Crime Junkie - MURDERED: The Short Family

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

When Michael and Mary Short are found murdered in their Virginia home in August of 2002, the question on everyone’s minds is: where is their nine-year-old daughter Jennifer? But as weeks go by with no solid leads, authorities grow more and more concerned that they won’t find Jennifer alive. And those worries only intensify when a homeowner across state lines finds something horrifying in his front yard.   If you or anyone you know has information that could help this investigation, please call Henry County Crime Stoppers at 276-632-7463. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit: https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/murdered-short-family/

Hi, crime junkies, I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and today I have two stories for you. This episode is about a mystery that has confounded investigators for 20 years, one that they're still seeking answers for today. But we also have another mini-episode in our feed today outlining another unsolved case, so make sure you don't miss that one as well. But this is the story of the Short Family. On the morning of Thursday, August 15, 2002, this guy named Chris Thompson leaves his motel room in Oak Level, Virginia, and he heads down the street to his boss's house,

this guy named Michael Short. Now, he's not just going over for a visit, Michael actually runs his business out of his house, MS Mobile Home Movers, and Chris had been there the night before helping him with vehicle repairs in the yard. So it's about 9am when he rolls up, there's no sign of Michael, or anyone for that matter out in the yard. This is pretty unusual, but you know, Chris was there until like midnight the night before, so maybe Michael is asleep, maybe he's just in the house or the attached carport getting

something, so Chris goes to check the carport. And that is where he finds Michael, except Michael isn't working away or drinking coffee or doing any of the things that Chris might expect on a Thursday morning. Michael is laying, unresponsive on a couch with what looks like a single gunshot wound to the head. Chris wastes no time calling 911, and authorities quickly arrive at the scene and do an immediate search of the house. And when they do, they discover Michael's wife, Mary, in her bed also with what appears

to be a single gunshot wound to the head. But as they go from room to room clearing the house, the pit in their stomach grows when they open the door to a little girl's room. They had learned from Chris that Michael and Mary have a nine-year-old daughter named Jennifer, and authorities are absolutely dreading what they might find in her room. And for the briefest of moments, they actually breathe a sigh of relief because they don't find a third body in there. In fact, the room is completely empty.

But of course, that relief is fleeting as investigators begin to wonder, okay, if Jennifer isn't here, then where is she? Once the house is fully cleared, police are able to make some important observations. Most notably, the fact that there isn't really any signs of a struggle anywhere in the house. And I mean, you would obviously expect to see a struggle in a case where you have two parents at home with a nine-year-old daughter. I mean, I would fight like hell if I even had a tiny chance to protect my child. So investigators quickly begin to suspect that maybe Michael and Mary were killed in

their sleep. And this was a little hard to wrap my head around at first because I would think that the first shot would likely wake one of them up. But here's the thing. You see, the house itself is in this pretty odd location. It's like quite literally on a four-lane highway, like there aren't really any other houses around. I mean, there's a convenience store nearby, there's a motel, sometimes a flea market,

but it's not really like a residential area because there's so much traffic going by, which maybe that makes it difficult to hear a gunshot. But with Jennifer missing, investigators do wonder if maybe she heard what was going on and she managed to escape into the woods behind the house. So their hope is that maybe they're going to find her hiding out there. And that's when the search for her begins. Investigators from the local sheriff's office, along with the FBI, state and city police, and even investigators from North Carolina descend on oak level over the course of Thursday

and Friday, searching every inch of the area. And I mean, we're talking woods, the house, and everything in between. In this search, they don't find Jennifer or really anything useful in the woods, but there is some evidence in the house. They find two spent 22 caliber casings where the bodies were found and they collect a number of other items, including a cell phone, some business documents and a computer disk. Investigators also find a pretty significant amount of cash, like $485, just lying out on the kitchen counter.

