Going West: True Crime - Shauna Howe // 90

Episode Date: October 14, 2020

In 1992, an 11-year-old girl was walking to her Pennsylvania home from a Girl Scout Halloween Party. But during her walk home, a man witnessed her abduction. The town scoured for years to find out who killed this poor girl, and little did they know- the answer was right in front of them. This is the murder of Shauna Howe. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on to Cramp fans? I'm your host Tee. And I'm your other host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Kind of fun little announcement. Heath and I got engaged. We did. We got engaged this last week. I was in the hospital for part of it. It was awesome. That's why our episode was a little bit late last week. Last week was crazy. It was my birthday and then Heath proposed in this cabin in Bend, Oregon, which was amazing. And then hours later, he was in the hospital, but he's doing much better now. Yes, I was very sick, but overall it was a great vacation and I'm so glad that I have a fiance now. That's pretty awesome.

About dang time. I know, right? It's crazy. We've had this podcast for two years and it's funny because a lot of people are like, I thought that you guys were married already. It's like, no, we were just dating. But anyhow, so today we're gonna be talking about a case that happens around Halloween time.

But nonetheless, very tragic story. We do, by the way, guys, remember we have a second podcast called The Dark Parts. That's where we have some more fun spooky stories and we're coming out with episode five this week. So if you're interested, the dark parts is what it's called. Alright guys, this is episode 90 of Going West.

Wow. Yeah, I know. 10 more to 100. So let's get into it. In 1992, an 11-year-old girl was walking to her Pennsylvania home from a Girl Scout Halloween party, but during her walk home, a man witnessed her abduction. The town scoured for years to find out who killed this poor girl, and little did they know, the answer was right in front of them. This is the murder of Shawna Howe was born on July 11, 1981 in Oil City, Pennsylvania to her mother Lucy Howe. She was raised in Oil City by her mom Lucy and her stepfather John, alongside her older brother and younger sister.

Oil City by the way is a very small town of around 12,000 people, or at least in the early 90s, just about an hour and a half away from Pittsburgh. Shawna was described to be headstrong and sassy yet shy, and this is what her mom says, and she was a proud member of her local Girl Scouts troop. In October 1992, when this story takes place, Shawana was three months into being 11 years old and had just begun fifth grade at 7th Street Elementary School in Oil City.

Halloween was just a few days away, so on the morning of Tuesday, October 27th, 1992, Shana dressed up in a turquoise and black, striped gymnast jumpsuit and headed off to school. So this was her costume. She kind of did like a meek shift gymnast costume. Before leaving, she made sure to kiss her mom goodbye and then she was off. Shana had plans for after school, which included her joining her fellow Girl Scout troop as they

went to the local nursing home and sang to the residents, which is something that Shana loved doing. She often sang in the church choir at her local church, so she took any chance she could to sing in front of other people. After that, they were to go to a nearby church to have a Halloween party for the Girl Scouts. And this is what she really was excited for because Shana, like us, absolutely loved Halloween. So the Girl Scouts Halloween Party was hosted at the free Methodist church on Wilson Avenue in oil city, which wasn't far from where she lived. Since the town is so small, Shana planned to walk home that night, and this is something that she did pretty often. She was super familiar with her hometown, and she and her mother something that she did pretty often. She was super familiar with her hometown,

and she and her mother felt that she was safe walking around alone, whether to or from school or a friend's house. At the party, Shawna had a great time with her friends, but before it got too late, she made the walk home. At first, she and her friend Joey Elle walked together, but then they parted ways, leaving both girls to walk the rest of the way to their respected homes alone. At around 8 p.m., Shawna passed the corner of West First Street and Reed Street, where a huge stunning Presbyterian church is located, and actually there are many churches that line this particular street. This church was just about two blocks from her house, so she was almost home. She had already been walking about 10 minutes or a total of a half a mile or 0.8 kilometers, so this wasn't a long walk at all, but it was dark out by then.

