Crime Junkie - INFAMOUS: Manhole Murders

Episode Date: November 30, 2020

The investigation into one man reported missing from South Bend, Indiana, uncovers four dead bodies and many uncomfortable truths, and shines a light into one of the darkest corners of America. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Sources for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/infamous-manhole-murders/ 

Hi Crime Junkies, I'm your host Ashley Flowers, and I'm Brett, and today I've got a story from right here in Indiana, actually from our own hometown of South Bend. It might be unknown to those of you outside of South Bend, or even to some of you in South Bend because society found the victims easy to forget. But this is an infamous case for those who remember it. It's one of those cases that is so much more than the sum of its parts. And it all starts when a 40-year-old man goes missing around Christmas of 2006 and his family tries everything they can to find him.

But instead of finding him, what they discover are three more missing men. And the investigation into their disappearance uncovers more than just a motive. It uncovers some of our most deep-seated social issues and a need for change that to this day many are still looking for. This is the story of the manhole murders. It's December 24, 2006, Christmas Eve, and Darlene Nolan is at her daughter Amy's place for their annual holiday gift exchange. But in between the laughter and the hugs from her grandkids, Darlene is worried.

She's worried about her son, Shan. He's not the type to miss a family gathering, and especially wouldn't pass up the chance to see the three nephews he absolutely adores. Shan was supposed to be there. Darlene spoke to him five days ago on the phone about their plans to get together for the holidays. She was going to pick him up, and then he and a friend would spend the holiday weekend at Darlene's and then go to his sister's Amy's party on Christmas Eve.

But when she went downtown to meet him at the library where they planned, he wasn't there. Neither him nor his friend were there. Darlene even went back to the library two more times to see if maybe he was just running late, but nothing, and she's been uneasy ever since. All week, that uneasiness has just been growing and turning into full-out worry. Five days isn't a crazy length of time to be out of touch, I mean, Shan is 40 years old after all and has his own stuff going on, but this was Christmas. So when the party wraps up that night at Amy's, she says her goodbyes and decides to drive

to the place Shan's been staying, just on the off chance that he's there and maybe there was some misunderstanding or maybe there's at least an explanation for all of this. Has she tried calling him? Well, no, but that's because she can't. And this is where things get a little complicated. Shan doesn't have a phone. He doesn't even have a place of his own. This home, at least recently, has been this abandoned warehouse in South Bend where homeless

men, including Shan, sleep, they call it the fort. So that's where Darlene is headed to find Shan. According to a multi-part series written by Virginia Black and the South Bend Tribune back in 2011, Darlene parks on a side street and walks up toward the fort, but she doesn't go in or even get too close. I mean, it's the dead of winter. It's cold and dark. There's no electricity or heat inside the fort, and there's no way to know who is up

there or what they're doing. So she just stands near the railroad tracks that run past the warehouse and shouts out Shan's name, hoping that he'll hear her and come out, but there's no response. Darlene starts back down the hill to her car, her worry just slowly hardening into fear. Yes, Shan's homeless and his life is not the same as most people's, but he wouldn't disappear. He wouldn't miss Christmas. I have a question.

Do we know how Shan ended up as part of the homeless community at all? He obviously had a place to go for Christmas. I guess I'm just curious as to how he ended up at this place. It was a really complicated set of factors that led Shan to this lifestyle. I mean, he had an undiagnosed learning disability. His mom thinks maybe dyslexia, and he was possibly also on the autism spectrum. So school had always been a challenge for him. He actually never graduated.

And over the years, he had begun drinking, not a lot at first, but more and more. And by 2006, alcohol addiction was ever-present in Shan's life. He was no longer in control of it. So he couldn't hold down a regular job long-term. He couldn't pay his bills. He tried treatment programs, but every time, it was like one step forward and two steps back. I mean, alcohol use disorder is difficult to treat in everyone.

And for Shan, recovery just seemed impossible at that time. And more than that, when I was looking into this case and learning about the homeless population where we grew up, it seems that there are really two categories when it comes to homelessness. The people who find themselves homeless for a short or even long time, but it's temporary. And there are others for whom homelessness is their life. And for Shan, this was a way of life for him. And yes, there were options in South Bend at the time in terms of supportive housing

or even shelters. But those places come with rules, including often sobriety, which wasn't something that Shan could commit to at that point in his life. Even with all of that, Darlene and Shan's dad, Mike, know that their son is actually content now in his own way. He found this place where he felt like he belonged with other men at the fort, and he would make money where he could, like basically enough to survive, and he would use community support when it was available.

