True Crime with Kimbyr - The Heartbreaking Mystery of Chanin Starbuck: A Family Torn Apart - Part 2

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

In this second part of True Crime with Kimbyr, we continue unraveling the tragic case of Chanin. As investigators dig deeper into the digital trail, more shocking revelations come to light, painting a clearer picture of the events that led to her untimely demise. With each new clue, the story becomes more complex and heartbreaking, exposing hidden secrets that tore her family apart. Join us as we uncover the final pieces of this tragic puzzle and seek justice for Chanin. Tune in to True Crime with Kimbyr for the emotional conclusion of this gripping case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The cause of death was from the compression of the neck or strangulation. There was a broken bone in her throat and the likely murder weapon was something soft like a towel or someone's arm holding Shannon in a chokehold position. Shin hadn't died immediately. Instead, she could have been alive for up to two hours before her lungs filled with fluid. In all, this poor woman sustained between 80 and 90 women. wounds to her body. They did swab her ankle area and her vaginal area, which seemed to contain male DNA. And they were hoping that these results would bring them more answers. On December 5th, Clay met with lead detective Mike Ricketts to inquire about Shannon's autopsy results. Clay was interviewed for three hours, and he fully cooperated. He provided his cell phone information, consent

for police to download a cell phone. He gave DNA samples. fingerprints, and he also posed for photos to document any injuries he might have, especially when they looked at his hands. Since Shannon was beaten, the detectives assumed Shannon's attacker would have been wounded, but Clay Starbuck did not appear to have any injuries when the Starbuck children were interviewed, which must have been super emotional and a surreal experience. They had just lost their mother. But Austin, the oldest son, was asked when he saw his mother last and how the relationship was. He did tell them he lived with his father

because they had a close relationship. Like Clay, Austin's hands were checked for injuries and he was questioned about several scars and wounds that were on them. Austin explained that he worked at a glass company called GSI Glass and he frequently had cuts and wounds on his hands. Shannon's children told detectives that they watched to catch a predator. This is a show on the same network as Dateline. And they knew that the children.

there were weirdos out there who spent time on the internet and they were afraid that their mom had met someone like that. The older children told police their mom left them alone when she would go out on dates and that they had seen nude pictures and videos of their mother and men on her computer. The husband is always going to be a suspect, so the very next day on December 6, Clay went with the detectives to retrace his steps the day of the murder. Then Clay gave a more detailed explanation of how his car stalled the morning, the text messages that were sent back and forth, and how the kids ended up at his home. He said he woke up around 7 a.m., drove his 1988 Toyota Tercell around to warm it up

before picking up the kids from Shannon's and taking them to school. He showed them where the vehicle had stalled. It was near the golf course, a North High Desert Drive, which I'm showing you here. So he texted Shannon asking her to please take the kids to school. Clay had decided it was better to keep his car on the street at the moment and then come back in the afternoon when the temperature was warmer. Clay explained to the police he walked back and forth between his car and his house twice during the day, using the same sidewalk and route. Right after the car broke down, he walked home and went to bed to nap. So after he walked home, Clay told Detective Johnson

and Rickett that his phone battery had died causing him to turn it off. Since he was a night owl, he usually drove the children to school and then returned home to nap. So he left his phone off so that he wouldn't be disturbed. He had still been experiencing terrible back. pain that would keep him up all night. Clay couldn't remember how long he slept, but he said he woke up around 11 a.m. and he returned to the car to try to start it again, but it was still dead. So he walked back home and to pass the time he played Call of Duty on his Xbox. However, Clay was using offline mode, so there was no way for detectives to verify exactly what time he was doing that. Then Clay said after he was done playing Call of Duty, he picked up his tools and

rags and worked on his car. He went back out there. Clay said he spent the entire day working on the carburetor walking to the car playing Xbox and because his phone was off the whole day Clay explained he had missed the text messages from Shannon asking him to pick the children up from school at 317. But eventually he said the car started working and he went home. Now of course they're trying to establish an alibi. This is what they do with everyone. So they asked him, did anyone see you during this time? And he said, I don't know if anyone had. And by this account, Clay was within one and half blocks from Shannon's place several times that day. But none of his fingerprints matched any at the crime scene, and Clay did not have a criminal record.