So that at least helps narrow down the motive a little bit. Like they know this isn't some kind of robbery. The only other clue that they gather from the home is that according to an article in the Washington Post, the phone line to the house had been cut, which shows at least a little bit of premeditation and planning. And there's this moment, again, after they see the phone lines, after they realize this isn't a robbery, that there is just fear in everyone's hearts. Because if the killer wasn't after money, if they weren't after material things, and

if Jennifer didn't run to hide out in the woods, then maybe Jennifer was the motive. Maybe she was targeted and taken with whomever killed her parents, or maybe she was just collateral damage if someone was after her parents. Police issue an Amber Alert, and by Friday, they push Jennifer's photo and description out to all of the local and regional media. And tips do begin pouring in from all over, I mean, even as far away as Missouri, apparently. But there is nothing particularly concrete at first. And again, because of the location, it's not like they have this deep well of eyewitnesses

that they can tap into. I mean, there are almost no other houses nearby. There is that convenience store, but the entrance to it faces away from the short house. So even if you are coming or going from there, any surveillance footage, it pretty much would like face away from the house. So the only thing police could really do was look closely at people the family knew. Now that they're likely dealing with an abduction, statistically, that's where they should look. And at a minimum, maybe the people closest to the shorts can point them in the right

direction. Police also interviewed Chris multiple times since he was the last to see the family alive the night before. And to all accounts, he's very cooperative. Even though they're not considering him as a suspect or even a person of interest, they don't necessarily rule him out either, because at this point, no one is getting ruled out until Jennifer is found. But they do try and probe Chris for more information around Michael's business.

As I mentioned, he operated his own mobile home moving business. And this wasn't the kind of business where he employed the same people year after year. People kind of came, they helped out for a bit, then they left. So investigators are trying to figure out if maybe someone who worked for him might have held a grudge for some reason, or if there could have been any other kind of business-related reason for this horrific crime. But Chris doesn't seem to have any leads, any idea of who would want to do this either. So investigators move on to Michael and Mary's friends and family.

Michael actually had three adult sons from previous marriages, and police talked to them as well. Michael and Mary were also trying to sell their house, so investigators talked to their realtor to get a sense of who might have been in and out of the house for viewings like that kind of thing. But they still can't seem to uncover any clues that might lead them to Jennifer, or even a motive. And although this is still just within the first day or so, after finding Michael and

Mary's bodies, authorities are very much aware that with every passing minute, their chances of finding Jennifer get slimmer and slimmer. By the time the weekend rolls around, investigators begin to wind down their physical search in the area around Michael and Mary's home so they can shift their focus. Because if Jennifer's not hiding on her own, then someone took her. And with that four-lane highway right outside the family's door, I mean, I think they're safe in assuming that she could easily be anywhere at this point. So it's time to just chase down tips and see if they lead investigators to her, to

anywhere. And at this point, there's a lot of tips to go through. The case has become so popular that they're now getting tips from as far away as California, Florida, and Kansas. They even have psychics calling in information. And investigators are acting on every single tip. But every single one, they're able to eliminate. There are some that come in that raise their hopes more than others and require a little

more vetting, like one that they get early on the following week when they hear reports that several people have seen Jennifer in North Carolina accompanied by a man with a gun. But in the end, it seems to go nowhere. But that one's like wild to me, because again, this isn't some random person saying they saw Jennifer. It was a number of people saying they saw her in the same place. All of these people are reporting it.

So okay, if it's not her, who is it? And who is this man? But that's a question we never get the answer to. Police continue to go by with no breaks in the case. Police do tell reporters that they're looking at a few people who could be suspects, but otherwise they don't really say much at this point. They try and provide some general tips to the public that are basically like, here are some signs that someone you know might have committed a double murder and kidnapped a nine-year-old.

But they're the kinds of things that like any good crime junkie here would know to look out for. Like, does a person you know seem to have like this oddly intense interest in the investigation? Or did someone you know leave town without warning? That kind of thing. Whether it's their pleas to the public or something else, the police do get a couple of other leads that pop up over the next few weeks that are interesting. Like one where police get a tip that back in 1992, so this would have been 10 years earlier,

Mary had I guess been harassed by a man who seemed to be kind of obsessed with her. She was working at an industrial plant at the time and it got so bad that this guy actually had to be like forcibly removed from the premises one day by her coworkers. Now she didn't actually file a police report and it doesn't seem like she had any further contact with this guy really, but it is something. So they look into it, they investigate, they talk to the guy, but nothing comes of it. The next development in the case doesn't come until early September when investigators receive another tip.