Darlene and Mike were actually interviewed for an episode of A&E's The Interrogators on this case called No Shelter. And they said Shan's way of life certainly wasn't glamorous, but he was happy and he felt like he had found his people. And they still loved him. They still wanted a relationship with him as much as they could. So even though they know that this is the life that he lives, they still have that relationship. And when Christmas morning comes and there's no sign of Shan, Darlene and Mike know that

something is wrong. And so they actually head to the police station to file a missing persons report. Do the police even take the report? They do, actually. Wow. It's a surprise, too, considering how often we hear about police pushing back with missing persons like this. But they take the report and by the next day, they've got an officer assigned and working

on it. And the Nolans are hustling hard, too, like they're doing things that families and friends can do when a person is missing, like calling hospitals, searching places Shan went a lot. Like the Hope Rescue Mission, the library, Our Lady of the Road, they are handing out photos. The people they meet in the street, who they think might be homeless, too, like might be part of the same community. And on December 26th, they get their first lead.

And it's not even really a lead so much as a timeline confirmation. Basically, police tell Darlene that they were able to track down the last known sighting of Shan, which was on Monday, December 18th, at the Blood Plasma Donation Office. OK, but was that before or after Darlene had talked to him on the phone and kind of confirmed the plan for Christmas? Well, the plasma donation plays, that happened just one day before Darlene and Shan had that conversation. So it's not necessarily the last contact, it's the last, like, sighting.

Exactly, exactly. That call the next day, though, was the last official contact that anyone had with him as far as I can tell. And at this point, like I said, it's been a week since then. So you can imagine how desperate Shan's family is starting to feel. So the next day, Shan's dad, Mike, decides to go to the fort to look for Shan again. And he asked police if they could send an officer along with him. And they do.

Someone meets him out there. But apparently, the officer won't actually go into the fort with him. OK, why not? I don't have a super clear answer to that question, but I suspect safety could have potentially been a big concern. Like the men who slept there were doing so illegally. They could be rough and defensive, especially with new people, and they for sure didn't trust cop.

So it's possible that sending his dad in alone, and maybe he thought you'd have more luck, I'm not 100% sure. Yeah, it's not exactly an inviting scenario. Plus, like, there's trespassing things, and the officer might even be breaking the law if you were to enter, stuff like that. Yeah, no. I mean, that's like a point I didn't even think of. Like, they, as far as I know, don't have any kind of search warrant.

His dad's just like going to look and kind of has this backup. Now, Shan's dad wants to go in, though. He doesn't want to just sit outside and call his name. But this place that he's walking into is pitch black. It's freezing cold. And his dad, Mike, actually has to, like, pry the front door open to actually get into this place. And he's, like, walking around with this tiny little flashlight.

Finally inside the building, Mike finds the area where Shan had been sleeping. All of his things are there. This makeshift bed, some clothes and magazines, but no Shan. You said earlier that there were other people staying there as well. Did he have the opportunity to talk to any of them, see if they had seen him or talked him at all? No. So there definitely were signs that other people had been there at one point.

Like, there are actually three beds in the area where Shan had been sleeping. But if anyone was still sleeping at the fort, they were nowhere to be found on this particular day, so no one in the building for him to actually talk to. It's at this point that the investigation into Shan's disappearance is starting to just hit a wall. The Nolans are still out looking, interviewing people that they meet on the street or that frequent the missions and soup kitchens where they knew Shan had hung out. And Mike even goes back to the fort again to post signs and photos and leave a note

for his son just to let him know that his family is looking for him. And it's just about this time while the Nolans are out searching for any sign of their son that they start to hear some rumors, rumors that turn their search for Shan into something even bigger. The Nolans, Darlene, Mike and Amy had been talking to pretty much everyone they could find in the South Bend homeless community, and what they kept hearing was, Shan wasn't the only homeless man missing from the fort in South Bend. What?

