Evil Walked In

Small Town Dicks

Detective Greg recounts a harrowing rural homicide case where an intruder named Shane breaks into a home through an unlocked door, steals a handgun, and shoots Stephen and his wife Carrie. After

Key takeaways

• Shane broke into Stephen and Carrie's home through an unlocked door, stole their .380 handgun, and shot Stephen in the head before firing through a nursery door, killing Carrie.
• A two-month-old baby, Ryan, survived because his mother collapsed on top of him, and Stephen managed to pull him free despite suffering severe facial trauma and losing his left eye.

Main topics

• Rural law enforcement challenges
• Home invasion homicide investigation

Notable quotes

"Once you choose to work in law enforcement, you forever forfeit the right to live in any degree of ignorance."

Conclusion

The episode underscores the unpredictable nature of violent crime and the profound, lasting

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:02) Hey, Small Town Fam. Hey, it's Yardley. How are you guys? I have a friendly reminder for you. If you can't wait to hear the first few episodes of this season of Small Town Dicks, head on over to smalltowndicks.com slash superfam and join at the super duper fam level. That way, you get access to our binge feed where you can hear the first four episodes of season 19. Right now. I said right now! Which means right Speaker 5 (0:36) now. Speaker 1 (0:45) Hey, Small Town fam. It's Yardley. Hey, how are you guys? I hope everything is really wonderfully well where you are. So I was looking up some statistics the other day, and national crime data says that between 50 and 70 percent of solved homicides are committed by people who know their victim. That makes stranger-on-stranger murders much more unusual than I would have thought. Today's episode fits that unusual description. And it comes to us from Detective Greg, one of our favorite original guests. Greg is retired now, but when he was a detective, his police agency was in an extremely rural location. This scenario creates a whole set of challenges that are unique to small departments. For instance, your nearest backup? Could be 40 minutes away. That's terrifying. And it's this kind of detail that made us want to launch Small Town Dicks in the first place. To show that big-time crime was happening in small towns everywhere, just less often than it does in big cities, and also with many fewer resources. Meanwhile, the expectation that you'll carry out a superb investigation is the same no matter where you are. or what size your department is. This case is a shining example of that. Here is Evil Walked In. Speaker 1 (2:22) Hi there. I'm Yardley. Speaker 4 (2:24) I'm Dan. I'm Dave. And I'm Paul. And Speaker 1 (2:26) this is Small Town Gigs. Speaker 4 (2:28) Dave and I are identical twins and retired detectives from Small Town, USA. And Speaker 2 (2:33) I'm a veteran cold case investigator who helped catch the Golden State Killer using a revolutionary DNA tool. Speaker 3 (2:39) Between the three of us, we've investigated thousands of crimes, from petty theft to sexual assault, child abuse Speaker 4 (2:45) to murder. Each case we cover is told by the detective who investigated it, offering a rare, personal account of how they solved the crime. Speaker 2 (2:53) Names, places, and certain details have been changed to protect the privacy of victims and their families. Speaker 3 (2:58) And although we're aware that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we ask you to please join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved out of respect for what they've been Speaker 4 (3:07) through. Speaker 3 (3:08) Thank you. Speaker 1 (3:17) Today on Small Town Dicks. My friends, how are you? I'm so excited. I have Detective Dan. Hey Speaker 3 (3:25) there. Speaker 1 (3:25) Hey there. I have Detective Dave. Speaker 4 (3:29) Hello there. Speaker 1 (3:30) Hello you. I have the one and only Paul Holes. Speaker 4 (3:33) Hey. Speaker 1 (3:34) Hey, Speaker 4 (3:35) hey, Speaker 1 (3:35) P.H. And small town fam, this is really, really a fun day. We have one of our OGs sitting at the table with us today. We have Detective Greg. Hi, Greg. Speaker 5 (3:49) Hello. Thanks for having me back. Speaker 1 (3:51) It's so great to see you. For old and new listeners alike, Greg gave us an episode in season four. way back in the day called Accelerant. It's excellent if you haven't heard it or it's been a minute, you should go back and listen. Then he came back and gave us The Ginger Beard Man in season 10. Greg, you're retired now. Speaker 5 (4:13) I am. Speaker 1 (4:14) Congratulations. Thank you. Give us a little thumbnail because I remember when we first sat down with you, you... had such a tiny department because you were quite rural, and you could be the only guy patrolling, I don't know, 50,000 square miles. It was insane. So give us a little... Speaker 3 (4:33) Basically Alaska. Speaker 1 (4:35) Yeah, basically. You were the only guy. So tell us a little bit about that. Speaker 5 (4:40) Yeah, I work for a county agency, and our county is 5,200 square miles. Most of that is rural forest land. There's a few major cities in there. Actually, there's only two, and they're right next door to each other. But they each have their own police departments. We contract out to smaller communities, cities in the county. But for the most part, it goes quite a