by Mike Riley
Investigation:
From the beginning, had some evidence been handled differently it may have changed the course of the investigation. Investigators at the scene interviewed the adults present, who were all direct relatives of Hendricks.
They did not however talk to Shelly’s children at all, a move that has since been criticized. At twelve and nine years old, they were certainly old enough to be able to express to investigators what they’d witnessed.
Hendrick’s family all told officers that Shelly had been unhappy and suicidal for some time. They also said that her family had a history of suicide and her sister had also killed herself. It would later be revealed that all of this was untrue.
Hendrick’s family also claimed that Shelly’s oldest daughter was a “difficult child” and was forcing Shelly to return to Arkansas, prompting the suicide.
Shelly was life-flighted to San Antonio, but she died on arrival. An autopsy was performed, but the medical examiner was told upfront that it was a suspected suicide. Did that color his findings? When the contact wound and path of the bullet reflected a typical suicide, Shelly’s death was ruled as such.
Officers asked Hendrick to take a polygraph test, and he agreed, but then failed to show up to at least two separate appointments. Soon after this, he disappeared.
With no local friends or family to make sure Shelly’s side of the story was heard, the case languished. It would be another seven years before anyone took a more detailed look at the case.
In 2008, a law enforcement officer named Carl Bowen became an investigator under the DeWitt County Sheriff. Bowen had been on the force when Shelly’s death occurred, and although he hadn’t been assigned to the case he had known about it.
He’d taken an interest in the investigation, and it had always bothered him that Hendrick had never taken the polygraph test.
Even more suspicious was the fact he’d disappeared soon after Shelly’s death. All these years the case had left questions in his mind, and now with his new appointment he was able to do something about it. He approached the Sheriff, Jode Zavesky, about re-opening the case, and was given permission.
Then, in the summer of 2008, Hendrick appeared in the DeWitt County Jail. He’d been arrested and charged with domestic abuse, beating up his new live-in girlfriend. Bowen also discovered at this time that during the time between Shelly’s death and his recent appearance, Hendrick had been in jail in South Dakota for a felony DWI. Now he knew that Hendrick was a convicted alcohol abuser and violent man. Alarm bells were now ringing.
Bowen approached Hendrick about finally undergoing the polygraph, and Hendrick agreed. Perhaps predictably the results indicated deception from Hendrick for the events surrounding Shelly’s death. When questioned after these results, he asserted his right to counsel.
However, after the polygraph Hendrick told three different people that he’d lied to the police. He was still denying he’d killed her, but now said that he had been in the room with her, a significant change in his story. Previously, he’d told police that he had been outside when she had shot herself.
Bowen took the case to the district attorney’s office, but he was rejected. They did not feel there was enough evidence to make the case. Although they believed that Hendrick had at least been involved in her death, the autopsy report still stated the death as suicide, and that was a major sticking point.
Then in 2012, Bowen approached their office again to ask for their support in contacting a cold case TV show regarding Shelly’s case. The assistant district attorney (ADA) in charge of the case didn’t thinking anything would come of it, but saw no reason to deny the request. He wanted to be able to say that every stone had been unturned in the hunt for the truth.
Despite the district attorney’s skepticism of the show ever making it to air, the producers of the show jumped right in. The idea behind the show was that a former ADA, Kelly Siegler, and former crime scene investigator, Yolanda McClary, would come in and help small and often under-staffed law enforcement agencies take a fresh look at a cold case.
They soon learned that Siegler’s reputation was well earned. She interviewed witnesses, and reinvestigated the crime scene and all facets of the case. They also gave the investigators access to the latest technical advances in forensic investigations with a quick turnaround. The gun was analyzed for touch DNA, the slug for ballistics, and a bloody t-shirt found in the laundry hamper for DNA. They also did computer modeling of the scene.
Despite all this, there was still not a break in the case. The touch DNA test found nothing, and the DNA on the shirt was all Shelly’s. The slug matched the revolver found at the scene, and the computer modeling revealed nothing significant.
The TV team investigated the evidence given by the Hendrick’s family, and discovered their lies. There had been no history of depression in Shelly’s family, and she had never been on anti-depressant medication herself. They also found no evidence of previous suicides in her family. The case for Shelly’s death truly being a suicide was starting to look shaky.
From there, Seigler’s team started to look at the likelihood that it was murder. They found that Hendrick had committed several serious assaults on other women, both before and after Shelly’s death. In one that was eerily similar to the circumstances of Shelly’s death, he nearly killed the woman.
Johnny Bonds, a former interviewer with the Houston Police Department with an excellent reputation, re-interviewed multiple people involved in the original incident, including Hendrick himself.
So had someone else been involved in Shelly’s death? Had she been murdered and the original investigation missed it? Still the biggest weakness in the case was the gunshot wound.
It’s very difficult to get the gun barrel right up against the temple of an unwilling victim. Even if they are held still, most still manage to pull their head back slightly. How then did Shelly have a contact wound if she had not pulled the trigger herself? There was really only one way.
