Shannon Melendi

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Dark Cast Network. Come to the Dark Side of podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
We have cookies Wookiers. We love cookies.

Speaker 3 (00:12):
Ever wondered how in the hell did I get here?
You are not alone. My podcast is called True Crime
Connections with an advocacy podcast where I talk with survivors
of toxic relationships, abuse of marriages. We all have one
thing in common. How in the hell did we get here?

(00:36):
And how do we get out? How do we find
our self worth again? Well, if you feel that way,
come check out my podcast, because not only do you
get actionable steps to take to help you take your
life back, but you can listen to how others have
dealt with their own situations including addiction, suicidal ideation, and

(01:01):
low self worth and respect. We can get you on
the right track. Make sure to check out True Crime Connections.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
See you there. Devil is on his way.

Speaker 1 (01:28):
Devil is on his way. Devil is on his way.
Mother God, the devil gonna make you pay.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Fall to your knees.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Devil is on his way. Fall to your knees.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
Devil gonna make you pay fall to your knees. Devil.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
Ah, Okay, I'm recording. You are recording.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah, that's the open your strange little noises have been captured.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
By the way, you guys don't know this, but he
was making like a threatening gesture.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Oh my gosh, welcome to Mount Murders, making.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Strange little noises with his stupid mouth.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Welcome to Mount Murder. She's Heather and I'm.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Doing Hey guys, Hey yo, welcome back.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
Wow. So that was just you got taste of real.
This was the raw, real Mountain Murders.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
There.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
Okay, the pre show antics have been captured.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
The taste, Dylan, they don't like it.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
It's sour, that's right, lick it.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
It's a sour, bitter taste.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
All right. So here we are wrapping up our what
would you say that our college.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
It seems like we covered back to school like that
was kind of what we called our theme for the
month of September, covering cases that are related to students,
whether that's a high school student, a college student. Yeah,
so student crimes, student crimes.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
And they've been some gosh, some pretty pretty sad cases.
And yeah. So here we are with our final one
before we get into the spooky months.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Yeah, heading into our spooky month of October, Dylan, we
have decided our midweek episodes will be dedicated to horror
movies that are based on true stories. Now, when it
comes to film, a lot of times directors writers will
take inspiration from a real life story turn it into

(03:34):
a film, a horror film. But I always find it
interesting when you learn that a specific movie was like
based on something real, Like maybe you didn't know that right, right,
So we're going to do based on true story horror
movies for the whole month of October. So I'm looking
forward to that, Dylan. I've already gotten started, and I've
created a watch list for our listeners if they want

(03:57):
to watch these movies like ahead of time, so we
don't you know, because obviously there'll be spoilers in some
of the episodes, but if you want to prepare ahead
of time, I've actually made our watch list.

Speaker 1 (04:09):
Oh that's so cool. I need to I've seen all
the movies you've laid out there for me, but I
need to rewatch them as well. I think it's a
really good way to make a good, solid comparison between
the true story and the movie.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
Right. So first up, we've got Jennifer's Body that will
be our first movie the first week of October. So
just in a few days, we'll be covering Jennifer's body.
We'll be watching Changeling, the Angelina Jolie film, Wolf Creek,
the Australian horror film. Actually one of my favorite. That

(04:43):
movie's scary, one of my favorite horror films.

Speaker 1 (04:45):
That guy's scary in that movie.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Right, A haunting in Connecticut. And also Monster what a
physical transformation. Shirlene Shirley's color, Sharlene Shirley's the ron made.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Yeah for that film. She did a great job on that.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Oh man, that movie is great. So of course we'll
be discussing the Allen Warnos case, uh and obviously aspects
of that film. So I'm looking forward to October. I
think it's gonna be a fun conversation. And of course
we always like to hear your feedback, so feel free
to hit us up at Mountain Murders Podcast at gmail
dot com. We've already had some folks send in listener stories.

(05:23):
We are collecting those. We're gonna have a big kind
of blowout Halloween episode this month.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Oh god, you're really exciting.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
So we want to hear from you and Dylan before
we get into today's case. I want to give a
big shout out to our newest patrons.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
I can't wait.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
We have Adele, Thank you Adele, and we also have
Sanna Sana. Yeah, so thanks so much. We hope that
you enjoy the extra content the ad free episodes. I'm
over at patreon dot com Slash Mountain Murders podcast, Dylan,
Before we get started with this case, I gotta be

(06:00):
upfront and honest with you and our listeners. Oh, this
case pisses me off.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
Really well. I think this.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Case highlights the flaws in our justice system and how
maybe our lawmakers need to revisit some sentencing guidelines.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Well see, I feel like.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
We've really gotten soft on crime. And I don't know
when that happened or why. I'm sure smarter people out
there are studying it, but I feel like we've really
gotten soft on crime.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Well see, it's tricky because we've done you know, more
than one story on Mountain murders where maybe someone's been
accused of something and pursued by authorities or prosecutors to
the point where it ruins their lives, and sometimes they're
even incarcerated innocent people. And I think that's a tricky thing.

(06:57):
Is to protect against that, but also the people that
deserve to be locked away from society to make sure
that they that gets done in an effective manner. It's
a really kind of a tricky balance.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
Well, we are not fans of sexual predators here at all.
As you know, they're on our shit list.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
Yeah, they're on our ship bird list, they're on our
keel list.

Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, like shoot your local pedophile. I have no problem
with that. Not that I'm.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Encouraging murder alleged pedophiles, right right.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
I mean, you know, we don't celebrate murder here unless
it's pedophiles or casing anthony. That's true, and that's the
only time we're like, yeah, okay, cool, good riddance.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
So this is one of those cases where we're going
to see flaws in the justice system and how if
proper steps had been taken to identify a predator early on,
we might have been able to save our victim today.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (07:56):
So yeah, it's one of those cases. It's probably going
to piss you off a little bit too, Dylan, Are
you ready to get into it.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
Let's get started.

Speaker 2 (08:03):
Okay, let's do the big old Mountain murders. Let's do it. Okay. So.
Shannon Denise Melndi was born October twentieth of nineteen seventy
four in Miami Dade County, Florida, to appearans Yvonne and Louis.
The family will welcome another daughter, Monique, about five years later.
From the beginning, Shannon was a natural at everything she did.

(08:25):
Her brother Yvonne described Shannon as a quote dream child. Oh,
just the perfect kid. Wow, no trouble, just awesome all around.
And not only is Shannon a natural leader from a
very early age, but she's highly motivated and enthusiastic. I

(08:46):
mean she has a real zest for life.

Speaker 1 (08:49):
I just I love being around people like this. They
really kind of optimistic. Yeah, they kind of living up
the room. You know. You can have a whole group
of friends that are kind of you know, I don't
know what we're gonna do, or kind of bored, and
then this person comes in and just.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Kind of blow in yeah and gets here he starts right.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
Yeah, it gets everybody pumped up, feeling good, laughing, smiling.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Well, with Shannon, Dylan, there was no try. There was
only do If that makes sense right, I Mean she's
a real go getter. She was just good at everything.
As a freshman, Shannon was chosen for a paid internship
with former President Jimmy Carter's nonprofit, the Carter Center in Atlanta.
She spent fifteen hours a week doing clerical work for

(09:33):
this internship.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
We all it sounds like a great opportunity.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
She was like one of the youngest people ever chosen
for this position.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
That is awesome. So not only had Shannon been president
of both her junior and senior classes at Miami Southwest
High School, but she was a star on the debate team. Dylan,
I did not have a debate team at my high school.
Did you have a debate team at your high school?

Speaker 1 (10:00):
No, I don't ever remember one of the mini schools
I went to there ever being a debate team. But
I've always thought it would be fun to be part
of it.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Yeah, I would have loved to have been part of
a debate team. I think that would have been a
really cool opportunity. Well, the team would argue cases at
Dade County mock trials like these competition trials. Shannon had
an interest in law, in becoming an attorney. She was
a member of the National Honor Society and graduated from
high school kumloud wow. Right. To add to Shannon's impressive resume,

(10:34):
she was nominated for a Silver Knight Award in the
speech category. She also spoke before Congress and the un
while she was still in high school.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Damn, dude, she's done more by high school than some
people have done their entire lives.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, I'm like, she's more accomplished at eighteen years old
than I think I've ever been. Sadly, can I admit
that it's really sad? Shannon earned acceptance to the pristine
just Georgetown University in Washington, d C. But elected instead
to attend Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She was offered
a full scholarship to the southern school. And if you're

(11:13):
not familiar with Emory University, I mean it's a prestigious
academic institution as well. It's consistently ranked among the top
universities in the United States for its academic excellence, rigorous programs,
outstanding faculty, and it really just has a strong reputation.

Speaker 1 (11:31):
So she turns down Georgetown and goes to Emory.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Which is an equally like awesome school.

Speaker 1 (11:39):
Right, And I offered full rides probably at both.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
It is often grouped with other highly respected universities, including
some that are considered like the New ivys, due to
its similar academic standing. You know, when you think of
like sort of what's on par with like the Southern
like what we would consider maybe some of the Southern ivs,
I think Emory, Vanderbilt, Duke. Right, So those are some

(12:03):
of the schools that in my mind are kind of
on par with the Ivy.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
League schools, right, very very accomplished academic just I mean,
you're we were talking about this the other night. You
can't just buy your way into schools like this. You
got to have well, I mean, I guess you could
have influence, what I mean.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
You can have a legacy family and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
But I mean, you you're expected to do the work.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
But you have to earn a spot there.

Speaker 1 (12:32):
You have to keep your spots. Yeah, and you have
to have some academic chops. You have to be you're
you're you're not going to be a slouch in places
like this.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Well you're not going to last long, right, right. Shannon
was studying political science and Spanish. So not only is
she studying, you know, finishing up one major as an undergrad,
but she's got.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
A double major and that doesn't surprise.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Like adding extra coursework. She had a plan to attend
law school and then join the US Navy as they
commit officer. Her hope was to become a JAG Corps attorney,
but her ultimate dream, Dylan, she wanted to be a
justice on the US Supreme Court.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
Damn.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
And I have no doubt she could have done this well.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
She sounds obviously very driven and knows what she wants
and is not afraid to put in the hard work
to make that happen.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
Yeah. I mean, she just sounds amazing, right, highly motivated,
very smart girl and has these goals and a plan
to achieve them at such a young age. I admire that, right.
It was a Saturday, actually, March twenty sixth of nineteen
ninety four, the day before Palm Sunday. The weather made

(13:46):
a comfortable spring day, and Shannon Melindy was working at
a softball field. She worked part time at the Softball
Country Club of Atlanta, so at times she worked as
a scorekeeper or in the gift shop at this place.
She had just returned from spring break in Daytona Beach
when Shannon had spoken to her mother on the phone,

(14:08):
you know, she'd gotten back from her trip. Had called
her mom like, hey, she was super stoked about her ten.
Oh yeah, like she had spent days in the sun.
She had this great ten. She was like bragging to
her mom, like, girl, I got a great ten.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
Wait till you see me.