As Shawna came up around this corner, still dressed in her gymnast costume, something terrible happened. A couple hours past and Lucy, who remember as Shawna's mom, called home to check on the kids, since she was at work that night at a local restaurant job. Shawna stepped at John answered and told his wife Lucy that Shawna still wasn't home. And he didn't know what time the party was supposed to be over and Lucy completely forgot that she was supposed to arrange a pick up for Shauna. Since she was still at work, she didn't arrange for someone to pick her up

and she got distracted, but Shauna always walked home. I mean, it was like a 15 minute walk, so her not being home was really odd, especially since the party was long over and it was a school night. So at that point Lucy was incredibly worried. While Lucy sped home around 10 pm, she asked John to call local hospitals and see if something had happened to Shana, but he didn't find any answers. So when Lucy got home and Shana still wasn't there,

she called the police and reported her missing. And this has got to be like the most terrifying thing for any parent. I can't even imagine, I'm not a parent, but I just can't imagine what Lucy is going through. Well, especially with this whole pickup thing, because like we said, Shauna usually walked home, but her mom was like, shoot,

I was supposed to kind of figure out how she was going to get home and I totally forgot. So she might also be thinking, well, since I wasn't there, then maybe a friend took her home or she went to a friend's house or that kind of thing, but since Shana did walk home a lot, her mom knew that she wouldn't just go somewhere without telling the family. So that worry just like really sets in. And again, this is a small town. So there is that mentality that this town

is safer than other towns because a lot of people know everyone else and you just tend to feel a lot safer in a smaller community, but that's not always the case. So police came to the house immediately to talk to Lucy about Shana's day, and they all just hoped that she was with her friends or at a friend's house and everything was fine. But little did Lucy know, a man had seen a young girl get abducted just a couple hours

earlier. At around 8 p.m., when Shana was walking past the Presbyterian church on West First Street and Reed Street, a man named Daniel Payden walked on the other side of the street. He looked up and noticed her, and at that moment, a tall and thin white man and a baseball cap forced her into a small, reddish, rusty colored car on the street. Daniel didn't know that this was Shawna, and since it was dark, he could only get a pretty basic description of her. But this would still be super helpful, was Shawna, and since it was dark, he could only get a pretty basic description of her. But this would still be super helpful, considering Shawna was the only child reported missing

that evening in the small town of oil city Pennsylvania. Daniel knew right away that something was wrong with the whole scene, because the little girl screamed as she was grabbed, and then the car sped off. So he was confident that he had just witnessed a kidnapping. While an officer was at Shana's house talking to her mom, someone radioed the responding officer and said that a man called in regarding a possible kidnapping sighting of a young girl. And Shana's mom Lucy overheard this. So all of her hopes that her daughter was safe were now gone. And remember this was reported a couple hours earlier, but this officer was

probably just finding out about it when it was being radioed and this was kind of when it was just being talked about. And then Lucy hears this and she's like, oh my god, because obviously small town of 12,000 people, how many little girls are being abducted or how many little girls are missing. Suddenly you have no idea where your daughter was that night and you hear that a little girl was abducted. So since it was 1992, Daniel wasn't able to just like grab his cell phone and call this in because he didn't have a cell phone.

So he ran to the closest houses that he could find and just frantically knocked and asked everyone if he could use their phone to call the police. And the first person to open their door, he just was able to make that call. But since he wasn't able to report this immediately, police didn't go out searching for this car right away. And they really didn't do this until Shana was reported missing. Because that was when they connected what Daniel saw to a real girl's possible disappearance. But as soon as they did make this connection around 11 p.m. so three hours after Shana was

abducted, over 20 officers scoured oil city and beyond for Shana and made sure the town was on high alert. At this point, they were looking for a 5-foot tall 85-pound girl with a short-brown Pageboy haircut and blue eyes. Although a couple hours had passed since the abduction had occurred, police set up roadblocks all around oil city in hopes of trapping the perp in, and then they looked everywhere for this rust-colored vehicle. They also talked to countless local residents to see if anyone else had witnessed anything, but it seemed that Daniel Payton was the only one who had seen

anything. It was such a tight-knit community that all through the night and into the next day, an incredible amount of locals went out and searched for Shawna. Most of Shawna's family joined them, but Lucy stayed home so that someone would be there to answer any phone calls. And this kind of community and family support went on throughout the week. But two days into searching, Shawna's uncle Keith found a turquoise and black striped body suit on a hiking trail in Rockland, Pennsylvania, eight miles or 13 kilometers from where she went missing. So this was definitely not a good sign.

