Missing Helen: Part 1 | 10

If you've ever been to an aquarium, you've probably seen a touch tank.

It's an interactive exhibit with shallow basins of water where you can stick your hands in to try to touch sea creatures.

Usually, you'll find crabs, sea anemones, stingrays, and even sometimes sharks in there.

Here's what I have to say to that:

No thanks.

I don't need to get my hands slimy and sleeves wet with dirty fish water, and it's none of my business what those fish are doing in there, anyways.

Now, the reason I bring this up at all is because today's caper takes place in the murky water of one of those touch tanks.

It's a story about folks who definitely didn't mind getting their hands dirty and most certainly didn't grant these sea creatures the respect they deserve.

I'm Steve Vussemi, and you're listening to Big Time, an Apple original podcast from Peace of Work Entertainment and Campside Media in association with Olive Productions.

Today's episode, part one of a two-part story, is reported by Rajiv Gola.

If you've ever spent time around anyone who keeps exotic pets as a hobby, you know they can be more on the eccentric end of the spectrum.

Even calling it a hobby seems like underselling it.

For them, it's really a lifestyle.

It defines their entire personality and consumes an inordinate amount of their square footage and bank accounts.

And personally, I say more power to them.

Wave that freak flag high.

The exotic pet community encompasses a lot of different types of folks.

And among the different communities of bug people and reptile people and rodent people and fish people and bird people,

there's a definite hierarchy of weird.

Fish people are very, very different because they love their fish.

But it's not like you get to go cuddle it and scratch it.

There's an emotional connection, but there's not a lot of touching that happens like it would for, let's say, a parrot

or a mammal.

Bird people take like bites like crazy.

Like they're like, oh yeah, it totally bit my finger.

And I love you so much.

That's Jamie Shank.

She's a fish person.

And so is Jenny Spellman.

I have driven 15 hours from San Antonio, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia just to go see the whale sharks in the aquarium there.

They're absolutely amazing.

I'm fortunate enough to live about four hours from there now, so I go see them on the regular basis.

There really is nothing that can stand between a fish person and a fish they love.

Except for, well, another fish person.

Which is exactly what happened on a summer morning in 2018.

when a fish went missing at the San Antonio Aquarium.

That fish, like many other fish in aquariums around the world, was a no-name talent, a background actor with a snowball's chance in hell at making a name for itself.

But after the great 2018 aquarium heist, that fish became an international celebrity.

It became so famous that its exact location remains a closely guarded secret even today.

One of the few people tasked with keeping that secret is self-proclaimed fish person Jamie Schenk.

She also serves as the director of the San Antonio Aquarium, a place that tries its best to bridge the physical gap between fish and fish person.

What's unique about us?

We make it possible so guests can come and touch and feed our octopus, touch and feed our stingrays, and a lot of our tanks are set up that way so that we can provide an experience for the guests to have an emotional attachment with that animal.

As you can imagine, providing that sort of interactive experience is a pretty demanding job.

My days and my nights are pretty much merged together.

But that's the sort of commitment you only find when you're dealing with fish people.

And it's absolutely necessary when you're overseeing over 8,000 animals.

I mean, you're dealing with life, right?

So you never know who's going to be sick, who's going to do this, babies being born, new projects being completed, everything like that.

The folks running the San Antonio Aquarium have seen just about everything.

Newborn lemur needs to be hand-fed overnight?

No problem.

I want to escape the terrarium, they can catch him with one arm tied behind their back.

That's the kind of folks that keep the aquarium ticking, keep all the guests happy, and all the animals safe.

Folks like Whale Shark Superfan, Jenny Spellman.

My name is Jenny Spellman.

I was the general manager at the San Antonio Aquarium.

Jenny Smellin pulled into work on July 28, 2018, expecting it to go like any other day.

She unlocked the doors and started running down the checklist of her duties as general manager.

We opened up the facility, we put cash in the registers, we made sure all the staff showed up.

We had a morning meeting, just like every morning, kind of introducing myself to the staff I hadn't met yet.

The reason that she hadn't met all the staff yet was that Jenny had just been hired on as general manager a few days earlier.

They showed me how to unlock the doors, how to reset the alarm code, showed me where the bathrooms were, and how to get money to the bank.

I had done some training for two days and then day three, this happens.

Her name tag might have been born yesterday, but Jenny sure wasn't.

She'd worked in zoos, aquariums, and vet offices her whole life.

