumber.

Except for a brief little tearful moment toward the end, she acted like she was ordering brunch. And her story was dramatically different this time. She said Jermere had wanted her to have his baby, and he was angry at her when she terminated the pregnancy. She said, I didn't have the abortion because he didn't want to be a father with me. me, I had it because I found out the pregnancy wasn't viable. She said, Jermere had called her doctor to try to find out as she was lying about that, and the doctor had told him that she couldn't give him that information because of patient privacy laws, and she said Jermere was furious about that.

She claimed that he had said, if you don't want the baby, I'll take the baby and raise it. She said he'd begged her and wheedled her and eventually threatened her to keep the baby. Now, campers, logic this out with me. why would a guy who was cheating on his long-time serious girlfriend and soon-to-be fiancé, why would he want so badly to have a baby with his friend with benefits, especially when said longtime girlfriend had no idea that the friend with benefits even existed? Why would he want that? He would have to confess everything to Danita, which we've already seen.

He doesn't not seem inclined to do. It doesn't make any sense. It does not. But this was Shannon's claim. when she terminated her pregnancy, that was when it all changed, that Jermere just became a completely different person, and that's when the stalking started, according to her. She said he'd come to the 911 call center where she worked and just stand at the window looking at her, which is a creepy image.

She said she began to fear for her life. So now, contrary to her former story of, I've never owned a gun, never touched a gun. She said, look, I was scared, and I went to my coworker for protection, for a gun for protection. She said, I only had the gun for about a day, and then I realized I didn't want it. I got rid of it. So they said, okay, well, where did you get rid of it? And she said, I can't remember. Oh, oh, God.

Can't remember. So you can't remember what you did with a gun. Right. Which is a thing that supposedly you're terrified of, and there was, like, real psychological trauma surrounding the purchase of. You just don't remember how you... What? And this is supposed to be recent?

Why not give it to your coworker back? Right. Give it back to your co-worker and say you mean my money back. Yeah. You don't remember. I'm sorry. You're going to have to try harder than that. Yes. And she said a few months before Danita's murder, Dramir had started not only threatening her, but threatening her kids. If you don't take me back, I'll kill your kids. I'll kill both of them. I'll kill your family. I'll kill you. So on the day before the murder, according to Shannon, Jermere had picked her up from work and he'd given her a choice.

He said, either your children die for you. you or you die for your children and when she asked him what the hell he was talking about he said I'll tell you and he drove her to Durham to a Danita's apartment complex pulled in sat there and said this is where Danita lives and if you don't want to die and you don't want your kids to die you're going to help me with this this woman needs to die and the next day January 4th Shannon said he'd forced her to get into that burgundy SUV and drive him back to Danita's apartment complex in Durham. She said he'd left her sitting in the driver's seat. She heard arguing and then a gunshot, and then Jermere had come hustling back,

climbed across her to get into the back seat. Now, why would she say that, campers, that he'd climbed across her? Because, you see, by now she and her attorney have found out about the gunshot residue that was found on the steering wheel and the gear shift, and they needed a way to explain it. right very clever so she said that that was when she'd encountered the maintenance guy and he just didn't see jermere lying in the back seat and on the drive back to greensboro she said jermere had repeated all his threats if you say anything you and your kids are good as dead so at first glance this story made some degree of sense but the more detective pate thought about it the more it started to just unravel like a cheap sweater so he said he said that he said he said that he said he's just unravel like a cheap sweater so he said said to her, why didn't you tell us this when we first interviewed you on the day of the murder? Why didn't you say anything during the days that you were sitting in jail?

Well, I was scared. He knows where my kids live. Okay, well, why aren't you scared now? Doesn't he still know where your kids live? Shannon didn't have an answer to that. Which, come on, Shannon, work with me here, girl, you know? You're going to have to try harder than this. This is the best you could come up with. So he also asked her, like, okay, so what was Jermier's motive? Like, why? did he want denita dead and her response to that well i don't know you're going to have to ask him also not a great answer and may i say remember jermere and denita were not married at this point

there's no life insurance policy there's no financial tie there's no children involved why would he have to kill her why couldn't he just break up with her exactly like i have a real problem with motive here if jermere is the killer so did Detective Pate said, okay, if you want us to believe this story and you don't want to go down on a first-degree murder charge, you're going to have to give us proof. And, oh boy, was Shannon about to deliver on that request. So, Shannon went back home, she's out on bail, and before long, her attorney contacted the police with some bombshell evidence. They had a series of taped phone conversations between Shannon and allegedly Jermere, with him threatening her, talking about letting her take the fall for the murder

basically corroborating every element of her story and you can listen to these on various true crime shows and if I can find them anywhere I'll post them on our social media you'll want to judge for yourself as to whether this was Jermere's voice but on the tapes she's referring to this guy as Jermere and he's saying stuff like they ain't trying to put a cop in jail

and better you than me and you better keep your mouth shut and lots of really gross threatening stuff and we're not talking about one phone call here there were many of these and they got emotional at times like at one point shannon said god is all seeing and all knowing and you know that how many times did i pray with you and the jermere voice says i'm sorry shannon it was very dramatic so shannon seemed to have successfully conducted her own little sting operation to exonerate herself and incriminate jermere so they did a little digging they tracked down the source of the calls and unfortunately they were coming from a payphone

