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It was Halloween Week 1992 in Oil City, Pennsylvania. About 11,000 people lived in the small Rust Belt town. It was the type of place where everybody knew their neighbors and kids were free to roam the streets unsupervised. When it came to Halloween, that meant they often went trick or treating without their parents hovering over them. The holiday technically wasn't until Saturday, but the whole week leading up to it was filled with activities and 11 year old Shauna Howe was excited about every one of them. Decorating her house, buying candy, and most of all, putting together her costume. She loved Halloween and this year she decided to go as a gymnast. On the afternoon of Tuesday, October 27, she came bounding down the stairs of her mom's place in a turquoise bodysuit. She was in a Girl Scouts troupe and they were having their weekly meeting that evening. In the spirit of Halloween. They were all supposed to come in costume. Shauna was one of four kids. She had two younger sisters and a brother. Their parents were divorced and shared custody of the children. Despite the divorce, Shauna and her siblings seemed like happy, well adjusted kids. Shawna was an outgoing girl with joyous energy. She had a page boy haircut and a slight gap between her two front teeth. Her mom, Lucy Howe, described her as sassy, headstrong and independent. So Lucy thought nothing of sending Shauna off to the Girl Scouts party on her own. She gave her a hug and told her she loved her. Around 4:30 that afternoon, Shauna headed out. The Girl Scouts meeting finished on time at around 8pm that night. Afterwards, Shauna and her best friend Joiel started walking home. They lived a few streets apart, so they went most of the way together before splitting up. Then joeyelle turned one way and Shauna turned the other, skipping down first street without a care in the world. A local man named Dan Peyton happened to be walking on the other side of the street at the same time. He smiled when he saw her costume. The kids seemed to be getting dressed up for Halloween earlier every year. But then Dan saw something that made him slow his steps. A tall, thin man in dark clothes and a baseball cap was heading directly toward Shauna. Dan barely had time to register the unsettling flutter in his stomach before suddenly the man in the baseball cap grabbed Shauna. She screamed and the man covered her mouth with his hand. Then he carried her off and turned down another street, disappearing around the corner. Dan took off running trying to catch up with them, but by the time he made it around the corner, the man was getting into a small red car. Dan couldn't see where Shauna was, but he assumed she was already in the vehicle. The car hit the gas and peeled down the street before Dan could get a good look at the license plate. The but he was pretty sure it had been a Pennsylvania plate. Panicked, Dan started knocking on doors trying to find help. This was before cell phones, so he needed to get a landline. Finally someone answered and called the cops. Officers showed up at the scene of the abduction about 15 to 20 minutes later. Dan told them everything he'd seen, but since he didn't recognize Shauna or the stranger in the baseball hat, it wasn't much to go on. Around that same time at 8:30pm, Shauna's mom, Lucy called the house to check in. She was out for the evening, but her live in boyfriend, John Brown was home. He answered and said that Shauna wasn't back yet. Lucy found this odd. The Girl Scouts meeting should have been over by 8pm and Shawna was supposed to come straight home. Still, she didn't jump to any conclusions. Maybe Shauna had gotten distracted comparing costumes with her friends. Lucy called back an hour later, around 9.30pm John said Shauna still wasn't back. That was when Lucy started to worry. She told John to call the hospital to see if there had been any accidents. She would be home as soon as possible. She arrived about half an hour later. When Lucy learned that Shawna was still mia, she picked up the phone and called the police Officer Robert Wenner was on patrol duty that night. He drove to the house and talked to Lucy, making sure to get all the details. At that point, it still seemed possible that Shawna might have just gone to a friend's house. But then Wenner's radio crackled to life and a report came in. There was a man at the station who'd witnessed a child being abducted. The victim was a young girl wearing a turquoise bodysuit. And that was how Lucy learned her daughter had been kidnapped. Local officers immediately jumped into action. Around 25 of them went out looking for Shawna. In a town with a population of less than 12,000, that was a lot of manpower. Some officers set up roadblocks and stopped every passing car. They asked if anyone had witnessed anything strange or if they'd seen the reported red car driving around. Other policemen patrolled the city in grid patterns, driving up and down every street and alley, searching for the 11 year old. The silent, terrifying truth hovered over all of them. With every passing hour, it was less and less likely they would find Shauna alive. By morning, news of her abduction had spread throughout the community. Hundreds of civilian volunteers joined the search for her. It seemed like nearly the whole town was on the hunt. Everyone except for Shawna's mother, Lucy. Police told her to stay home and wait. She needed to be there in case the