So this was in like a remote area, which we'll discuss more in a second, but there was these big teams of volunteers along with the police. So Keith was in one of the groups and then he was the one who came across the body suit or like, like it was like a leotard and it was just laying there on the hiking trail. So even though pretty much everybody knew that it was Shana's because they knew the description of her clothes and kind of what to look for,

they still wanted to ensure that it belonged to her. So the officers at the scene called her stepfather John to come and identify it. And he confirmed that it was indeed Sean's body suit. So they took it back to the lab to see if they could get anything off that article of clothing. And even though it was 1992 and they couldn't do as advanced of DNA testing as they can today, they were able to determine that the body suit had semen on it. At this point, her family really feared for the worst and so did the police.

You know, they felt really confident by the third day that they were looking for a body, but they weren't going to give up. They refocused their search on the area of Rockland where her body suit was found because they felt that this was a really good lead. This area of Rockland is super remote and it holds a fairly secluded swimming spot called Colter's Hole. So there's not very many people in this area, especially in October, since Pennsylvania

gets pretty cold this time of year. So no one's really swimming. They continued their search of that area the rest of the day, but the search came up empty. So when the sun set, they called it a day until the following morning. But on that third day, which was Friday, October 30, 1992, so the day after Uncle Keith found Sean's body suit, a passerby noticed something odd. A man was walking over an old railroad trestle, and about 30 feet under those wooden tracks

is a rocky creek. And in this creek, the man saw the body of a young girl. The man called the police as soon as he spotted the young girl in the creek. But the weird part was that police had searched that entire area just one day prior, including this specific area of the creek. But as they sped over to the area, they felt confident that it was Shana. When police got to the scene, they found a badly injured and deceased Shana how, laying face down in the cold, rocky creek.

The water wasn't very high this time of year, so her body hadn't been submerged. Shana's shoes were found on top of the bridge, and that information mixed with her injuries made investigators believe that Shana had been thrown off the bridge sometime between the following evening and that morning. Since police and volunteers had very obviously been searching that area the previous day, and since Shana's shoes were placed so neatly at the top of the bridge police believe that this was the killer's way of kind of poking fun at them. They felt that this act was very deliberate. Since this was a 33-foot drop this fall did

damage to her whole body. Her knees, arms, legs, and face were scuffed up and scraped. She had a lot of blunt force damage done to the left side of her body, including her head. And this was her cause of death, blunt force trauma to her head and chest. It was also confirmed that she had been raped. This fall onto the rocks caused a very severe brain injury that didn't immediately kill her. She was thrown off the bridge alive and died around 10 minutes later. Whether or not she was conscious is unknown, but this means that Shana had been alive for three whole days while everyone was out looking for her. Before police could get to Shana's family's house, her mother Lucy's brother Keith ran up to the house emotional beyond belief,

exclaiming to Lucy that they found Shana and that she was dead. We have a new totally incredible eco-friendly sponsor that we are so excited to share with you guys. It's real paper. Real paper is tree-free toilet paper, meaning no trees were harmed in the making of this toilet paper, because it's made from 100% recyclable bamboo. And bamboo grows in the forest without having to be replanted over and over again.

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for the killer. But again, since it was 1992, there was no codis or any other system to run DNA samples against a mass amount of people, because codis didn't come onto the scene until about 1998. But they were able to match the profile against other people to see if it was a match. Naturally, police began with Shauna's family. Shauna's dad was out of the picture, so they went ahead and tested her stepdad, John, as well as Uncle Keith, who had found her body suit and the other men in her family.

None of them were a match. Another obvious step was to test the man who found Shauna's body, and when they looked into him, they discovered that he drove a small red car. That, on top of the fact that he seemingly just happened to be in this very secluded area at the right time, was just a little bit odd. But his DNA sample didn't match what was found on Shana's body, and they didn't find anything suspicious that linked two Shana after searching this man's red car. Since all they could really do was go one by one and test people, they had to start with those closest to Shana. So they asked all of Shana's friends and classmates if any boys liked Shana or

anything like that. But since Shana and her friends were only around 11 years old, it didn't seem like any of them could really be the culprits here because of the whole seeming detail, and the fact that Daniel had seen a tall man grab her, and the fact that this person kept Shawna with them for multiple days and then drove her out to an isolated area. But they looked into every single person that came up in their search efforts for months and months on end. It being a small town, they hoped that word would get out and someone would come forward, but that didn't happen.