If Hendrick had crept up on Shelly while she was in the bathroom using the mirror, and she had seen him and turned to face him just before the gun went off, that would produce the same wound pattern. Despite now having an explanation for the wound pattern besides suicide, the DA was still not ready to take the case to trial.
Then, a few weeks after the filming the show, the final piece fell into place. Bowen found Shelly’s ex-husband, Jessie. He was incarcerated in a prison in Texas. He told Bowen that he had spoken to Shelly on the day of her death. According to his testimony, he and Shelly were getting back together. He was the father of her eldest child, and she was planning to move back home with the kids and be a family together again.
During the phone call, Hendrick had grabbed the phone and told Jessie that the only way Shelly would be returning to Arkansas was if she was in a pine box. Jessie was also polygraphed, and when he passed with flying colors, the district attorney was ready. The case for Shelly’s murder was taken to a grand jury.
Hendrick was indicted by the grand jury in November of 2012. He was incarcerated until his trial in September 2013.
Meanwhile, the reality TV show episode was due to run just days before jury selection. With the gathering media attention, the DA started to worry that ironically the whole case would fail because of the attention given to it by the very thing that helped to break it open in the first place. The producers of the show however refused to delay the broadcast, and it went to air only days before the real trial began.
Thankfully, on the day of the trial the judge asked the jury members to raise their hands if they had watched the show. A third of them did so. As they were interviewed and most admitted that they already thought Hendrick had killed Shelly, a mistrial was declared.
The only solution that the DA could see was to change venues. However, the show had been broadcast nation-wide. The judge reset the case to be tried again in June of 2014, hoping that the fanfare would have died down by then.
The DA then approached Hendrick’s attorney.
He told them that when he brought the case to trial the delay would mean he’d only have more evidence, and also pointed out that nearly everyone who had seen the TV show already thought Hendrick was guilty.
In the end, Hendrick pled guilty to murder just a day later. He was sentenced to twenty-two years in jail.
Current Status:
A timeline established twelve years after the murder showed that over an hour passed between the shooting and when emergency responders were called. Did that gap give the family time to get their stories straight and rearrange any crucial evidence?
The DA that prosecuted the case has the utmost respect for the professionals involved in the show. However, he believes that the producers were wrong in not delaying the broadcast. Had it been delayed just two weeks, he believes he could have impaneled an impartial jury. Had Hendrick been found guilty in a trial rather than taking a plea bargain, he would likely have received life in prison.
Many think that were it not for the actions of Carl Bowen and Sheriff Jode Zavesky in taking a personal interest and re-opening the case, justice would never have happened for Shelly. There was no political pressure or public speculation driving the case. As far as the general population was concerned, Shelly had committed suicide. The only thing on her side was one investigator with a nagging feeling that something just wasn’t right.
Solved But Unexplained
Victim: Sara Lynn Wineski
Location: St. Petersburg, Florida
Suspect: Raymond Samuels
Date of Crime: May 22nd, 2005
Date Identified: 2013
Backstory:
Sara Lynn Wineski was born in San Diego, California on June 25th, 1955 to parents Walter Wineski and Katherine McManus. Records indicate she married Edward J. Murphy on July 12th, 1975 when she was 20 years old.
The couple had two children, daughter Candace M. born May 9th, 1976 and son Edward James born March 21st, 1978. The marriage was not to last and they divorced on April 12th, 1984.
It’s not known what occurred in the intervening years but in 2005 Sara Lynn Wineski had born two more children and then become a homeless woman living in St. Petersburg, Florida. She had moved there from Sarasota less than two weeks before her death. She was forty-nine years old.
On The Day In Question:
On Sunday May 22nd, 2005, Wineski’s body was found in a secluded area, under a wooden deck belonging to a Ronald McDonald House. She had been dead for less than a day when she was found.
Investigation:
Investigations revealed that Wineski had been raped and then strangled. She had been killed brutally, her body suffering significant trauma, particularly her upper body.
A guest of the Ronald McDonald House recalled hearing screams around 11:00pm the night before. The deck where her body was found overlooked Roser Park, a common sleeping place for homeless people.
At the time of the attack, police suspected the case was linked to an earlier violent sexual assault that had occurred near Campbell Park on May 7th. Campbell Park was close to the scene of Wineski’s murder, and police said both crimes had “disturbing similarities” that they were not releasing.
The victim of that attack (a resident, rather than homeless as Wineski had been) had survived the attack, and described the perpetrator as a black man with a dark complexion, twenty-six to thirty years old, around 5’ 7” tall, and with a thin build. Investigators were worried that a serial rapist was on the loose.
Police handed out flyers at parks and shelters around the crime area, looking for people who might have seen Wineski shortly before she was killed.
DNA evidence was collected at the scene of Wineski’s murder, but there was no progress on identifying a suspect.