During the interview, Clay again told the detectives that they should focus on Shannon's computer or her phone. He was convinced that someone Shannon had met over the internet was responsible for her murder. Clay was then free to leave after the second interview, and the investigators followed his lead and started to investigate Shannon's online dating history. While investigators were still gathering evidence and having it analyzed, Shannon's funeral was held at 1 p.m. on Saturday, December 10, 2011 at the Riverside Chapel, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in the town of Chattery in Washington. Shannon's friends and acquaintances from her children's school, the church, her dental school, and the broader community turned out to pay their respects. Also in attendance, of course, was Clay, he was there with his kids,

and everyone was trying to support them going through this incredible loss. And afterward, Shannon's body was then returned to Florida where Clay and her children and her family laid her to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery in Orlando. She was remembered as a wonderful mother who supported her children in all of their endeavors. Shannon's eulogy was read by her friend Doug Carter, and he described Shannon as a mother and community activist and that she was an outstanding woman. Doug said Shannon's loved ones were allowing law enforcement to do their jobs and they were all there to support and love on Shannon's children. children. When Shannon's funeral was held, Clay told the media that his only concern was getting his children through the upcoming holidays, which I could only imagine would be completely devastating. I'm sure there were constant reminders of Shannon everywhere. So let me go back to the days

right after Shannon's murder. I want to tell you everything they found. Detective Johnson and Rickett searched her cell phone for any recent communications to track down her killer. By this time, they were confident that Shannon knew her killer, but there was still a lot of people to speak to. And this information didn't necessarily point to one specific suspect. Police were sifting through a ton of information. They'd actually been receiving calls for men saying they'd recently spoken to Shannon online or had even gone on dates with her. It was encouraging and the police had more potential people of interest to look at.

But not every man that Shannon had met or chatted with was making contact, which was a concern. When detectives went through Shannon's cell phone, they could see that on December 1st between 806, and 8.47 a.m. She was texting back and forth with a man named Tom Walker. The pair had met online and had a lunch date four weeks earlier. Then they had a dinner date scheduled for December 5th at Tom's house. But of course, that would never happen because Shannon would be murdered. There were a number of flirtatious. I'm calling them flirtatious. That's very PG. But there were messages going back and forth between Shannon and the men she was texting. And one of them caught their eye. And there's a reason for that. Only hours before Shannon's death, the messages that were exchanged were sexually

explicit. In one of Tom's messages, he requested that Shannon sent him a very graphic photo of herself, a very specific way that he wanted her to pose with a sex toy in a very suggestive manner. And while Shannon never actually sent this picture to Tom, her killer posed her dead body the exact same way. The detectives didn't know what this connection meant, but they were interested in talking to Tom Walker. When Shannon and Clay separated, her friend Summer Starks encouraged her to try online dating because Shannon was lonely. All she had was her kids and going to school, and her friends wanted to see her thrive. Her online dating life was the opposite of what she experienced on her daily life. During her dates,

Shannon kind of let loose. She wasn't exhibiting her motherly persona. She was free of responsibility. So let's just say she was having a little fun. I told you this is the first time she was independent in a very long time. And she is ready to just let her hair down, so to speak. She had her profile on several dating websites and she was looking for someone intelligent that she could have a great conversation with. And among the men who caught Shannon's eye was this car salesman Tom Walker. She was impressed by Tom.

She thought he was a catch. He was honest and open with her. And soon they set up that date and they met three weeks before Shannon's death. They traded a lot of sexually charged and very flirtatious text messages before and after meeting a person. Because Tom Walker's number was already stored in Shannon's cell phone, finding him was relatively easy. When the detectives informed Tom that they needed to speak with him, he agreed and he met with them on December 4th. Investigators were obviously very interested in Tom's movements days prior and whether he had an alibi on the day of her murder. Tom told Detective Ricketts that on December 1st, he left work around 9.40 a.m. to attend a funeral in Spokane Valley, about 28 miles from Deer Park. He left the funeral at 10.30 in the morning, returning to work around 11 o'clock. And 20 minutes later, he texted Shannon, asking how her day was and telling her he had just gotten back from the funeral. At 12.10 p.m., Shannon replied, saying that she had to stop by the bank and she asked Tom if he would like to be.

