A Knife in the Night

Summary

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Deadly Engagement: "A Knife in the Night"

Podcast: Deadly Engagement (Dateline/NBC News)
Host: Josh Mankiewicz
Date: September 25, 2025
Episode Summary by Section with Timestamps and Quotes

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Brief Overview

In this episode, Josh Mankiewicz delves deep into the tragic connection between Denita Smith, a talented graduate student, and Shannon Crawley, a determined single mother, whose lives intersected in a devastating love triangle with Jermir Stroud, a Greensboro police officer. What follows is an intricate tale of jealousy, betrayal, and shifting accusations, culminating in murder and a second, shocking allegation of assault. The episode meticulously traces the unraveling of all three lives in the wake of Denita's death, featuring conflicting stories, family perspectives, and investigative twists.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Portraits of Denita Smith and Shannon Crawley

• Comparison of Paths:
  • Both women described as creative, driven, and intelligent, but with distinct life trajectories.
  • Ann Crawley: “Very sensitive, very creative, very smart, very articulate. She's a writer.” (01:04)
  • Narration: Shannon overcame hardships as a young, single mother and later secured a solid job at a 911 call center.

2. Introduction of Jermir Stroud and the Love Triangle

• Both women, unknowingly, became romantically involved with Jermir Stroud.
• Shannon Crawley: “He was charming. It was very nice. We got along. We had a lot in common.” (03:04)
• Narration: The doomed triangle is set—"This isn't about did this person commit this crime? This one is about which one is it?" (03:11)

3. Murder and Conflicting Accusations

• Denita Smith is shot dead; suspicion quickly falls on Shannon Crawley.

• Shannon’s Version:

  • Claims Jermir orchestrated the murder, threatened her children, and forced her presence at the scene.
  • Shannon Crawley: “Either you die for your kids or the kids die for you. What's your choice?” (06:00)
  • Asserts she did not know Denita existed.
  • Shannon Crawley: “I never shot anybody. I didn't kill anyone. I didn't...I had never seen her before.” (06:19)

• Jermir’s Side:

  • Maintains innocence, paints Shannon as obsessive and erratic, denies knowing her location or stalking her after the incident.
  • Claims to have kept records and reported strange calls from Shannon to his department. (27:07)

4. Polygraph and Aftermath

• Shannon volunteers for a polygraph to prove her innocence—she fails.

• Polygraph Examiner: “She didn't pass the test, as we're not surprised.” (08:11)

• Examiner suspects Shannon took something to try to calm herself and beat the test.

  • “She made an effort to fool the test.” (08:20)

• Detectives’ Reaction:

  • Began to regard Shannon as more desperate and dangerous.
  • Suspicion intensifies: “I don't trust to be on the highway with her at the same time.” (09:08)

5. Allegations of Stalking and Harassment

• After Shannon posts bail, she claims Jermir aggressively stalks and harasses her, even after a failed restraining order.

• Shannon Crawley: “Immediately after I got out, he filed for a restraining order...then started calling me, wanting to know what I had told the police.” (11:48)

• She is instructed by the District Attorney to record calls for evidence.

• Shannon Crawley: “They then said, record the phone calls. And I did that.” (12:57)

• Family feels harassed and under siege; unsettling, constant phone calls reported.

  • Ann Crawley: “I remember I could hear someone whispering. It was very soft...a lot of expletives.” (14:30)
  • Keith Crawley Sr.: “We would always show a block number...after a while, even though you can't probably prove it was him, you know who it is calling?” (16:36)

• All members recount seeing Jermir in their neighborhood, watching, and following them.

  • Ann Crawley: “I chased him through the neighborhood one day...The kids would run in the house because they would see him.” (17:36)

6. DA’s Skepticism of Recorded Calls

• Despite the family’s certainty that the recordings incriminate Jermir, the DA expresses doubt—the voice might not be his.
• Shannon Crawley: “I felt betrayed.” (18:47)

7. Alleged Assault: The Knife in the Night

• The dramatic centerpiece: Shannon alleges Jermir broke into her mother’s backyard in Charlotte and raped her at knifepoint.