And I'm not actually sure where they receive it. Like if it comes through a phone call or during an interview, but they hear that there's a possibility that Jennifer might not actually be Michael's biological daughter. And without literally anything else to go on, I think investigators start to wonder like if this is true, what if Jennifer's biological father was involved in her disappearance somehow? Like maybe he didn't know about Jennifer at all, then somehow found out, it set him off, he decided to kidnap her, murder Mary and Michael, that kind of thing. Again, all complete conjecture at this point, but basically they're thinking that conjecture

could be better than nothing. So they actually perform a paternity test. But investigators discover that Jennifer is 100% the biological child of both Mary and Michael. And so the next day, investigators announced the results to the media. Kind of. You see, they only tell the media that the test confirmed that Jennifer is Mary's biological child.

According to an Associated Press report published by the Daily Press, investigators say that they don't want to declare the paternity results publicly because it could impact the investigation. Basically, they're thinking here is that it could still be the case that whoever kidnapped Jennifer thinks that he is her biological father and that if he were to find out somehow that that's not the case, it could potentially cause them to harm Jennifer. But then not releasing the paternity really upsets Michael's family. I mean, again, they don't have the kind of context that I just gave you at this point.

It's just kind of put out there by police that they're keeping it secret. And it puts this weird and unfair question mark over Michael's head when his family is still grappling with his murder. I don't love the tactic here. I can't figure out why they wouldn't loop the family in. And it doesn't seem to even do much for the case. Like there are no arrests. There are no new suspects because of this.

There is nothing for nearly six weeks. But it's at that point that the case finally does break wide open. You see, 30 miles away at a home in Stoneville, North Carolina, a man discovers something completely unexpected right in his front yard. On September 25th, Eddie Albert is outside his home with his two dogs when he notices something a bit odd. There's this pond that basically runs through Eddie's front yard and his dogs have been like playing, exploring around.

And when they return to Eddie, he notices that one of the dogs seems to be playing with what looks like maybe a turtle shell. But when he takes a closer look at it, Eddie realizes that this definitely is not a turtle shell. This is a large piece of bone. And suddenly he remembers a few other odd instances over the past few days at his house. Like when he found what looked to be a brown wig on his property. But he just threw it out.

Or when his daughter discovered what she thought was a set of animal teeth. So to be safe, he contacts the authorities and they come out to search the property. And when they do, they find several bone fragments in the pond. And when they come across a skull, they know without a doubt that these are no animal bones. They are human. Of course, even though it's across state lines, Eddie's house isn't actually that far from the short house. So everyone is immediately wondering, could these be Jennifer's remains?

They do a preliminary test by comparing hair samples. And just based on that, their initial finding is that this is not a match for Jennifer. But that's not always the most reliable testing method. Especially because at this point, I don't even think they have enough bone fragments to make a definitive assessment as to who this person is, like in terms of size, sex, that kind of thing. So they spend the next few days searching the area around the pond and the house. And within about six days, they find leg bones, pieces of jaw, and 16 teeth.

By the end of the search, their assessment actually changes. Although they plan to do DNA testing, it is clear that the skeletal remains are those of a nine-year-old child who was shot once in the head, even without the DNA. Everyone fears this is Jennifer. Now the first DNA test results come back inconclusive, but they run the test again. And on October 4th, a press conference is held to announce that the skeletal remains do in fact belong to Jennifer Short. Now the only sort of positive development I can see here is that the investigators are

