Shannon Graves, a 28-year-old beauty, is unseen by family and friends for months. Yet, people in the neighborhood report seeing her in her car and walking her dog. Then a body is found in a freezer and speculation soon turns into a horrible truth. It is Graves' body. How did the Shannon Graves end up in two places at one time?
Joining Nancy Grace today:
- Darryl Cohen - Former Assistant District Attorney, Fulton County, Georgia, Defense Attorney
- Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst, Beverly Hills, follow on Instagram at "DrBethanyMarshall"
- Steven Lampley - Former Detective - Author of “Outside Your Door”
- Dr. Kris Sperry - Retired Chief Medical Examiner, State of Georgia
- Reporter Ray Caputo- Lead News Anchor for Orlando's Morning News, 96.5 WDBO
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
We're talking about the disappearance of a gorgeous, young, diminutive woman,
Shannon Graves, who goes missing. Yet neighbor series driving by
in her car with her dog. So how she missing? Well,
I don't know the answer to that yet, but I
do know this, A body turns up in a friend's freezer.
(00:29):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A twenty eight year old
young woman goes missing. What happened to Shannon? I'm Nancy Grace.
This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here.
(00:50):
Take a listen to Crime Onlines, John Limley. Shannon Graves
had not been seen for months. This is what her
family told police when they followed missing persons report in
June twenty seventeen. Her half sister, Debbie DePaul, told reporters
that graves friends last saw her in February, but she
(01:12):
also said it wasn't unusual for Shannon to go for
some time without talking with her family. Now, what was
unusual for the twenty eight year old was to leave
home without her car, her dog, and her phone. All
three were left behind, something to keep in mind. De
(01:33):
Paul described the woman as pretty petite. She was rather small,
but with a big personality, and when it comes to
her size, she was exactly right when she went missing.
Graves was four foot eleven and she weighed about ninety
eight pounds. Is this all a big hoax? Because after
she's reported missing, she's seen driving her car, her credit
(01:57):
card is ye, she's even walking her dog. But yet
she's seemingly has vanished from the lives of everyone. Sheet
knows what is happening to Shannon Again, thank you for
being with us here at Fox Nation and Series one
eleven with me an all star panel. Former felony prosecutor
(02:17):
now defense attorney DARYLD Cohen joining me from the Atlanta
Jurisdiction Psychoanalyst to the Stars, doctor Bethany Marshall joining me
from La Stephen Lampley, detective and author Outside Your Door
at Stephen Lampley dot com. Former Chief medical Examiner for
the entire State of Georgia, doctor Chris Sperry, and lead
(02:39):
news anchor WDBO Morning Ray Kiputo, Ray, I want to
talk about first, Shannon Gray. She's just twenty eight years old,
but she's barely five feet tall. She only weighs, you know,
ninety one hundred pounds. She's a tiny tiny, diminutive woman.
(03:01):
Just beautiful. I might add, she looks like somebody on TV.
I'm trying to figure out who that is. She looks
like anyway, gorgeous, and she's reported missing. Tell me about
who reported her missing and how they noticed she was missing. Well, Nancy,
(03:22):
it wasn't uncommon, according to family members, for Shannon to
go long periods of time without contacting family members. So
when she first kind of people noticed that she wasn't around,
it wasn't like, you know, somebody you see every day
where you immediately notice that. She was last seen on
Christmas Day in twenty sixteen, and then her sister said
she saw her a couple months later in mid Sebruary.
(03:44):
But again it's kind of abnormal. You'd think when somebody
goes missing in a matter of days, people notice, but
it wasn't like that with Shannon. So she was last
seeing that February by her sister. You know, that's how
people fall through the cracks, Doctor Bethany Marshall, because I've
told to this story my mom. This is when you
still got charged for a long distance call. My mom worked,
(04:07):
you know, thirty forty minutes from her home and the
moment she got to work. They had what was called
a Watts line at the times, an eight hundred number,
so the moment she got there, she would get there
at seven o'clock in the morning. Wherever I was in
the world, she'd call me to make sure I was up,
getting ready to go to court, or had already left.
(04:28):
She would call me immediately the moment she got there,
and we were in touch every day, and typically on
my way home from work, I'd call my dad. My
mom talked to them on the way home, so that
was a regular routine. She did not have that routine,
so the family after they see her in February, didn't
(04:49):
realize she was missing for a period of months. Bethany Nancy,
this is so unusual because all of the cases we
cover think about it. Usually it's co workers, Like with
your mom, the co workers say, hey, the employee has
not shown up for work, or the person vanishes on
social media they stopped posting on Instagram or Facebook, or
(05:11):
the most important call of the day to your mother. Right,
it's always the mothers who know these young women. Shannon
Graves was what twenty seven, twenty eight years old. When
I was that age, I called my mother all the time.
I would never have been able to go two or
three days without talking to a family member. So, you know,
(05:31):
the positive side was that she was a pretty spirit.
She loved to drive around with her dog and everything.
The negative side is that she seems to be either
an introvert or isolated, having a very low need for
contact with family members. And as you know, Nancy and
you're talking about, that really put her at risk. It
(05:54):
really did. You know what I'm thinking about, how she
could have gone period of months with no one realizing
she was gone. Maybe she had mentioned a vacation. Maybe
she went on a vacation nobody knew, but we don't
know how many days had really passed that Shannon had
(06:15):
actually been missing. The other thing it points to would
be a possible DV situation domestic violence. I was thinking,
what young woman falls out of contact with everybody in
their life, maybe if she had a very controlling boyfriend.
I don't know much about the boyfriend, and this piece, well,
we don't know anything at all about domestic abuse. But
(06:39):
what we do know is that she seemingly dropped off
the face of the earth. But then there were conflicting
reports neighbors and others saw her driving her car, which
we heard was abandoned. They see her with her dog,
which we were told was left alone back at the apartment.
(07:01):
Her credit cards, her ATMs were used to suggest that
she was still alive and not missing at all. Is
Bethany Wright? Is she hiding out from some lover she
wants to get away from? To see her walking her
dog out in the open, to see her drive by
in her car with her dog in the car. That
seemed to dispel police's fears because the suggestions that she
(07:27):
was missing or even dead, that didn't jive with the
fact that she's spotted in her own car in her
own neighborhood with her dog. Now the sister, the half
sister tells us she was missing, her dog was left behind,
her other objects like pocketbook and so forth, all left behind.
(07:49):
She was the only one missing, Yet neighbors have spotted
her in the neighborhood in her car. That doesn't fit together.
So there you have the dichotomy. Year Cohen. Fancy, do
they really see her drive by or did they see
her car and they assume that she's the one driving it.
Did they see her drive by? Is there a dog
(08:11):
in the car, they see the dog, they once again
assume as her Is that really what happened? Yes, it's
her dog and her car. Time Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys,
(08:37):
we're talking about the mysterious disappearance of a young woman
or youngstown. Then there seems to be a break in
the case. Take a listen to Janet Rogers WF m J.