• Ann Crawley’s Account:

  • Finds Shannon “half naked, crawling across the bedroom floor...hysterical.” (20:54)
  • Shannon, in distress, repeatedly claims Jermir “was here...he hurt me.”
  • Ann: “I just put my robe around her because she was. She was naked from the...I believe, from the waist down...” (21:49)

• Shannon’s Testimony:

  • Describes a protracted, brutal encounter—Jermir dressed in black, assaulted her, used a knife when he lost his erection.
  • Shannon Crawley: “He got on top of me and raped repeatedly...he used the knife to penetrate me.” (23:23)

• Medical chart records superficial wounds but not the severe injuries her story would suggest.

  • She reports fighting back and eventually escaping.
  • Shannon: “I got up and ran and he started to chase after me...he just stopped running and he just kind of laughed at me.” (24:25)

8. Police Investigations and DNA Requests

• Charlotte police respond to the rape allegation, interview both parties.
• Jermir Stroud: States he was nowhere near Charlotte, provides an alibi (work, friends, late night TV), and agrees to provide DNA.
  • “She was telling people I was contacting her and blaming me for the murder...they were going to try to make me look bad.” (29:06)
  • Expresses frustration and desires to be left alone: “When it shows that she's lying, I would like for some law enforcement agents...this is blatantly alive. I mean, I just want to be left alone.” (31:34)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Polygraph Moment:

  • "She did. We had from the North Carolina State bureau of Investigation, the head polygraph examiner for the state administered the test.” (07:28)

• Chilling Allegation:

  • “His exact words to me were, either you die for your kids or the kids die for you. What's your choice? So I went.” – Shannon (06:00)
  • “He got on top of me and raped repeatedly...he used the knife to penetrate me.” – Shannon (23:23)

• Family Under Siege:

  • "He would sit behind the house. The kids would run in the house because they would see him...driving through the neighborhood, and he would sit behind the house and watch." – Ann Crawley (17:36)

• DA’s Doubt:

  • “He didn’t believe the voice on those tapes actually belonged to Jermir Stroud.” (18:47)

• Denial and Desperation:

  • “I never shot anybody...I had no reason to. I didn’t know who she was. I had never seen her before.” – Shannon (06:19)
  • “I would like for some law enforcement agents because this is blatantly alive. I mean, I just want to be left alone.” – Jermir (31:34)

• Police/Ambulance Scene:

  • “She was hysterical and she’s shaking...she kept saying, he hurt me.” – Ann (20:54)

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Important Timestamps

• 01:04: Ann Crawley describes Shannon’s talents and sensitivities
• 03:04: Shannon first describes how she met Jermir and her feelings toward him
• 06:00–06:19: Shannon recounts Jermir’s threat and denies knowing Denita
• 07:22–08:14: Polygraph testing and its results
• 11:48–12:57: Description of post-bail harassment and request to record calls
• 13:48–16:05: Audio evidence from recorded calls and family’s sense of terror
• 18:47: Shannon’s reaction to DA not believing her evidence
• 19:15–21:49: The night of the alleged attack in Charlotte
• 23:23–24:25: Shannon’s detailed account of the sexual assault
• 29:06–31:34: Jermir’s statements in police interview and his defense

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Tone and Language

The episode retains the investigative, skeptical, sometimes gritty tone Dateline and Mankiewicz are known for. Both victim and accused are allowed to speak in their own words, including moments of desperation, confusion, and conviction. The language is direct, sometimes raw—never sensationalized, but always humanizing.

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Final Takeaway

"A Knife in the Night" exposes the tangled aftermath of a love triangle turned deadly, overlaying conflicting narratives with the pain and suspicion that tear two families apart. Each side is fraught with fear—one with the burden of accusation and fleeing from a perceived threat, the other with repeated denials and claims of victimization at the hands of law enforcement and family vengeance. The truth remains elusive, with listeners left questioning who is protecting whom, and who, if anyone, is telling the whole truth.