ways. And we field most shifts with just three deputies. Sometimes we'll get lucky and have a fourth on. And it doesn't take long at all for all of them to be tied up on something. And it's usually... very far apart from each other. Speaker 1 (5:21) Yeah, I mean, insane. I remember, I think it was Accelerant, the first case you gave us. You know, if you needed cover, it could take 45 minutes to an hour for somebody to come and join you. And as we always say, you know, five minutes can feel like a lifetime if you're in trouble. Speaker 5 (5:37) Absolutely. It's quite a wait. Fortunately, we have some help from the state police that have. You know, there are troopers out and about also, but also not many. And they could be coming from who knows where at the same time because they're primarily responsible for, you know, patrolling actual state highways. And we have a lot of rural roads, county roads, gravel roads, forest roads, wherever the calls take us and can be confusing and hard to get to. Speaker 1 (6:05) Right, and probably not very well marked. Speaker 5 (6:07) No. Speaker 1 (6:08) Oh, my God. I'm glad you made it out safely. Well, let's get to the business at hand, shall we? All right. Greg, please tell us how this case came to you. Speaker 5 (6:21) This one came to me just as I came into service early in the morning, like 7 o'clock in the morning. So I turn on the radio and just wait a minute just to see, make sure you're not stepping over somebody's traffic stop or something else. And also, for just this reason, I heard the channel marker tone on the radio. Speaker 1 (6:40) What is that? Speaker 4 (6:41) So you turn the radio on and it lets everyone know something big is happening. Keep off the radio. Speaker 1 (6:48) I see. Speaker 5 (6:49) As I'm driving towards the office, my detective sergeant gave me a phone call. He said there was... A shooting out in the small pass-through community on one of the highways, probably about 40 minutes from where I came in service. One person had been transported by ambulance with a gunshot wound to the head and that there was likely a deceased person inside. So, eventually I get there, and I find out that there was indeed a female who was found dead in the house. A male subject had been shot in the head. He had been transported and was still alive at that time. So, I found out later that this incident had just happened maybe a half an hour earlier, before they received a 911 call from the male with the gunshot wound. We had deputies who happened to be out in that area, so they got there fairly quickly. Every once in a while, you're in the right place at the right time. Right. I got there, saw several emergency vehicles, police cars parked at the bottom of this property. Now, this property leaves the roadway and goes uphill. It's about five acres, and it's a steep uphill. There's several small outbuildings and shops dotted around it, and there's one long paved driveway. It goes from the roadway all the way up to the top of the house. And the property is bordered by fencing, brush, trees, that sort of thing. This is out in the countryside area. I know that the action's up at the top of the driveway. I saw that's where a couple of the other detective vehicles were, so I drive up there and met with my sergeant and another detective who'd already been there. I found out that one of our partners had already been assigned to go to the hospital to meet with the male subject who'd been shot and try to get any information he could from him if he was able to speak. Speaker 1 (8:34) I'm curious that the guy who was shot in the head is actually the one who called 911, so... I mean, at least at this point anyway, not a fatal wound. Yeah. Speaker 5 (8:44) But Speaker 1 (8:44) getting shot in the head seems like a big deal. Pretty serious. Speaker 5 (8:47) Yeah. Speaker 5 (8:50) So I got up there. There's two deputies, and they're holding a small infant about two months old. And as I get closer, I see this infant has blood speckled across his face and some staining on his little outfit. So I don't know quite where this baby fits into this picture yet, you know, but I'm going to find out. Speaker 1 (9:11) And the baby is alive? Speaker 5 (9:13) Baby is alive. He's alive, well, crying. I speak with the deputy who was there with the baby. And I learned that upon receiving the phone call, when they get up the hill, they see a man come out of the house, basically in his underwear, holding a T-shirt to the side of his head. He's bleeding profusely. He's talking, kind of slurring. They can't understand because he's also got a lot of blood coming out of his mouth. And so he's yelling for them to go into the house because his wife is shot. And he's pertinently insistent on that they get in there and help him. Speaker 1 (9:48) And this guy, the caller, what's his name? The Speaker 5 (9:51) caller is Steven. You know, and this is kind of a sad thing where you got to put your safety first before you can help somebody. Erring on the side of caution because they don't have all the information just yet. So we don't know if this was a murder-suicide gone wrong. We don't know if it's an ambush, if there's a suspect still at large inside the house. So the last thing we're going to do is rush inside. So after some... Quick negotiating, they're telling Stephen to come back to the car. They got an ambulance up there. They can see that he's bleeding