During these early days of the investigation, someone called the police and stated that they believed to know who killed Shana Howe. There was a 32-year-old man working at a local pizza shop in Oil City who matched the description of the man who abducted Shana. He was tall and thin, shaggy looking, and he drove a small red car. Considering he was a local, police jumped on this tip immediately. The man's name was Ted Walker, and it turns out he knew Shana and her friends. Whenever they would go to the pizza shop after school, and he was working, he paid special close attention to them.

And this was confirmed by Shana's friends. They were a little scared of him because he always wanted to give them hugs, but they really didn't like that. So all the red flags were going off to police. But after questioning him and collecting his DNA, nothing seemed to match, which was incredibly disappointing. And I've got to say, I feel like every town has this weird guy that works at a pizza shop that wants to hug little girls.

Every town has a creep. Yeah, every town's got a creep or 10. I mean, the town I grew up in had the same creep. I mean, this guy in particular. Which one? I can't remember his name, but growing up, he was always like, I think he was like 10 years older than me,

but he was always weird towards the little girls, girls like my sister's age my little sister's age Did he work at Abbie's? I think he did. I think he did work at Abbie's legendary pizza. I swear I swear, but this guy was so involved in community things like he would help out with like girl scout rallies and He just he just rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. And if my sister listens to this episode, she knows exactly who I'm fucking talking about. Does he look like Ted Walker? He's just like this chubby guy who's really, really weird.

And he's like the type of guy that'll come up behind you and just start mis-sodging your shoulders for no reason, like out of the blue. He's that guy. Hopefully he's not listening. But some of them are creepy on purpose. Some of them just have other stuff going on and that's just the way that they're wired and they can't help it.

But this guy, Ted Walker, he was just known to be... He kind of played that shy, innocent guy And so a lot of people kind of felt, oh, he's harmless. But then he would do creepy things. I tried to hug little girls and everyone's like, no, thanks. Right, he's the harmless pizza shop worker guy who's kind of overweight.

But everybody's like, oh, he's just, he's just Ted, like, you know, he's just weird a little bit. But Ted skinny. Oh, but Ted, yeah, right, Ted's a skinny guy. I don't know why, maybe I'm just picturing the guy that I grew up around. You're just projecting your Ted Walker. Yeah, seriously.

So anyways, of course, this was really disappointing because Ted seemed like a really good lead. He was the town kind of creepy, dude. But luckily, they did have some other tips and leads coming in from locals. Even one guy who acted suspiciously around the time Shana disappeared and then left town the very next day. Police thought that he may have kept Shana in his crawl space after comparing it to the

marks on her knees and they actually did search his house. But this lead fell flat too. Investigators were working very hard here to find the killer. I mean, they took well over like 100 DNA blood samples, but nothing was clicking. The months turned into years, and police had no solid leads connecting to Shauna's murder. No one else was abducted in the town of Oils City during this time either, so police couldn't figure out if the person who had done this was a serial abductor who was just passing through town, or if this was a one-off offense done by one of their very own.

But nearly two and a half years after Shana's murder in the summer of 1995, there was an attempted abduction in oil city. Again, oil city is a safe family community and it's small, so murder, let alone child abduction is not a really common thing. So when a call came in about someone trying to abduct a girl in oil city, police felt like Shana's killer was trying to strike again. The girl had almost been abducted, was beaten pretty badly, but she was able to escape from being thrown into the guy's car. And because of this, she was also able to describe and identify her attacker.

It turned out to be then 23 year old James O'BrienBrien or Jimmy as many called him. Jimmy was a local to the area, but he was always getting into trouble with the law. He and his older brother Tim, who was six years older, were known to be very violent young men and had even committed sexual offenses before. And you're probably wondering why they didn't look into Jimmy or Tim for Shana's murder when it happened, knowing full well that there were two young sexually deviant criminals in their town. But the reason for this was because they were both in jail at the time Shana was killed. And at that time, Jimmy was 20 and his brother Tim was 26. So they didn't look into them at all

after discovering this because, I mean, why would they, you know? And then once they had discovered Jimmy tried to kidnap a young girl in the summer of 1995, they put him in prison for attempted kidnapping. And then they kept on searching for Sean as killer. But just over two years later, exactly five years after Shana went missing on October 27, 1997, another girl disappeared in town. It was four-year-old Shanae Freeman. No one witnessed Shanae being abducted, but one minute she was playing in her own backyard, and the next minute she was gone. So once again, the community was on high alert that Shana's killer was striking again, especially since this was happening at the exact same time that Shana was murdered.