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Transcript

[Josh Mankiewicz]

With my job, I can't drink during the week. Weekends are a different story. Ugh.

[Shannon Crawley]

After eight hours of this, I have earned my wine. You know what I'm saying?

[Josh Mankiewicz]

My family is a lot. It takes me four beers just to hang out with them. Binge drinking isn't all college kids doing keg stands. Oregonians in their 30s and 40s binge drink at close to the same rates as younger people, raising our risk for long term health problems. [e-mail] an OHA initiative.

[Shannon Crawley]

The fight for our future starts with.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Belief in our nation and its promise.

[Shannon Crawley]

In our future and its potential. Together, we answer America's call to win.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

We are Marines.

[Shannon Crawley]

We were made for this.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

In a different time and place, Shannon Crawley and Danita Smith might have been friends. Like Danita, the young woman whose murder is at the center of our story, Shannon was determined, hardworking, and full of wonder.

[Ann Crawley]

Very sensitive, very creative, very smart, very articulate. She's a writer.

[Jermir Stroud]

Poetry, short stories, that sort of thing. Very creative.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Just like Danita. Shannon was a very good student.

[Ann Crawley]

English was her strongest subject.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

It is undeniable. If fate had dealt Shannon a different hand, she and Danita might have met in college and maybe formed a bond that would have lasted long past graduation. Well, that is not the way it went. Unlike Danita, who went to college and then on to grad school, Shannon became the mother of two while still a teenager.

[Ann Crawley]

She didn't want to be a statistic. That's Shannon's mom, Ann, the typical, you know, welfare mother. She wanted to take care of her children, and that's what she did.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Instead of sorority pledge parties and fancy summer fellowships, Shannon struggled to make ends meet. She worked a lot of odd jobs. And that's Shannon's brother, Keith Crawley Jr. Selling vacuum cleaners, worked in a factory. Then in 2000, Shannon found work at the 911 call center in Greensboro. It was a good job, and by all accounts, Shannon was good at had been a tough road. But Shannon Crawley beat the odds.

[Ann Crawley]

She worked six months straight, 12 hour shifts to buy a house. At 27 years old, I think that's quite an accomplishment for a single mother.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

This is the story of two talented young women on two entirely different life paths. Two women who never met socially, but who are forever linked by one common denominator. They both fell for the same man, Jermier Stroud.

[Shannon Crawley]

He was charming. It was very nice. We got along. We had a lot in common.

[Ann Crawley]

She thought he was absolutely gorgeous.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Love triangles seldom have happy endings. And this one with one person dead and the other two accusing each other of murder is no exception. This isn't about did this person commit this crime? This one is about which one is it?

[Shannon Crawley]

Is it Jameer or is it Shannon?

[Josh Mankiewicz]

In this episode, you'll hear just how far the he said, she said finger pointing went.

[Shannon Crawley]

We have the recordings where he admits that he killed her.

[Polygraph Examiner]

She volunteered for a polygraph. The head polygraph examiner for the state administered the test.

[Jermir Stroud]

When it shows that she's lying, I would like for some law enforcement agency prosecute.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

And you'll hear how the murder investigation was rocked by an explosive new accusation.

[Shannon Crawley]

He got on top of being raped. Who is this guy? Is the Greensboro police officer.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is Deadly Engagement, a podcast from Dateline. Episode four, A Knife in the Night. For more than a year after the shooting death of Danita Smith, Shannon Crawley, her accused killer, tried to clear her name. Shannon insisted to anyone who would listen that it was not her, but her former lover, Jermir Stroud, who had pulled the trigger. It was Jermir, she said, who forced her to ride with him to Durham that day. Jermir, who insisted she drive her car. Jermir, who directed her to Danita's apartment and told her to wait in the car.