Speaker 2 (14:22):
Right for a report, Shannon had asked if she could
work on Saturday instead of Sunday. I guess she was
scheduled for Sunday, but she switched days because she had
made plans to play in a soccer game on Sunday.
Things were fine until twelve forty five PM, when Shannon
took off for lunch. There was a game scheduled at
one fifteen pm, and I'm sure Shannon thought this was

(14:44):
enough time to grab a bite to eat, quick little lunch.
She got what like thirty minutes there, right right When
game time rolled around, there was no sign of Shannon.
She had not returned from her lunch break. This was
out of character for Shannon. She was a reliable young woman.
She had never skipped work, you know, not come back

(15:07):
from lunch. She would have called. So obviously her employers
are like, what's up? With Shannon.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, because this girl is the opposite of flaky, right right.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
She was replaced as scorekeeper in the game went on
as planned. Since cell phones were uncommon at this time,
there was no way to contact Shannon to find out,
like she had had car trouble, maybe she had gotten sick. Whatever.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
It's back in the old days.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Back in the old days, when you weren't in constant
contact with people, you got a break. I missed those days.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
Yeah, I certainly miss those days. I mean there's many ways.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
Of benefits of having a mobile phone.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
There are benefits, and uh, but no, I definitely miss
those days of when you're just off doing your.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Things, simple times.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
And uh, you know later you find out later on
or once you get home, if you have an answering
machine or something like that, that's when you find out
someone's trying to get a hold of you and you're
kind of just doing your own thing, you know, just
hanging out, having a good day.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Yeah, I missed that. By next I'm sorry, I said,
by next time. By night time, Shannon had not made
it back to the dorm. At Emery, Shannon's roommate Athena Perez,
grew concerned it was unlike the sophomore Shannon to stay
out all night. No one had heard from her. Athena

(16:29):
is worried. I mean, she's lived with Shannon for a while.
She knows her roommate pretty well.

Speaker 1 (16:33):
She knows her routine, right, Athena.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
You know, she's alarmed by this. When there is no
sign of Shannon on Sunday morning, that's when Athena raises alarms.
She gathers a group of friends to search for Shannon.
They start at the softball club, which is only about
five minutes from campus. While looking for the club's interests entrants,
they kind of pass by not realizing where the entrance is. Okay,

(17:02):
which I mean that happened. You know, you've never been
to a place before. I know that happens to me
all the time. I drive by and realize, oops, it
was back there. So while they're looking for this club's entrance,
they spot Shannon's car, a black Nissan, parked at the
Sitgo gas station, which is next door to the club.
The car is parked funny, It's kind of crooked, like

(17:23):
at the far end of the gas station's parking lot.
Looks like a really kind of haphazard parking job, okay, right,
like somebody parked it in a hurry. The car was unlocked,
keys were in the ignition. Now, according to Shannon's friends
and family, she loved this car. And I'm not exactly
sure what it was, but a black Nissan. I'm assuming
it is probably some little sporty car, right, And she

(17:45):
loved this car. There was no way that she would
ever park it recklessly at a gas station unless she
was having some kind of car trouble. But again, no
one's heard from her.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
So she's probably not going to leave her car part
crooked in a gas station parking lot with the keys
in it.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
No, well, that's the other part of a deal, and
she's certainly not going to leave the keys in the car.
She loves this car. It's not like, hey, I'm gonna
give an open invitation for someone to come in and
steal my car right right now. Athena caused police to
report Shannon missing. She explains that her roommate has been
gone for about twenty four hours and they've located this car.

(18:24):
A female officer arrives to meet with Athena at the
gas station and she takes down everyone's information. Athena was
surprised when the officer told Shannon's friends that they could
drive the car back to campus.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Uh yeah, that would kind of well. I mean, it's
one of those cases that lets you know right there
what the cops think about this situation. Right, They don't
think it's serious in their mind. Maybe she met up
with someone else friends, or saw some friends in the
parking lot and jumped in their car to go have
college kid fun or whatever.

Speaker 2 (18:57):
You know, college kid fun, yeah, you know, which is
like you're poor and you go to the Wendy's drive
through to get some dollar chicken nuggets, those.

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Wacky college kids, you know.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
So Athena thought certainly law enforcement would want to take
the car in for processing, because you know, it could
be evidence. The officer seemed pretty nonchalant about the whole thing.
She did speak to an employee at the gas station
who confirmed they had seen Shannon on Saturday. And you know,
I don't know if Shannon may be regularly popped in
this gas station or what, but she's a very striking

(19:31):
young woman. She's supertractive. I mean, Shannon's very pretty. I
could see where she would be a memorable like if
someone saw her, they would remember her, right.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
And I imagine the convenience story beside where she works
her you know, part time job of sorts.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
Just a few minutes from campus, a few.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Minutes from campus, so it probably is a place that
she might frequent.

Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:54):
Absolutely. Now Athena doesn't know what to do next, and
though she dreads being the bearer of bad news, Athena realizes, like,
I've got to contact the Milindi's Shannon's parents and let
them know what's going on.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
See, I would, now if I had a thought like
why why aren't the police towing her car and like
basically taking it away for possible evidence, I would treat
the car in that manner, you know what I'm saying.
I would carefully get it somewhere safe and just leave
the car alone, right, lock it up, don't let a

(20:31):
bunch of people go around or in the car. And
I would protect the car.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Oh yeah, you know what I mean. Well, and I
think it's clever for Athena to realize, like the weight
of this, this could be evidence, it could be a
crime scene.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
Well yeah, and that goes.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
To preserve this vehicle.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
Well, and that just shows that she knows her friend's
routines and habits, and this is way outside of normal
for her, because.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
At twenty I doubt I would have or nineteen I
probably would have never thought like we should be careful
with this car.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
She already knows that this is some type of situation
just because she hasn't shown up.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
I'm really distracted. I'm sorry. I keep looking at Rufus
and he's sleeping on his little bed and he looks
so cute, and I just want to go over there
and kiss his fuzzy little neck.

Speaker 1 (21:24):
My car, he looks like a very angel.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
He's super adorable. He's such a tiny little deity. Okay,
so she's got to call Shannon's parents, and I would
not want to make this call.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Well, no, because what you're about to do, if it
is some innocent situation, as you're about to work, scare
and worry the parents to death just with your phone call, right,
I mean, as soon as you say this, they're going
to be like, oh my god, what's going on? You know,
you're really gonna I don't know. Calls a bit of

(21:58):
a stir.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
And Yvonne learn their daughter was missing. They hoped the
next plane out of Miami. You know, pretty quickly riving
in Atlanta. Sadly, Luis did not have a good feeling.
He would later describe receiving the phone call from Athena
saying that his knees buckled and he knew at that
moment he would never see his daughter again.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
His wife, Yvonne, turned to prayer. She seemed a little
bit more hopeful that things would work out. Terrible, terrible feeling. Now,
when the family arrives in Atlanta, they make a police
report as well, and once law enforcement hears from the Milindes,
they take the missing person's case a bit more seriously, right,
Which is sad that it takes like these adults to

(22:45):
get get anywhere. Right, So the police are just dismissive
of college kids, and I think that's I mean, come on,
you you should take any report seriously.

Speaker 1 (22:57):
Well look, yeah, I mean her whole friend group and roommate.
That's not enough to raise any kind of alarms to you.
You have this car kind of awkwardly parked in a
parking lot, which is a bit weird. Left, this is
in Atlanta. You know, you know, most people don't leave
their cars sitting around with the keys in them, right,

(23:19):
because of for fear of it being stolen or something
like that. So, I mean, this really is I'm surprised
that that didn't raise any kind of alarm with the
officer in the first place.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
When the family arrives in Atlanta, like I say, they
make this police report, and that's when they're finally taken seriously.
A party of between fifty and sixty officers gathers to
search the area surrounding the softball club, leaving no stone unturned.
These officers search creek beds, abandoned buildings, apartments, It's like
a several square mile radius around the location. When they

(23:57):
find no sign of Shannon, officers tell her parents she
might have just left town. They suggested she'd gone to
can Kun.

Speaker 1 (24:05):
Yeah, maybe she went to Cancun. I mean she ever
talked about going to the Eiffel Tower.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
Well, I find this a little silly that she just
ran off the can Coon, Like that's just a hop,
skip and a jump away. I mean that means she's
got to have the money to go to Kankun get
an airline ticket. I mean there's a lot involved.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
In that car.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
Why is she going to leave her car at a
gas station?

Speaker 1 (24:28):
She left her car at a gas station. She probably
call a taxi to the airport because I mean, you know,
she don't have to pay for parking now because and
she left her keys here, so you know, I mean,
it all makes sense.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
Hoping someone would just drive the car away.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Well, she figured her friends would come looking for it
and they would take it back, and look what happened.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
I don't want to be difficult when it comes to
law enforcement. I know they have a tough job, but
sometimes I hear these.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Stories something like this, maybe Cancun, and it makes me.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
Just want to like shake the person who said this
and be like, what is your major malfunction?

Speaker 1 (25:08):
She just got back from spring break. Yeah, but she
could have went to Cancun. I mean, it makes total
sense if you really slow down and.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Think, gosh, I would love to just spend my time traveling.
How about you doing? Law enforcement? Theorized that Shannon had
taken off. They focused on questioning her friends, including Athena.
Athena was interrogated for like eight hours, okay, an officer
told her quote Shannon ran away. The investigators suggested that

(25:35):
Athena and the other friends knew where Shannon was hiding
out and they were covering for her.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
I mean, what are they doing? What are they doing
so if they need to cover for her, but they're
the ones that raise the alarm in the first place.
I mean, what are you talking about, dude?

Speaker 2 (25:56):
I don't know. But Athena is in shock. I mean
she's like, is this really? Is this real life?

Speaker 1 (26:01):
Is this happening? Yes?

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Is this what we're doing? Yes, this is what cops
are doing. Like, what the fuck right? It didn't make
any sense.

Speaker 1 (26:11):
It didn't doesn't. And now when you enter in a
situation like this and you never I mean most time
people haven't had to report their friend missing or loved
one missing. You may be surprised by procedure or just
how the whole thing kind of happens in real life.
You may have these expectations that aren't realistic. But I mean,

(26:32):
come on, this is just like this is one kind
of goofy thing after another coming from and then you're
gonna grill me and then kind of basically out like
we're lying in some manner. All I want you to
do is look for my friend in a meaningful way.