So that told them nothing. And they listened and listened and listened to the calls. And Jermere has a very distinctive, deep, baritone voice. And the detectives noticed very quickly that the voice on the tapes was much higher. At times it almost sounds like a woman's voice. I don't think it is, but it really does not, in my opinion, sound like Jermere at all. No, not at all. You agree?

Yeah, I don't think it sounds like him at all. And at times the voice whispers, and at one point, Shannon asks, why are you whispering? And the voice says, because somebody's listening. which does not even make sense. Like, if somebody's tapping Shannon's phone, it doesn't matter whether you're whispering or not. But that's the kind of thing you might say if you'd seen too many movies.

Right. And a cop would certainly know that. Well, yeah. Yeah. So the detectives were not really buying this bombshell, you know, taped sting operation evidence that she handed them. And then one night, Shannon showed up in the emergency room about 5.30 a.m.

She was disheveled. and bruised, she seemed traumatized, and she told the doctor she'd been sexually assaulted. By who? Well, who else? Jamir Stroud. He'd attacked her the night before. So the police went to the hospital to take her statement. They took it seriously as they would any other allegation like this. Her story was that she'd gone out. She was staying with her parents in Charlotte while she was out on bail to walk the dog at about 2 a.m. the night before. And Jermere had run out from the shadows and attacked her in her parents' backyard. Now, this has shades of Cindy James to me. Why would you go out? It really does, yeah.

And walk the dog in the middle of the night when you're terrified for your life and you knew that this man was on the loose. I can't imagine, but whatever, okay. Yeah, that's actually, that's a really good point. And it does remind me of the Cindy James case because the night of the fire in Cindy James's basement, remember her story was she'd gone out to walk the dog. And one of the reasons why the police didn't believe her is because, well, you're being stalked and harassed and threatened and you go out at 2 a.m. to walk your dog. So it's a similar situation. Yeah. And if you want to hear more about that case, go listen to our Halloween special episode. Yeah, that was our Halloween special. If you haven't listened to that one,

that's an amazing story. It's really, really disturbing and scary. And it's got a creepy report. It also has a creepy recorded phone call. I'll be darned. She said he'd held a knife to her throat and assaulted her for four hours until the sun came up, a vicious, vicious attack. And at dawn, he'd finally left her alone and she'd told her parents and rushed to the ER. So this is a wild development, obviously. Was Jermere trying to keep Shannon quiet? Was this corroboration for her story?

So, of course, they questioned Jermere, and he absolutely denied it. Said that was crazy. He hadn't been anywhere near Sharpe. A neighbor of Jermere's had a very interesting story to tell. They said that late that previous night, they'd seen a car drive up and a dark, feminine-shaped figure, get out, and throw something into Jermere's outdoor trash can. Very curious. Exactly.

Shannon had told them that Jermere had held a knife to her throat, and she'd described the knife. And now, now, what did they find? in his outdoor trash can? Well, it's a knife just like the one she described. So, holy shit. At the hospital, they performed a rape kit, and the kit showed no evidence of anything. No bruising, no semen, no hair, not on her clothing, not on her body, nothing.

In addition, they canvassed the parents' neighborhood. No one saw or heard anything, including a dog barking. And I have to say, allegedly, this was a four-hour long. long attack. Right. And there's no evidence at all on her body. It's, it boggles the mind. They also wondered how Jermere would know that she'd be out walking her dog at 2 a.m. Shannon said he must have been watching the house and took the opportunity when he saw it. Finally, they got a hold of Jermere's work log. Not only had he been on patrol in Greensboro, but he'd also been on the phone for almost the entire time of the alleged assault.

The stew loves the freaking phone. Yeah. I never met anybody in my life who loves talking on the phone. 12-hour phone call with Shannon, and now for at least four hours on the phone, he's just on, like, while she's allegedly being attacked. Yeah. Four hours on the phone. Dude. Maybe he was calling different people.

Yeah, it's possible, but still, four straight hours on the phone. Yeah, I don't know. Like, aren't your ears numb after a while? Right. Maybe he had one of those Bluetooth. Yeah. Sure. Sure. It was 2007. Those existed back then, right? Yeah. Have to be, right?