They have an autistic son. They were going to She
was going to make spaghetti, and so she opened the
(09:01):
freezer lock the three screws that took the pad lock
off so she could open it. And when she looked inside,
she saw garbage bags and a garbage bag and a pail,
and she basically thought something was very wrong. She screwed
it back on, and when her husband came home, she said,
(09:21):
something is really wrong. I was going to make spaghetti
for our son. He's autistic. Guinea loves spaghetti, and she
was going to get some meat and replace it. And
he said it took him about five minutes before he
could even go look because then suddenly he started fearing
the worst because he did know Shannon Graves. She had
(09:42):
spent time at the home. He thought she was a
very polite, very nice woman. And was just terrified because
suddenly things started adding up she had been missing. Okay,
that's really weird, and I'll tell you why. Just night
before last, I see something in the freezer. I'm looking
(10:04):
for ice cream for John David, of course, and I
see something wrapped in tinfoil. I have no idea what
it is. It's not marked, so I took it out
and thought it out. It was this giant thing of meatloaf.
My mom had made god Elino's win and had bundled
in his huge thing of tinfoil and put it in
a plastic bag. You know, I never once thought, Wow,
(10:27):
could that be so and So's missing foot? Could I
never would dawn on me that an unknown or unidentifiable
frozen object could be a body part. But this guy says,
the first thing he thought was, oh, that's Shannon. That's
(10:48):
Shannon in my freezer. See, those two things do not
fit together for me. Plus, how do you explain neighbors
seeing her driving around the neighborhood in her car with
her a dog. So this mom says she wanted to
make spaghetti for her son, goes down, opens the freezer
(11:09):
and says garbage bags and the husband immediately goes, oh, yeah,
I bet that's the missing woman. Shannon, Hmmm. Take a
listen to more Janet Rogers wf m J. When he
finally got up the courage to go look in the freezer,
he saw the garbage bags. He basically tried to open it.
(11:31):
It was frozen solid and he said that he tried
and that didn't work. So he went and he got
you know, he got a knife and he cut one
bag and he said it was a heavy duty contractor's bag.
And then he got to another layer and there was
another bag, and then then it is when the smell
(11:52):
hit him and then basically he cut open another bag
and that's when he saw the foot and leg and
they both screamed. They went and called nine and one.
They have been crying when I spoke with them on Sunday,
a day after they found that body. I'm called nine
O one immediately Wow. So the husband, ken Eshan Paul,
(12:17):
starts digging through garbage bags and the freezer must have
been one of those deep freezers that you lift up
like a trunk, and realizes that it is in fact
a human body. Two former chief medical examiner for the
(12:37):
entire state of Georgia, doctor Chris Sperry, who can withstand
practically anything on cross examine, cross examination, I can attest
to that, doctor Sperry. What effect does freezing have on
a body? And I'm very curious in this case why
the killer didn't just dispose of the body parts. Why
(13:00):
put them in a freezer where they can be discovered later.
So that's a whole other canorms. But what effect does
freezing have on the body. I'm curious because this witness
ken eschen Boss says he opened the bags, the body
was frozen, yet the stench of decomposition hit him. Witten,
(13:26):
freezing get rid of that smell. No, freezing will not
do that. If a body is fresh, whether it's stop
right there. Let me just drink that in. If a
body is fresh fresh, never heard of describe like that,
But okay, I'll take that away. If a person has
(13:48):
recently died, and that's nice. There is that's more palatable.
And then the body is put into a freezer, whether
it's then, whether it's dismembered or intact. As long as
the time between death and the freezing is fairly short
(14:10):
a few hours, then there will be no odor. Once
the parts are discovered and the bags are open. However,
if a body begins to decompose and is then frozen
or dismembered and then frozen, the parts are frozen, the
decomposition odors will not go away at all. Freezing does
(14:34):
not eliminate decomposition, even though when the body parts were discovered,
they clearly they clearly had been a significant decomposition before
the dismembered parts were put into the freezer, and that
odor will stay there whether it's a month or a year,
or no matter how long. So what does that tell you? Forensically,
(14:58):
Doctor Chris Berry? Tell me the when when the person
was murdered, there was a period of time, probably at
least a day at room temperature, and perhaps you've been
as long as three, four or five days. I mean,
we could tell more about looking at the portions of
(15:19):
the body, looking at the tissues, but it tells me
that enough time had passed between the when the person
died and then was dismembered and frozen that decomposition had
already set in. So that's you know that that definitely
shows right there, there's an interval between the time of
(15:40):
death and then the hiding of the body parts of
the freezer. So bottom line, the killer left her body
lying around, as you said, at room temperature. You do know,
doctor Sperry, you refer to human bodies as if they're
I don't know, pro do you just want to make
you aware of that at the fresh well, it's bad, okay?
(16:06):
Did you say it's work, just work? Did you when
you were a little boy, doctor Sperry, what did you
want to be when you grew up? Because I'm just curious.
I wanted to be a doctor from the age of four.
My mother could attest to that, but I decided to
be a forensic pathologist when I was fifteen. I used
(16:26):
to ride my bicycle to the medical library or the
science library at the University of Kansas and just walked
through the stacks looking for books. And one day I
found a book on forensic pathology, which I probably checked
out and took home, and I decided that in there
that is what I want to do, and my dream
came true. I don't really know what to say. Even
(16:48):
as a young boy, you dreamed of dead bodies. You know.
I'm going to let you and doctor Bethany Marshall take
up that issue privately, but I'm just trying to get
my mind around what you're saying to Daryl, And I
was going down the rabbit hole of do we ever
stop and hear ourselves describing dead bodies like their produce.
(17:09):
But I want to talk about the forensics in this case.
That means that the killer left her just what, lying
there for a period of time before doing anything with
her body. That suggests to me a real plathora of possibilities.
Were they so arrogant, so sure they wouldn't get caught,
(17:29):
that they could just leave a body sitting there unattended
to Nancy. I'm wondering if it was just the opposite
that the killer was afraid, because it was obviously he
in my view, he had somewhere else to be, and
if he wasn't there at or near the time he
was supposed to be there, that would send out, oh
(17:51):
my gosh, where is he ready, and then later they
would tie that back to him. So I think one
good theory is that he west where he had to be,
and he had to leave the body decompose and then
so he could come back to it later and then
put it on ice. I think you're right. I think
(18:13):
your theory is very very possible. Time Stories with Nancy Grace.
(18:33):
We're talking about the disappearance of a gorgeous, young, diminutive
woman's Shannon Graves, who goes missing. Yet neighbor series driving
by in her car with her dog. So how is
she missing? Well, I don't know the answer to that yet,
but I do know this. A body turns up in
a friend's freezer and it looks like a woman's foot.
They call nine on one. You know, I was trying
(18:55):
to figure out who she looked at. It has been
bothering me. She looks like a much younger Carrie Fisher
with a side pony around the time of the First
Star Wars, very very beautiful princess Princess Leiah. That's who
she looks like. Anyway, long story short, This body turns
up in a freezer. The moment the homeowner opens the freezer,
(19:21):
he realizes something's very wrong, thinks it's a body, opens
a trash bag and yes, he finds a human foot.