Over the next few days, everyone in town was out there looking for Shanae, and many people were going to Shanae's mom with comforting words. But there was one 17 year old kid named Nick Bowen, who seemed to be paying her a little too much attention. And Shane's mom didn't even know this guy. So part of it was like, oh this nice guy in this community is reassuring me that everything's going to be okay. But the other part was like, why is this stranger saying all this stuff and hugging me? So police went down and talked to him on Halloween day, and he immediately broke down and

told them where she was. And apparently, he didn't know whether or not she was dead, but he did try to kill her. Police sped over to the local wooded area where Nick had thrown Shane from a cliff and then partially buried her. Shenei's cause of death has not been made public, but she was dead when they arrived. Nick was then arrested for her murder and was sentenced to life in prison. And they were kind of going back and forth about this because he was 17 and a half when this happened, but they did end up giving him life in prison for what he did.

I mean, he brutally murdered a four-year-old girl. Right. In the strange thing here is that Nick is 17 years old in 1997. So he was obviously too young to produce semen when Shawna Howe was murdered. You think about that, but then you also think about the fact that he threw Shanae off a cliff cliff and that's so reminiscent of how Shana died, so it's just a really weird connection. Well, that's actually a really good point that I hadn't thought of because I wonder if he was almost inspired by Shana's murder because it happened on the same day, you know, same time of year, just a few years later. So I wonder if to him, he was kind of trying to like copy it? Yeah, that's so freaky because typically, murders like that don't happen on the same day. I mean, this is the same exact day years later.

Same town. Same town and the same cause of death are the same way that the killer disposed of the body. So it's just, it's just, it's just really weird. It is really weird. And just like you're saying about being too young to ejaculate. So police originally did think that Nick was a great suspect for Sean's case, but then they considered the fact that he would have been 12 years old at the time of her death. So he would have been too

young to commit the crime in that sense. His DNA didn't match anyway, but he likely hadn't have gone through puberty at that time, and he couldn't drive, and he couldn't have kept Sean hostage in his home, so he's off the table. And none of this connected, and super obviously, again, disappointing dead end in Sean's case. After another handful of months passed, with still no suspect in sight, another detective started looking into Shauness case, which is always really a good thing because there's typically new ideas that come in at that point and it's like a fresh pair of eyes, so it's always good when somebody on the outside can come in and look at it from that different perspective.

Yeah, we've seen that happen in a lot of cold cases where not to say that the original detectives or investigators weren't doing their job, but sometimes things just kind of slip through the cracks and then when somebody takes a look at it later on, like you said, they have a fresh pair of eyes and now there's probably a little bit better DNA testing going on so it's always kind of a good thing to have someone come in and look at it further.

So this new detective had a lot of work on his plate, but he didn't want to see Sean's case continue to go cold, so he went through all the case files himself, and noticed something kind of strange. Something that hadn't been put in Shana's autopsy report, yet that was in photographs of her body, was part of what looked like a shoe print right there on Shana's face. Unfortunately, this hadn't been looked into at the time, so all this new detective could go off of was the photos. But he got some other professional opinions and everyone agreed that it did indeed look like a shoe print. They also looked heavily into the rest of the marks on Shana's body, including the lack of ligature marks on her wrists and ankles. The reason this was a bit strange was because we know that Shana was kept for three days,

so why didn't she have any marks indicating that she had been restrained during that time? That's when the idea that more than one person was involved came about. And this makes a lot of sense for more than just this, because they took blood samples of so many men throughout the years, and even when they looked into Ted Walker who was super suspicious and even had a red car, the only reason that they didn't look into him further was because the DNA didn't match, but that doesn't mean that he or someone else wasn't a part of the actual crime itself, maybe just not the rape. So this was a really important thing for them to realize.

Exactly. So this is when they started to look at Ted Walker once again. And the reason why they thought to look into him again was because in a way, they kind of completely started over in this case. They started looking into everything that happened in oil city around the time that Shana was murdered, and that's when they discovered something that they hadn't known about before. Sometime after looking into Ted Walker, shortly after Shana was murdered, the fire department reported to the scene of a vehicle fire. And that vehicle was Ted Walker's small red car.