Yeah, a man named Mike Lawson, who was actually the guy who was planning to join Shan for Christmas Eve at Amy's place, he was also missing. And so was a man named Brian Talboom. Wait, so there's three of them missing? There's three men missing, yes. Is it a possibility that they're together somewhere? I assume they all, like you said, spent time at the fort, but do they have something else in common, like a friend they might have gone to visit that was out of town or maybe even

traveling for a job opportunity? Well, I mean, yeah, right, like these guys have a lot in common. I mean, we actually know that they all had issues with alcohol, they all struggled to maintain housing, and they knew a lot of the same people, but there is one other thing that they have in common, and that's how they all made enough money to survive. They did this by scrapping. I think I know what that is, but can you do an explainer just so I'm sure? So what I mean by scrapping is basically like salvaging scrap metal, like lead, aluminum,

copper, that sort of thing, because the price of metal was really high around that time, and there were a lot of businesses who were eager to buy this stuff. According to a 2007 article by Susan Solney from the New York Times, guys scrapping in South Bend and other places at the time could make actually like a few hundred bucks a day and even more when they teamed up. And so at one point or another, what we learn is that those three men, the guys that are missing had all made their money pulling scrap metal out of the walls of abandoned buildings and even stripping it from cables and wires underground.

But the underground stuff, that was like a much bigger job and not everyone could do it because it required climbing into manholes and painstakingly stripping the metal off the wires that were no longer in use, while also being careful not to damage or destroy the live wires. That sounds really dangerous. Oh, it definitely was. It is not a job for the faint of heart, that's for sure. In the South Bend Tribune, Virginia Black talks about this one guy in particular, Dawn,

who was apparently given the go ahead to scrap underground around like the wires that ran parallel to the train tracks just outside the fort. Like he had the right tools to get the manhole covers off. He had worked the railway years ago and knew what he was doing. So he didn't hurt himself or damage the wires in the process. And that's no small feat considering like he's doing all of this after dark. Which is even more dangerous. Right.

Now, apparently this Dawn guy worked alone a lot of the time. But obviously these kinds of jobs are a lot easier with help. I mean, yeah, even just someone standing there to hold a flashlight. Right. Right. So this Dawn guy ends up meeting this other guy who also slept at the fort, Randy Reader. And he hires Randy to help him out. But I guess Randy was just kind of like a difficult personality, like he's real hard

to get along with. So this partnership doesn't last very long. So when Randy doesn't work out, he gets Mike Lawson to help him do the scrapping underground. He's the one who was supposed to spend Christmas with Shan and his family, right? Right. And all this stuff about scrapping, I promise, it's not completely unrelated either. Because basically like the Nolans and the cops running the investigation into these missing men, they're hearing a lot of buzz about like the manholes in particular.

Specifically, they're hearing that maybe Shan fell into one or maybe there was some kind of accident or something that happened while they were doing some scrapping work. Like again, we said, this is super dangerous. You're around a bunch of live wires, like anything could be going on here. And we know that the guy Shan was supposed to be with around Christmas Eve was like very active in this work. And as possible, Shan was too. So on January 9th, weeks after Shan and the other men went missing, police decide to head

out to the railroad tracks outside the fort and take a peek in some of the manholes. Basically, they want to put all these rumors to rest either. There's something to them or we just need to stop talking about the manholes. So a couple of officers head down to the area. Now the manholes run along both sides of the train tracks, about 50 of them in all, and they're 200 feet apart. And even getting the covers off is a really big job. You have to pry them open, like slide them to the side, and they're super heavy.

They make their way to the first one they see near the fort and bend down to get the lid off. And it's a narrow space underground and about 10 feet deep, super dark, of course. One of the officers leans over to peek inside and there, lying upside down in the hole, are two bodies. Not only that, but according to that piece I mentioned from the New York Times, they're stacked one on top of the other. At first, like the initial thinking is that these guys must have been down there scrapping

or trying anyway and like fell in, but then they realize when they take a little bit of a closer look that neither of these guys are wearing shoes. So you know, they're having to be thinking like, would they really be working outside in Indiana in January with no shoes on? And on top of that, you would think if they fell in on accident, the manhole would still be uncovered. There'd be no need to pry it off. Yeah, that's a great point.