Now I don't need a medical degree, no offense, doctor
Sperry to note this is murder. Take a listen now
to Joe Gorman with the Vindicator. And I looked at
the Corners Report today to see the Channy Lake on that,
(19:44):
because they never really did give a cause of death
for her, and the Corners report doesn't say too much.
It mentions how she was, how what they found was
cut up, They found a foot, there are two or
three different bags, and there were different body parts. But
the corner's ruling said that it was ruled her death
as homified by unspecified means. They haven't been mentioned anything
about a timeline or anything like that. With a body
(20:05):
dismembered in this manner, it may be very, very difficult
to get a cod cause of death. And I believe
it was Darryll Cohen pointed out earlier. Yes it has
to be a guy, not absolutely, but I mean Stephen Lampley,
detective author of Outside Your Door, Have you ever seen
a female killer that dismembered the body Nancy? I have not,
(20:27):
and I won't say that it's never happened. I'm not
familiar with and I've never had that experience, to be honest,
neither have I. Of course, if it did happen, she
was smart enough to get rid of all the evidence
and didn't leave it in a freezer. So you know
what I keep hearing Ray Kaputo, lead anchor WDBO, I
keep hearing about a foot and another foot. Nobody's mentioned
a hit. Well, Nancy, it's because they never found it.
(20:51):
Parts of her body have never been found. Only that's
in pieces, you know, Ray Kaputo, I bet they never
found her hands either. I haven't heard that. I don't
know that to be true, but it seems to me
that the killer was trying to avoid her body being identified. Yeah,
I mean that's correct. It seems like great lengths. I mean,
(21:12):
first off, anybody that goes through the trouble of freezing
a body and cutting up. I mean, if killing somebody
wasn't disgusting enough, you have to have quite a stomach
to do that. So they did go through great lengths,
you know, just by the nature of how she was
the parts of her were found. It is quite bizarre. Guys.
I'm also curious about how this fraser ends up in
(21:33):
your basement and you don't know there is a dead
body in it. Police began backtracking. They look at everyone
that thinks they've seen Shannon Graves alive in the recent past,
and as Daryl Cohen alluded in the very beginning of
this murder mystery? Was that really Shannon Graves? Was that
(21:58):
Shannon Graves that we see go by in her car?
I want to go to doctor Chris Sperry, Doctor Sperry.
Without a head and without hands, How can a body
be identified? Well, if you're lucky enough to find, say
(22:19):
tattoos or significant scars on the body, those can be
unique identifying marks, especially if a tattoo has a name
or is very unique. Now lots of people have all
kinds of surgical scars that you know, at least it
may give some idea or or you know, if you
know that a missing person had, say a hysterectomy, and
(22:42):
the autopsy shows that there's no uterus or Philippian tube,
no female organs, well at least that's a start. But honestly,
at this day and age, DNA that that is how
the vast majority of identifications are accomplished today. In situations
like where we have here, where the head is missing
(23:02):
and perhaps the hands also, there's still a ton of
DNA even with the decomposition state of the tissues. If necessary,
we can take DNA from the bone marrow and still
identify someone. DNA from the bone marrow you don't want
to circle back to it. Daryl Cohen, the former prosecutor
now defense attorney. The Atlanta jurisdiction set earlier because these
(23:26):
people were sure they had seen Shannon Grace. So if
it's not her driving her car, and her dog, and
her credit cards and her at even her clothes, then
what is there a mysterious evil twin. She does not
have a twin, So is there a doppel gager? What
led you to say that? Daryl Cohen? Yancy? Because in
all the years I've prosecuted, and in all the years
(23:48):
I've defended the least the least person, the people who
absolutely identify the person or persons are are not very reliable.
I'm not you and the bad eyewitness again. You know
what so many defense attorneys have whined the eyewitness didn't
(24:09):
see what they saw. We actually it's actually in the
law now and the statute the case law that says
with eyewitnesses, you need to and this is routine sop.
When I put up an eyewitness, what time of the
day was it, do you wear glasses? Was it? Well?
Let how far away were you? Was your view obstructed?
Where the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time,
there's actually a litany that you put your eyewitness through
(24:33):
because of people just like Daryl Cohen that would love
to tell a jury the eyewitness didn't see what they saw.
But in this case, sadly is Daryl Cohen absolutely correct.
Oh hold on, I'm not going to let him in
because he's gonna gloat. Let me go to doctor Bethany Marshall.
Just a moment, Doctor Bethany. This woman her feet and
(24:56):
other parts of her body in garbage bags and a freezer.
Who in the world would think of wearing her clothes,
using your ATM and credit card, taking her dog out,
driving her car, even wearing her hats? Long story short,
What kind of mind would take over the clothing and
(25:16):
the life to be an apost for a dead girl?
Another jealous woman, another woman who wants her life, another
woman who envies her nancy. This reminds me a little
of these crimes where a woman wants to become pregnant,
gets pseudocyesis, which is a false pregnancy, find the pregnant woman,
(25:38):
kidnaps her and cuts the baby out of the pregnant
mom's belly. They want what the other person has, Who
wanted what Shannon Graves had, was there somebody who was
befriending her, was sending her gifts, soliciting contact with her,
trying to cozy up to her family or her boyfriends,
(26:00):
or to her place of employment. I bet there was
some woman somewhere who was obsessed with her, and I
would try to follow the clues in that direction. But
to the extent that you would wear a dead woman's
clothes and walk her dog for Pete's sake, Bethany, Well, Hey,
if you're going to cut a baby out of a
(26:21):
pregnant mom, you start with the babycat out of a
pregnant mom. That has nothing to do with this that
we know of yet. But why would you wear the
dead woman's clothes? You know? I think why you chop
her up in bens and they go, oh, I think
I'll try on her Max. I mean, you know, it's
really like, um, I'm digging her hat. That's a no.
(26:42):
Who was it where the head of the fan club
killed the star? Was it? Selena? Selena? So? Hello? Okay?