Speaker 2 (26:49):
Well, Athina trying to emphasize that Sheannon was a responsible
young woman, she did not make rash impulsive decisions, and
that it did not seem likely if she was running
away that she would have just left her car behind. Again,
wouldn't she need this car to run away? To get away? Yeah,
to go right, I mean travel.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
The only thing missing here is her personal belongings and
perse like in the car still, I mean, that's the
only thing part missing from this. And for the cops
to be like, well, maybe she just decided to become
someone else, you know, maybe she's fighting chickens in Mexico.
I mean, you just never know.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, I don't think so, Dylan. It didn't make any sense,
like I said, But law enforcement is sort of dismissive
when it comes to the family's concerns. They think Shannon
will turn up on her own, But Luis and Yvonne
are not accepting the situation without the help of law enforcement.
They launch their own campaign to find Shannon. They raised

(27:54):
ten thousand dollars in reward money. The family also put
up around sixty billboards featuring Shannon's picture along with information.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Oh so this family has money.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
Well, they raised someone I don't know, I mean her dad.
Her dad's has a success successful photography business okay in Miami. Yeah,
it's pretty pretty successful. I guess, a very successful businessman
in the Cuban community where they live. I don't know

(28:26):
if I would say they have money or rich. I
mean that, you know, I guess they're not poor.

Speaker 1 (28:33):
Well love Keathern. My family couldn't put one billboard up.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
Okay, yeah we could. I know, I know a few,
but they're like way in the middle of nowhere, and
you can get them for like four hundred dollars a month.
I know because my face used to be on one
of those. This guy probably not people haven't seen that
billboard because you know it's way out in the middle
of bumfuck.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
But it just be my head on the whole billboard.
Just that would be it. Yeah, have you seen this guy?
And this is a have you seen this?

Speaker 2 (28:59):
Cheesy mother?

Speaker 1 (29:00):
This is to scale.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
Around ten thousand posters were hung up around, you know,
all over Atlanta. The Melinda's turn to the media, playing
for Shannon's safe return, Yvonne said the only way her
daughter could be missing is if she had been abducted.
Her family suspected something terrible has happened.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
Well, no, what this really represents is a friends family
that are worried, and they're mobilizing in a very efficient manner.
It sounds like doing all the things that needs to
be done to get the word out in the best
way they know how, and I think they're doing a
really good job.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Luis was well connected in the Cuban community in Miami,
as I mentioned, reached out to friends for help. He
was introduced to Cuban born actor Andy Garcia as well
as pro athlete Bo Jackson. Both celebrities use their star
power to record public service announcements asking for help in

(30:00):
solving Shannon's missing person's case.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
They're talking about Bo don't know where Shannon's at.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalind released a statement
offering prayers and asking for anyone to come forward with information.
So she's got like some big, big time folks helping
out here, okay, right. I mean a lot of people
love Shannon and when they hear about her disappearance, they
jump into action. They're willing to help. A few days

(30:25):
after Shannon's disappearance, on March twenty ninth, an anonymous man
we know he was a man, but we don't know
who he is, contacts a tip line listed on the
missing Persons posters. The man alleges that he kidnaps Shannon
from the gas station, and he says, quote, I'm going
to keep her till I'm.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Through with her. Oh god, Like, what does that even mean?

Speaker 2 (30:48):
It sounds very sinister.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Well, yeah, that sounds terrible.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
You wait, get your turn till I'm done with her?

Speaker 1 (30:55):
I mean, good God, I mean why. Well, I gotta
imagine that this is one of those kooks or something, right.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Another twist in the case comes on April sixth A
phone call placed to the Emory University Counseling Center is
traced to a payphone in Macdano, Georgia, near a waffle
house of all places. The caller said quote, I have Shannon.
She's okay, okay, And the caller let this counseling center know,

(31:27):
like I know, this call is being recorded. Authorities are
able to trace the call. They go to this payphone
and they find a ring belonging to Shannon at the payphone,
like in the phone booth.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
Are you serious?

Speaker 2 (31:40):
Yeah, it's been wrapped like in a bag and taped up.

Speaker 1 (31:45):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (31:46):
The blue Topaz ring had been a gift to Shannon.
From her godmother. The bag was traced to a manufacturer,
but the only customer the company supplied in Georgia was
Delta Airlines. The masking tape was also used by Delta.
Through testing, the police found particles of metal on the tape. Now,

(32:08):
I've heard it described as metal, but I've also heard
it described as like cobalt.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
So okay, it sounds like.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
An industrial like these are industrial.

Speaker 1 (32:19):
Materials, right, right of some sort.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
This particular metal combination was only found around aviation environments
where like jet engine repair and maintenance take place.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Wow, So I mean we have a very strong link
the person who had this ring, which is indeed Shannon's.
It is definitely linked to aviation, right, a mechanic or
something like that.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yes, The investigation really ramps up when South Florida Congressional delegation,
along with Senators Connie Mack and Bob Graham, write letters
to the US Attorney General Janet Reno. You're remember Janet,
She'll call a linebacker.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
Yeah, I remember dying it. I remember she didn't like
in people down wakers.

Speaker 2 (33:05):
She did not. An FBI task force is set up
into Cobb County. Now, the missing Person's case they've like
replaced the word missing person with the word kidnapped.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Okay, well I think that's, uh, that's reasonable assertion on
their part. And uh again, this somebody's connected and has
powerful friends at the very least. Okay, because it's just
not the type of outreach you see not only in

(33:37):
the hood but also in the trailer parks, you know
what I'm saying. And I just find it interesting. The
only reason I keep bringing it up is because this
is the type of top of outreach and mobilization we
should I wish we could see in every case. Oh yeah,
but it's just it's just not how it works sometimes,

(33:58):
and it really kind of makes me sad.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Shannon's case was featured on the Oprah Winfrey show, America's
Most Wanted, and some other like local programs. Since law
enforcement didn't take Shannon's missing person case seriously in the beginning,
time has passed and what does that mean done? Evidence
is gone, It's lost. The Nissan had been released to
Shannon's friends before it was searched, security tapes had been

(34:24):
erased from the gas station, and when the ring was discovered,
the FBI agent who just found this ring or whatever
did not wear gloves when they picked it up.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
Come on, dude, you just traced a phone call of
someone claiming they have the victim and you didn't like
be prepared to maybe touch evidence or Okay, well I
guess shit happened. Maybe they were just surprised that it
was real. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
The calls made to the counseling center were not recorded,
like though they were traced. They had a tracer, but oh,
we don't have time to have set up a recording device.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
And then Easter weekend further delayed the case because then
you have people taking like a long weekend right in
the middle of this investigation.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Now, I would say the biggest, biggest miss out of
everything you just described would have to be the surveillance
tapes at the gas station, right, yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
Mean that's a pretty important, key piece of information that
we need, right, a very important element to the case.

Speaker 1 (35:34):
Well. See, that's that's where I'm saying. I know, cops
get calls from you know, around college areas or colleges.
They get a ton of them. You know, someone's you know,
got drunk at a party, went home with someone else,
didn't tell their friends.

Speaker 2 (35:49):
I mean turn up in a parking lot without pants.

Speaker 1 (35:51):
This does turn It does happen a lot. But it
would have been easy for that officer right then that day,
without making a huge fuss, to say, well hold on,
let me go in right and just review their tapes
for the last you know, a couple hours or maybe
we can see how long this car's been here. And

(36:12):
it wouldn't have been that hard. It may have shown something.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Oh I'm certain it would have shown significant.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
I mean yeah, it could very well show her being
grabbed or something like that.

Speaker 2 (36:22):
You know, local law enforcement just could not seem to
get it together when it came to this case. At
every turn, the investigation was bungled. Police focused on the
one thousand people attending the stadium on the day that
Shannon went missing. But if they'd looked a bit closer
at the people who were around Shannon that day, they
would have made an eerie discovery. And we're gonna get

(36:43):
to this when Shannon's coworkers are finally interviewed, Like, shouldn't
that have happened immediately? Well, yeah, well they weren't. So
you know, here, we're just gonna lost some time pass
before we go interview these people police. He found the
several employees who complained that the umpire, oh, I should

(37:05):
say employees and players at this softball field had complained
that the umpire on March twenty six was doing a
lousy job instead of you know, paying attention to the game.
The man kept talking to the scorekeeper Shannon. He couldn't

(37:25):
seem to keep his eyes off Shannon Melindy. One player said, quote,
I would throw a pitch and then mint stride. He
would turn around and look at the scorekeeper. So it
seemed that multiple players and employees had complained that the umpire,
Butch Hinton, was more interested in Shannon than the ball game.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
So as soon as they start interviewing people at the
softball compound or whatever it is there, this person comes up.
Everyone noticed this umpire acting kind of strange. Yeah, almost
if if you will, obsessing over the scorekeeper.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
Like take a picture brot the last long.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Not watching pitches. I mean, you got a umpire not
even watching pitches, which is literally their job if they're
home played umpire and and just totally how many are there?
Well you oh you got, gosh, you got I mean I'm.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
Gonna be real honest here, I know, the bare minimum
when it comes to like baseball and softball, because I
am not a fan of the sports. I don't like
playing them and I hate watching baseball.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
Well, I think you got I don't know anything about it. Yeah,
I think you've got one behind home play, and I
think you got multiple other umpires watching things like foul
balls and they're making the calls for you know, at
the bases and things like that for someone being tagged out.
I don't know there's more than one at I think.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Okay, well, I'm going to write that down to something
I learned today doing Thank You.

Speaker 1 (38:55):
I could be wrong, because honestly, I like the idea
of base ball, but it's like it's kind of tough
to watch. It's really slow. Yeah. Yeah, it's for the
love of the game.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
But man, people who love it love it.

Speaker 1 (39:09):
Yeah, and that's fine. I mean I get the whole atmosphere,
like I said, going to a ballpark and it's kind
of cool on a chili dog yeah yeah, maybe having
a beer.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Like a thirsty Thursday beer. Yeah, where it's like cheap and.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
Then you can go like a steal a ball away
from a kid or something.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yeah. Absolutely. When Shannon's coworkers were finally interviewed. As I mentioned,
so we get this name, Butch Hinton. Now this is
kind of the first name we've really had in the case,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 (39:42):
Butch. Yeah, it's such a I.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
Kept writing my script and accidentally typing bitch instead of Butch.
But I think he is a bitch. So it's okay.
So now police have a lead in Butch Hinton. Looking
into Butch's background, police learn he is a sexual predator.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
Okay, so what's this guy doing within ten miles of
this softball complex.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
When he was a young adult living in Illinois, Butch
kidnapped then raped fourteen year old Tammy Singleton. Tammy was
the girlfriend of his brother. Butch had lured Tammy to
his house, where he tied her up in the basement
and assaulted her. You know. Butch's wife discovered the teenager

(40:29):
tied up, and he'd served time in prison for the crime.
But we'll talk more about that in a minute, because
he didn't serve very much time. Once he had lived
in Kentucky, Butch went to his employer's home and assaulted
the woman. She owned a pizza place where he worked. Okay,
at the time of the attack. Butch was a juvenile.

(40:51):
I think he was seventeen when this happened, and he
was given psychiatric treatment only like he was ordered to
go to counseling.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
All right, I'm already picked. Yeah, this person has issues,
is a danger. This is very violent. This isn't I
slapped some girl on the butt, which is not okay.
But I mean this is way beyond. This isn't. I
was nineteen and she was seventeen and a half and

(41:19):
we dated a consensual relationship. It's none of that. This
is violent, deviant, terrible.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
Yeah, he's twenty two years old, kidnaps a fourteen.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
Years old and has her tied up, torturing her, assaulting her.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
Come where he lives with his wife.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, this is way outside the norm. This is not okay,
and that right there should have been the end of
this guy when he's uh, could you imagine his wife
finds this poor girl tied up, you know, beaten and
assaulted in their basement.