So you can see why pretty much immediately police dismissed the idea that this was some kind of accident. And when they keep taking stock of the scene, they notice that the guy who is closest to the surface of the manhole, his shirt has been like inched up and police can see that bruising that happens after death called levidity or you might have heard it called liver mortis. And I know we've talked about this on the show before, but it happens when blood pools to the areas closest to the ground. So if you die face up on your back, then the blood is going to settle on your back.

And what they see where this guy's shirt is inched up is that all of his levidity is on this guy's side. So this probably isn't the scene of the crime. It's more than likely just a dump site. That's what it's looking like. Do they know whose bodies they are? Like do we know if one of these guys is Shan? Well, they can't see their faces.

I mean, at this point, they can really just see their feet and like a little bit of their bodies. And while it seems possible that one of these men is Shan, they won't know for sure until they get the bodies out of there. And that is going to be quite the operation in and of itself because the body closest to the top is actually draped over the fiber optics cable and some of them are live wires. So they have to get down into the manhole to retrieve the bodies, but they have to do it without getting hurt, without disturbing the evidence.

And to make things more complicated, there's now a crowd of onlookers and that crowd includes Shan's parents. When they finally are able to get the two men out of the manhole, the thing that strikes investigators first is the state of the bodies. Like decomposition? Well, there is definitely decomp happening, like the temperature underground is not as cold as above ground in January, but the thing that they notice, the thing that is impossible not to notice is that both of these men had been beaten like savagely, almost beyond recognition.

And I say almost beyond recognition because Mike and Darlene are able to positively identify one of the bodies right there at the scene as their son Shan. And while that does answer one of Mike and Darlene's biggest questions, it is really more like the beginning because now what they and investigators need to know is what happened to Shan? How did he get in this hole? And who is the other man in there with him? The answer to investigators questions are not in the manhole police pulled the two bodies

from. So the fort is where they go next. Before it was the fort, the building was the site of a chemical company. The building itself was huge and it had been the head offices and the manufacturing and storage part of the business. And basically it had sat empty for a while before being claimed by a few members of South Bend's homeless community. From time to time, police would come and like round up anyone staying there and force them

out. But according to Virginia Black's reporting in the South Bend Tribune, no one really knew who the building belonged to at this point. So it wasn't like anyone needed them out. When police and crime scene investigators walk inside, what they find is a mess. The company that had been in that building in the first place had been shut down by the government really abruptly. So pretty much everything was left behind, paper, office supplies, filing cabinets full

of documents, tools, equipment, like you name it. There were holes punched in the walls and ceiling tiles laying on the floor, windows were broken, the roof leaked, I mean again January and South Bend so it's freezing cold even indoors and there hadn't been running water for a long time. So the men who used this place to live, they were using buckets for toilets and dumped the contents in piles in one room of this building on the main level. Wow, it doesn't really sound safe even to be searching in there, let alone living there. Yeah, it was bad enough that the crime scene techs who actually went through the building,

they had to wear full on like hazmat suits. But as they're looking around, it's clear to them that people were definitely living here and not too long ago. Shan Nolan's bed is one of the three police find in this alcove between the first and second floors and right away they noticed dark spots on the wall next to Shan's bed. Dark spots that look just like blood and one of the officers lifts up a jacket laying in the middle of the bed and under that there is more blood, like a lot of blood. Wait, didn't Shan's dad go there and see his bed and everything before, was the blood

not there? No, I'm actually pretty sure it would have been there when his dad was searching the fort but remember there's no electricity, Shan's dad maybe had a tiny flashlight so I'm not sure that he would have seen that level of detail like a crime scene tech who bring their own massive lights, they've got their testing kits. So it was likely there but just something that he didn't notice because of how dark it was. On the first floor, investigators are weaving through big barrels marked with hazardous

material stamps along with dirt and junk and garbage and in the hallway toward where the main entrance to the building is, they find even more blood on the walls and when they start moving things to get a closer look, something else catches their attention. There is a perfect boot print left in blood. Police collect this boot print along with a ton of other evidence from the fort because there is still a whole lot more to go through. Police are most interested in those two pools of blood that they found upstairs in Shan's room and the two more that they found downstairs near that front entryway.