So she gained proximity to this star. She became her
biggest fan. She learned everything about her, her comings, her
goings for bank accounts, you know, she infiltrated her fan club,
(27:02):
became the head of it. But she didn't want to
be close to her. She wanted to be her. So
whoever did this wanted to be Shannon Graves wanted that
kind of a life. And I bet it was a
weak individual who did not know how to build a
life of her own. She had to steal a life,
she had to take it from somebody else. Did Shannon
(27:23):
Graves have a boyfriend? I don't know. Was this this
person wanting other aspects of Shannon's life? Did she have Shannon? Yes,
Arthur Novoa had a boyfriend. Hey, doctor Bethany Marshall getting
into the psyche of someone that could take part in
a brutal murder and dismemberment of this young woman, gorgeous,
(27:46):
twenty eight year old Shannon Gray. She's about four eight
four nine, she weighs about ninety pounds, just a little
whisp of a woman, but with a big personality and
then suddenly assume her identity, live her life. Take a
listen now to what we learned from Ken Shinbach. Mean
(28:12):
wife just screaming came up and I went to the
friend Steths. Take a listen, to de Wi KB and
TV stan Bonnet. The two people in connection with this
crime are Artario Novoa and Katrina Layton. Now keep in
mind these two have only been charged with abuse of
a corpse. They have yet to be charged with the
(28:34):
murder in connection with Shannon Graves. We do know that
Shannon Graves and Arturo Novoa were at one point boyfriend
and girlfriend. They live in an apartment on Mahoning Avenue
in Youngstown. That uh once, eventually, uh, Katrina Layton came
into the picture and she was seen driving Graves's car,
(28:55):
using her cell phone and basically taking the place of
Shannon Graves. Dot to Bethany Marshall, You're absolutely correct, and
so are you Daryl Cohen. So doctor Bethany Marshall. Since
Darrel Cohen has in fact confessed he's just a JD,
not a psychoanalyst like you, let me go to you
to explain the thinking. What is going on in this
(29:17):
woman's mind that she takes over the identity of Shannon
Gray's after taking part obviously taking parton murdering her. Well,
didn't we see this in the Dulos murder Jennifer Dulos
that her husband recruited another woman to help dispose of
the body. This is not an uncommon story, sadly, but
I don't remember the girlfriend, Nan Dulos wearing Jennifer's cloth.
(29:42):
This is a good point, you know, Nana. Still yes.
The psychology is that the boy Samantha Grave's boyfriend begins
to devalue and to degrade her to the new girlfriend
to put her down to tell Stor. He begins to
build a narrative that Shannon Graves doesn't really deserve the
(30:03):
life he's quote unquote air quote given her. She doesn't
deserve that beautiful car she drives around. She doesn't deserve
that loving dog. She doesn't deserve the money and the
bank accounts because he, after all, has provided all of
it to her. And why is that h taking things
that are not hers to take. He builds the narrative
(30:24):
with the new lover and the new girlfriend, who buys
into it, and begins to develop a paranoid relationship with
Samantha and with society that he's like God and she'll
only bloom if she's planted in his garden. Pretty soon
they begin to conspire to get rid of Samantha and
to take over her life because they have already in
(30:45):
a sense, destroyed the goodness of her personality in their minds,
and by the time they kill her, they chop her up,
they put her in a freezer. They have completely rationalized
that her belongings belong to them. They're not hers, they're theirs.
It's hetty theft at a very grand, elaborate level. Crime
(31:16):
stories with Nancy Grace, guys were talking about the mysterious
disappearance of a young woman or Youngstown. You know what's interesting,
Stephen Lampley, Daryl Cohen, we all three agree that we've
never seen a female killer dismember a body. Yeah, but
(31:42):
isn't it true? Ray Caputo w DBO that it was Layton,
thirty six year old Katrina Layton that went and bought
the freezer and bought sulfuric acid. Oh yeah, Nancy, she
was a willing participant. She also helped move the body too.
But you know, she was not just on the sidelines
of all this, and you know that a lot of
(32:03):
that came out when she went to trial. But yeah,
I mean, she bought sulfuric acid, she bought the freezer,
she helped move the body, She knew what she was
doing so in your mind, Stephen Lampley, detective author of
Outside Your Door. She's in the thick of it. She
may very well have taken part in dismembering the body.
She's the one that buys the freezer. She's the one
(32:24):
that buys the sulfuric acid. She's in the thick of it. Nancy,
she is, and she's well involved. And I mean she's
like you said, she bought the freezer. Obviously round I
would think that she helped even in the dismembering. That's
my initial thought. But yeah, she is so involved in
this murder. You know too, Doctor Bethany Marshall. On my keychain,
I have you know you can do those little you
(32:45):
can get those little plastic frames. I know I've got
at least five of the twins and all of us
together at different spots. Here we are at the beach,
eating at Crabby Joe's. Here we are at NASA part
anything like we're floating in space. Listen to this. Did
you know the lover Arthur Nevoa kept the key to
(33:10):
the padlock on his keychain. Now, when they moved out
of the apartment, they moved the freezer with the dead
body and the freezer to these friends, the Eshenbergs. But
he kept it and every time he had to crank
his car unlock his house, he had to see that
padlock and think, Shannon Grays, my lover, She's dismembered in
(33:34):
the freezer. How do you do that every day? Look
right at it on your keychain, Nancy. I always say,
as in life, so in death, meaning he controlled her
in life, he controlled her in death. He's a control freak,
and so is his girlfriend. Controlling to the point of
being homicidal, wanting to complete control over the body. I think, Nancy,
that something happened where they conspired to kill her, but
(34:00):
they were not far sighted enough to know what to
do with the body, and so it lay there for
several days while they contemplated their next move. It takes
an enormous amount of energy to dismember a body, you know,
you can ask mister Sperry, doctor Sperry, blood all over
the place. I mean, it's a herculean task. They finally
put her in the freezer, They secrete the freezer, or
(34:23):
they give it to a friend. He has the key
to the padlock. He imagines that he still has control
over her, that she's his, that no one would ever
get in that freezer because he and only he has
the key. And that's what abusers think. They think that
they are the sole person in charge of that other
person's life. I think it's that simple psychology in this case.
(34:45):
Is it true, Ray Caputo, that Novoa and listed other
people to help him dispose of the body? Yeah, Nancy,
I wish I could say that that Latent and Novola
were the only two people involved. But he had another friend,
Andrew Herman, who apparently helped him mutilate the body and then,
to make matters worse, Andrew Herman was married at the
(35:06):
time and he had a wife who helped out as well,
moving in disposing things. So it wasn't just these two
deprived individuals. There were a couple more involved. And I
think that's the really sick part is that you know,
you think that one person would come to their senses,
but all four of them took part in this. I mean,
Daryll Cohen, I've wanted us a million times. When you
have a group of defendants to take part in a murder.
(35:28):
Man the first time somebody says, hey, do you want
to help me dismember body. You'd say nothing to me
but elbows, intel hole, because I'd be running straight to
call police, not here, and these people went, oh sure,
what is that? It seems to me every party that
these people have nothing on their mind but to help
their buddy. And this is really cool. When I'll tell
(35:49):
you what, Nancy, when it's time to roll over one
of those people. Besides, I am not guilty, I am
going to tell because I don't want prison the rest
of my lord. You know, the family is left wondering.
Take a listen to to w KB and Stan at Beune.
There were lots of hugs around the gazebo at Austin
Town Township Park is. The family of Shannon Graves held
(36:11):
an evening to remember her. It was organized by her sister,
Debbie DePaul. Shannon was her own little spirit, She was
her free spirits. One of Shannon's good friends was John Scarrata.
She was awesome. She was a great person, always full
energy on top of everything that she did, like really focused.