to meet her for lunch that day at 1 o'clock at a restaurant in town called The Onion. But Tom had to be at work at that time, so we declined that invitation around 12.12 p.m. There must have been some miscommunication or crosswires because at 1219, Shannon texted Tom asking if he was on his way for lunch. Five minutes later, he again said that he wasn't going to be able to make it. And he never heard back from Shannon after that. But what if Tom had come to Shannon's after this? And maybe they got into an argument. And that resulted in Tom killing her. While despite sending Shannon the text asking her to pose a certain way, Tom denied involvement in her brutal murder. And he explained that he had been exchanging text

messages like this back and forth with her for weeks. He did say that the fact that Shannon asked him to go to lunch, considering they already had a date set for December 5th was odd, especially because Shannon knew that Tom had to work that day. As part of their investigation, detectives did collect DNA samples from Tom Walker, checked his cell phone records, and called his boss to confirm his alibi. Everything was confirmed. Tom Walker's phone records did not place him near Shannon's house on the day of her murder. Therefore, until the DNA could be analyzed and compared to the scene, detectives had to look at other leads. And again, they didn't know exactly what time Shannon died, so no one could be excluded as a suspect. And during their investigation into Shannon's life,

The detectives discovered several messages and calls from a man on December 1st, and he was listed in her phone as John Wilson. Well, investigators initially had a very difficult time identifying who this John person was. To begin with, his Facebook profile was not him. He was definitely catfishing. It belonged to a doctor in New York City. When they did a reverse image search, they saw that this doctor had a practice in New York. So someone was using his picture and talking to Shannon on instant messenger and even on Yahoo under an account called Just Wondering 006. And he used the username Just Wondering 06 on his dating profiles.

So already, that's a little suspicious. Based on Shannon's message exchanges with John Wilson, the detectives were able to see that the two were planning to meet on Thursday, December 1st. That's the last day anyone had heard from Shannon. So detectives were definitely intrigued when they discovered that John was supposed to meet with. her on the day she died. They immediately tried to track him down for questioning. Shannon had met this John Wilson person on a dating site a few months before she was murdered back in September of 2011, and the two soon began a sexual relationship. When they first began dating, John made it clear that he wasn't looking for anything serious and Shannon was fine with that. She was fresh out of a

long-term relationship that had been kind of tumultuous and she was ready to have some fun. So upon looking through Shannon's phone records, the detective discovered that John Wilson always called Shannon from a public pay phone. And in addition to that, he would use a library computer every time he message her on the dating profile. So this was definitely another red flag, that he was reaching out to Shannon through untraceable numbers and computers. So detectives decided to message John from Shannon's dating profile. And instead of pretending they were her or anything, they just told John that, they were detectives from the Spokane County Sheriff's Department and they needed to question him about Shannon Starbuck. Within 20 minutes, a message came in from just wondering 06 username. First,

he told the detectives that John Wilson was not his name, but he didn't want to disclose his true identity. Well, because of his behavior, the detectives were even more suspicious of this man, and they needed to know who he was and to investigate his involvement in Shannon's murder. So what they did is they took one of those incoming calls from Shannon's phone and they traced it back to a pay phone at a university library. And on the library's CCTV, they see a man entering the building not long before this call was placed. That was their John. But why was he hiding behind a fake picture online and a fake name? To make things even more difficult, John had gotten a lawyer as soon as he heard about Shannon's murder and he wasn't talking. He refused to meet with office.

until they threatened to go public with his photo from the CCTV footage. They said, we'll just wait until someone comes forward who recognizes you. So after some consideration, this man agreed to meet with the detectives at his attorney's office, December 17th. Sure enough, the guy who comes in looks nothing like the profile picture, but we already knew that. However, his name was really John. It was just not John Wilson. It was John Kenline. They also learned that he was a high school teacher and he was married. but he was lying to Shannon and saying he was single.

But this is also why he didn't want to come forward because he was cheating on his wife. John told police that he had been intimate with Shannon about a half a dozen times, including twice at her home, but that he had no intention of making the relationship public or dating her seriously. It was clear that John had catfish Shannon. And honestly, it was not clear to the investigators why she remained in a relationship with him. Shannon's family suspected that this was because she always was so accepting of people and she would see the good qualities in them.