kidnapper called. It was possible they might want a ransom for Lucy's return. The phone never rang. Lucy paced back and forth, wishing she was out on the street searching herself. But all she could do was sit tight and pray that someone would find Shauna. The authorities looked for her everywhere. They searched backyards and parks and the wooded areas around town. But there was no sign of Shauna. Then on Thursday, October 29, two days after Shauna's disappearance, a local man spotted something on under a bridge. He was out camping in an area called Coulter's Hole, about eight miles from downtown. It was a spot where locals swam in the river had picnics. It was also known as a place where teenagers went to drink and smoke. The man had left his campsite and was about to drive home when he noticed what looked like a piece of turquoise fabric in the brush. Everyone in town had heard about Shauna's disappearance and they knew she was wearing a gymnastics leotard. That night, the man quickly called the police and reported his discovery. The police showed up and confirmed the fabric was a child's turquoise bodysuit. It was damp and looked like it had been left in the bushes overnight. Officers called John Brown, Lucy Howe's boyfriend, to identify it. They didn't want to upset Lucy unless it was absolutely necessary. When John arrived, he confirmed that it was Shauna's gymnastics costume. Silence fell over the officers at Culture's Hole. No one wanted to say what they were all thinking. That it was becoming more and more likely that something unspeakable had happened to Shauna Howe. On October 27, 1992, a witness saw 11 year old Shauna Howe get abducted off a street corner in Oil City, Pennsylvania. Two days later, authorities found her Halloween costume in the undergrowth below a bridge. After closer inspection, authorities found a stain on the turquoise bodysuit. They sent the bodysuit to the crime lab for testing. Technicians confirmed the stain was from semen, and they were able to extract enough of it to get a DNA profile. If detectives found a suspect, they could test it for a match. But first, and most importantly, they needed to find Shauna. She could still be out there somewhere, hopefully still alive. October 30th was gray, misty and miserable. Authorities had been searching for Shauna for three days with no leads. Then that Friday morning, the phone rang at the station. A man named Bill Crabtree was on the line. He thought he'd found Shauna. He said he'd just left Coulter's Hole, the area where Shauna's bodysuit had been found the day before. He said there was a body in the creek below a railroad bridge. The officer who answered the call was confused. Law enforcement had combed that entire area just 24 hours earlier and found nothing. Still, officers raced to the scene to see for themselves. They arrived just before 9am and sure enough, in the creek, a few hundred feet away from where Shauna's bodysuit had been found, there was a body floating face up in the water, stuck between a rock and a log. The body was small and clearly female. There were no other missing 11 year old girls in the area. It had to be Shauna, since detectives had searched the area the day before. They reasoned the kidnapper must have come to the bridge overnight to kill Shauna and dispose of her body. And before long, they found another piece of evidence to support this theory. Up on the bridge was a pair of shoes. They seemed like Shauna's size. They also looked like they'd been placed there deliberately, the toes facing different directions, like someone had staged them. And there was also a reinforcing support bar below the bridge that appeared to have blood on it. To detectives, it seemed obvious that Shauna had been thrown from the bridge and hit the bar on the way down. The only other piece of evidence they found was a candy wrapper discarded nearby. Although they didn't think much of it at the time. Besides that, there were no other clues at the scene. They had to turn to the autopsy for answers. By November 1, the results of Shauna's autopsy were in the. They determined the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the chest and trauma injuries to the head. They also said that Shauna had scuffs and scrapes on her knees, almost like carpet burns. These could indicate she'd been kept in a small area where she had to crawl around. The medical examiner also confirmed that Shauna had been alive when she was thrown from the bridge. She had used her arm to break her fall, dislocating her shoulder in the process. She'd likely hit the piece of rebar the detectives had spotted on her way down. That, combined with the impact of the fall onto the rocky creek bed, had left her with fatal chest and head injuries. But her death hadn't been instantaneous. Shauna had probably been alive for about five to 10 minutes before she died. It was, and is, horrifying to think about, and it only pushed detectives to ramp up their investigation into her killer. Without any clear leads, authorities set out to interview everyone in Shauna's orbit. After all, child abductions by total strangers are rare. It's much more likely that the person responsible knew Shauna beforehand. Detectives started with her family the same day they found Shawna's body. They brought her mom, Lucy, in for questioning. They also interviewed her boyfriend, John Brown, and took DNA samples from him. It must have felt intrusive, but Lucy and John were cooperative. They knew they weren't