According to that episode of the interrogators I mentioned earlier, it's clear to investigators that whatever happened in the fort was brutal and it was violent but there are still a lot of question marks in the case. Some of them police hope will be answered during the autopsy because not only are they eager to learn like cause and manner of death, they actually still need to learn who this other man is because Shan's family was there to identify him on the scene but no one else identified that other man and it's the ME who can potentially identify this victim. When the ME comes through, the name of the second victim is Mike Lawson.

Mike was 53 years old when he died, living at the fort in that shared space with Shan. The descriptions I've read of Mike call him an easygoing dude, maybe a bit of a storyteller and Mike had been homeless for a long while and struggling like Shan with alcohol use disorder. Now what the pathologist finds during the autopsy paints an even more disturbing picture of Shan and Mike's death. Both men had massive skull fractures and injuries to their heads, necks, chest and shoulders. They also both had defensive wounds on their arms. According to Virginia Blacks reporting, some of the injuries to the men's bodies are small

and round and others are more long and narrow. So the pathologist thinks that they probably got made by a hammer or some kind of club like weapon. So that's what police go looking for at the fort and at the same time they look for anyone who might have more information. Other homeless people, maybe staff and volunteers at soup kitchens and shelters what not, but a lot of people are really reluctant to talk to police and their efforts don't really yield them any good leads.

So they're surprised when out of the blue someone calls them. This guy named Don and he says that he knows all three missing men, Shan and Mike whose bodies were found dumped in a manhole and Brian Talboom who is still missing and he also knows a few other guys who were living or hanging out the fort during the time frame that's all happened. Now Don says that he knew these guys because most of them had worked with him at one time or another, scrapping copper wires from underground in the manholes and he offers to take investment investigators out to search the rest of the manholes for signs of this third guy, Brian.

So it's just a little before noon on January 12th and the group is about to break for lunch after hours of prying open manhole covers and looking inside and finding nothing, but they spot a cover that's been put back on upside down so like immediately draws their attention is feeling off, right? Right, someone has messed with this. Right, and when Don prized it open detectives realized that they're looking at a second potential dump site and here's the thing, there isn't just one body in there. There is two in this manhole.

But we only know about one other missing person. Right, at this point we only knew Shan, Mike and Brian had gone missing together. They were just looking for Brian. So if you're feeling a bit shook right now, I'm pretty sure the investigators were feeling the same. Now they tentatively identify one of the bodies as Brian Talboom based on the clothes that he's wearing. But the other man, they have no idea who this other man could be.

And it's not until the autopsy that they finally give that fourth man a name. Jason coats. Jason was 29 years old and he'd also been living at the fort. So he had chummed around with Shan and Mike a lot. So now police have four dead men and not a single suspect. As you can imagine, there is some panic that was starting to set in in South Bend, especially among the homeless community. Police and the public were concerned that maybe a serial killer was behind the murders,

like someone who potentially could travel through on train targeting homeless people as they went. But investigators looked into other towns along the railway for similar murders and they didn't find anything. So they quickly scrapped this idea of a serial killer. And when they look at everything they had and all the people who they had talked to, there was one person that they were skeptical of. And that's Don, the guy who basically led them to their latest grave site.

Definitely. I was actually about to ask you about Don because, you know, it wouldn't be the first time we saw a murder kind of insert themselves into the investigation. Right. And this feels like maybe the best lead that they have. So yeah, they bring Don in for questioning and they keep him there for three hours and they even ask him to do a polygraph, which he does and pass it. So they're thinking like Don isn't their guy.

He doesn't even seem to have any good information about who their guy might be. So maybe it's just a fluke that he happened to lead them to their second grave site. But police know that someone knows what happened in the fort that night. And there is one name that somehow everyone they talk to keeps circling back to. And that's that guy, Randy Reader. A bunch of people told them that Randy had been living at the fort in December 2006. No one was saying that he was the killer, just that he would be a good person to talk to.

And maybe he might know something because he's hanging around all these people. He was probably around there at around the same time. So like go talk to this Randy guy. So police bring Randy in for questioning and he actually tells them that he hasn't been living at the fort lately, that he's basically been out of there since before Christmas. And when detectives ask if he knew who was living there at the time, Randy lists off Mike Shan and then gives them another name. The name he gives police is Daniel Sharp.