But John Kenline had more concerning information to share with the police. He told them that he had stopped by Shannon's house on the day that she was last seen. Not only did John stop by Shannon's house once, but he visited her several times on December 1st. Now that's even more suspicious and why hadn't he come forward? I mean, I understand the infidelity and the hiding of your identity, but if you find out that someone has been murdered and you don't come forward, that can definitely raise some red flags. John explained that he and Shannon had plans to meet the morning of December 1st. He arranged to actually take the day off work.

After leaving his house around 9 a.m., John took his kids to school, bought some coffee at Starbucks and North Spokane, and then drove to Deer Park arriving at Shannon's house at 10.30 a.m. He told the police he knocked on the door a few times. But when no one answered, he went to a payphone nearby where he tried calling Shannon. So John told them he returned to Shannon's the second time. He walked the perimeter of her house and he knew where her bedroom window was. So he goes into the backyard and he checked for things like lights if a fan was running in the bathroom, but she was nowhere to be seen and the house was completely closed up with the blind drawn. John said he left. He drove to Deer Park Library before

heading back home. But he did stop at Whitworth University. It's there that he used one of the public computers at 1217 to instant message Shannon from his Yahoo account, checking to see if everything was okay. Shannon messaged him back from her phone at 1237 telling John she'd been eating and said, did you stop by? John told her he had come there that morning and asked if she was going to be home soon. The message that Shannon sent back seemed straightforward enough, but John said he had a weird feeling about it. I mean, all she said is like, did you stop by? But he said it wasn't her usual self. She was kind of jovial and playful and pleasant. And for some reason, it just caught his attention. John said he texted her again, asking if you could see her that night around 10.30 p.m.

At 117 p.m., Shannon replied saying, no, not tonight. I have a headache. And I will have Clay take the kids. John responded asking her, well, what about closer to 9.30? Shannon texted back at 132 p.m. saying, nope. So John went to go get some lunch around 2 p.m. And then he told the investigators he went home about 90 minutes later before heading back out to go to several places, one of which was taking his son for a haircut. These movements were all corroborated by receipts that John provided. And that night at 8 p.m., he dropped his daughter off at basketball practice and used a phone at his daughter's school to call Shannon. But he didn't get an answer. So John went back home before heading to Shannon's once again and arriving at 10.30 p.m. and the house was just in darkness. However, this time you could hear the heat

running. He knocked on the door, but he didn't get an answer. The doorknob was locked. So John tried calling Shannon from a payphone once again. But when she didn't pick up, he drove back towards his house where he bought drain cleaner just before midnight at Walmart. In total, John had come to Shannon's about four times a day. And though at first they did have this theory that it was possible that Shannon might have threatened to tell his wife that he was cheating and that she was going to try to blackmail him. But the thing was, Shannon didn't even know that John was married. But because he didn't have a solid time of death for Shannon, they could not confirm whether John was telling the truth about where he was and what he did on December 1st. At that moment,

the detectives considered John the most promising suspect. Ironically, his alibi for that morning was that he was ordering a coffee at Starbucks. I'm sure you're see the irony there, the last name. The detectives, however, were not convinced that John was innocent. What would stop a man from lying to police if he was willing to cheat and lie to his family and have this double life? But at this point, they didn't have anything concrete to hold him, so after collecting DNA samples from John, the detectives let him go. So far, DNA samples were obtained from Clay Starbuck, John, and Tom Walker. While waiting for DNA test results from the state crime lab, detectives went back to scrutinizing Shannon's phone records when her outgoing

call records were received by detectives a couple weeks after her death, Detective Lyle Johnston found something. And this shut a whole new light on the murder. At 918 a.m. on December 1st, Shannon had called the Spokane County 911. This was not in her outgoing call log on her actual cell phone, as though it had been deleted off of her device. Detective Johnson and Rickett contacted the 911 dispatcher immediately, and they were able to find a record. of Shannon's 911 call that had gone completely unnoticed until this point. Wow. The call only lasted about 30 seconds, but the operator couldn't hear anything intelligible, only a short, high-pitched guttural sound that sounded like a woman, followed by a rustling noise.

911, what are you reporting? Hello? The call then ended abruptly. So the operator called back the number right away, but it went to voicemail indicating that the cell phone had been turned off. Hi, this is Shannon. Please leave a message. However, according to GPS, the phone was at Shannon's residence when this 911 call was made. Investigators could see that someone had tried to delete the record of the call afterward. As the detectives were listening to the recording of this 911 call, the shuffling sounded like a struggle.