responsible for Shawna's death. The police could take whatever they wanted. But then officers asked for DNA samples from Shauna's brother, who wasn't much older than Shauna herself. Lucy thought it was ridiculous to drag a child into this ugliness. She was about to refuse and make a scene, but then her son told her he wanted to help, so Lucy relented. The police didn't stop there, though. They also took DNA samples from Shawna's uncles who'd been helping with the search. All the samples were tested. None of them was a match to the DNA found on the bodysuit. So detectives moved on to anyone Shauna knew. From school. They talked to all of her fellow girl scouts and their parents. But even after all that questioning, they weren't any closer to a killer. At that point, detectives had to work with the information they did have, which meant revisiting some previous clues. One of the first suspects outside of the family was Bill Crabtree, the man who found Shawna's body. Coincidentally, he also drove a small red car, just like the kidnapper's vehicle. Police questioned Bill about why he was at Coulter's Hole the morning of October 30, but he swore up and down that he'd just been camping. They searched his car to see if there was any evidence of Shauna being in it. They took a DNA sample, too, but there was nothing in the car, and his DNA wasn't a match. So Bill got ruled out. But he wasn't the only good Samaritan under the microscope. Detectives also questioned Dan Paton, the witness who reported reported Shawna's abduction. Dan said he was interrogated twice, and the way the detectives spoke to him made him feel like he was being considered a suspect. Although, thankfully for Dan, it went no further than that. Once Dan and Bill were both cleared, detectives moved on to other more likely suspects. One was a local man named Michael Pruitt. He lived a few doors down from where Shauna had been abducted, and he had suddenly left town the day after her body was found. Detectives searched his house and discovered a small cubby hole under his stairway. They thought it might be the place Shawna was kept before she was killed, where she'd gotten the abrasions that the medical examiner noted during the autopsy. The police gathered DNA samples from the house and sent them off to the crime lab. They were convinced they had the right man. It seemed like all the pieces were falling together, but then the tests came back negative. Michael Pruitt wasn't a match either, and so another prime suspect was ruled out. Just as they were about to lose hope, detectives got one more promising lead. Somebody called the station and suggested that another local man named Ted Walker might have something to do with it. Walker, who was around 34 years old, worked at the pizza shop in town that Shauna had frequented. Apparently, Walker always tried to hug the young girls who came in for slices. The frightened girls would run away from him. Walker also happened to drive a small red car. Those were two red flags against Walker. So the police went to check him out. But they tried to keep their expectations low. They'd been down this road before. And sure enough, once again, the DNA testing came up clear. Walker wasn't their man. The nightmare just kept going. Days turned into weeks, which turned into months. Eventually, a whole year had passed, then two. And despite testing over 100 DNA samples, investigators didn't get a single hit. It was starting to seem like they might never solve the case. CASE but then, three years after Shawna's murder, there was another violent kidnapping in Oil City. And detectives wondered if Shawna's killer had struck again. In 2013, the murders of Claudia Maupin and Chip Northup left their town of Davis, California, paralyzed in fear. The victims were an elderly couple. It was up close and personal. Even more chilling, the prime suspect was a teenager. He's. I think the word is psychotic. From 48 hours binge the full series 15 inside the Daniel Marsh Murders now on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. In October 1992, 11 year old Shawn Howe was abducted and murdered. While detectives had several initial suspects, none of them matched the DNA sample taken from the bodysuit Shawna was wearing when she disappeared, so no arrests were made. Nearly three years passed before Shawna's case got a new life. It was the night of July 30, 1995. Officer Robert Wilson Wenner was enjoying his night off when he got a call from the station. He needed to come in right away. There was a woman who just escaped a violent abduction attempt. Wenner sat up straight, listening as the other officer on the line rattled off the details. The woman had been at a local tavern where she met a man. Unbeknownst to her, this man followed her home after she left. Before she got to her front door, he jumped out of his car, grabbed her and tried to force her into his trunk. When she fought back, he shoved her to the ground, trying to bash her head against the concrete. He only let up when another car drove by and he got spooked. That was when the woman managed to escape. Most disturbing of all, the attack happened on the same route Shauna Howe had taken home three years earlier. But this time the police had a clear suspect. 