Speaker 2 (41:54):
Well here's a little detail I left out of our story.
But since you mention it. Research it seems that the wife,
when she discovered Tammy tied up, unties her and starts
like admonishing her husband, which made Tammy feel like this
was something he had done before, or that his wife knew,

(42:15):
like he was a fucking freak.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Oh like the way she was not again, Yeah, something
like that. Oh my god really yeah. Wow.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
We'll talk more about the criminal past in a little bit.
Butch had been scheduled to work on March twenty six
for a full day at the ball field, but the
day before Butch's wife told him she was gonna go
out of town. Butch asked another umpire to cover the
afternoon shift on March twenty sixth, twenty sixth, he told

(42:44):
his coworker he had a quote hot date okay. When
the other man could not cover the shift, Butch spoke
to a supervisor at the ball club. He requested the
second half of the day off to deal with family issues.
I should also include that Butch had contacted his wife's

(43:04):
best friend and was like, Hey, will you meet me
Saturday afternoon? My wife will be there, but don't tell
anybody you're meeting me or where I or where we're
gonna meet.

Speaker 1 (43:14):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
Of course she was like, uh no, yeah, I'm sorry.
But if your friend called me and was like, hey,
come meet me. My wife will be here, but don't
tell anybody where you're going. I would have to decline.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
If anybody told me that very weird. I don't care
if it's a little old lady of the street. I
might come back by later, honey, but don't tell nobody.

Speaker 2 (43:42):
I got from banana popstick.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Or for you pudding.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Well, I might go back. If she's got that might
get me.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
Oh my god, you'd be tied up in the basement.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
Putting is my weakness. That is definitely how you're gonna
lure me into the basement now. At one fifty four
pm on Saturday, Butch called in to his manager or
whatever to say like, hey, I can come back to
work this afternoon. Okay, I suddenly resolved these family issues, right,

(44:14):
But he was told, well, we don't need you. We
replaced you already. That's when Butcher started making calls to
his wife, his family, his friends. He made multiple phone calls.
Butchers spotted again at the stadium between two thirty and
three pm. He was seen walking back from the Sitgo
gas station where Shannon's car had been found. Butch told

(44:34):
a coworker he was getting ready for a game. But
he didn't even have on his usual umpire uniform at
that time, right, So this coworker thought it was odd, like, well,
if you're here for a game, why aren't you dressed
in your uniform. The coworker noted that Butch was wearing
tiger striped workout pants, and they were described as baggy.

(44:56):
So all I could think is rex quando, what are
those pants called? What?

Speaker 1 (45:00):
Parachute pants? Well, like the they have.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
A proper are they called skids or something?

Speaker 1 (45:07):
I don't know, but I know that Zach pants you're
talking about.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
They oftentimes ham pants.

Speaker 1 (45:12):
Yeah, I think that's what they would be nowadays. But
oftentimes they have a very loud print, you know, tiger striped,
bright colors.

Speaker 2 (45:21):
Yeah, yeah, I wish more things were tiger striped. I
have to say, I love a good tiger print. Now.
The same coworker spotted Butch walking to the clubhouse around
five pm, and another person who had seen him earlier said, well, like,
I thought you left already. Bush explained that he had
forgotten to turn his pay slip for the day, but
he didn't have a pay slip in his hand, so again,

(45:43):
these folks are just finding these, you know, little things
odd Right around three am, which would be Sunday morning,
March twenty seventh, neighbors reported seeing Butch tending to a
very large fire in his backyard.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Which is a very weird thing, right, you see your
neighbor out there starting a fire, you know, in the
wee hours of the morning.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
At seven am, Butch phoned his father to ask if
he could borrow a quote bone saw. Now, I I'm
gonna show you I'm a little ignorant here, Dylan, because
I don't know anything about tools and saws very little.
Is there a tool called a bone saw? Because when
I hear a bone saw, I'm thinking like one of

(46:30):
the medical saws that they used to like amputato leg
during the Civil War or something.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
I've heard of a bone saw before.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
And is that like one of those long you're like
the long.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
Kind of weird with the curved handle.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Well, you have a bone saw, okay, but I think
I don't know if this is something people would use
a hunting if it's a literal bone saw. But I've
certainly heard the term before. Okay, I'm not sure as well.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Well, I don't know, because I was like, what do
you is like a circular saw jigsaw like you know,
I don't know. That's my limited knowledge of sauw is knowing?

Speaker 1 (47:07):
Okay, right there?

Speaker 2 (47:08):
Oh a chainsaw A chainsaw, I do know that one.
You know because you almost cut your leg off with one. Yeah,
and instead of calling nine one one, you call me
to come get you.

Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Yeah, Because there's nothing like having your panicked wife drive
you to the hospital.

Speaker 1 (47:21):
Well, whan, did you be part of it?

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Please don't, please don't do that again. Let's talk a
little bit about Butch. By the way, I don't know
how someone earned the nickname Butch.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Yeah, I'm not sure. Yea, some people are actually named Butch.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Well, I think he's named Butch because Colvin Cornelius Butch
Hinton the.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Third, Oh Lord Hinton.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Colvin Cornelius was born in September of nineteen sixty in Kentucky.
His violence began as a teenager. I mentioned earlier that
he had broken into an employer's At that time, he
was only seventeen, and he received counseling for the rape
of his employer. Afterwards, his family left town and relocated

(48:12):
to Illinois. Because I guess when your teenage son is
a rapist, that's what you gotta do. While living in Illinois,
Butch worked as a butcher. He married a woman named Gail.
He was twenty two at the time of Tammy Singleton's kidnapping,
and like I said before, he did serve time Dylan
in prison. But guess what. He was only sentenced to
four years for the rape and kidnapping, but he only

(48:37):
spent two years of that four year sentence in jail.
Of course, by nineteen eighty four he was back on
the street. Around this time, his wife divorced him. Years later,
and investigative reporter Steve Daniels with NBC six found another victim,
a relative of Butch Hinton's, described how he had kidnapped

(48:59):
her then repeatedly sexually assaulted her. The family swept the
attack under the rug, and it was just like never
mentioned again.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
Yeah, because that's what you do when a family member,
you know, lashes out violently at other people, you just
very like it didn't happen very best. Up, you should
enable someone like that, that's for sure.

Speaker 2 (49:21):
Butch moved to Georgia. He married a woman named Michelle,
and the pair resided in Rex, which is like a
suburb of Atlanta. Butch worked as a maintenance utility employee
at Deilta Airlines. Oh no, he also had a part
time job as an umpire with the softball club. There's
a softball country club. Sorry. On April twelve, police searched

(49:44):
Butcher's home and vehicle in Clayton County. At this point,
Butch had had eighteen days to destroy or clean up evidence.
Though law enforcement didn't find anything directly related to Shannon,
they did find some one thing quite concerning in the backyard.
Various women's clothing items were buried in the backyard.

Speaker 1 (50:09):
Oh yeah, that's not weird.

Speaker 2 (50:11):
There were skirts, sweaters, and blouses.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Maybe he's trying to grow a woman.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
None of them. None of these items belonged to his wife,
and police never determined who the clothes belonged to.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
They also found a pair of plastic pants like ones
that are worn at a crime scene, along with wire
ties that could be used as bindings. In the home,
they found nine rolls of masking tape that matched the
kind on Shannon's ring. And this was also the kind
of brand of tape or whatever that they use at Delta.

(50:46):
In his vehicle, police found the same metal cobalt particles
that would be matched to the ring and the masking tape.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
Right.

Speaker 2 (50:56):
Yeah, investigators would search Butcher's house six more times over
the course of the next.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Couple of years, six times.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Or actually the I guess the course of the next
couple of months. I should say, although investigators told the
press Butch was not a suspect. You know, Butch is
not as dumb as he looks. I guess he realized
they're onto him. So during this time, he asks another
employee at Delta for a pass card ticket. So I'm

(51:27):
assuming that this is like some kind of free plane
ticket or like gives you authority to hop a plane
right after seating available. But in order to do this,
to use a pass card, you were required to wear
a suit, and since Butch didn't own a suit, he
asked another coworker if he could borrow one.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
So I wonder what tipped Butch off that they were
looking at him as a possible suspect. You think it
was a third or fourth time that they searched his
own He's like, wait, hey, hold.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
On, wait what wait what it didn't I mean, it
looked like Butch was planning to run. Obviously, you know,
trying to borrow a suit, trying to get this plane ticket.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Ye, he's trying to get a deal. He's trying to
get a deal employee discount while he's trying to run.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
He doesn't want to just stop by men's warehouse and
pick up a suit. But he didn't fly anywhere. Butch
also did not return to Delta to his job, like
after police start taking a look at him and his home.
He also quit or was fired from the softball club.

(52:38):
A few months later, Butch was teaching Sunday school classes
at his church and managing a McDonald's in College Park. Okay,
Butch was arrested on January twenty seventh of nineteen ninety five.
Then this is due to an incident that happened in
December of nineteen ninety four, So a few weeks earlier,

(52:59):
a nighteen year old McDonald's employee named Della was walking
home after her shift. That's when Butch grabbed the young
woman forcefully by the arm and threatened her by saying, quote,
I've taken care of a woman before and wouldn't mind
doing it again.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
Damn.

Speaker 2 (53:15):
So he's trying to get her into his car. Headlights
uppear and Butch got scared hurried away like the little
rat that he is. Della reported this to law enforcement.
He was arrested on charges of faults, imprisonment and later
released on a five thousand dollars bond. However, Della did
not show up for court, so the charges were dropped.

(53:38):
During this time to Cobb County, prosecutors had taken the
case against Butch Hint into a grand jury to indict
him for Shannon's murder, but the jury didn't think there
was enough evidence. The only details that had emerged about
Hinton were his previous sex crimes. After all, they didn't
have a body, they didn't have a crime scene, and
they didn't have any witnesses.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
But I mean, no, I know it's not terribly strong evidence.
But you have the ring from the anonymous tip that
did have all the earmarks of coming from Delta. I
think that's fairly strong evidence there, don't you.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
I do. But I mean I can see where maybe
a gr injury is like, this isn't strong enough right
right by j Because I mean, Delta is a big
employer in Atlanta.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Yeah it is. It is because of their airport. There's
the International Airport is huge.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
But you have to take a subway train to get
from like one end of the airport to another.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
Oh my god, chaotic.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
I hate flying into Atlanta, Hartsville or whatever it's called now.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
But then you have his proximity to the victim. I
think that's fairly significant. And I think his history of
his history, obviously you know, is not good.