And then that grunt from the female sounded like she was in distress. and then there was just silence. This was the very last call that came from Shannon's phone. Detective Johnson just jumped out of his seat and yelled, she called 911. This was an incredible moment for him. And of course, for this entire case. Since Shannon was murdered,

the detectives were working on the assumption that she died within 24 hours. They didn't know the precise time that she had been murdered, only that it happened between December 1st and December 2nd. However, the fact that Shannon called 911 gave them a better idea of when she died. In light of this new evidence, the detectives determined that Shannon had been murdered shortly after returning home from dropping her children off at school around 918 a.m. when that phone call was made. So this meant that any other activity from her phone after this couldn't have been Shannon.

her killer must have sent text messages to deceive people into believing that she was still alive. With this new 911 information, it was clear that Shannon couldn't have been the one texting Logan and Clay later that afternoon from her cell phone because she was dead. The detectives had a new potential time of death for her and whoever had Shannon's cell phone must have been familiar with her and her family. Because remember, she used a family nickname for her son Marshall, she called him Marsh. Someone turned Shannon's cell phone back on at 12.05 p.m. and from that time until 4 p.m. that day, 11 text messages were sent from her phone and she received 99

messages. The last text from her phone was sent at 3.17 p.m. when she asked Clay to go pick up the kids from school because she had a headache. That wasn't her texting. What this meant was that that text message to Tom Walker, remember him, inviting him over to meet that day meant that that came from the killer. Some of the text message between Tom's and Shannon's cell phone were deleted from Shannon's phone, but they remained in Tom's message history. Remember, Tom even said it was odd that Shannon wanted to meet because they had a date planned for a few days later. But I know you're probably also wondering if there was something else that should have happened

in terms of the 911 operator. Why didn't they take further action? Why didn't they send police over there? But I did explain they tried to call Shannon back. Protocol dictated that the next step after the operator called back but got no response was to call again a second time. And at that point, if no one answered, they were supposed to forward this to the sheriff's dispatch for a follow-up. And tragically, this did not happen because only one callback was ever made. But in this case, inexperience couldn't be blamed because the person who took that 911 call had been working as an operator for 17 years. They should have known. The communication center classified hang-up calls as either a phase one or a phase two.

Phase one calls give the operator the caller's number and the nearest cell tower. Phase two give the number plus the coordinates of GPS at the time of the call. Shannon's call was a phase two. They would have known exactly where this call was coming from, and this meant that officers could have been sent over there right away. However, what is interesting is that there was a follow-up news story about this. and the 911 communication center's policy was quoted saying that even if an operator calls a hang-up back twice

and no one picks up, law enforcement doesn't have to respond. It's almost like a case-by-case scenario. And the reason for this is because they receive dozens of hang-up calls every hour, meaning that they would have to send an officer all over the place. And that would be pretty hard to do. The communication center did conclude that the breach of protocol was an isolated incident and that the operator would not be fired because other than this, they had an exemplary record. However, in light of what happened in Shannon's case, the communication

center did decide to have a refresher course be given on hang-up calls, but it doesn't help with what happened to Shannon. But it did help with a timeline. And after establishing Shannon's time of death, Detective Johnson and Rickett re-examine John Kenline's alibi. While Tom Walker's alibi had been confirmed by his boss and the guests of the funeral he attended, John still had to be verified. The police went into that Starbucks, where John said that he ordered his coffee on December 1st. And luckily for John, when the detectives looked at the Starbucks records, they saw that he ordered a coffee at 9.50 a.m. and a barista remembered him. There was not enough time for John to kill Shannon, stage the scene, and then drive all the way from Deer Park to that Starbucks and be there at 9.50 a.m.