But she has a lot of friends. You could tell
by the people that are coming here. Shannon graves father,
(36:34):
Ronnie DePaul, also showed up and said he's handling it
because he has to, but without all the standards. But
she ever could have done to add these two people
do what he did to her. Elodi got the bury
part of a buttah. Just everything around her being missing
wasn't right. So we kind of didn't know the specifics
(36:55):
or the gruesomeness of it, but figured pretty much something
like that had happened forty eight to life. But Shannon's
family still still distraught over the light treatment, latent and
others got We wait as justice un falls. Nancy Grace
Crime Story signing off good Bye Friend,
We're talking about the disappearance of a gorgeous, young, diminutive woman,
Shannon Graves, who goes missing. Yet neighbor series driving by
in her car with her dog. So how she missing? Well,
I don't know the answer to that yet, but I
do know this, A body turns up in a friend's freezer.
(00:29):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. A twenty eight year old
young woman goes missing. What happened to Shannon? I'm Nancy Grace.
This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here.
(00:50):
Take a listen to Crime Onlines, John Limley. Shannon Graves
had not been seen for months. This is what her
family told police when they followed missing persons report in
June twenty seventeen. Her half sister, Debbie DePaul, told reporters
that graves friends last saw her in February, but she
(01:12):
also said it wasn't unusual for Shannon to go for
some time without talking with her family. Now, what was
unusual for the twenty eight year old was to leave
home without her car, her dog, and her phone. All
three were left behind, something to keep in mind. De
(01:33):
Paul described the woman as pretty petite. She was rather small,
but with a big personality, and when it comes to
her size, she was exactly right when she went missing.
Graves was four foot eleven and she weighed about ninety
eight pounds. Is this all a big hoax? Because after
she's reported missing, she's seen driving her car, her credit
(01:57):
card is ye, she's even walking her dog. But yet
she's seemingly has vanished from the lives of everyone. Sheet
knows what is happening to Shannon Again, thank you for
being with us here at Fox Nation and Series one
eleven with me an all star panel. Former felony prosecutor
(02:17):
now defense attorney DARYLD Cohen joining me from the Atlanta
Jurisdiction Psychoanalyst to the Stars, doctor Bethany Marshall joining me
from La Stephen Lampley, detective and author Outside Your Door
at Stephen Lampley dot com. Former Chief medical Examiner for
the entire State of Georgia, doctor Chris Sperry, and lead
(02:39):
news anchor WDBO Morning Ray Kiputo, Ray, I want to
talk about first, Shannon Gray. She's just twenty eight years old,
but she's barely five feet tall. She only weighs, you know,
ninety one hundred pounds. She's a tiny tiny, diminutive woman.
(03:01):
Just beautiful. I might add, she looks like somebody on TV.
I'm trying to figure out who that is. She looks
like anyway, gorgeous, and she's reported missing. Tell me about
who reported her missing and how they noticed she was missing. Well, Nancy,
(03:22):
it wasn't uncommon, according to family members, for Shannon to
go long periods of time without contacting family members. So
when she first kind of people noticed that she wasn't around,
it wasn't like, you know, somebody you see every day
where you immediately notice that. She was last seen on
Christmas Day in twenty sixteen, and then her sister said
she saw her a couple months later in mid Sebruary.
(03:44):
But again it's kind of abnormal. You'd think when somebody
goes missing in a matter of days, people notice, but
it wasn't like that with Shannon. So she was last
seeing that February by her sister. You know, that's how
people fall through the cracks, Doctor Bethany Marshall, because I've
told to this story my mom. This is when you
still got charged for a long distance call. My mom worked,
(04:07):
you know, thirty forty minutes from her home and the
moment she got to work. They had what was called
a Watts line at the times, an eight hundred number,
so the moment she got there, she would get there
at seven o'clock in the morning. Wherever I was in
the world, she'd call me to make sure I was up,
getting ready to go to court, or had already left.
(04:28):
She would call me immediately the moment she got there,
and we were in touch every day, and typically on
my way home from work, I'd call my dad. My
mom talked to them on the way home, so that
was a regular routine. She did not have that routine,
so the family after they see her in February, didn't
(04:49):
realize she was missing for a period of months. Bethany Nancy,
this is so unusual because all of the cases we
cover think about it. Usually it's co workers, Like with
your mom, the co workers say, hey, the employee has
not shown up for work, or the person vanishes on
social media they stopped posting on Instagram or Facebook, or
(05:11):
the most important call of the day to your mother. Right,
it's always the mothers who know these young women. Shannon
Graves was what twenty seven, twenty eight years old. When
I was that age, I called my mother all the time.
I would never have been able to go two or
three days without talking to a family member. So, you know,
(05:31):
the positive side was that she was a pretty spirit.
She loved to drive around with her dog and everything.
The negative side is that she seems to be either
an introvert or isolated, having a very low need for
contact with family members. And as you know, Nancy and
you're talking about, that really put her at risk. It
(05:54):
really did. You know what I'm thinking about, how she
could have gone period of months with no one realizing
she was gone. Maybe she had mentioned a vacation. Maybe
she went on a vacation nobody knew, but we don't
know how many days had really passed that Shannon had
(06:15):
actually been missing. The other thing it points to would
be a possible DV situation domestic violence. I was thinking,
what young woman falls out of contact with everybody in
their life, maybe if she had a very controlling boyfriend.
I don't know much about the boyfriend, and this piece, well,
we don't know anything at all about domestic abuse. But
(06:39):
what we do know is that she seemingly dropped off
the face of the earth. But then there were conflicting
reports neighbors and others saw her driving her car, which
we heard was abandoned. They see her with her dog,
which we were told was left alone back at the apartment.
(07:01):
Her credit cards, her ATMs were used to suggest that
she was still alive and not missing at all. Is
Bethany Wright? Is she hiding out from some lover she
wants to get away from? To see her walking her
dog out in the open, to see her drive by
in her car with her dog in the car. That
seemed to dispel police's fears because the suggestions that she
(07:27):
was missing or even dead, that didn't jive with the
fact that she's spotted in her own car in her
own neighborhood with her dog. Now the sister, the half
sister tells us she was missing, her dog was left behind,
her other objects like pocketbook and so forth, all left behind.
(07:49):
She was the only one missing, Yet neighbors have spotted
her in the neighborhood in her car. That doesn't fit together.
So there you have the dichotomy. Year Cohen. Fancy, do
they really see her drive by or did they see
her car and they assume that she's the one driving it.
Did they see her drive by? Is there a dog
(08:11):
in the car, they see the dog, they once again
assume as her Is that really what happened? Yes, it's
her dog and her car. Time Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys,
(08:37):
we're talking about the mysterious disappearance of a young woman
or youngstown. Then there seems to be a break in
the case. Take a listen to Janet Rogers WF m J.