Speaker 2 (54:59):
Well, we all know, Dylan, that circumstantial evidence is still evidence.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Well, and you have all the employees saying he was
paying this kind of weird attention to her, like right
before she disappeared. I mean, I don't know, what more
do you need? I don't Yeah, what more do you need?

Speaker 2 (55:17):
By gin of nineteen ninety four, the FBI had ceased
actively searching for Shannon, and at this point they're like,
we suspect file play, Like we no longer think she's
just been abducted or that she's missing. Wow, we think
she's dead. For the Milindi family, all signs seem to
point to Butcher Hinton, Yet there was no arrest. The case,

(55:37):
which had twelve signed investigators, was now dropped down to
just one investigator. Police were no closer to solving the case,
and as time went on, tips and leads dried up.
Captain Rodney Maddox with the Police Department said quote, as
time goes by, it is less likely that they will

(55:57):
find Shannon alive, even if it's hard to accept her
for her parents right. However, Lewis Melindy said he had
received an inappropriate phone call from Maddix. Lewis told the
media that the call was disrespectful, but he wouldn't exactly
go into detail about what the officer had said to him.

(56:19):
Captain Maddox refuted this claim, but also refused to elaborate
on what was said during the call. He responded to
reporters that often there is no one left to blame
but authorities. Okay, so it sounds to me like maybe
Rodney Maddox told him like, look, I don't think we're
going to find your daughter alive. I don't think we're

(56:39):
going to be able to find her at this point.
You know. I know this isn't what you want to hear,
but I think you're just going to have to accept it,
and that the father maybe found that to be like
he thought that was disrespectful.

Speaker 1 (56:51):
Yeah, like a.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
Sign you're giving up or something like that.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
Now, they didn't investigators started out kind of slow in
this case, but it sounds like it's gotten worked pretty
hard since the FBI was brought in, right, And I'm
sure this is not an uncommon thing between investigators and
family when it does go cold, or it doesn't go anywhere,

(57:16):
or they have a suspect. But they do need they
do need the indictment from the grand jury to move
forward with charges and all that. And they don't have
a certainly don't have a slam dunk case against mister
Butch there. But yeah, so I'm sure it's not uncommon
for relations to cool between families.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
And we see that, yeah, quite a bit, we do.
Strangely enough, Butcher's home caught fire on September eighth of
nineteen ninety four. There was smoke and water damage in
the back of the home. Butch filed an insurance claim. Now,
investigators from the start believed Butch had set the fire himself.
It was likely that Butch had hoped this might hide

(58:00):
any remaining evidence, since you know, police has been to
his house like seven times to search. In June of
nineteen ninety five, Butch was indicted by a federal grand
jury for arson. Hinton had poured gasoline throughout the house,
set it on fire, and collected one hundred and eighty
five thousand dollars through an insurance settlement.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
Oh so it paid out, It did.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Butch claimed a faulty vacuum had started the fire.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
Well do you know how dangerous those gasoline powered vacuums are?
I mean, seriously, so many accidents have been caused.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
By those, Are you kidding?

Speaker 1 (58:36):
Well, that's how the gas got all over the house. Yes,
it's a joke.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
There's what.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
My vacuums got a four stroke engine on it, you
shoun bitch.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
I had no idea. Damn that vacuum's rolling cold.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Some bitch. Yeah, well, I mean this is this, sir.

Speaker 2 (58:56):
Vacuums Like fuck the environmentalist who.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
My gap vacuum no't get but two miles to the vacuum.
So now this is the sophistication of this guy, right.
He doesn't even try to make it look like an electrical.

Speaker 2 (59:11):
Side, Am Kirby.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
He just poured literally pours in the cellar all around
the house. And I can't believe the insurance paid out.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
Maybe he accidentally poured the gasoline into his rainbow vacuum
clean mistaking it for a lovely lavender fragrance.

Speaker 1 (59:24):
Oh yes, I can't believe the insurance paid out. Seriously.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
There was so much publicity surrounding this case that the
trial had to be moved to Panama City, Florida, and
although Butch had not been arrested for Shannon's disappearance, the
insurance company released a statement saying they thought the fire
was a stunt to cover up evidence in her murder.
Oh nice, Yeah, sick burn from the insurance company, right,

(59:50):
no pun intended. Butcher was sentenced to ten years in
prison for mail fraud and using a fire to commit felony.
He would serve seven years this offense.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
So he got more. He got more time for that.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
For that gas powered vacuum.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Than kidnapping and raping a fourteen year old. Yeah see there, right,
there's the problem, folks.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
That's the or breaking into his employer's home and raping her.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Oh well, you just need some counsel. He's troubled.

Speaker 2 (01:00:17):
Yeah, just let him go talk to somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:00:21):
Tell him how he wants to break into people's houses
and rape him. I mean, what are we talking about here?
This that's not like a mild depression or something. Talk
therapy is not going to psychiatric treatment is not going
to help that. I don't think, right. I mean, do
people get better.

Speaker 2 (01:00:41):
From that, from talk therapy, from.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Wanting to rape and harm, kidnapping, rape women?

Speaker 2 (01:00:49):
Oh well, I think that. I'm no scientists here, Dylan,
but just based on my own research and opinion, which
you know obviously is quite valid, it doesn't seem to
me that sexual predators can be rehabilitated.

Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
No, No, they can't.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Now, the only rehabilitation that sexual predator can receive is
it's called a wood chipper look, and that's how you're
going to get them to stop offending.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Now here's the thing, man, If you don't lock them
away forever, you have these you know, basically like communities
where they go and stay with other sexual predators, and
that's the only people that get to be around, Like
Pervert Park in Florida. I've still you know, I've still
never seen that. I want to see that, but I
can't find it anywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
It's it's a good watch. Yeah, it's a really interesting program.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
No, and I've seriously seen people who have these issues
openly and honestly discuss how it's a compulsion and how
they live in fear of reoffending. Right, It's like almost
like they can't control themselves and they're you know, I've

(01:01:59):
seen it spoken about in an earnest way about I
don't want to do this, but it's just like you
know what, you know what I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
Well, I mean I understand compulsion because we mentioned earlier,
like banana pudding for example, And I'm not trying to
make light of, you know, being a pervert, but if
there's a banana pudding, I am not going to have
any kind of impulse control. I'm going to need to
put that banana pudding in in my mouth.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
It's going in your hole, it's so yeah. So I'm
just saying this is not something that can be cured.
It cannot, and that's why they have to be, you know,
put away somewhere in some form. If it's not prison,
like I said, be it a colony on an island
or something. I'm being serious.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
I don't I'm not opposed to bringing back penal colonies. Yeah,
and placing the sex offenders there, That's fine by me.
I mean, these people are not compatible with society. They
have no place being in society. They're not going to
should not be able to re offend. They're not going
to stop. They only escalate. As we've seen time.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
And time again, right, child molesters turn into child killers.
Thees fuckers, Yeah, I do something with them.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Released in two thousand and three, detectives once more started
trying to connect Hinton to Shannon's case. The lead prosecutor said,
the more he read through the case file, the stronger
he felt that Butch was responsible. He's their prime suspect.
With forensic developments using electron microscopes, the investigators were able

(01:03:32):
to definitively tie Butch to the masking tape and the
delta bag.

Speaker 1 (01:03:37):
See that's the thing. I know a lot of people.
You know, well, I guess the forensics continue to evolve
during this case. But you can take those shavings and
what were whatever and break them down to a like
I'll break it all the way down to like its
chemical makeup, and you can actually say, hey, yeah, this

(01:03:59):
is oldbalt dust or whatever, but this is from the
same batch. You know what I'm saying. You can you
can really dial that stuff in to make it a
stronger evidence. You can say, hey, this is the same
as Zach chemical makeup, as the stuff we found at
his house or in his car or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Metal from Delta Airlines the facility where he worked was
used to match the cobalt and other medals on the evidence.
I mean before they felt it was a match. But
like now technology is improved and they're like, this is
definitely a.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Mask, and I improve it with science.

Speaker 2 (01:04:35):
The DA hired an expert aeronautical scientist to determine what
chemicals and medals were used in aircraft maintenance and repair.
Not only do they have this physical evidence now, but
Butch Hinton had blabbed to multiple inmates because Butch is
a fucking idiot dumb. One inmate said Butch had nightmares.

(01:04:57):
This was like I guess his cellmate, and that he
would wake up screaming and afterwards would tell the cell may.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
I didn't kill her, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
He told the inmate a girl had worked at a
softball field with him and she had gone missing. But
you also told this guy that he had a demon
inside of him. I got this demon.

Speaker 1 (01:05:18):
I got a demon in my butt.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
It just lives in there, comes out sometimes.

Speaker 1 (01:05:22):
He has made him a nice little home in there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Makes me do little demon things. When Butch learned from
another inmate that states could not charge someone with murder
or I'm sorry, I could charge someone for murder with
a nobody case. Yeah, because the States had started to
kind of make this happen, he started freaking out. He
began researching nobody cases, and the law library was asking

(01:05:47):
other people that worked in the law library like to
help him get information on these cases. How that worked.
Butch made other statements about how he had been burning
brush the night. In the early morning after Shannon had disappeared,
he made other statements that basically not statements but kind

(01:06:12):
of more like questions asking, you know, like hmm, you know,
if you burn a body in a burn pile, like
wonder how much of the bones and stuff is left?

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
Oh my god, they never checked. They never checked the backyard.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Well they did, they found those clothes.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Yeah, but we're gonna.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
Get to that. Hold on. Butch told another inmate that
his weakness was quote young girls. He also said the
best way to get rid of a body is to
cut it up, crush the bones, and throw the pieces
in a river. Butch bragged about being a butcher previously
and how he could cut up a whole cow in
less than an hour. Without getting a single drop of
blood on him. I mean, these are all very weird statements,

(01:06:50):
right right that you're just in prison, like jack in
your jaw telling people all this weird shit.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
You ever took the skin off a pig?

Speaker 2 (01:07:00):
Finds me of that scene in Wayne's World when they're
at the coffee shop. Yeah, and Ed O'Neil's like, you know,
if you cut a man's heart out in the dead
of winter, heat will rise from his body, or you know,
steam will rise from his body. I just feel like
that's a bush in the corner just saying weird shit
and everybody's like, not that guy. Now, we've talked about

(01:07:22):
surviving prison and jail and stuff, and I think that
would be probably one of the top five things that
I would hate about jail is having to listen to
other people all the time. Oh yeah, I would want
to be like, just shut the fuck up, dude, because
you know, you've got these idiots in there who just
all the time, probably about their crimes and trying to

(01:07:43):
be cool or whatever, and I just want to tell
those people to like zip it.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
Well no that that's certainly got to be one of
the worst parts. And then having to like be don't
want to hear all that shit. Be cell mates with
someone and you don't choose talking or I've been listening
to this book on like La Gang's called The Black Hand,
which is really good, really good read or listen if
you will. But anyway, this one time he's talking about

(01:08:09):
this guy. He's with this guy who has like body acne,
and he'll like pop his pimples and then like start
touching all the snacks and reaching in his hand in
the potato chip back. Dude, I would be so grossed out.
Happen to be in a tiny tiny room.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
You're basically living in a bathroom, yeah, with somebody.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):
With another person, and they could be gross, and they
could be gross. Yeah you can smell elly. Yeah, they
might fart.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
All that never stop talking. Yeah this look take the
farts over the just like incessant talking, just.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
Looking you in the eyes whileter taking a poops.