Then, in 2013, there was a sudden break in the case. The DNA from the case found a match, a man named Raymond Samuels. In 2005, he had been visiting St. Petersburg. He had then been in prison in Ohio since 2006, charged with attempted murder and kidnapping, where his DNA was recorded in the system.
Samuels, who would have been twenty-three at the time of the attack, was also a transient person with no fixed address, and had been in the area for less than two months before Wineski’s murder.
Current Status:
Wineski was survived by four children, and now also has four grandchildren. Her family is glad that her killer has been found, saying that her life was not a waste, and not something anyone had the right to take from her, despite how she was living when she ran into Samuels on that fateful night.
Samuels is currently awaiting trial at Pinellas County Jail in Clearwater, Florida.
A Fateful Walk
Victims: Skyla Whitaker, Taylor Paschal-Placker
Location: Weleetka, Oklahoma
Suspect: Kevin Sweat
Date of Crime: June 8, 2008
Date of Conviction: October 17, 2014
Backstory:
Skyla Jade Whitaker was born in Joplin Missouri on April 5, 1997. Her parents, William and Rose Whitaker also had daughters Rosita, Christina and Jayme and son Edward. Skyla was in the 5th grade at Graham School.
Taylor Dawn Paschal-Placker was born March 6, 1995 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Her parents were Vicky and Peter Placker. She also attended Graham School and was in the 6th grade.
Both girls were active in 4H, cheerleading and SWAT (Students Working Against Tobacco) and were best friends. Skyla wanted to be a veterinarian some day.
On The Day In Question:
On Sunday, June 8, 2008, the girls were walking together down a rural dirt track. Despite its condition, the road was well used by locals, and the girls had taken the route together many times before. They had had a sleep over together at Paschal-Placker’s house the night before, and were on their way to a riverbank where they wanted to collect pebbles and shells.
Then, that afternoon a disturbing call came into 911 at the Okfuskee County Sheriff’s Department. A woman on the other end of the call was screaming, “Somebody’s killed two girls!” That woman was Paschal-Placker’s grandmother, who had found the bodies of the two girls lying in a ditch along a rural road. Their bodies were riddled with bullets, the girls together had been shot a total of thirteen times.
Investigation:
Police determined that more than one gun was used to kill the girls, one of which was a .40 caliber Glock semi-automatic handgun. They did not release any information regarding the second gun, but did state that both victims had been shot with both guns. Were they looking at two perpetrators or a single attacker with multiple weapons?
Police and the community both struggled to understand why someone would kill the two young girls. Neither of them was a member of any gangs or lived “high risk” lifestyles. They were both popular and well liked by both their peers and their teachers. Whitaker wanted to be a vet when she grew up. Paschal-Placker, described by her friends as “the smartest girl in school”, wanted to be a forensic scientist.
Evidence found at the scene included tire tracks, shoe prints, as well as shell casings and bullets. A witness also reported a Native American person seen in the area at the time of the shooting, and a police released a composite sketch. Due to the remoteness of the location, investigators believed that the perpetrator had to be a local. They interviewed every known violent felon in the area, but came up empty.
With no leads or suspects, the case went cold.
Years passed, and then a break came from a very unexpected place. In 2011, Kevin Sweat, who lived in the nearby town of Okmulgee, was unhappy in his relationship. He was engaged to Ashley Taylor, but things hadn’t always been smooth sailing. In fact, Sweat had written on his blog a year earlier that the engagement was “the biggest mistake of his life”. People described Sweat as secretive and unpredictable, and he would often write cryptic messages.
During the summer of 2011, Sweat told his friends that he and Taylor were eloping to New Orleans. They left town together, but Sweat returned alone. He told friends that along the way they had starte
d arguing, and Taylor had left the car and walked away. Suspicious of his claims, Taylor’s family reported her missing.
When police visited Sweat to investigate their claims, they found a man who was obsessed with guns and knives. During questioning, Sweat admitted that he had killed Taylor by slitting her throat, and had then pushed her into a lake. However, when they searched his father’s property, police found a burnt-out bonfire that contained human remains. Also found in the fire were the remains of a pair of glasses. The prescription matched Taylor’s.
It was while making sure they’d thoroughly investigated the scene of Taylor’s murder that the police uncovered perhaps the most surprising part of the whole investigation. In the backyard where Taylor’s remains had been found, police uncovered shell casings. When the casings were analyzed, the police couldn’t believe it – they matched the ones recovered from the murders of Whitaker and Paschal-Placker three years earlier.
Could the man who killed his fiancé also be involved in the murder of two young girls?
Once Sweat was informed of the match, he began talking to police as easily as he had about Taylor’s murder. However, his tale was a strange one. He said that he had been driving down the road that afternoon when he had seen two monsters. When the monsters started moving towards him, he panicked and grabbed a gun and fired at them. He then grabbed another gun from his glove box and fired that as well.