So huge red flags are now going off for Ted once again. Because not only do they know that he knew Shana from his job at the pizza shop, but the girls also thought he was creepy. So now investigators and police started to believe that maybe Ted was involved in some way. He just wasn't the one that raped Shawna. And this is all coming to fruition in the late 90s. So over five and a half years after Shawna's death. Unfortunately, since Ted's DNA didn't match

at the time they looked into him, they dropped him and never looked in his car for DNA. And the reason for this was because they really didn't have enough to get a warrant anyway. But in the early 2000s, they brought him in for questioning once again. Ted acted super casual and said he just wanted to help the investigators because he didn't have anything to hide. So when they asked him how he found out about Shana's murder, Ted immediately said that Jimmy and Tim O'Brien had told him when they heard the news themselves. Now this was very suspicious to detectives because they knew that the O'Brien's were criminals and

Jimmy O'Brien at this time was serving time in prison for attempting to abduct that girl in the summer of 1995. But apparently, the O'Brien had both been in jail when Shauna's murder occurred, so they couldn't have committed it. The new detective on the case, Detective Graham, wanted to make sure that this was true, and twist, lo and behold, both Jimmy and Tim had posted bond just before Shana was abducted. So what must have happened when the O'Brien's were slightly looked at in the beginning of this case was one of the detectives saw that they had been arrested and imprisoned,

but they didn't actually look deeply to determine if they were still in prison or not. He just assumed that they were because they're a rest and prison time listed in their file. This discovery busted the case wide open, and luckily both the O'Brien's were in jail at this time, so finding them to question them was very easy. We know Jimmy was locked up for the attempted abduction, but his brother Tim was also in jail, but for sexually assaulting a girl.

So now we know that these two are little shitheads, and that they both were actually out of jail when Shana went missing. Somehow, the police didn't have DNA samples of either Jimmy or Tim, so they questioned both of them and asked for it. Neither wanted to give it up, and they both said that they wanted a lawyer, so that was out for the time being. They both also denied having anything to do with Sean's disappearance and murder, but Detective Graham felt they were both acting very strange during the questioning. It took about another year for them to

be able to obtain the O'Brien's DNA samples and then more time to process them. But in early 2002, 9.5 years after Shana's murder, they discovered that Jimmy O'Brien's DNA matched the semen sample that was found on Shana's body suit. So now the whole story is coming into play and investigators felt they knew exactly what happened. That Ted Walker and the O'Brien brothers committed this crime together. Good old pizza boy Ted Walker ended up confessing and telling police exactly what happened. In October of 1992, 32-year-old Ted and his buddies 20-year-old Jimi O'Brien and 26-year-old Tim O'Brien discussed their interest in kidnapping a child in town.

On the evening of Tuesday, October 27, 1992, Ted and the O'Brien's were driving around to do just that, and that's when they saw Shana walking home. That's when Tim got out of his car and approached her and asked her if she was selling Girl Scout cookies. Before she could respond, he grabbed her and threw her into Tim's arms inside his red Chevy Chevette and Jim, who was driving, sped off towards Ted's house. And no offense to those of you who drive Chevy Chevets, but that's a really serial killer esque car.

It really does look like it's very fitting. So when they arrived at Ted's, Jimmy and Tim took her upstairs into one of the bedrooms while Ted hung out downstairs, where he could hear her yelling at the O'Brien to let her go and to get off of her. And this is all Ted's account because the O'Brien's never actually admitted

to any of this. So it's very possible Ted played a bigger role than he's leading on. Because it feels kind of convenient that he's like, I was downstairs the whole time. Yeah, I was just with the group who brutally murdered and rapes an 11 year old. I didn't do anything wrong. Yeah, feels like a lie. But either way, Ted then stated that the O'Brien's took his Chevy Chavette out to Colter's hole and sexually assaulted her again there, which is how her body suit got out there. Then, he and detectives believe that they kept her in the trunk or the back of the Chevy Chavette overnight, waiting for the area to clear so they could dump her body.

Ted stated that this was all supposed to be a Halloween prank and that they didn't actually plan to kill or hurt her and that that part just happened. So they threw off the railroad tracks to get rid of her and sped off. I'm sorry, but you guys are three grown adults who talked about abducting a girl? That's not a Halloween prank, you pieces of shit. Like, you don't just go abduct a person and play a prank on an 11 year old girl walking home. Like, you don't abduct first of all, you don't abduct anybody.