23 year old James O', Brien, aka Jimmy. Wenner, had been suspicious of Jimmy and his brother, 29 year old Tim, since Shauna's murder. The O' Briens were local Oil City men with a checkered history of arrests and violence. According to Wenner, Jimmy in particular was pure evil. And this new report was so similar to Shawna's kidnapping, Winter couldn't help thinking the two events might be related. Winter looked into it and it turned out that detectives on Shawna's case had investigated, investigated the brothers back in 1992. Apparently both Jimmy and Tim had been in jail at the time, so they'd been ruled out. A person can't be in two places at once. So all Winter could do was arrest Jimmy o' Brien for the abduction attempt on the woman at the bar. Jimmy was convicted soon after and sent back to jail. But while he was in prison, another young girl went missing from Oil city. It was two years later, on October 29, 1997, almost five years to the day since Shawna's body was found. Halloween was just around the corner. Ever since Shawna's murder, police had extra patrols out for the holiday and festivities were restricted to daylight hours because as everyone knew, there was still a killer on the loose. Four year old Shanae Freeman was playing in her backyard with another little girl and boy while her mom chatted with a friend inside. As the three kids messed around, the boy cut himself on something. So he ran inside for a bandaid. That was when a man appeared and abducted she Cheney in broad daylight. The other little girl saw it happen. When Cheney's mom learned her daughter was gone, she immediately began looking for her. Soon, news spread through the town that it had happened again. Another girl had gone missing just before Halloween. The community joined the search, just like they had with Shauna. But as the evening settled in and it started getting bright darker outside, many wondered if Cheney was destined for the same fate. The Oil City police weren't about to let that happen. They fanned out, questioning anyone who might know where Cheney was. That included speaking with every volunteer in the growing search parties. 17 year old Nicholas Bowen was among them. Officer Winter watched Bowen give Shanae's mother a hug. But something about the way he was acting seemed off. So Wenner decided to speak with Bowen himself. And as they talked, Wenner became even more suspicious about Bowen's body language. It seemed like he was hiding something. So Wenner pressed gently. He put a hand on Bowen's arm and told him he really needed his help to find out what happened to Shanae. And all of a sudden, Bowen crumbled. He confessed that he knew where she was and that she was badly hurt and bleeding. Winter kept his cool, telling Bowen that he had seen a lot of people, people who'd lost a lot of blood and still lived. If Bowen could bring Wenner to her, they could make sure she was okay. Bowen agreed. Then he led Wenner to a shallow grave where he had buried the four year old. He had covered her with leaves just a few hundred feet away from her home. Tragically, by the time they got there, it was too late. Shanae was already dead. An autopsy later determined she'd been sexually assaulted, then hit on the head. Her cause of death was blunt force trauma. Officer Wenner arrested Bowen, and he was charged with murder. The news quickly spread throughout town, and people wondered if he was responsible for Shauna's death too. But the police weren't so convinced. He would have been 12 years old at the time of Shawna's murder. They determined that he couldn't have been the perpetrator, presumably because he wouldn't have been old enough to drive the red car spotted at the scene. Shawna's mom, Lucy Howe, was devastated. There had been a moment of hope that her family's ordeal would come to an end. She and her now husband, John Brown, had reached out to the Freemans to offer support through Shanae's disappearance. Unfortunately, Lucy and John knew exactly what they were going through. Although the truth was grim, Shanae's parents got what Lucy Howe still longed for. Closure. It had been five long, excruciating years since since Shawna was killed. And while the Freemans now knew what happened to their daughter, Lucy was still in the dark. It didn't seem like she would get an answer anytime soon. As time passed, detectives retired or got reassigned. But not everyone was giving up. Eventually, a new investigator with a fresh perspective would come onto the scene and change the case forever. Because it turned out, Shawna's killer was much closer to home than anyone had ever imagined. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy and this is Murder True Crime Stories. Come back next time for part two on the abduction and murder of Shawna Howe and all the people it affected. True Crime Stories is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media, Rimehouse on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review and follow True Crime Stories. Wherever you get your podcasts, your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad free and instead of having to wait for each episode of a two part series, you'll get access to both at once. Plus exciting bonus content will be back on Thursday. True Crime Stories is hosted by Me, Carter Roy and is a Crime House original. Powered by Pave Studios, this episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team. Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Natalie Pertzofsky, Rachel Engelman, Lori Marinelli, Sarah Camp, Alex Burns, Hania Saeed and Russell Nash. Thank you for joining us. And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. 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