[Shannon Crawley]

I don't know that his plan that day was to go there and shoot her.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

That's Shannon Crawley speaking in an interview I did with her years later. If Jameer's plan is to frame you for Danita's murder, leaving aside that I don't know what his motive would be in that, why bring you along? Why not kill Danita and plant the gun in your car or your house?

[Shannon Crawley]

I think he acted in the spur of the moment, but I don't believe that he set out to deliberately go there and shoot her. I believe that he was after me. I honestly believed that he was going to kill me.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Why would Jermir Stroud, a police officer, want to kill anyone, much less someone he claimed to love?

[Shannon Crawley]

I don't. I don't know.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

She said Jermir had been emotional and erratic with her for months, stalking Shannon, intimidating her, pleading with her to come back to him. Remember, Shannon told Detective Pate Jermir had even threatened to kill her children on the day of the murder if she didn't take that ride with him to Durham.

[Shannon Crawley]

His exact words to me were, either you die for your kids or the kids die for you. What's your choice? So I went.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

As for Danita, well, Shannon insisted she had no idea Danita Smith even existed.

[Shannon Crawley]

I can't sit here and tell you that everything I did was right. I can't. But one thing I can absolutely tell you is I never shot anybody. I didn't kill anyone. I didn't. I had no reason to. I didn't know who she was. I had never seen her before. I knew nothing about her. There's no way I could have known anything about her or where she lived at all.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

And if you had found out that she existed, what would have happened?

[Shannon Crawley]

He and I would have broken up, and that would have been the end of it. I never would have been involved with him if I knew that he was involved with someone else.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

You think Jumir killed Danada?

[Shannon Crawley]

I absolutely believe that he did.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Though Shannon's family was steadfast in their support for her and 100% believed her version of what happened, Detective Pate and the Durham DA did not. So in April 2008, Shannon and her lawyers approached Detective Pate with a proposition. Shannon was willing to have her veracity tested by the state Bureau of Investigation.

[Polygraph Examiner]

Polygraph test was given to Shannon at a SBI substation.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

She volunteered for a polygraph.

[Polygraph Examiner]

She did. We had from the North Carolina State bureau of Investigation, the head polygraph examiner for the state administered the test.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

In a small, quiet room, a polygrapher applied the electrodes that would measure Shannon's heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, and perspiration. Then he asked her 20 questions, beginning with, how do you think you'll do on this test? Shannon answered, I am going to pass. When asked if she had killed Anita, Shannon responded, no. When the test was done, the polygrapher tallied up the results.

[Polygraph Examiner]

She didn't pass the test, as we're not surprised.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Then, Detective Pate says the polygrapher pulled him aside and told him this.

[Polygraph Examiner]

I can tell you without a doubt that she took something to calm herself down before this test. Because you can take something and to calm yourself down, but when you lie, it's still going. No matter how low calm you make yourself, there's still going to be a spike. So instead of being up, starting up here and spiking up here, okay, you just start here and spike up here. But she made an effort to. To fool the test.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Polygraphs are not admissible in court. Even so, the detective and the DA Saw the results as confirmation of something they had long believed. Shannon Crawley was a killer. And now, out on bail with her options of avoiding trial running out, she was as dangerous as dynamite.

[Polygraph Examiner]

She puts her head on the steering wheel For a minute she looks up like, for, like burning a hole through the building with her eyes. Then she just puts it in drive. Insists there for a second. When she put it in drive, I just pulled off. And the other detective says, what are you doing? You're not gonna follow her. I said, I'm gonna be honest with you. I don't trust to be on the highway with her at the same time. And she knows that, you know, she might think, hey, if I get rid of him, slow things down, at least slow things down. And I didn't know if she thought this was a last ditch effort. I don't know what's going through her head. I didn't know if she was gonna try to take herself out and do something crazy on the highway.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

When she walked out of that building, did she know she'd failed the polygraph?

[Polygraph Examiner]

She did.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

They told her right there.