Got to be. There, so obviously there was no way he could have done what Shannon was alleging. Interestingly enough, there were knife cuts on Shannon's body, but the doctor said that they were shallow and looked a lot like self-inflicted wounds. So this rape allegation was a hoax. Oh my God. It's Shades of Tracy Richter again, whenever our earlier cases where there was a hoax sexual assault allegation and it is just infuriating because this is the last thing actually no it's not the last thing it's not even on the list of things that actual victims of sexual assault of which there are many of all genders need they don't need this absolutely not victims don't need this they already have an uphill battle no and to be heard and taken seriously all of the resources that she took up

for this little stage play that could have been helping other people. Absolutely. So I just get infuriated when and it happens very rarely. That's the thing is that there's this mythos that this just happens all the time

and that people just always making up sexual assault allegations. It's actually very, very, very much less common than people think. Yeah. But it doesn't take much because just one fake allegation has this huge ripple effect. And it does nothing but hurt real victims.

Exactly. And it just makes me so mad I could spit nails. And yeah, that's hardcore to subject yourself to the type of testing and medical exams that go along with reporting a sexual assault. It's very invasive. Absolutely. It's a really, you know, invasive process and probably not super fun to go through, I'm imagining. And most people would never, never fraudulently subject themselves to that. So to have somebody who is willing to do that to further her own agenda, that's scary. Oh, yeah. I mean, she's scary to me.

And, you know, we mentioned Tracy Richter, who did something similar, but Tracy didn't even go to the hospital and go through all the testing and everything. Tracy just made the allegation on paper in order to extort someone. But Shannon actually went to the hospital, so subjected herself to very unpleasant testing and stuff in order to further this agenda, which is, as I said, most people would never dream of doing. So that is, going to those lengths, that shows you there's a mind at work here that is extremely cold, calculating, devious, and scary. Yeah.

Willing to subject yourself to unpleasantness in order to get what she wants. Yeah. Yikes. Go fuck yourself, Shannon Crawley. Between the fake audio tapes and this bullshit, the police and prosecutor were D-O-N-E- Stick-A-Forking done. The murder charges would stand. They went to trial.

The charge was first-degree murder, life without parole. Shannon got a great defense attorney who tried real hard to keep the audio tapes out of court. Now, I find this very telling. If they were real, wouldn't you fight like hell to get them. in? Yeah, exactly. Wouldn't you want them voice tested? The fact that the defense fought to get those excluded

speaks volumes. So, you know, because you would think that if a defendant, if you just saw this on paper, okay? And you read that a defendant had, prior to trial, presented to the police audio tapes where a male voice was confessing to the murder

and letting the defendant take the fall for the murder, you'd think the defense would be fighting to get those tapes into evidence. Right. And the prosecution would want to keep them out. But that's not what happened here. That tells me they know perfectly well what those tapes are. Yeah. Yeah. Fake out. Yeah. Not a great look. Now, of course, Jermere was the star witness. Testified about all her bunny boiling stuff, his and Danita's engagement, etc., etc. And the jury got a really good listen to his voice. And when those audio tape were finally played in court, the jury actually laughed because it was so obvious to

them that it wasn't Jermere. That must have been a bad moment for Shannon's defense team when they look over and they see the jurors laughing. Yeah. Whoopsie-doodle. Now, what probably happened, according to the forensics presented by the state, was this. Danita came down the stairs early that morning on her way to class, and Shannon was lying in wait. Did she say something to her first? Oh, I hope not. Yeah, I don't think we'll ever know, but I think it's safe to say that we hope desperately not. I hope she never saw it coming. I hope she never even had a moment to be scared. Yeah. And it seems likely that that is, in fact, what happened. And I hope so. Because I don't think Shannon would have wanted to risk her running away. Right, exactly. Like on the one

hand, I could see Shannon wanting to gloat and say, hey, your man's been sleeping with me, but at the same time, you know, as you say, she probably wouldn't have wanted to risk it. Yeah. Because Danita might have fought her or run away, et cetera. We always struggle to find one little comforting detail in these awful tragedies. And the one we can cling to in this case is, at least Danita didn't suffer. The gunshot was at point-blank range. Her death was instantaneous.

and in true narcissist fashion, Shannon took the stand in her own defense. And in true narcissist fashion, she did herself no favors. As always, she was cool and collected and came across as emotionless and arrogant. She seemed to have trouble reading the room well enough to see how she was coming across to the jurors.

Now, as I mentioned before, this is a pretty common narcissistic trait, and it's also when we see a lot and sociopaths and psychopaths. Yeah, we actually mentioned this in season one, if I recall, what you're about to tell us. So FBI profiler, John Douglas, describes it as knowing the words, but not the music. Shannon seemed to think that she was smart enough to talk her way out of this, but the jury came away with the feeling that she had no empathy.

And it didn't take long for the jury to find her guilty. She was given this sentence of life without parole. It's so sad. Donita was 25. Shannon was 27. They were both beautiful, intelligent young women on the cusp of starting their lives. Yeah, it's just an incredible waste. Danita didn't even know about Shannon.

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