They have an autistic son. They were going to She
was going to make spaghetti, and so she opened the
(09:01):
freezer lock the three screws that took the pad lock
off so she could open it. And when she looked inside,
she saw garbage bags and a garbage bag and a pail,
and she basically thought something was very wrong. She screwed
it back on, and when her husband came home, she said,
(09:21):
something is really wrong. I was going to make spaghetti
for our son. He's autistic. Guinea loves spaghetti, and she
was going to get some meat and replace it. And
he said it took him about five minutes before he
could even go look because then suddenly he started fearing
the worst because he did know Shannon Graves. She had
(09:42):
spent time at the home. He thought she was a
very polite, very nice woman. And was just terrified because
suddenly things started adding up she had been missing. Okay,
that's really weird, and I'll tell you why. Just night
before last, I see something in the freezer. I'm looking
(10:04):
for ice cream for John David, of course, and I
see something wrapped in tinfoil. I have no idea what
it is. It's not marked, so I took it out
and thought it out. It was this giant thing of meatloaf.
My mom had made god Elino's win and had bundled
in his huge thing of tinfoil and put it in
a plastic bag. You know, I never once thought, Wow,
(10:27):
could that be so and So's missing foot? Could I
never would dawn on me that an unknown or unidentifiable
frozen object could be a body part. But this guy says,
the first thing he thought was, oh, that's Shannon. That's
(10:48):
Shannon in my freezer. See, those two things do not
fit together for me. Plus, how do you explain neighbors
seeing her driving around the neighborhood in her car with
her a dog. So this mom says she wanted to
make spaghetti for her son, goes down, opens the freezer
(11:09):
and says garbage bags and the husband immediately goes, oh, yeah,
I bet that's the missing woman. Shannon, Hmmm. Take a
listen to more Janet Rogers wf m J. When he
finally got up the courage to go look in the freezer,
he saw the garbage bags. He basically tried to open it.
(11:31):
It was frozen solid and he said that he tried
and that didn't work. So he went and he got
you know, he got a knife and he cut one
bag and he said it was a heavy duty contractor's bag.
And then he got to another layer and there was
another bag, and then then it is when the smell
(11:52):
hit him and then basically he cut open another bag
and that's when he saw the foot and leg and
they both screamed. They went and called nine and one.
They have been crying when I spoke with them on Sunday,
a day after they found that body. I'm called nine
O one immediately Wow. So the husband, ken Eshan Paul,
(12:17):
starts digging through garbage bags and the freezer must have
been one of those deep freezers that you lift up
like a trunk, and realizes that it is in fact
a human body. Two former chief medical examiner for the
(12:37):
entire state of Georgia, doctor Chris Sperry, who can withstand
practically anything on cross examine, cross examination, I can attest
to that, doctor Sperry. What effect does freezing have on
a body? And I'm very curious in this case why
the killer didn't just dispose of the body parts. Why
(13:00):
put them in a freezer where they can be discovered later.
So that's a whole other canorms. But what effect does
freezing have on the body. I'm curious because this witness
ken eschen Boss says he opened the bags, the body
was frozen, yet the stench of decomposition hit him. Witten,
(13:26):
freezing get rid of that smell. No, freezing will not
do that. If a body is fresh, whether it's stop
right there. Let me just drink that in. If a
body is fresh fresh, never heard of describe like that,
But okay, I'll take that away. If a person has
(13:48):
recently died, and that's nice. There is that's more palatable.
And then the body is put into a freezer, whether
it's then, whether it's dismembered or intact. As long as
the time between death and the freezing is fairly short
(14:10):
a few hours, then there will be no odor. Once
the parts are discovered and the bags are open. However,
if a body begins to decompose and is then frozen
or dismembered and then frozen, the parts are frozen, the
decomposition odors will not go away at all. Freezing does
(14:34):
not eliminate decomposition, even though when the body parts were discovered,
they clearly they clearly had been a significant decomposition before
the dismembered parts were put into the freezer, and that
odor will stay there whether it's a month or a year,
or no matter how long. So what does that tell you? Forensically,
(14:58):
Doctor Chris Berry? Tell me the when when the person
was murdered, there was a period of time, probably at
least a day at room temperature, and perhaps you've been
as long as three, four or five days. I mean,
we could tell more about looking at the portions of
(15:19):
the body, looking at the tissues, but it tells me
that enough time had passed between the when the person
died and then was dismembered and frozen that decomposition had
already set in. So that's you know that that definitely
shows right there, there's an interval between the time of
(15:40):
death and then the hiding of the body parts of
the freezer. So bottom line, the killer left her body
lying around, as you said, at room temperature. You do know,
doctor Sperry, you refer to human bodies as if they're
I don't know, pro do you just want to make
you aware of that at the fresh well, it's bad, okay?
(16:06):
Did you say it's work, just work? Did you when
you were a little boy, doctor Sperry, what did you
want to be when you grew up? Because I'm just curious.
I wanted to be a doctor from the age of four.
My mother could attest to that, but I decided to
be a forensic pathologist when I was fifteen. I used
(16:26):
to ride my bicycle to the medical library or the
science library at the University of Kansas and just walked
through the stacks looking for books. And one day I
found a book on forensic pathology, which I probably checked
out and took home, and I decided that in there
that is what I want to do, and my dream
came true. I don't really know what to say. Even
(16:48):
as a young boy, you dreamed of dead bodies. You know.
I'm going to let you and doctor Bethany Marshall take
up that issue privately, but I'm just trying to get
my mind around what you're saying to Daryl, And I
was going down the rabbit hole of do we ever
stop and hear ourselves describing dead bodies like their produce.
(17:09):
But I want to talk about the forensics in this case.
That means that the killer left her just what, lying
there for a period of time before doing anything with
her body. That suggests to me a real plathora of possibilities.
Were they so arrogant, so sure they wouldn't get caught,
(17:29):
that they could just leave a body sitting there unattended
to Nancy. I'm wondering if it was just the opposite
that the killer was afraid, because it was obviously he
in my view, he had somewhere else to be, and
if he wasn't there at or near the time he
was supposed to be there, that would send out, oh
(17:51):
my gosh, where is he ready, and then later they
would tie that back to him. So I think one
good theory is that he west where he had to be,
and he had to leave the body decompose and then
so he could come back to it later and then
put it on ice. I think you're right. I think
(18:13):
your theory is very very possible. Time Stories with Nancy Grace.
(18:33):
We're talking about the disappearance of a gorgeous, young, diminutive
woman's Shannon Graves, who goes missing. Yet neighbor series driving
by in her car with her dog. So how is
she missing? Well, I don't know the answer to that yet,
but I do know this. A body turns up in
a friend's freezer and it looks like a woman's foot.
They call nine on one. You know, I was trying
(18:55):
to figure out who she looked at. It has been
bothering me. She looks like a much younger Carrie Fisher
with a side pony around the time of the First
Star Wars, very very beautiful princess Princess Leiah. That's who
she looks like. Anyway, long story short, This body turns
up in a freezer. The moment the homeowner opens the freezer,
(19:21):
he realizes something's very wrong, thinks it's a body, opens
a trash bag and yes, he finds a human foot.
Now I don't need a medical degree, no offense, doctor
Sperry to note this is murder. Take a listen now
to Joe Gorman with the Vindicator. And I looked at
the Corners Report today to see the Channy Lake on that,
(19:44):
because they never really did give a cause of death
for her, and the Corners report doesn't say too much.