[Polygraph Examiner]

They did, they did. And honestly, I thought that the case was so good that I didn't want to do anything to jeopardize it.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

No, the detective wanted to keep his distance now and let the process run its course. Shannon Crawley, on the other hand, well, she drove away from that polygraph test knowing she would need to find another way to prove her innocence.

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[Josh Mankiewicz]

The suburban neighborhood where Jermere Stroud and Shannon Crawley lived was not big enough for the both of them. That much was clear to Jermir the minute Shannon bonded out of jail. After all, Shannon had been charged with murdering Jermir's fiance.

[Shannon Crawley]

Immediately after I got out, he filed for a restraining order. We went through a hearing and the restraining order was denied. Maybe a week after, he started calling me, wanting to know what I had told the Police.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Shannon told her lawyers the calls made her uncomfortable.

[Shannon Crawley]

After I told my attorneys that he was calling me, they contacted the Durham District Attorney's office and let them know he's calling her. That's when the phone calls increased, the frequency of the phone calls increased, and the nature of the phone calls changed.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

What was he saying? What was Jamere saying now?

[Shannon Crawley]

He was threatening to kill me if I told him anything.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

When she and her attorneys met with Durham County Assistant DA David Sacks and told him about the calls, the prosecutor asked them to bring him proof.

[Shannon Crawley]

That is what the District Attorney's office told us. They are the ones that asked me to record the phone calls. I did not volunteer to do that. I wanted them to make him stop. That was my initial thought. Make him stop. Make him leave me alone. They then said, record the phone calls.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

And try to get him to say something incriminating.

[Shannon Crawley]

And I did that. Hello? Jameer. What do you want? We've been talking to nobody. What do you expect, Jeremiah? You got me in the middle of your mess. Don't you try to figure.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

The recordings were a decidedly low tech endeavor. Shannon's attorneys basically bought tape recording equipment from Radio Shack and showed Shannon how to push the record button. As a result, it's often hard to hear what is being said, except for Shannon Crawley and her family, because to them, those recordings sounded like exoneration.

[Shannon Crawley]

You know, I didn't do anything. You need to tell the truth, man. I ain't going to jail. And I'm supposed to for something I didn't do. I think they get you on that. Well, they did because you lied.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

I noticed you.

[Shannon Crawley]

The kids. Why are you whispering? Know why.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

When Shannon was taping these phone calls that you said were from Jermaine, did you think, this is the evidence that's going to. Oh, yeah, it's going to turn everything around. Once police and prosecutors hear this, they're going to drop the charges.

[Ann Crawley]

They're going to drop the charges.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Ann Crawley told me she was on the receiving end of some of those calls.

[Ann Crawley]

I remember I could hear. Hear someone whispering. It was very soft, you know, shut, shut your. You know, and it was just a lot of expletives.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

You get on the phone sometimes and.

[Ann Crawley]

Yeah, yeah, please stop. Just stop.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Leave us alone.

[Shannon Crawley]

And.

[Ann Crawley]

And, you know, and, you know, either laugh or hang up again. I would answer the phone and he would think it was, Shannon ain't talking to me.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

And you knew his voice?

[Ann Crawley]

Oh, by then, yeah, I knew his voice.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

And it was always the same person.

[Ann Crawley]

Always the same Person.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Shannon says the calls were constant, creepy and unsettling. And what really concerned Shannon was that Jir lived close by. So after barely a year in that new house she had scrimped and saved to buy, Shannon put it back on the market.

[Shannon Crawley]

I couldn't go back to my house. We both owned houses in the same subdivision. I did not go back to my house after that. I moved in with my mother.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Shannon's mother, Ann, had recently separated from Shannon's father. She had rented a place in Concord. So Shannon and the kids moved there. Shannon thought she would be safe from harassment there, more than 70 miles away from Jermir Stroud. She says she was wrong about that. The phone calls kept coming. I've been at the house on numerous.

[Jermir Stroud]

Occasions when he has called the house.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

That is Shannon's dad, Keith Crawley Senior. I think there's one part of the conversation where he said, I killed her. And I kill you, too.