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
What some quiet time.

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Gosh, that's okay.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
I will make on contact with them too while the
staring contest.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
That would be so bad. Happen to poop and someone's
right there, dude, don't go to boot Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:01):
Yeah, okay, now we all know about jailhouse snitches. I
mean sometimes they cannot be trusted. But from the sounds
of it, Butch wasn't keeping anything secret. I mean, it's
not like there's just one jailhouse snitch coming forward. We've
got multiple inmates, like five to eight people coming forward

(01:09:22):
with these varying like damning details and information.

Speaker 1 (01:09:26):
Okay, right, so it's.

Speaker 2 (01:09:27):
Like a group of people who are telling law enforcement.
This is what he said. On August thirty, two thousand
and four. Butch was finally indicted with malice murder in
Shannon's case. The Milindi's made it clear they didn't hold
the City of Atlanta, Emory University, or law enforcement responsible
for what had happened to Shannon. Yvonne said, quote, people

(01:09:50):
tend to think something like this only happens to other people.
This would never happen to me. And I think Yvonne
Milindia is making a point there. You know, most of
us take for granted that our families and children are safe,
Like we don't think terrible things are going to happen
to us. But you know, I think she's pointing out
that we're like a wholesome all American family, you know, married,

(01:10:14):
two parent household These two like lovely daughters. Shannon, smart, successful, beautiful,
like has the world at her feet, and something like
this happened to her, so it really can happen to anyone.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
Well, yeah, you got you got a family. Everybody seems
to be doing the right thing, Shannon, certainly, you know,
it's just a you know, a great student. You know,
works her jobs, and she's not doing any kind of
high risk behavior, which certainly doesn't mean anyone deserves anything,
but you can understand how they may have ended up
in trouble, but she's not doing any of that. She's

(01:10:49):
you know, doing I think anyone would be proud to
have a daughter like Shannon. Yeah, absolutely, working that hard,
accomplishing all that, having such lofty goals as a younger,
and like you said earlier, I have no doubt that
she would have achieved all of her goals because she
seemed very driven. But yeah, this is a good point.

Speaker 2 (01:11:09):
Yeah, I mean it's really I think maybe just a
warning that like we could all become victim of a crime.
Crime doesn't discriminate, and you know, folks just need to
stay vigilant, teacher, you know, young children and young adult
children to stay safe out there, right, When Louis learned
about Butch's previous convictions, he was angry. Obviously, in the media,

(01:11:32):
he blamed the judge who had sat on the Timmy
Single Singleton trial. He said, if the judge had given
Butch fifteen to twenty years in prison for the kidnapping
and sexual assault of that fourteen year old girl, he
wouldn't have been out on the street to abduct Shannon.

Speaker 1 (01:11:47):
Well, there you go, and I agree with you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
Yeah, I mean, this is why I'm just like the
a weak ass justice system has been responsible for this,
the brunt of the responsibility for not keeping this monster
off the streets.

Speaker 1 (01:12:04):
Well, I want to know why mandatory minimum sentencings seem
in my I may be wrong, but it seems to
only apply to people tied to drugs and drug cases
and things like that. How in the world do you
let these people who perpetrate these violence, super violent crimes, rape, molesting, whatever,

(01:12:27):
violence to women in any capacity, even on the small level,
I think's a big deal. And how do they just
keep getting off with such small amounts of time. It
just blows my mind. And if someone's in there for
four years, even if they only got four years for
doing that to that poor fourteen year old girl. That's
the person who gets out. And half the time it's

(01:12:49):
total bullshit.

Speaker 2 (01:12:50):
I agree. I don't know why we as a collective
are not badgering our lawmakers.

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
Change the laws to fix this situation. Yeah, change the laws,
because it seems.

Speaker 2 (01:13:03):
To me like, just right now, we have a weak
ass justice system. Criminals are turned out on the streets.
The cashlest bail thing is proven, it doesn't work.

Speaker 1 (01:13:14):
It's allowing the same crappy people to ruin.

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
Community ciitivism because you have a handful of ship birds
who do all the crimes, but every time the police
go out and arrest them and do their job, then
the judges just let them go right not doing their job.
I mean, it just seems to.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Me like.

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
Victims have so few rights in this country. Criminals seem
to have more leniency and rights than the victims do.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
Yeah, I know, right, that doesn't that doesn't add up
for me.

Speaker 2 (01:13:44):
And nowadays, if you fight back or try to defend yourself,
you could face charges. I mean, it's just like they
want us to be terrorized by these criminals.

Speaker 1 (01:13:56):
You can face see.

Speaker 2 (01:13:57):
I mean, it just it's so fucked up, and I
don't know what's happening, but we gotta fix the shit
and get it together.

Speaker 1 (01:14:04):
Well, I'm saying, just like not long ago, you have
no matter how you feel about the case, you have
a guy two people breaking into his car multiple times.
He chases them down the road, shoots the assailants. Hey,
should he have chased them down the road? Probably not?
But you know who, whatever, this guy gets sat you
know charged.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Oh he's a murderer.

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
He's horrible, he's a murderer.

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
Oh my gosh, the comments I've seen online just this
guy is such a piece of shit.

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
And fifty eight years. I want to say something like
that that they're wanting to put him away for.

Speaker 2 (01:14:35):
So I mean, honestly that but if you bless and
kidnap a fourteen year old grin.

Speaker 1 (01:14:39):
And tire up in your basement, yeah you get four years.

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
We're going to just give you a little stuck on
the wrist.

Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
So I mean, I don't care how you feel about
either of those cases. That doesn't add up for me.
That doesn't add up that that person should be facing
sixty years in jail and then some piece of shit
like this butcher guy be out of jail in two years.

Speaker 2 (01:14:57):
You know, it's just this attitude that so prevalent in
today's society of we've got to make excuses for everyone's
bad behavior. There's like no accountability, no personal responsibility. People
make these terrible choices, but it's like, oh, but you
know they're the victim. They didn't really stand a chance, Like, oh,
they had a hard life. Well, like we all haven't

(01:15:19):
had struggles or had a hard life. Doesn't make me
go out and murder people? Does it make me kidnap
a child and tie up in my basement and sexually
assault her? Right? I mean, I'm just so sick of
the excuses and like having these uh you know, feelings
of like compassion for these criminals. It's like, no, they're
fucking terrible. They need to be off the streets. Like

(01:15:42):
we cannot allow this to continue.

Speaker 1 (01:15:44):
Like if you're breaking into my home, why is the
burden on me to make sure.

Speaker 2 (01:15:48):
That, yeah, I get away from you. If you're armed with.

Speaker 1 (01:15:50):
A weapon, Yeah that make sure the scenario is exactly
perfect before I'm allowed to protect myself. You know, if
there is some error made there, if if something happens
that shouldn't have happened, well you know, what if you
had never tried to break in my house, none of
this would have happened. Yep. And that's where the burden
of responsibilities should be on that person. And I don't

(01:16:11):
give a fuck if they're twelve or thirteen years old.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
On it show because and maybe I'm pissing people off
out there, and that's not my intention. I mean, we're
all entitled to feel how we feel, right, But I've
seen a video of a family speaking about a victim
who I guess is like the brother, sister, or I
guess it's the sister speaking. It's her brother along with
another relative. Teenage boy like broken a house, ended up

(01:16:38):
getting shot, was you know, doing something you should have
been doing, got shot by the homeowner? And the sister's
excuses like well, haltz. Was he supposed to get money
for school clothes?

Speaker 1 (01:16:48):
That's crazy?

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
And I'm like, what.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
That's that's mindset is insane to me?

Speaker 2 (01:16:56):
What are you talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
There's a twenty other ways you're supposed to try to
round up funds besides breakings.

Speaker 2 (01:17:02):
Ye, it's called get a fucking job or at you.

Speaker 1 (01:17:05):
Know, work ask family or do something, work a job.

Speaker 2 (01:17:09):
You should go to a part time job and earn
some money.

Speaker 1 (01:17:13):
How in the world do you think it's okay to
go take other people's stuff and scare them.

Speaker 2 (01:17:19):
Oh gosh, I don't know. I mean, we're supposed to
trust our justice system, and again, unfortunately, it just seems
to favor the criminals more times than not. Very lenient.

Speaker 1 (01:17:30):
Yeah, it's disgusting, exactly, the burdens on the victims, it
seems like to me, yeah, a lot of times.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
Real. Butcher's taking a trial on August twenty second of
two thousand and five. It would be Georgia's first nobody case,
so big deal. Since there was nobody, the death penalty
was taken off the table. The prosecution admitted they didn't
have a great deal of physical evidence, but you know, Dylan,
circumstantial evidence is still evidence and can be used to

(01:17:57):
paint a broader picture in my opinion. Not in my opinion,
counts showing that Shannon would not leave without warning, establishing
her close ties to her family, her friends, and the university,
likely meant she was dead. There was the metal fragments,
as well as Butch's confessions to multiple inmates while behind bars.

(01:18:17):
Prosecutors pointed to the fact that Butcher's wife had gone
out of town, and that he had spent the first
half of the day focusing on Shannon at work. And
we have multiple witnesses that say that he could not
contain himself.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
Yeah, he couldn't even right there in front of everybody.
He came to control himself.

Speaker 2 (01:18:35):
Man, is he's got lust in his heart and his
eyes kneeling. They left around the same time for lunch.
Shannon's car was parked at that Sitgo gas station where
Butch had been seen The same day, he returned to
the softball club as if he was trying to establish
an alibi. The neighbor had seen him burning trash. My

(01:18:58):
neighbor burns trash on the night that she had gone missing.
In one of the burn pits on Butch's property, police
found a pair of plastic handcuffs. The prosecution was allowed
to introduce Butch's previous criminal history into evidence, despite the
defense's objections. The judge ruled that the evidence showed a
pattern of behavior in which Butch manipulated women into vulnerable situations,

(01:19:22):
then restrained them for purposes of sexual assaults. Tammy Singleton,
as well as his former employer, both of his victims
testified at the trial. Tammy described Butch as quote jekyline Hyde.
She recalled how his eyes were evil like during the

(01:19:43):
moments that he was tying her up and assaulting her.
She said, he just looked like pure evil, right, Like
he had scary eyes, just blank frightening. His ex wife, Gail,
recounted finding tam Me tied up in the basement and
how she had intervened untied her. Gail said that Butch

(01:20:05):
seemed to be in a trance at this time, like
he just wasn't even himself.

Speaker 1 (01:20:12):
Yeah, I mean, so he goes into the state of whatever,
and that's when he's at his most dangerous.