It mentions how she was, how what they found was
cut up, They found a foot, there are two or
three different bags, and there were different body parts. But
the corner's ruling said that it was ruled her death
as homified by unspecified means. They haven't been mentioned anything
about a timeline or anything like that. With a body
(20:05):
dismembered in this manner, it may be very, very difficult
to get a cod cause of death. And I believe
it was Darryll Cohen pointed out earlier. Yes it has
to be a guy, not absolutely, but I mean Stephen Lampley,
detective author of Outside Your Door, Have you ever seen
a female killer that dismembered the body Nancy? I have not,
(20:27):
and I won't say that it's never happened. I'm not
familiar with and I've never had that experience, to be honest,
neither have I. Of course, if it did happen, she
was smart enough to get rid of all the evidence
and didn't leave it in a freezer. So you know
what I keep hearing Ray Kaputo, lead anchor WDBO, I
keep hearing about a foot and another foot. Nobody's mentioned
a hit. Well, Nancy, it's because they never found it.
(20:51):
Parts of her body have never been found. Only that's
in pieces, you know, Ray Kaputo, I bet they never
found her hands either. I haven't heard that. I don't
know that to be true, but it seems to me
that the killer was trying to avoid her body being identified. Yeah,
I mean that's correct. It seems like great lengths. I mean,
(21:12):
first off, anybody that goes through the trouble of freezing
a body and cutting up. I mean, if killing somebody
wasn't disgusting enough, you have to have quite a stomach
to do that. So they did go through great lengths,
you know, just by the nature of how she was
the parts of her were found. It is quite bizarre. Guys.
I'm also curious about how this fraser ends up in
(21:33):
your basement and you don't know there is a dead
body in it. Police began backtracking. They look at everyone
that thinks they've seen Shannon Graves alive in the recent past,
and as Daryl Cohen alluded in the very beginning of
this murder mystery? Was that really Shannon Graves? Was that
(21:58):
Shannon Graves that we see go by in her car?
I want to go to doctor Chris Sperry, Doctor Sperry.
Without a head and without hands, How can a body
be identified? Well, if you're lucky enough to find, say
(22:19):
tattoos or significant scars on the body, those can be
unique identifying marks, especially if a tattoo has a name
or is very unique. Now lots of people have all
kinds of surgical scars that you know, at least it
may give some idea or or you know, if you
know that a missing person had, say a hysterectomy, and
(22:42):
the autopsy shows that there's no uterus or Philippian tube,
no female organs, well at least that's a start. But honestly,
at this day and age, DNA that that is how
the vast majority of identifications are accomplished today. In situations
like where we have here, where the head is missing
(23:02):
and perhaps the hands also, there's still a ton of
DNA even with the decomposition state of the tissues. If necessary,
we can take DNA from the bone marrow and still
identify someone. DNA from the bone marrow you don't want
to circle back to it. Daryl Cohen, the former prosecutor
now defense attorney. The Atlanta jurisdiction set earlier because these
(23:26):
people were sure they had seen Shannon Grace. So if
it's not her driving her car, and her dog, and
her credit cards and her at even her clothes, then
what is there a mysterious evil twin. She does not
have a twin, So is there a doppel gager? What
led you to say that? Daryl Cohen? Yancy? Because in
all the years I've prosecuted, and in all the years
(23:48):
I've defended the least the least person, the people who
absolutely identify the person or persons are are not very reliable.
I'm not you and the bad eyewitness again. You know
what so many defense attorneys have whined the eyewitness didn't
(24:09):
see what they saw. We actually it's actually in the
law now and the statute the case law that says
with eyewitnesses, you need to and this is routine sop.
When I put up an eyewitness, what time of the
day was it, do you wear glasses? Was it? Well?
Let how far away were you? Was your view obstructed?
Where the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time,
there's actually a litany that you put your eyewitness through
(24:33):
because of people just like Daryl Cohen that would love
to tell a jury the eyewitness didn't see what they saw.
But in this case, sadly is Daryl Cohen absolutely correct.
Oh hold on, I'm not going to let him in
because he's gonna gloat. Let me go to doctor Bethany Marshall.
Just a moment, Doctor Bethany. This woman her feet and
(24:56):
other parts of her body in garbage bags and a freezer.
Who in the world would think of wearing her clothes,
using your ATM and credit card, taking her dog out,
driving her car, even wearing her hats? Long story short,
What kind of mind would take over the clothing and
(25:16):
the life to be an apost for a dead girl?
Another jealous woman, another woman who wants her life, another
woman who envies her nancy. This reminds me a little
of these crimes where a woman wants to become pregnant,
gets pseudocyesis, which is a false pregnancy, find the pregnant woman,
(25:38):
kidnaps her and cuts the baby out of the pregnant
mom's belly. They want what the other person has, Who
wanted what Shannon Graves had, was there somebody who was
befriending her, was sending her gifts, soliciting contact with her,
trying to cozy up to her family or her boyfriends,
(26:00):
or to her place of employment. I bet there was
some woman somewhere who was obsessed with her, and I
would try to follow the clues in that direction. But
to the extent that you would wear a dead woman's
clothes and walk her dog for Pete's sake, Bethany, Well, Hey,
if you're going to cut a baby out of a
(26:21):
pregnant mom, you start with the babycat out of a
pregnant mom. That has nothing to do with this that
we know of yet. But why would you wear the
dead woman's clothes? You know? I think why you chop
her up in bens and they go, oh, I think
I'll try on her Max. I mean, you know, it's
really like, um, I'm digging her hat. That's a no.
(26:42):
Who was it where the head of the fan club
killed the star? Was it? Selena? Selena? So? Hello? Okay?
So she gained proximity to this star. She became her
biggest fan. She learned everything about her, her comings, her
goings for bank accounts, you know, she infiltrated her fan club,
(27:02):
became the head of it. But she didn't want to
be close to her. She wanted to be her. So
whoever did this wanted to be Shannon Graves wanted that
kind of a life. And I bet it was a
weak individual who did not know how to build a
life of her own. She had to steal a life,
she had to take it from somebody else. Did Shannon
(27:23):
Graves have a boyfriend? I don't know. Was this this
person wanting other aspects of Shannon's life? Did she have Shannon? Yes,
Arthur Novoa had a boyfriend. Hey, doctor Bethany Marshall getting
into the psyche of someone that could take part in
a brutal murder and dismemberment of this young woman, gorgeous,
(27:46):
twenty eight year old Shannon Gray. She's about four eight
four nine, she weighs about ninety pounds, just a little
whisp of a woman, but with a big personality and
then suddenly assume her identity, live her life. Take a
listen now to what we learned from Ken Shinbach. Mean
(28:12):
wife just screaming came up and I went to the
friend Steths. Take a listen, to de Wi KB and
TV stan Bonnet. The two people in connection with this
crime are Artario Novoa and Katrina Layton. Now keep in
mind these two have only been charged with abuse of
a corpse. They have yet to be charged with the
(28:34):
murder in connection with Shannon Graves. We do know that
Shannon Graves and Arturo Novoa were at one point boyfriend
and girlfriend. They live in an apartment on Mahoning Avenue
in Youngstown. That uh once, eventually, uh, Katrina Layton came
into the picture and she was seen driving Graves's car,
(28:55):
using her cell phone and basically taking the place of
Shannon Graves. Dot to Bethany Marshall, You're absolutely correct, and
so are you Daryl Cohen. So doctor Bethany Marshall. Since
Darrel Cohen has in fact confessed he's just a JD,
not a psychoanalyst like you, let me go to you
to explain the thinking. What is going on in this
(29:17):
woman's mind that she takes over the identity of Shannon
Gray's after taking part obviously taking parton murdering her. Well,
didn't we see this in the Dulos murder Jennifer Dulos
that her husband recruited another woman to help dispose of
the body. This is not an uncommon story, sadly, but
I don't remember the girlfriend, Nan Dulos wearing Jennifer's cloth.