[Shannon Crawley]

Why did you kill her? You said you don't. You gonna kill me too? Keep talking. No.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Much more proof do you need? As a former sheriff's deputy in another state, Mr. Crawley would take a particular interest in the police handling of his daughter's case.

[Jermir Stroud]

Sometimes I would hear her side of.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

The conversation at the times.

[Jermir Stroud]

If my wife picked up the phone.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Or I picked up the phone, there'd be just silence.

[Jermir Stroud]

No one would say anything. We would always show a block number or number that we couldn't access on a caller id. And after a while, even though you.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Can'T probably prove it was him, you know who it is calling?

[Jermir Stroud]

Yeah, it's very obvious who's calling.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

In February 2008, Shannon's mom moved into a new house in a new subdivision on the east side of Charlotte. That house was more than 100 miles away from Jermier Stroud. But the Crawleys say it was there that Jermir found Shannon. He would appear in the neighborhood, just sit there in his car and watch the house.

[Jermir Stroud]

Follow her to work.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Follow her to work. Chandor.

[Shannon Crawley]

Yeah.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

You pointed at her. Follow you to work?

[Ann Crawley]

Yes.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Why?

[Ann Crawley]

I don't know. Sometimes she would have to use my car, you know, to go to see the lawyers, and she would take, you know, take me to work. And I think he followed me to see. Find out where I worked, because he'd show up at my job.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

You saw him?

[Ann Crawley]

I. Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. I chased him through the neighborhood one day. I just had enough with him. He would sit behind the house. The kids would run in the house because they would see him. Driving through the neighborhood, and he would sit behind the house and watch.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

The way the Crawleys saw it, they were practically living under siege, hounded by a Greensboro police officer who lived an hour and a half away.

[Ann Crawley]

Sometimes he would think he was talking to me, and I would just be listening, you know? And once he told her, he said, that was your mother that answered the phone. The next time I call, you better answer.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Angry guy. Oh, yes.

[Ann Crawley]

Oh, my gosh.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

So angry guy. Jealous guy.

[Ann Crawley]

Jealous guy.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Shannon managed to get many of those calls on tape. Her family thought those recordings exonerated her. But after listening to them, the DA was unconvinced. He told Shannon's lawyers he didn't believe the voice on those tapes actually belonged to Jermir Stroud. What was your reaction when you realized the DA's, like, sort of didn't believe that that was really jir.

[Shannon Crawley]

I felt betrayed.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

According to Shannon, months of harassment and phone threats reached a climax on a hot Summer Night in June 2008. It was then, Shannon says, that Jermier Stroud suddenly appeared in her mother's backyard in Charlotte. Shannon was alone, and he had a knife. No one in the neighborhood heard a single sound until the sun came up.

[Shannon Crawley]

I just saw a bunch of police cars, and I saw Ann's daughter, I don't know her name, being taken into the ambulance. Okay. Would that be Shannon? Yes, her daughter. Okay. Being taken into the ambulance.

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[Josh Mankiewicz]

Whatever it was that happened in Charlotte on Downey Birch Road in the pre dawn hours of June 20, 2007, remains to this day a mystery. No one saw anything. No one heard anything. Except when Anne Crawley woke up that morning, she saw her daughter Shannon, half naked, crawling across the bedroom floor.

[Ann Crawley]

She's Hysterical. And she's shaking, and I'm like, what's the matter? And she's telling me. She said, jamir, he was here. He hurt me. And she kept saying, he hurt me. So I ran down the stairs, and the back door was open, and I didn't see anybody again. There was no houses in our backyard behind us at all. And the doorbell rang, and it was the police. Apparently, she hit the alarm, and she didn't remember, you know, hitting the alarm. But she didn't want to talk to the police.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

No. That morning, the very sight of police uniforms seemed to freak out Shannon. So Ann Crawley says she got her daughter to her feet, calmed her down, and walked her downstairs to where the EMTs had a gurney that would take her out to a waiting ambulance.