But especially not an 11 year old girl. Well, right, and we know that the O'Brien brothers, I don't know if Ted had a criminal history, I couldn't find that, I don't think he did. But we know the O'Brien Brothers definitely did. So they're not the kind to just play prank. So they're kind to sexually assault, violently sexually assault different women and girls.

So they're not the kind of guy who's just gonna play prank. They enjoy this. Yeah, they knew exactly what their intentions were and I hate when people do this. I hate when they try to downplay what they've done like no you did a horrible thing and I feel really really sassy in this episode But it's because I can't say today. I can't stand these guys. I cannot stand them Well, I don't know if you saw and I have to show you if you didn't that interview of Ted Walker It's not an interview. He's kind of going over everything that happened,

and you can just tell he's just not really all there. You know, like he just seems a little absent-minded. So you probably would say that you don't think Ted is the ringleader in this situation, and maybe the O'Brien's are? No, they definitely thought that it was Jimmy O'Brien because he was the kind of the ringleader type guy. He was that, like he just played that part.

You just knew it when just by talking to him. But Ted, what I mean is that Ted seems like he's easy to trick and Ted seems like he's easy to convince to do something. Right, he's easy to manipulate. Yes, so I, I honestly just by listening to him talk and looking at him, I just kind of felt like, like, he just seems like he was really, really just kind listening to him talking, looking at him, I just kind of felt like,

like he just seems like he was really, really just kind of taken advantage of, but he also doesn't really think that he did anything wrong. All three men were arrested for these crimes. Ted Walker was arrested for kidnapping and third-degree murder since, according to his statements, he wasn't the one who actually killed her, but he was a part of at least parts of the events. He received these charges after accepting a plea bargain, which was his whole reason for telling the story in the first place.

Meanwhile, the O'Brien brothers were arrested for second-degree murder, kidnapping, and voluntary, deviant sexual intercourse, and conspiracy, and they were tried together. After a 15-day trial for the O'Brien brothers, they were found guilty of all charges in April 2006 and were sentenced to life in prison. Ted Walker was convicted of his two crimes, which again were kidnapping and third-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Meaning that he's set to be released by 2046 at the age of 92 if he even lives that long. This murder, of course, had a huge effect on this small community, and regarding Halloween, no one felt safe going out. So the city council voted to stop allowing kids to trick or treat at night time for years. And if you think about in October, I think the sun sets probably at least in late October, probably before

six. So didn't leave much time for kids to trick or treat at all. This was a thing until members of oil city petitioned in 2008. So 16 years after Sean is murdered. And then City Council restored trick or treating and other Halloween activities for the town to enjoy. So not only did these idiots kill an 11 year old girl, but they literally produced so much fear in this one city that the city had to actually cancel Halloween. So good job, guys. You ruined Halloween for kids for like 16 years.

And as we were saying in the episode, they were just so scared. Like everyone was just really scared because they didn't know who did it. And it took almost 10 years to figure it out. But even though they did know, in 2002, they found out, but trigger treating still wasn't allowed until 2008. But you have these monsters that went out

and killed this poor girl. And then what about the four-year-old girl, Sheney Freeman, who was killed in this town? So they're like, there's some monsters out here and we don't want this to happen again. So Halloween is canceled. And the really unfortunate thing about this case is, if they had known that Jimmy and Tim had been out on bond

all those years ago, they would have been able to nail them a lot sooner, I believe. Well, yeah, and of course Lucy's family, for years are just sitting on pins and needles, they have no idea where their sister and their daughter is, and they were right there in front of police's eyes. And again, I really do believe that police did a good job on this case.

And I think to them, they just were like, oh, they were in prison and they just kind of took it at that and they didn't look into it further as probably just a little fluke thing. It was really devastating to the case because they did have all of the answers between the O'Brien brothers and Ted. They had all those answers in the very beginning. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West.

Yes, thank you guys so much for listening and next week we'll have an all new case for you guys to dive into. Big shoutouts and thanks to everybody who gave us a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts this week. That's just kind of our way of saying thank you to everybody who gave us a nice review, so thank you to everyone who loves the show. Thank you to Lynn and Chandler Arizona. Thank you to Marie and Marie Utah and Terry and Kentucky. Big thanks going out to Jess Lynn and Los Angeles, Holly and Sacramento, California, and Emily and Midland Michigan. Thank you so much to Emma and Tennessee, Rachel in Michigan, and Kim in Bavaria, Germany.

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