from a wound on the left side of his face, and it's coming out of his mouth. They were able to get him into an ambulance right away. They waited for another trooper to show up, and then they set about going in and clearing the house. And there's nobody else in the house except for this man's wife. Speaker 1 (10:39) And what's the woman's name? Speaker 5 (10:41) The woman's name is Carrie. So I go inside with my sergeant and we just kind of take a quick look inside the house to see what sort of gear we're going to need to bring with us inside. We entered through the garage into the home. It's a really beautiful home, very clean, very orderly. There's a small room with a diaper bag, a car seat. Right as soon as you enter, I had decided, you know, let's go in, try to get that diaper bag, take some quick photos of things, how they are, at least in that area. photograph the car seat and the diaper bag in place. Then I had them take the diaper bag out and maybe look in the fridge, try to find some formula, some breast milk, whatever else we need to get for this baby, maybe a clean outfit. We didn't know anything at all about this family at this time. We don't know if there's relatives nearby, so we just called for child services to come take temporary custody of the baby just to remove it from the scene and while they work on finding out who a suitable person was that we could contact. Speaker 1 (11:41) Do we have a name for the baby? Speaker 5 (11:43) Ryan. So I had been on scene for about 20 to 30 minutes. More cars were showing up down at the lower part of the driveway, and we hear a commotion. Some of the guys down below were yelling, turned to look downhill, and I see a lot of the other deputies running back towards about the midway point of this long, steep driveway. A couple of cars were repositioning. along the side of the road of the driveway. And all of their attention was focused on a property or the fence line just to the east that bordered the driveway. I hear a lot of commands, yelling, pointing, and I gather that somebody had just manifested themselves in the bushes right nearby, right on the other side of the fence. So I found out pretty quick that our police services lieutenant had just arrived on scene. And as he... just barely got out of his vehicle and started walking up the driveway, he notices a man jump up out of the bushes right on the other side of the fence, probably 15 yards away, so very short distance. And this man's got a black small handgun, and he's holding it to his own head. As we got closer, I heard them say, put the gun down, drop the gun, we're going to be delivering gas. I watched as a couple of deputies drove around to the adjoining property. and start working their way through to where this subject was. They did deploy some gas, some pepper balls to the area. To Speaker 4 (13:13) advance to where pepper balls are being deployed, that's not step one. So you have to be really noncompliant to arrive at that. Speaker 5 (13:22) Yeah. And I heard some yelling coming from this person that they're contacting. He was telling them to put their guns down and to leave, to go away. He made a comment about the aliens. And if they don't put their guns down, he's going to shoot himself and then end the world or the aliens are going to come and end the world. This Speaker 3 (13:42) is like an academy scenario. Speaker 5 (13:44) Yeah, about the best one they can come up with. Yeah. Speaker 1 (13:47) Like a police academy scenario? Yeah, Speaker 5 (13:49) where Speaker 3 (13:49) they just give you a problem that's unsolvable. Yeah. Speaker 4 (13:52) Yeah, like, hey, reason with this guy. Yeah, they want to see how you react. And it's basically to see how Speaker 3 (13:57) your mind works under pressure. Or if you get stuck in the goofy loop where you just keep repeating yourself like, show me your hands, show me your hands, show me your hands. Like, can you pull yourself out of that situation and see it from a different angle? That's a typical Academy scenario. Speaker 1 (14:12) Interesting. And about how old is this man in the bushes holding a gun to his head? Speaker 5 (14:18) He's mid-30s, early 40s, something like that. Speaker 1 (14:22) Let's give him a name already, even though you probably wouldn't have known it at that moment. Speaker 5 (14:26) His name is Shane. Shane. Yes. Speaker 1 (14:29) Okay, so Shane is holding a gun to his head and telling the officers to put their guns down. Speaker 4 (14:36) Yeah. What's Shane's appearance? How does he look? Speaker 5 (14:39) He's dirty, ragged, wearing some really worn, dirty clothes. Eventually, they get him to comply after some encouragement from some gas and some pepper ball rounds. They have him climb out of the bushes. He comes over the fence, and he's taken into custody. deputies went back into the area where he had been holed up and found a small .380 semi-automatic subcompact handgun. While they're patting Shane down for any more weapons, they find he's got a carbon fiber Kydex-type holster with a clip on it in his back pocket. Coincidentally, about that time, we heard back from our partner who was at the hospital speaking with Stephen. Stephen wanted to let us know that at some point the previous evening, he had... put his .380 semi-auto handgun either on the dining room table in his hat with his keys and wallet. Speaker 1 (15:33) Is Stephen in law enforcement or something?