[Ann Crawley]

I just put my robe around her because she was. She was. She was naked from the. I believe, from the waist down. And she went to the hospital, and I had the kids.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Did Shannon tell you she'd been raped?

[Ann Crawley]

Yeah.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

At the hospital, while Shannon was waiting to be photographed, examined, and swabbed, all part of the standard rape kit, she spoke with Detective Pam Zencon from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Sex Crimes Unit. Shannon told Detective Zencon the whole ordeal began at around 2:30am that's when the family's new puppy started whining, signaling he needed to go out.

[Shannon Crawley]

I walked out into the grass, and the dog was using the bathroom, and he kind of stopped and started to turn around, which made me turn around, and before I could turn, he grabbed me around my waist and had the knife up to my throat and just told me not to say anything.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Shannon told the detective Jermir was dressed all in black. Black cargo pants, black shirt, black boots, and black gloves. She said that as Jermir was pulling her away from the house and deeper into a neighbor's backyard, she slipped on the wet grass and fell to the ground. That's when she says he got on top of her and started cutting, cutting her shorts and underwear off with a knife.

[Shannon Crawley]

And he got on top of me and raped repeatedly. Yeah, you're doing. You're doing so good. Just take your time. Sorry. He started getting upset because he lost his erection, and so he used the knife to penetrate me.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

One can imagine the look on the detective's face when she heard that. Shannon's medical chart did note a few superficial wounds to her genital area. However, there was no mention of the kind of injuries one might expect from the knife attack Shannon described.

[Shannon Crawley]

And then when he got his erection back, he. And you raped Me, a kid.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Shannon told the detective she could not remember if Jir used a condom or condoms during the assault. She did recall that it went on for hours.

[Shannon Crawley]

We would fight. I kept struggling to get away from him. And he would. I would end up on my stomach and try to crawl away from him. And he just kept pulling me back, back down and just laying on me. And then finally he put the knife down and I kind of pushed myself up and back and started kicking and hitting at him. And I got up and ran and he started to chase after me. And then I remember looking back and seeing he just stopped running. And he just kind of laughed at me, kept laughing and I ran inside.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

By then the sun was up and the neighbors who were stirring at that hour noticed police activity at the Crawley house.

[Jermir Stroud]

I was walking through my backyard and I seen some women's underwear and some rickshaws. So I'm not too sure if it was a sexual assault crime that took place.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

By Shannon's reckoning, her struggle with Jermir lasted for hours. And yet none of the neighbors reported hearing anything. And if you're wondering about the dog that apparently did not bark, a Yorkie Chihuahua mix well, Shannon's mom said she found him later that morning.

[Ann Crawley]

The dog did come upstairs and he hit him in the bed under my bed.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Hours after Shannon reported she had been sexually assaulted, Charlotte police went looking for the man she had named as her attacker, Jermir Stroud. Jermir was not hard to find. He was at home by 1:30 that afternoon. Two officers were in Greensboro to interview him. Here's how that interview sounded.

[Jermir Stroud]

The first time that you knew about the allegation from this morning was wit. How did you find that out? I was called by lieutenant rang up through the coffee, told me chief Charlotte type is on the way up.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

That is the voice of Jermier Stroud.

[Jermir Stroud]

That's the first time you knew what the nature of it was.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Jermeer gave the Charlotte cops a quick four or five sentence synopsis of his relationship with Shannon. Those sentences included her arrest for the murder of his fiance and her subsequent release on bond. Then, unprompted, Jermir launched into a lengthy discourse about her behavior towards him since she's been released.

[Jermir Stroud]

They just strange phone calls and hang up phone calls and things of that nature that I kept the record of and turned it into the gun police department.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

In Jermir's telling, it was Shannon who'd been acting erratically. He'd never stalked her, he'd never threatened her, and he didn't even know where she lived.

[Jermir Stroud]

Now don t told me that she was going with her mother for a while. Do you ever have any information that she was living in Charlotte now? No.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

According to Jermir, the last time he stopped in Charlotte for anything other than gas was two weeks earlier, on June 7, 2008. Jameer told the officers the date was significant to him and he marked it by visiting danita's grave himself.