finally able to clear up all this business around who Jennifer's biological father is. According to a CNN transcript of the press conference, investigators very clearly state that Michael and Mary are both Jennifer's biological parents without a doubt. And they even explain their reasoning as to why they kept some of that under wraps and they apologize for any distress that their tactics might have caused the family. At this press conference, journalists start asking questions about another development in the case based on some search warrants that were filed. You see, investigators searching the area around the house also discovered a mobile

home parked about a mile away from where Jennifer's remains were found. And after looking into it, they learned that that belonged to a guy named Gary Bowman. And Gary Bowman is not a name that's new to investigators. It turns out that earlier in the investigation, a tip had come in from Gary Bowman's landlord. And the landlord told police that Gary talked to them about paying a man in Virginia to move his mobile home, which I'm sure you remember is exactly what Michael Short did for a living. And he said that he paid a man in Virginia.

But at this point, when Gary is talking to his landlord, he's super upset because he said that the mobile home hadn't been moved. And he's like, listen, I paid this guy, so he's either going to have to do the job that I paid him to do or return the money. And if he didn't, Gary said that he was going to have to kill him. But that's not even all. The landlord also told police that he had seen Gary with a gun on the day that the shorts were murdered.

And the day after that, Gary and his mobile home were gone. So like I said, this had all become public when police filed that search warrant for Gary's mobile home. But investigators are not calling Gary a suspect or even a person of interest at that point. They simply describe him as a witness. So with that search warrant that they got, investigators thoroughly searched the mobile home as well as the house that he had been renting from this landlord. Now there was no evidence that Gary had been there recently, but that doesn't mean that

they left the search empty handed. As they were searching Gary's homes, investigators come across this map, which sure, not exactly unexpected, especially for someone who owns a mobile home and especially back in 2002 before we all had Google Maps in our pockets. But when they take a closer look at the map, there is something unexpected on it. On the map, the very piece of highway where Michael, Mary and Jennifer lived, right where Michael and Mary's bodies were found, has been marked in red. When authorities go looking for Gary, they find that he's already in custody, but not

in North Carolina or Virginia or even the United States. Now, Gary has been arrested over 4,000 miles away near the Arctic Circle in Canada's Northwest Territories. You see, Gary had moved to Canada in August, not long after the murders. According to an AP report in the Daily Press, on August 31st, he was in a car accident while driving under the influence and he was placed under arrest there, and he ended up being charged with impaired driving and released from custody. But I think that charge must have kept him on authorities' radar because he's arrested

again on October 3rd at the request of Citizenship and Immigration Canada because they've learned that when he entered the country originally, he failed to disclose that he had a criminal record for older impaired driving charges, which is against Canada's immigration laws. So anyway, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are holding him on these charges and eventually investigators down in Virginia and North Carolina learn about this and they're like, um, hey, Canada, you mind letting us chat with the guy? The next few weeks are just kind of this, like, bureaucratic back and forth, like they're trying to figure out if investigators from the US should travel to Yellowknife and interview

Gary there, how long it's going to take to process the impaired driving charges that he's facing from back in August, they're figuring out whether or not he's going to be deported, what evidence can be moved from Canada to the US, it's just this massive headache on all sides. But ultimately, it's decided that the impaired driving charges against Gary are just going to be dropped and he will simply be deported back to the US, at which point investigators there are going to interview him. Now all of this takes a few weeks, during which the media is following the whole process

closely and reporters are starting to talk to people who knew Gary. And despite the search warrant, despite that weird map, despite the timing of his move out of the country, despite all of this sussiness around Gary, his friends are not at all convinced that he was involved in the murder of the short family. According to an Associated Press report filed in the Star News Online, his friends basically say that Gary suffered from a severe alcohol use disorder, to the point where he was drinking a case of beer every day. And one of his friends says that he was with Gary on the day of the murders.

And when they parted ways in the evening, he says Gary was so inebriated that there was no way he could have driven to Virginia, committed the murders, abducted Jennifer, especially without leaving any forensic evidence behind. And his friends also add that his move out of the country wasn't related at all to the murders. They say that he had actually been planning to move for a while and had often talked about wanting to live in the far north. So I mean, basically they're saying this is all a big misunderstanding.