(29:42):
This is a good point, you know, Nana. Still yes.
The psychology is that the boy Samantha Grave's boyfriend begins
to devalue and to degrade her to the new girlfriend
to put her down to tell Stor. He begins to
build a narrative that Shannon Graves doesn't really deserve the
(30:03):
life he's quote unquote air quote given her. She doesn't
deserve that beautiful car she drives around. She doesn't deserve
that loving dog. She doesn't deserve the money and the
bank accounts because he, after all, has provided all of
it to her. And why is that h taking things
that are not hers to take. He builds the narrative
(30:24):
with the new lover and the new girlfriend, who buys
into it, and begins to develop a paranoid relationship with
Samantha and with society that he's like God and she'll
only bloom if she's planted in his garden. Pretty soon
they begin to conspire to get rid of Samantha and
to take over her life because they have already in
(30:45):
a sense, destroyed the goodness of her personality in their minds,
and by the time they kill her, they chop her up,
they put her in a freezer. They have completely rationalized
that her belongings belong to them. They're not hers, they're theirs.
It's hetty theft at a very grand, elaborate level. Crime
(31:16):
stories with Nancy Grace, guys were talking about the mysterious
disappearance of a young woman or Youngstown. You know what's interesting,
Stephen Lampley, Daryl Cohen, we all three agree that we've
never seen a female killer dismember a body. Yeah, but
(31:42):
isn't it true? Ray Caputo w DBO that it was Layton,
thirty six year old Katrina Layton that went and bought
the freezer and bought sulfuric acid. Oh yeah, Nancy, she
was a willing participant. She also helped move the body too.
But you know, she was not just on the sidelines
of all this, and you know that a lot of
(32:03):
that came out when she went to trial. But yeah,
I mean, she bought sulfuric acid, she bought the freezer,
she helped move the body, She knew what she was
doing so in your mind, Stephen Lampley, detective author of
Outside Your Door. She's in the thick of it. She
may very well have taken part in dismembering the body.
She's the one that buys the freezer. She's the one
(32:24):
that buys the sulfuric acid. She's in the thick of it. Nancy,
she is, and she's well involved. And I mean she's
like you said, she bought the freezer. Obviously round I
would think that she helped even in the dismembering. That's
my initial thought. But yeah, she is so involved in
this murder. You know too, Doctor Bethany Marshall. On my keychain,
I have you know you can do those little you
(32:45):
can get those little plastic frames. I know I've got
at least five of the twins and all of us
together at different spots. Here we are at the beach,
eating at Crabby Joe's. Here we are at NASA part
anything like we're floating in space. Listen to this. Did
you know the lover Arthur Nevoa kept the key to
(33:10):
the padlock on his keychain. Now, when they moved out
of the apartment, they moved the freezer with the dead
body and the freezer to these friends, the Eshenbergs. But
he kept it and every time he had to crank
his car unlock his house, he had to see that
padlock and think, Shannon Grays, my lover, She's dismembered in
(33:34):
the freezer. How do you do that every day? Look
right at it on your keychain, Nancy. I always say,
as in life, so in death, meaning he controlled her
in life, he controlled her in death. He's a control freak,
and so is his girlfriend. Controlling to the point of
being homicidal, wanting to complete control over the body. I think, Nancy,
that something happened where they conspired to kill her, but
(34:00):
they were not far sighted enough to know what to
do with the body, and so it lay there for
several days while they contemplated their next move. It takes
an enormous amount of energy to dismember a body, you know,
you can ask mister Sperry, doctor Sperry, blood all over
the place. I mean, it's a herculean task. They finally
put her in the freezer, They secrete the freezer, or
(34:23):
they give it to a friend. He has the key
to the padlock. He imagines that he still has control
over her, that she's his, that no one would ever
get in that freezer because he and only he has
the key. And that's what abusers think. They think that
they are the sole person in charge of that other
person's life. I think it's that simple psychology in this case.
(34:45):
Is it true, Ray Caputo, that Novoa and listed other
people to help him dispose of the body? Yeah, Nancy,
I wish I could say that that Latent and Novola
were the only two people involved. But he had another friend,
Andrew Herman, who apparently helped him mutilate the body and then,
to make matters worse, Andrew Herman was married at the
(35:06):
time and he had a wife who helped out as well,
moving in disposing things. So it wasn't just these two
deprived individuals. There were a couple more involved. And I
think that's the really sick part is that you know,
you think that one person would come to their senses,
but all four of them took part in this. I mean,
Daryll Cohen, I've wanted us a million times. When you
have a group of defendants to take part in a murder.
(35:28):
Man the first time somebody says, hey, do you want
to help me dismember body. You'd say nothing to me
but elbows, intel hole, because I'd be running straight to
call police, not here, and these people went, oh sure,
what is that? It seems to me every party that
these people have nothing on their mind but to help
their buddy. And this is really cool. When I'll tell
(35:49):
you what, Nancy, when it's time to roll over one
of those people. Besides, I am not guilty, I am
going to tell because I don't want prison the rest
of my lord. You know, the family is left wondering.
Take a listen to to w KB and Stan at Beune.
There were lots of hugs around the gazebo at Austin
Town Township Park is. The family of Shannon Graves held
(36:11):
an evening to remember her. It was organized by her sister,
Debbie DePaul. Shannon was her own little spirit, She was
her free spirits. One of Shannon's good friends was John Scarrata.
She was awesome. She was a great person, always full
energy on top of everything that she did, like really focused.
But she has a lot of friends. You could tell
by the people that are coming here. Shannon graves father,
(36:34):
Ronnie DePaul, also showed up and said he's handling it
because he has to, but without all the standards. But
she ever could have done to add these two people
do what he did to her. Elodi got the bury
part of a buttah. Just everything around her being missing
wasn't right. So we kind of didn't know the specifics
(36:55):
or the gruesomeness of it, but figured pretty much something
like that had happened forty eight to life. But Shannon's
family still still distraught over the light treatment, latent and
others got We wait as justice un falls. Nancy Grace
Crime Story signing off good Bye Friend,
Host
Nancy Grace
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