[Jermir Stroud]

2008 was supposed to be our wedding day and I. I stopped there and then I got back home. 85 went straight to Atlanta.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

When asked about the last time he'd actually spoken with Shannon, Jermir said it was in late January when she called him.

[Jermir Stroud]

She called me from a untraceable redirect service number that doesn't allow you to trace the original source of the call and told me that she had some things that belonged to my fiance. So I wanted to get him back. I needed to meet her at Concord Mills Mall the next day. I did not meet with her. Notify the gun Fish attorney office David Sachs and Dun Police detective investigators Sean Pate and Lady tried to investigate the situation from there.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

J told the cops Shannon's latest allegation against him was part of a pattern.

[Jermir Stroud]

She was telling people I was contacting her and she was blaming me for the murder that they were going to try to make me look bad in a couple of you come trial time.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Is that what this was? An elaborate ruse related to an 18 month old murder investigation in Durham. The Charlotte cops didn't know they were there to investigate an alleged rape. So they started with the basics.

[Jermir Stroud]

Tell me a little bit about your job description and what your hours were last night. I'm a. What's called PNRC officer. It stands for Police Neighborhood Resource Center.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Jermeer told Charlotte police he'd worked the late shift the night before. It was well after midnight, he said when he clocked out.

[Jermir Stroud]

The last thing I did last night while I left work was I swiped my police ID into the PNRC office. And that is. That is a police system. Yeah, the log system.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

According to Jermir, he had a brief conversation with another officer on his way out the door. Then as he left town, Jermeer said He had a 20 minute phone conversation with a friend, then hit the drive through at McDonald's. He paid cash. Then he said he went straight home.

[Jermir Stroud]

Watch a little tv. You got any idea what time it was when you finally went to sleep? Martin was on TV One I fell asleep watching Martin on TV One. But I was probably about 3:30.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

That was the time Shannon Crawley had said she was being assaulted 85 miles away. Clearly, one of them was lying. The Charlotte cops knew of only one way to find out which one.

[Jermir Stroud]

We'd like to get a DNA sample from you. And we understand that in the past that you have had sexual relations with her. Obviously taken into account. And you said that you're fine with that? You're okay with that? Yes.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

By 2:00 clock that afternoon, Charlotte cops had their DNA sample and were on their way out the door. They'd only spent a half hour with Jermir, but by the time they left, it was clear to them Jermier Stroud was a frustrated man at the end of his rope.

[Jermir Stroud]

Before I shut off our reporters or anything you want to add, or when it shows that she's lying, I would like for some law enforcement agents because this is blatantly alive. I mean, I just want to be left alone.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

Next time.

[Shannon Crawley]

They took her to the hospital and.

[Ann Crawley]

My Aaron texted me that the doctor.

[Shannon Crawley]

The doctor's face didn't look good.

[Jermir Stroud]

I lift up my trash can the. And boom. I look down and I see this. This thing ain't nice. And I'm like, okay, that's just odd and weird.

[Polygraph Examiner]

No one wants to be that officer that says, you know what, lady, you're lying. No one wants to be that person. I mean, you're supposed to start, you know, start by believing.

[Josh Mankiewicz]

This podcast is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Tim Beacham is the producer. Marshall Hausfeld, Brian Drew and Deb Brown are audio editors. Kimberly Flores Gaynor is associate producer. Adam Gorfin is co executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole is senior executive producer from NBC News. Audio sound mixing by Rich Cutler. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

[Shannon Crawley]

I've never felt like this before. It's like you just get me. I feel like my true self with you. Does that sound crazy? And it doesn't hurt that you're gorgeous. Okay, that's it. I'm taking you home with me. I mean, you can't find shoes this good just anywhere. Find a shoe for every you from brands you love like Birkenstock, Nike, Adidas and more at your DSW store or dsw dot com.