And that's pretty much what Gary says as well when he's back in the United States and interviewed by investigators. He's held in custody as a material witness and he decides to undergo questioning without any legal representation. He's apparently very cooperative and he says that this conversation with his landlord never happened, though just a note, the landlord did take a polygraph and pass, but I don't know what to make of it. You know, I don't trust polygraphs.

Also, there is the thought that if Gary had this conversation while he was intoxicated, maybe he doesn't remember. Like there's this conflicting narrative situation here. So police ask him about the map because that's super weird, right? But Gary says he has an answer about that red X on the map too. He says that it's possible that his ex-wife had added it to mark the location of an antiques dealer, which I don't know if you remember I mentioned, but there was this like flea market that would sometimes be by the short house.

So that kind of checks out. Now there's nothing definitive tying Gary to the murders. So after that initial questioning, Gary is released from custody, but he's told that he has to stay in the area because he's going to be before a grand jury for further questioning. That happens around mid-November and ultimately with nothing concrete in terms of hard physical evidence, Gary is released without indictment and never charged in connection with these murders at all. I mean, it goes cold, fast, years and years go by with no real update in the case at

all. The cops do continue to come in occasionally, but nothing that leads to a break. And in an effort to bring the case back to the public's attention and maybe get some new leads, in March of 2009, the FBI releases a sketch of a man that they say they'd like to question in connection with the murders. According to Paul Garber's reporting in the Winston Salem Journal, witnesses apparently saw this man sitting in a white, single cab truck near the short house at around the time of the murders.

We're actually going to post a sketch of him on our blog post and it's going to be in our app, so you can take a look for yourself. But he was described by witnesses as being in his late 40s at the time of the murders and having a weathered complexion. Investigators also announced that they're chasing some other new leads. It turns out that they've learned Michael had been planning to move his business and life to South Carolina, which explains why they were trying to sell their house. And so they wanted to speak with anyone that he might have tried to connect with in the

South Carolina area. But even though they put this out, again, the case mostly seems to just go quiet with years simply passing by. Every once in a while, investigators do continue to reexamine old clues, sometimes even with new technology. By October 2018, they have conducted over 4,000 interviews trying to uncover what happened to this family. And every year on the anniversary, when locals hold a memorial motorcycle ride through the

town as a fundraiser for their community, they do receive new tips. And it's not like every tip is groundbreaking or anything like that. I mean, one is simply from someone who says that they saw the shorts at a Burger King drive-through at like 11 p.m. on the night of their murder. So interesting because, you know, that's something that investigators had gone nearly 20 years without knowing. But all these small pieces aren't going anywhere, though maybe they could add to a big break somewhere down the line.

Like these little puzzle pieces that on their own don't mean much, but when put together could show a bigger picture. I'm not sure if there was any evidence collected that could be reexamined or retested today. But if the killer left anything behind, then the chance to get answers from that was lost for good in February of 2019 when the house where Mary and Michael's bodies were found unexpectedly burned to the ground. So interestingly, or maybe not, the fire has never been officially linked to their murders. As recently as October of 2021, a task force was relaunched to investigate the murders

once more. And the people involved say that they're still optimistic that this case could be solved. In fact, in a podcast series from Fox 8 called Who Killed Jennifer Short, the current sheriff working the case today says that they have a narrow list of two to three suspects who they think might be involved, but they still need more information before moving forward. They need information from people who might have witnessed something, anything around the time of these murders. So that's you, crime junkies.

If you or anyone you know has information that could help this investigation, call Henry County Crime Stoppers at 276-632-7463 and help bring justice enclosure to Michael, Mary and Jennifer Short. And don't forget that we dropped another episode today of another unsolved case we need your help with. You can go tune in to that right now. You can find all of our source material and pictures for this episode on our website crimejunkiepodcast.com. Don't forget to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast and I'm going to be back

next week with a brand new episode. But again, don't forget there's another new episode available for you right now. So, what do you think Chuck? Did you approve?