So John was now cleared as a suspect in Shannon's murder. With John out of the way and Tom Walker's alibi confirmed as well, along with Shannon's two oldest sons, Austin and Blake being at school, the detectives returned to the drawing board. As they probed further into Shannon's personal life, the detectives discovered something else that was pretty alarming. Several of her friends told the detectives that Clay had been nothing but trouble for Shannon. Well, that's not unusual.

they were going through a divorce and co-parenting is not easy. But the people close to Shannon went on to say that there had been incidents around Shannon's house where she came home and she would find things kind of off. Shannon didn't feel safe in her own home. And between June and November 2011, she filed four reports with the sheriff deputies. One time, Shannon came home and she saw that her lamps had been tampered with. Some of the light bulbs were unscrewed in places like her garage. and her barbecue was tipped over on her porch.

Another time, she noticed that someone had tampered with the truck that she was borrowing from her friend, Summer. Summer was shocked when she learned that Shannon had been struggling financially and had almost been evicted and had her electricity turned off and her car repossessed. So Summer allowed Shannon to borrow her truck for shopping and taking the kids' places. However, a few days after Shannon borrowed the truck,

she had to apologize profusely to Summer and she sounded heartbroken. Shannon told Summer that she had been outside and saw the windows of Summer's truck were smashed. That's pretty extreme. Shannon also thought someone was stealing things like jewelry and even a handgun. Shannon was so paranoid that while she was away, she would put tape on the doors to check if they were still there when she got home. So wanting to keep herself and her kids as safe as she could, Shannon ended up changing the locks and she installed a video surveillance camera in the kitchen so she could catch whoever was breaking in. When she did change the locks, she didn't give her keys to anyone,

including her children. And that was because she wasn't sure who was doing it, and she suspected it could even be her ex-husband Clay. And she was so afraid that if it was clay, he would get a key from their kids and make a copy. Only Shannon's landlord had the key to this house. So on the day of the murder, the security cameras were missing from her home. And detectives speculated that whoever killed Shannon may have taken these cameras. So now detectives wanted to take a second look at Clay. Since several items of evidence were found that indicated Clay and Shannon's relationship had deteriorated further than anyone had known. The detectives obtained Shannon's divorce filings as well as her diary to examine. First of all, the decree of dissolution of their marriage also included a restraining

order against Clay that would remain in effect until August of 2012. Just a couple months before Shannon's murder in October, the judge actually ordered Clay to pay her over $9,000 in backchild support and attorney's fees. At the same court hearing, the judge entitled Shannon to 50% of Clay's pension. There were a number of letters that were part of Shannon and Clay's divorce records. And one letter from their 12-year-old daughter was in that filing. And she said she was unhappy living with her mom and then she had a close relationship with her dad. She referred to the relationship with her father as, quote, the best relationship ever, end quote, that they were two peas in a pod and she wanted to move in with Clay.

And in turn, there was a letter from Clay to the court claiming Shannon was jealous of the relationship that he had with their children. But from all accounts, this wasn't true at all. Shannon was completely devastated that her second attempt to trying to keep her family together by being with Clay again had failed. And at the same time, she could feel her children more. pulling away from her. Shannon knew her ex-husband was saying terrible things to their children in an attempt to turn them against her, but she never responded in kind. Shannon wanted her kids to have a

relationship with their father, even if he was nasty and vindictive to Shannon herself. There was a diary entry from September 2011 where she wrote, quote, Marshall was upset after spending the day with his father. Marshall said his father showed him a couple pictures from my phone. One was a picture his father told him was me naked from the waist up. Marshall said his dad put his finger over the breasts, but his father told him that I had sent this picture to men. Marshall said he didn't like me and everything was my fault because I was divorcing his dad. I think it is a little weird that Clay is claiming and even showing their son nude pictures that she supposedly sent to people. That's a little strange. And then there was a diary entry from September 5th.

and it stated, quote, Marshall and Serena spent the weekend with Clay and came home not wanting to talk to me. Marshall acted as though something was wrong and I asked him if everything was all right and he replied with, I don't like you. Based on Shannon's diary entries, the detectives concluded that the separation was not as smooth as Clay described in his interviews. Clay had said that things were perfectly amicable with the pair, but it's clear that the seeds of resentment and parental alienation on his part were being sewn according to what Shannon shared in her personal diary. But Clay insisted that he did everything he could to make things work. And it's convenient that now Shannon isn't around to tell her side of the story.

So Detective Johnson and Rickett reviewed Clay's story from December 1st once again. They requested Clay's cell phone records from the provider, and they began going back to speak with those close to Shannon, specifically asking them if there was anything suspicious they noticed about Clay.