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):
Of course, the defense argued that there was no evidence
tying him to Shannon's murder. They argued, without a body,
we don't even know if Shannon is dead. They pointed
to Butch's criminal past, but said, oh, well, just because
he kidnapped and raped a girl, that doesn't make him
guilty of murder.

Speaker 1 (01:20:34):
Well it's like the old Uh, just because he's a
terrible husband, that doesn't make him a murderer.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
Just because I caught your hand in the cookie jar
doesn't mean that you even like cookies. Now, the defense
said Shannon's drug and alcohol abuse as well as promiscuity,
led to her death. Oh yeah, so they're using the
whole victim blaming tactic here.

Speaker 1 (01:20:52):
Yeah, let's slut shame the victim, bud and there. I mean,
is she even to act like that?

Speaker 2 (01:21:00):
Well, Shannon's friends disputed these allegations during their testimony.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
That would matter.

Speaker 2 (01:21:04):
Shannon's friends say, yep, she smoked pot sometimes like nearly
every college student, but she was not a drug addict.
Nor was Shannon an alcoholic, and that she was a
responsible young woman who took college very seriously. So they
are definitely like rebutting what you know, this is a

(01:21:24):
rebuttal to what the defense is saying.

Speaker 1 (01:21:26):
Well, and I never get this tactic. So what if
she is an alcoholic, pot smoking, promiscuous young lady, right,
what does any of that matter? Doesn't I mean, how
does that?

Speaker 2 (01:21:38):
It's like saying, well, she wore a green shirt, Like,
how is that relevant?

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
It doesn't mean, it does not mean anything anything. It
means nothing at all. It's just a character assassination of
the victim.

Speaker 2 (01:21:50):
Posthumously, the defense used the again old you know, let's
blame the victim tactic, which doesn't usually go over well
with juries. It's a lot of juries see that and
think like you're disgusting. We're talking about a homicide victim.

Speaker 1 (01:22:07):
Here, you know, Now, what's that used to work a lot?
And that's why they still try it because it was
very effective right back in the day.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
I guess back in the damn what twenties or something.

Speaker 1 (01:22:21):
No I would say even you know, eighties, nineties. Unfortunately,
but it's finally getting a little bit out of style.
And honestly, I think I've listened to some cases that
where the person ended up being innocent after the fact,
after they've served time or something. But the proving that

(01:22:43):
you have, say an extramarital affair, your wife or your
husband ends up dead and proven that you have an
extra marital affair, I think that's a big blow to
the defendant in that because I really think that kind
of hangs a cloud. If you're trying to act like
your relationship.

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
Was perfect betrayal, and if you're willing to betray your
partner in this way, well that it open opens the
door for possibility that like maybe you could be doing
something else that's shady or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Yeah, and then it could be the other person's like, well,
it's you know, either it's you got to be with
me or them, you know, the ultimatums and things like that,
And so I think that's even more damaging nowadays than
character assassination of the victim.

Speaker 2 (01:23:27):
The prosecution had not made any deals with the inmates
who testified, but the defense told the jury that these
criminals were lying in order to get a reduced sentence.
You know, you can't believe them though they're not being
offered any I.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
Was going to say, oftentimes, it's very rare, actually that
they offer some kind of a sweetheart deal more often
than not. That's only if you're like co defendants, right,
you'll have someone who turns state's evidence against the other
people involved in a crime. And yeah, they may get
a you know, a reduced sentence, but it's very seldom

(01:24:04):
are they are they given total immunity.

Speaker 2 (01:24:08):
Finally, on September nineteenth of two thousand and five, Butch
was found guilty on both counts of malice murder and
felony murder because they added the other charge. He was
sentenced to life in prison on both charges. He appealed
the sentence in two thousand and six, but was denied.
Following the denial of appeal, Butch confessed to his father
about murdering Shannon. He requested that the de Kalb County

(01:24:31):
authorities sit down with him. He's ready to talk, he said, quote,
I can't live with this no more.

Speaker 1 (01:24:40):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (01:24:41):
He teld the lead prosecutor and a detective in a
recorded interview the details. So Butch claimed that he had
plans to rape another woman. Remember, he was trying to
get his wife's best friend to come over. But don't
tell nobody.

Speaker 1 (01:24:55):
Yeah, this guy is a really good planner.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
Yeah. Well. She refused to meet up with him on
that Saturday, and after meeting Shannon for the first time
at the game, he invited her to lunch. She agreed
to grab a bite with him. Being friendly, The pair
ate at a Burger King, and they were driving back
to the softball club, Butch faked a wrong turn. He
pulled onto the highway and headed for his home in Rex, Georgia.

(01:25:22):
Once headed in this direction, he faked a leg cramp
and asked Shannon if she would take over driving. Okay, ow,
my leg hurts, I can't drive.

Speaker 1 (01:25:33):
And then you and I don't know where I'm at.
I'm lost.

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
I mean does that work? How you fake a leg cramp?
I mean, what a dumbasus? No, something better than.

Speaker 1 (01:25:41):
That, I'm sure. At this point, Shannon's like, oh my god,
you know, I just want to get back to the
softball field. What are we doing here? Bud?

Speaker 2 (01:25:47):
That burger king made my leg hurt. He then climbed
into the back seat, where he had hidden a knife.
Butch held the knife to Shannon's throat and ordered her
to drive to his home. Of course, at this point,
she's absentsolutely stunned and is asking like, what are you
doing right? Once he got Shannon alone in the house,
he bound her in the guest room. At first, Butch

(01:26:10):
told Shannon he didn't have any plans to hurt her.
He just wanted to steal her car and that he
would let her go as soon as he sold her car.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
He made phone calls during this period to establish an alibi.
He's calling his wife, his friends, family members. Butch left
Shannon tied up in the house. He returns to the
softball club, he locates Shannon's car, and that's when he
parks it at the gas station. So if they had
reviewed the footage from the cameras. They would have seen

(01:26:42):
Butch pulling this car into the.

Speaker 1 (01:26:44):
Lot, and she's still alive, tied up in.

Speaker 2 (01:26:46):
His scaly parking it in the space.

Speaker 1 (01:26:49):
It could have possibly saved her life.

Speaker 2 (01:26:51):
They absolutely could have saved her life. I think if
this cop well it's been twenty four I okay, maybe not,
but it would have solved the case a lot sooner.
So Butch thought if he left the car un locked
with the keys inside it, that someone would come along
and steal the car, and that this would benefit him

(01:27:13):
by throwing police off his trail. Right right when Butch
returned home, he untied Shannon and sexually assaulted her. Then
he handcuffed Shannon to a bedpost. Now at this point,
she's kind of like lying in the floor and he
handcuffs her, you know, her hands to a bedpost, and
so she's in the floor. Shannon was calm and cooperative.

(01:27:36):
According to Butch, She's just like, you know, please, I
won't tell anybody, Just let me go. She's trying to like,
you know, connect with him and talk him into releasing
her kind of thing. He asks her, like, do you
want to listen to a radio station? She suggests a
local rock station, so she's like just trying to get

(01:27:57):
out of the situation. Butch said Shannon was composed the
entire time, that she never reacted emotionally even when he
raped her. He said Shannon did not fight back, and
he assured Shannon that she would be let go as
soon as he got rid of the car. Now, after this,
he ties her. He's got her handcuffed up, you know,

(01:28:17):
to the bedpost or whatever. He goes to see the
movie Mighty Ducks at a theater with his niece and nephew.

Speaker 1 (01:28:24):
What a seco.

Speaker 2 (01:28:25):
He gets back home around ten thirty. That's when he
rapes Shannon again. Then he starts to panic. He didn't
know what to do. He tried to go to sleep
but could not. Around two am, he got up. When
he enters into the bedroom, Shannon is still lying on
the bedroom floor, handcuffed to the post. Butch assumed she
was sleeping because she did not stir when he entered

(01:28:47):
the room. So in a state of panic, he doesn't
really know what to do. He has like a tie
rack in this room and he grabs a neck tie.
He quickly kind of jumps on top of her, Butch
strangled Shannon until she stopped moving. Now, at first, he
didn't even know if she was dead. He thought maybe
she had just passed out. But as Shannon's body turns

(01:29:09):
pale and grew stiff, he realized what this guy, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:29:14):
I mean, really fucked this guy? Piece of shit.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
For the next hour or two, Butch paced around his
living room unsure of what to do. He decided to
move Shannon's body to a rollaway dumpster next to his house,
but then realized that was probably not the best option,
so he decided to build a fire in the backyard
using logs, brush, and other debris. He poured gasoline on

(01:29:38):
the burn pile and then placed Shannon's body on top.
Ignites the fire. As it's burning, rain starts to fall.
So Butch is worrying that the fire's gonna go out.
He leaves. He goes to a gas station, He purchases
some more gasoline, and returns home to tend the fire. Okay,
so he leaves this body burning in his yard unattended.

Speaker 1 (01:30:00):
He's a fucking sicko.

Speaker 2 (01:30:02):
Well, he's just dumb. I mean, at three am, this fire,
a neighbor could have called the police. Yeah, like does
he have a burn permit or something. I mean, there's
so many places here where he's just dumb. He makes
really bad choices, right, So, and we should talk about this, Dylan. Like,

(01:30:23):
a crematorium burns extremely hot in excess of two thousand degrees,
probably more like twenty five hundred and twenty seven hundred degrees.

Speaker 1 (01:30:31):
It's also reflected heat, that's the key component.

Speaker 2 (01:30:34):
A wood burning fire definitely does not reach that temperature. Also,
when a body is cremated, they're often still like big
chunks of bone left over. The bone fragments are placed
in a processing machine that grinds the remains. These machines
retail for thousands of dollars. So it is very likely
that Shannon's body did not burn quickly because a cremation

(01:30:58):
in one of these crematoriums designed for this purpose can
take three hours, right for a single body to be cremated,
So in this little fire pit or whatever, it's probably
taken really long time and it's.

Speaker 1 (01:31:14):
Not doing an effective job.

Speaker 2 (01:31:16):
No. Now. The following morning, Butch did borrow a saw
from his father. By the time Butcher returned from picking
up the tool, he says, Shannon's body was completely burned.

Speaker 1 (01:31:29):
I doubt that. I highly doubt that, because, like you said,
this is even in something designed to do this very thing.
It doesn't completely burn up a bo There's no way. Yeah,
I don't believe in an open pit, you're not getting
that reflective heat being pushed back towards the body.

Speaker 2 (01:31:47):
No, I don't believe it. Butch then got dressed for church.
I mean, because you know, when you rape and murder
a woman, you better go to church. His wife, Michelle,
arrived home around two pm. Worried about the weekends events,
Bush thought he could distract his wife by taking her
to the Olive Garden for dinner. He gifted his wife

(01:32:08):
Michelle a ring that he had stolen from Shannon's body. Disgusting,
he left the other blue topaz ring at the phone booth,
if you recall now. Once the couple returns from their
tour of Italy, Butch became paranoid that law enforcement would
show up at any minute to arrest him. Then he
starts thinking about the burn pit, and around eleven PM

(01:32:31):
he goes outside to collect the ashes. Of course, his
wife is like, what are you doing? Are you fooling
with this thing so late at night? And he explains
to her that a landscaper is coming by the next
day and that the yard needed to be cleaned up.
Michelle helps him collect the ashes from this fire pit
like she held the trash bag while he shoveled in

(01:32:53):
this ash and debris. His wife had no clue that
these ashes were human cremaines.