Now it's not the first time they've heard this guy's name. He's been around South Bend for a while and he's got a bit of a reputation on the streets. Like what kind of reputation? Well, he's described as kind of unhinged, basically aggressive and difficult. Not the kind of guy people really wanted to spend too much time around. In his interview with police, Randy calls him grumpy and moody and says that Daniel doesn't really like anyone. Based on his interview, police are pretty convinced Randy is telling the truth.

Like he's super helpful, he's relaxed, composed, not to mention he's older, like 50 at this point and just frankly doesn't look big enough to be their suspect. Like a guy who could haul men into a manhole. So they kind of like take him at his word and they're like, okay, we need to go look at this Daniel guy. They track him down the next day on January 30th and he's definitely eccentric. According to the detectives who were interviewed in the interrogators, they couldn't get a read off Daniel at all and something about that made them suspicious.

So they start their questioning of him by asking him, when was the last time he actually stayed at the fort? And he said it was several months ago, maybe October, maybe even August and that doesn't really match up with the stories that they've been hearing around town, reports of people seeing him at the fort well after that, like in December actually. So it kind of sounds like he's trying to distance himself from the crime scene. A little bit, yeah. So well they ask like, okay, well where are you staying now?

Like do you have a camp in the woods somewhere? And Daniel says like, no, I don't like camping in the woods. It's really hard to keep the snow out of his boots. And when he says that, he lifts his foot up and that's when they see it. Remember that footprint detectives found in the blood back at the fort? Oh my God, yeah. So they think that they now have found the boot that left that print. So they asked Daniel if they can have his boots for a minute and he says yes.

And when they compare it to the footprint at the scene, it is a perfect match. Like right down to the where patterns of these exact shoes. When police confront Daniel with this evidence, the shoe print, the reports of other people seeing him in the building around December, he doesn't deny anything. But he doesn't really say anything either. So they ask him to take a polygraph. They say so they can cross him off their list and Daniel agrees. Daniel fails that polygraph.

The results show that literally every question that wasn't a baseline question, he was lying. And when detectives confront him with that news, the walls start closing in and Daniel finally folds. And the story he tells police is one I don't think I'll ever forget. Daniel tells the detectives that he and Randy Reader had spent weeks building a room in their basement corner, like of the fort putting up walls, making sure that they could lock up their little space. And one night they'd gone out scrapping and when they came home, they realized that someone

had been through their stuff. Not just that, but some of their things are missing. And the most important thing that's missing is this propane heater that one of them had just found at a yard sale. And you can imagine how important a heat source is, one that specifically doesn't require electricity in a place like the fort in the middle of winter. So Daniel says they knew right away what had happened. They could hear the propane heater running upstairs where the other guys were.

And they could also hear them drinking and laughing. And the longer they laughed, the louder they laughed, the angrier he and Randy both got. They banged on the pipes and shouted at the guys upstairs to bring back their things, but they didn't. Daniel and Randy were seething by this point, but nothing happens that night. It wasn't until the next morning when they heard two of the men leave for breakfast that they decided to make their move. Daniel grabbed a hammer and Randy grabbed a three-foot length of pipe and they went to

confront the men upstairs. Daniel tells police that they walked upstairs and found both men lying in their beds. Mike passed out with a bottle of vodka and Shan reading a magazine. The assault that followed is almost beyond comprehension. Daniel says he swung the hammer at Shan while Randy beat an already unconscious Mike with the length of the pipe. Shan did his best to fight the men off, but he was just no match for the two of them wielding weapons like this.

Daniel tells the investigators that he and Randy left Mike and Shan for dead and went downstairs to literally hide and wait for the other two men to come back to the fort. And when I say wait, I mean they hid and waited for two hours according to court documents. Jason walked in first, then Brian, and they were both attacked. The detectives asked Daniel, did you say anything to Brian while you were beating him with a hammer? And his answer, which Virginia Black writes about in her manholes and murder series, was quote, no, I didn't have nothing to say to him.

I didn't even know him. End quote. Oh my God. I know, and it's not even over yet, Brit, because once Jason and Brian finally stopped moving, Daniel says he heard a moaning from upstairs. One of the two men that they left for dead wasn't. So they went back upstairs to find Shan still alive, blood everywhere. Shan begged them not to hit him anymore, but they didn't listen.

