Cold Cases Solved: True Stories of Murders That Took Years or Decades to Solve (Murder, Scandals and Mayhem Book 8) (4 page)

Victim:
Anna Palmer

Location:
Salt Lake City, Utah

Suspect:
Matthew Breck

Date of Crime:
September 10, 1998

Date of Conviction:
August 2001

Backstory:

Anna Palmer was born on August 8, 1988 to parents Nancy and David Palmer. Her family consisted of brothers Mike and Matthew and sisters Christine and Rachel. Anna was in the fifth grade at Whittier Elementary School in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Ten-year-old Anna was a friendly child. Her mother has described her as a “little socialite”, often playing with all the other children in the neighborhood.

On The Day In Question:

On September 10, 1998, Palmer phoned her mother around 5:00pm and asked her if she was allowed to go and play with some friends. That was the last time her mother would hear her voice. At 7:00pm her mother returned home and found Palmer’s dead body lying on the porch of their home.

Her body was already cold to the touch, and her mother has reported that her face was a ‘waxy, pale, yellowy color’, as though Palmer’s blood was no longer flowing. She immediately called 911.

She was advised by the operator to start CPR, and although paramedics arrived within minutes, Palmer was pronounced dead when they arrived on the scene.

Investigation:

At first investigators wondered if the injuries could be dog bites. However, an autopsy revealed that Palmer had been stabbed to death on the front porch of her home. She had fought back against her attacker, and been stabbed in the throat five times, and also beaten severely. One of the stab wounds had severed her spinal cord and killed her.

A police search began, and neighbors remember hearing helicopters and seeing searchlights for most of the night.

Despite the murder happening in broad daylight in public and near a busy intersection, witnesses were scarce. The crime scene had little evidence, and what did exist was not much use with the science techniques of the day. Nevertheless, swabs were still taken from Palmer’s body and clothing, and her fingernails were clipped. DNA profiling was not as advanced in 1998 as it is now.

Despite police investigations, no suspects were revealed and the case went cold.

An offered reward of $11,000 turned up some leads, but nothing they uncovered led to an arrest in the case.

Then, in 2009, detectives had the samples analyzed again. Using a new technique, forensic scientists were able to extract DNA that did not belong to Palmer from the swabs and fingernail clippings. Palmer’s attempt to fight back had trapped her attacker’s skin under her nails.

When the DNA was tested, there was a match. It belonged to a man named Matthew Breck. Breck was already serving a ten-year sentence in Idaho for child sex-related crimes. In 1998, he had been nineteen years old and living only one block from Palmer’s house.

Two witnesses, who were children at the time of the crime, testified that they had seen a teenager walking near Palmer’s house that day when she had been heading home. A taped police interview with a then ten-year-old friend of Palmer’s said they had played together on swings in her backyard, and then when it was near 7:00pm, they hugged and went their separate ways on a street corner.

She told police that at that time she’d noticed a man behind them who looked liked he might want to grab them. Palmer let the man pass her, and then yelled at her friend to run home. When her friend looked back, Palmer was on her way home and the man was gone.

Several other witnesses who were children at the time also came forward to report a man that had “creeped” them out. Multiple witnesses reported him as wearing a baseball jersey and having dark stringy hair. Breck was known to regularly wear baseball jerseys.

Current Status:

In August of 2001, Breck pled guilty to aggravated murder. The rest of his life will be spent in prison.

Had the evidence not been found in Palmer’s case, he would have already served the time of his other jail term and would have been again living in society.

Victim:
Pamela J. Shelly

Location:
DeWitt County, Texas

Suspect:
Ronnie Hendrick

Date of Crime:
January 6, 2001

Date of Guilty Plea:
September 10, 2013

Backstory:

Pamela Jean Shelly was born on July 25, 1969 in Harris County Texas as Pamela Jean Curlee. Her parents were Pearly Jean Surber and Carl Edward Curlee. 

In 2001 she was living with her boyfriend, Ronnie Hendrick, and her two children, Kayla (12) and Dustin (9). They lived in a rural area of DeWitt County, Texas.

Hendrick’s family lived just a mile away, and Shelly’s own family lived eight hundred miles away in Arkansas. Shelly had only lived in Texas for five months.

On The Day In Question:

On January 6, 2001, Pamela Shelly died in the bathroom of her home. The cause of death was a single gunshot wound to the head. Hendrick’s stepfather called it in as an attempted suicide, and Shelly was still breathing when she was loaded into an ambulance.

Being a rural area and ‘in the middle of nowhere’, Hendrick volunteered to accompany the ambulance to direct the driver. That meant when the sheriff’s deputies arrived, he was not there to answer any questions, or to be tested for gunshot residue.

When asked, emergency responders who attended the scene did not have any reason to doubt that the gunshot wound had been self-inflicted. The scene didn’t “feel like” a shooting of unknown origin, everyone was relatively calm and there was very little panic.

Apparently the family never considered that this was anything other than self-inflicted. No one was afraid an unknown shooter might be lurking. It was because Shelly’s shooter was very much known and standing right next to them.

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.