Speaker 1 (01:33:01):
I can't even well, yeah, I mean, i'd be the
furthest thing from your mind, right.

Speaker 2 (01:33:06):
He then took the trash bag to a railroad track
to dump it. During the confession, he did not accept
responsibility for the fire at his home in September nineteen
ninety five. He claims he did not start it. It
was always burning since the world's been turning. He did
not start the fire.

Speaker 1 (01:33:24):
He doesn't know how gasoline got all over his house.

Speaker 2 (01:33:26):
He does not, and he's also a big billy Joelfan. Obviously,
since it had taken law enforcement eighteen days to search
Butch's house, it is not surprising he had plenty of
time to remove and destroy any evidence, right so during
their like seven searches, of course, they didn't find anything.
The milindis considered Butch a far more sophisticated criminal than

(01:33:50):
police presented it was clear to prosecutors that Butch Henton
needed to remain behind bars. If he was released, he
would continue to escalate his crime. There are some who
suggested that Butch maybe was a serial killer and that
there were probably other victims. But we really don't have
any way of knowing. But we do know that oftentimes

(01:34:12):
these types of crimes do escalate.

Speaker 1 (01:34:14):
Yeah, and we also know that there was random women's
clothes found buried in his backyard.

Speaker 2 (01:34:19):
Well, there's that unexplainable bit of evidence. Yeah, the whole
system failed, Shannon. I mean, let's be honest, if he'd
been properly sentenced from the beginning, she would be alive today.

Speaker 1 (01:34:36):
Oh here's a crazy idea. How about you run background
checks on the people you let work at the softball
place where there's going to be a bunch of young people.

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
Things haven't gotten better really since the nineteen eighties and
nineteen nineties. I mean, we all know that today less
than one percent of sexual assaults lead to a conviction. Statistically,
only around twenty three percent of victims reports sex crimes.
One in five women will be rare during their lifetime.
I mean that's far too many. And yet rape is
the only crime in which victims are held accountable. I mean,

(01:35:07):
do we ever ask a mugging victim like, what were
you wearing? Did you egg it on?

Speaker 1 (01:35:12):
Oh? So you had your gold watch on your wrist?
Oh yeah, yeah, you kind of deserved that, didn't you.

Speaker 2 (01:35:17):
You got carjacked. Well, maybe you shouldn't be driving a car.

Speaker 1 (01:35:19):
Maybe you shouldn't have a car that nice.

Speaker 2 (01:35:22):
In nineteen ninety five, an area of forty eighth Street
in Miami was renamed Shannon Melindy Drive. Butch Hinton remains incarcerated,
but is eligible for parole every seven years. The Milindi
family fights to keep him behind bars. Yvonne Mulindy passed
away in twenty twenty due to COVID complications. That same year,

(01:35:43):
Butch was denied parole, so his ass remains locked up
where he belongs.

Speaker 1 (01:35:48):
How's he even getting chance at parole? Should have been
livee with no parole?

Speaker 2 (01:35:52):
Well, I agree, I agree with that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:57):
God, there you go.

Speaker 2 (01:35:58):
I told you this was a story that was gonna
it pisses me off.

Speaker 1 (01:36:03):
I mean, how many times over the years here at
Mountain Murders in the studio have we been pissed off
with the molesters and rapists getting away with it over
and over again.

Speaker 2 (01:36:15):
Hi, welcome to Mountain Murder Studio, where we are pissed off.

Speaker 1 (01:36:18):
God.

Speaker 2 (01:36:18):
Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 1 (01:36:19):
I should kill this guy in a slow, painful manner.
I mean he just saw well, you know he's got
oh gosh, all this hand ringing about worrying about Butcher's
feelings and what makes him do this. Call this person
out of society, kill them, get them away from us.

(01:36:41):
You know, I was listening to been listening to a
book called a Black Hands. No, yeah, but no, it
really got me thinking about when you end up with
these ultra violent people in prison and they laugh about
the fact they already have multiple life sentences, so they
will kill another.

Speaker 2 (01:36:59):
End they just don't even care.

Speaker 1 (01:37:01):
No, they'll kill another inmate. They'll kill you know, they'll
attack staff, threatened staff, kill staff.

Speaker 2 (01:37:06):
And a lot of times inmates purposely try to get
put on like death row or something right because they're like,
well it's better there.

Speaker 1 (01:37:14):
Well yeah, they feel like maybe the food's better, or
they can control their environment they do not have to.

Speaker 2 (01:37:20):
Deal with like gin pop or other.

Speaker 1 (01:37:22):
Yeah, but just this this listening to this very long
book and just the the violence. I don't understand why
as a society it's on us to make concessions and
to worry about what we do with these people that
act like this, that are fucking animals monsters. I just

(01:37:45):
don't understand why we can't get over that hump of
compassion and could well, I get it to a degree,
because we view things from more of a moral perspective, right,
a human kind of well, you know, you just can't imagine,
do you know, being a certain way or doing certain things.
But I just don't understand when these people prove time

(01:38:06):
and time again, even behind bars, even in the most
strict conditions, that they're still going to lash out every
chance they get a run, you know, drugs and criminal gangs,
on the street, from prison and all this stuff, why
they're allowed to be alive. I don't I don't understand
why we can't just be like, hey, this person should

(01:38:27):
be like not around anymore will be the best thing
for everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:38:32):
Right an island.

Speaker 1 (01:38:34):
Send them off, yeah, send them and let them kill
each other.

Speaker 2 (01:38:37):
Yeah, it could be like escape from New York. Yeah,
only we won't have cur rustle. No, they just will
put them there surrounded by sharks. We just put them
in kind of like Alcatraz.

Speaker 1 (01:38:51):
We parachute, throw them out and just let them float
down and then they can just you know, figure it
out amongst themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:38:59):
I don't know, I don't know what the answer is.
But time and time again, it just seems that criminals
do not have to pay the piper for what they've done.
And then innocent people and it seems like it's always
good people. It's always the best, like Shannon, like Brandy

(01:39:19):
last week. Yeah, you know, just these like wonderful young
people who are doing the damn thing, accomplished, going places,
they have dreams, and they're snuffed out by just a
disgusting predator who shouldn't even be out.

Speaker 1 (01:39:38):
Yeah, exactly, it's always they've.

Speaker 2 (01:39:39):
Done other things that they're supposed to behind bars. I mean,
I just I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:39:44):
All right, So thank you for that. I'm mad I
might have to walk it off. Thank you for that, Heather.
Thanks again to our uh the patrons that our new
patrons who sponsored today's show, Santa Nadel, Santa Nadel, thank
you so much. We hope you enjoy the ad free
and extra content over there on the patreons. And yeah,

(01:40:04):
until next time.

Speaker 2 (01:40:06):
I'm going to make a promise here, and you guys
hold me to it now. I don't I'm not going
to give you a specific timeframe, but eventually it will
get done. I'm going to take time to like organize Patreon, right,
set up the different collections, and try to kind of
like curate it so it's a little easier for folks
to navigate, right.

Speaker 1 (01:40:27):
So you can know what's a regular ad free episode
or what's actual bonus content, right, and thank you. That'd
be a great thing to do. I'm sure many of
our patrons will appreciate that.

Speaker 2 (01:40:39):
Yeah, but if you do join Patreon, there is just years,
years and years and years of work. They're just a
large volume of episodes to sift through.

Speaker 1 (01:40:52):
It's a thick book of content.

Speaker 2 (01:40:56):
Oh okay, yeah, well I guess the digital book.

Speaker 1 (01:41:00):
Yes, this is so digital.

Speaker 2 (01:41:02):
It's is thick as Stelling's thighs.

Speaker 1 (01:41:03):
It's ones and zeros.

Speaker 2 (01:41:06):
You have beefy thighs for a man, you think, so? Yeah, dude,
I saw a guy at the gym the other day
and he had like a like a big old booty
really yeah, which surprised me. You don't see that very often.
In a dump truck, and I'm like, okay, because I've
been seeing a little bit more of that. Well, you know,
so I appreciate that you guys are working on your
thighs and butts as well.

Speaker 1 (01:41:25):
Well, this is natural. I don't really work on these thighs.
That's just the way God drew me.

Speaker 2 (01:41:30):
Is that why you're wearing those short shorts so I
can see them?

Speaker 1 (01:41:32):
You like that?

Speaker 2 (01:41:33):
Well, I don't know if I like it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:34):
Hey, you keep looking, you'll see some other stuffs.

Speaker 2 (01:41:38):
It's probably true.

Speaker 1 (01:41:39):
Uh yeah, but you know, I think guys are starting
to work on their butts now. I think that's becoming
a thing. It is working those glutes.

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
Do you think men will start getting bbls.

Speaker 1 (01:41:48):
I don't know. I don't know. I hope so, do you.

Speaker 2 (01:41:53):
Yeah. I want to see a man with a BBL.
Make it happen, dudes, all right, make it happen.

Speaker 1 (01:41:59):
So I have new fits AND's goals.

Speaker 2 (01:42:01):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:42:03):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:42:03):
Well, thanks for tuning in to Mountain Murders, and we
will be back in a couple of days with our
first spooky season midweek.

Speaker 1 (01:42:10):
I can't wait.

Speaker 2 (01:42:11):
And again we'll be discussing the film Jennifer's Body and
the true story behind the film, the story that inspired it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:19):
Now, I got to say, I did not realize there
was a true story that inspired the movie Jennifer's Body.

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):
Yeah, and I have to say it's more disturbing than
the movie and probably yeah the movies. The movie is
not a great film.

Speaker 1 (01:42:32):
It's a terrible film.

Speaker 2 (01:42:33):
You say that.

Speaker 1 (01:42:34):
I called it in the movies. Unfortunately, it was a
horrible watch. But I'm gonna go rewatch it because I
want to be ready for this midweek. I want to
know what I'm talking about when I'm comparing the true
life story to the movie. So let's do it, okay,
all right, So until next time, stay safe. I hope

(01:42:55):
this podcast stay dry, Okay, hold on. I hope this
podcast finds you happy, safe and fed. Right, And that's
from the blast from the past.

Speaker 2 (01:43:07):
I want to be fed.

Speaker 1 (01:43:08):
I want to be fed.

Speaker 2 (01:43:09):
I'm starving over here.

Speaker 1 (01:43:11):
All right, So I'm gonna get off here and feed Heather.

Speaker 2 (01:43:14):
Yeah, something really healthy, like a piece of stellery or something.

Speaker 1 (01:43:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:43:17):
Boring alright, by Dyla.

Speaker 1 (01:43:19):
Bye.

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