Daniel tells police it was Randy who actually dealt the final blow. The detectives who worked this case back in 2006 and 2007 said Daniel showed absolutely no remorse for what he and Randy had done that day. And you can probably tell that by what he said to them, right? Like I didn't say anything to them. I didn't even know these guys. In the episode of the interrogators on this case, one of the detectives says that it was clear Daniel felt quote, totally justified that he had every right to kill those guys

for taking his space heater and messing up their room. End quote. Daniel actually slept in the fort that night with the bodies of the four men he'd killed and blood all over the walls. He tells police Randy was shook up and left that day and didn't come back until the day after Christmas, almost a week later. And that's when they began the job of cleaning up the fort. So was Shan's body still at the fort when his mom stood outside and was calling his

name? It was. Based on my understanding of the timeline, I doubt that there was any more than a day or two between when Randy and Daniel took the bodies out of the fort until Shan's dad was actually in there looking for him. So even the fact that his dad didn't find his body was a really close call. Daniel tells police that he and Randy strapped each of the men's bodies onto a stretcher they found among the junk at the fort and wheeled them one by one to the manholes.

The whole operation took them about six hours and according to court documents, they also threw the murder weapons along with the men's shoes and some of their clothes into the river. But wait, is all of this happening while the police are investigating Shan's disappearance? Yeah, it is. So how did no one see any of this happening? Like a stretcher coming down the road and dropping a body into a manhole? Mostly I think that's because they waited till after dark to do this stuff when no one was around.

And again, I mean, they just got very lucky that no one actually had come into the fort to do their searches until after they moved the bodies out of there. Daniel agrees to walk detectives through the crime scene at the fort going move by move through the events of that morning recounting in chilling almost detached detail each swing of his hammer and each blow of Randy Reader's pipe. So what happened with Randy? Did they go back and get him? They did.

They were arrested and charged with all four murders. And even in the face of a full confession from his accomplice, because obviously this guy is just telling them what happened, like we said he folded. Right, right. Even in the face of eyewitnesses putting Randy at the fort in December 2006. Even Shan Nolan's blood on the propane space heater at the center of all of it, even telling a cellmate that he was the man responsible for the murders. He actually still professed his innocence.

Now Daniel Sharpe pled guilty and was sentenced to 65 years in prison. But because Randy didn't want to plead guilty, didn't want to take anything like that. He did go to trial and was found guilty. And according to an article in the Goshen news actually requested the death penalty for himself. He said that prison would be a worse faith than death for him. But ultimately he was sentenced to 260 years in prison, 65 years for each of the murders. Both Daniel and Randy were in their fifties and will almost certainly spend the rest of

their natural lives in prison. Shan Nolan, Mike Lawson, Brian Talboom and Jason Coates were men living on the margins of society in a town where the contrast between the haves and the have nots is pretty sharp. I'm not sure how much our listeners know about our hometown Brit, but South Bend is home to one of the country's wealthiest universities, Notre Dame. And yet still the issue of homelessness persists to this day. And the thing that is almost like the most baffling to me, Brit, is how little ink or airtime this story got in South Bend and elsewhere.

I mean, four men died horrific deaths. They were missing for weeks before their bodies were found in a manhole. And yet there is almost no coverage out there on this story. Yeah, I was going to say, you and I were both living there at the time. And I had no idea. I had never heard of this. Yeah, far and away, the most comprehensive reporting on this case came from Virginia Black Series for the South Bend Tribune in 2011.

And one of our team members actually spoke to Virginia about the case to get her thoughts on why things played out the way they did. And here's what's so fascinating. I was expecting the reason that it wasn't huge national news had something to do with the profile of these victims, in particular, because they were homeless. And that is a big part of it, but not in the way that you might think. See, I was originally thinking like, oh, there are just no reporters who want to write about this story because of the way these men live their lives, because of who they were.

But that's not the whole story here. There's another element to this, and that's the families of the victims. With the exception of Shan Nolan, whose parents and sister were relentless in their search for Shan, none of the other victims' families were out there looking. All of these men, the victims and the perpetrators, struggled with alcohol and many struggled with mental illness. They all stole things to survive. They all had criminal records, mostly for petty crimes.

And of course, they were all homeless. From what Virginia gathered in her reporting, it was embarrassing for their families. So embarrassing that even years later, she said that it was difficult to find people to actually speak to her. And those who did want to talk to her often wanted to do it anonymously. And I think that just shows you that there is still so much shame when it comes to the issue of homelessness for those who are experiencing it and for their loved ones and the communities that surround them.

I wish I could tell you that these murders changed that or everything in South Bend, but it didn't. The issue of homelessness persists to this day, here and in every major city across the country. The manhole murders shone a light into one of the darkest corners of South Bend, into a space that no one wanted to look, and it uncovered more than anyone bargained for. As usual, you can find all of our source material and pictures for this episode on our website that's crimejunkiepodcast.com.

And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode, but stick around for a profit of the month's story. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve? Okay, today I'm going to tell you about a sweet puppet named Joe Cerman the Greyhound sent to us by his human Rebecca, and Rebecca claims that she is the weird girl who went

to every dog night at local beer gardens just to pet all the dogs and ask their humans about their personalities and dreams and all the little quirks, which I'm like, girl, that's not weird. That's normal. Yeah, you're one of us. And she never had a dog of her own, but one of her friends got a rescued Greyhound. And of course, Rebecca felt completely in love. He was the sweetest, kindest dog she'd ever met.

And as Rebecca was getting out of a relationship that she classified as stupid, she looked up Greyhound rescues in Michigan where she was currently living. She applied, got contacted by a recruiter for the organization, got to do all of like the application process and interviews and I mean, I don't know if you know this, Ashley, but Greyhounds are like a really big responsibility. I didn't. I mean, I know, you know, their high energy depending on, you know, where they were. I mean, yeah, they're called like the fastest couch potatoes in the world because they are

like kind of high energy when they want to be, but they're also super lazy. But because they're sighthounds, they could see something miles away and go after it. Oh, see you later. So you really have to be prepared to like train and be around and attentive when they're outside because sure. They're not small dogs. They're pretty big. And so she went through this rigorous process and eventually got to meet her Joker man.

And she said that it was love at first sniff. He was stoic and regal and quiet, which is exactly what I think of when I think of Greyhounds. But she said that he did cry when his foster mom first left. Oh, stop. But after a little bit, he came over to her and just kind of stood in front of her and stared at her like, are you my new mommy? Yeah. So it's us now.

And when I tell you I cried when I read that, I actually mean that I wept. So shortly after she had chopped a Joker, they went back to New York where she's from for a wedding. And Ashley, this is so you. She actually left the wedding early to spend like even more time with Joker. And it was a total bonding weekend for them. Just spending time together at the hotel that they booked. She even said they'd booked it like they were this adorable couple and I was like, same.

And she said he's the goofiest boy who loves his zoomies. She lives in an apartment at the moment, but is right now looking for a house with a fenced in yard so he can zoom around freely. And after I reached out to her, she got back in contact and said that he'd had some health issues recently. But she just emailed me to let me know that he's doing so much better and is back to his normal self. That's amazing.

And are you ready for the sweetest part of this story? Yes. So Joker Man is a retired racing Greyhound. And one of the things that happens to racing hounds is that they get an identifying number tattooed in their ears, right? So they know that the dog that's racing is the dog that won, et cetera, et cetera. Well, Rebecca got the same number in the same coat of green as Joker Man's ear tattoo on her shoulder.

So what was this kind of not awesome symbol of his past life is now a set of matching tattoos for two besties. That is probably the best thing I've ever heard. I wish my dogs had tattoos so I could get matching ones. I know what a way to end on a high note, man. We've had a lot of sad, propped stories, but that's beautiful. It's just like the story of two besties. And I could not get over, again, Rebecca's like, we booked this hotel, we have matching

tattoos. They are truly, truly, like, relationship goals. Yes. Yes. I need to talk to Chuck and see what his thoughts on matching tattoos are. Exactly. And I asked for more information on the rescue where she got Joker Man and she sent me to houndsofgrace.org, which is based in Michigan where she got Joker Man and is focused solely

on Greyhounds. Grace actually stands for Greyhound Retirement, Adoption, Care, and Education. And they're staffed solely by volunteers that are super, super passionate about finding permanent homes for specifically retired racing Greyhounds, which I just think is amazing. And as always, we'll be linking to hounds of Grace on our post about Joker Man. Well, again, ending on a high note. This was the story I needed today. Thank you.