And if Jenny had a nickname, it would be the brick wall, because nothing got past her.

This was a big job for Jenny, and the aquarium was gigantic, over 50,000 square feet, almost the size of a football field.

Aside from 8,000 animals and about a dozen touch pools, there was a gift shop, the bouncy house in arcades, snorkeling pools, an aviary interactive lemur and otter exhibits, and a handful of mermaids waddling around posing for photos.

Managing a place like that was like riding a bull, except you had to hold on for a whole day.

The rodeo kicked off as soon as the doors opened.

And at some point in the early morning, there was a truck that parked in a towaway zone.

It was this big red truck right by the gift shop, which is where people exited from.

So I also was trying to track down the owner of that.

We had announcements go out over the PA, trying to get the owner of the truck to move it, but I got busy and kind of forgot about that.

So I went up to the office to have lunch, and there was a call over our radio.

A guest was exiting the cold water area with their stroller leaking water.

As it turned out, one of the fish keepers had seen two men leaving the cold water room, an employees only area where highly sensitive fish were kept.

The two men left in a hurry and one of them was carrying something rolled up in a blanket.

They placed the blanket in a stroller and just started walking away.

The fishkeeper rushed rushed into the cold water room and saw nothing out of place.

And when she steps back out, she saw the men carrying the baby stroller up the stairs.

And each time the stroller tilted back, water poured out the bottom.

That sounds really suspicious coming from an aquarium.

What did I tell you earlier?

Brick wall.

So I decided to go confront them and see what happened.

But while Jenny's on her way out the door to find this guest, the fish keepers find a big problem in the cold water room.

So in the back, we have sanitization buckets.

We have a bleach diluted bucket so we can sanitize our scrub brushes or anything that we put into the tanks so we're not cross-contaminating.

So he took it and he dumped bleach into our system.

And if you're familiar with aquariums, bleach kills fish.

So it was kind of like, okay, this guy took our shark, but he's also trying to crash one of our systems.

It's a big enough emergency that it warrants calling the Assistant Animal Husbandry Director Jamie Shank on her day off.

You're kind of in a bit of a

state of shock.

Then it's like you're trying to take care of almost two things at one time.

Then the staff members were on the phone with me.

What do we do?

What do we do?

This was the aquarium equivalent of a robber throwing marbles behind him.

But these aren't just any old rents of cops.

These are San Antonio's finest marine caretakers.

Basically, we did a large water change and we were able to put dechlorinators into the water really fast.

So in the end, we actually had zero loss, which is amazing.

And then at the same time, go hunt him down.

So we were moving pretty fast.

With Jamie and her staff taking care of the fish tank, it's all on Jamie to track down the thief.

And she is in hot pursuit.

I walked up the stairs.

I kind of followed the trail of leaking water out into the parking lot.

And there we have that truck that was parked in the towway zone by the gift shop that exit.

It was an older style red pickup truck.

There were two men standing there.

There was a woman with a baby.

So I went up to the taller man and I said, hey, I need to look and see what's in your truck.

It's really suspicious that you guys are leaking water coming out of an aquarium.

According to the fish keeper that called in the possible theft, Jenny then bent over and smelled and tasted the water that was in their stroller.

She looked up and said to the man, This is fresh water.

He said his girlfriend had spilled some water into the stroller, and that's why it was leaking, but he didn't have an empty cup, and that was a lot of water for it to be leaking, just a cup.

So if you would please allow me to look through your stroller and see what's going on.

And they said, absolutely not.

The taller man also told Jenny they needed to leave.

His baby was sick.

So Jenny let him go.

They're beggar men.

I'm not going to get in a physical altercation with somebody over searching their car.

The two men got into the red truck, the stroller inside with them.

They hightailed it out of the parking lot, leaving the woman stranded, looking dazed and nervous.

And I thought it was incredibly suspicious that she was not staying with them, especially since he said that his baby was sick.

And why would you walk down the road along the side of a highway with nothing around except like car dealerships when you have a sick baby and not get in the air-conditioned car?

It looked like the thief had just slipped through Jenny's fingers, but

I did get their license plate number as they drove away.

That's right.

You're dealing with the brick wall, baby.

But before Jenny could call the cops to file a report, she had to gather some evidence.

I went back to my office.

I called the former GM to figure out how to use the security equipment because I had absolutely no idea how to get passwords.

So I went back and watched the security cameras.

The video was grainy, black and white, and a little tough to make out.

But the thief's face was clear.

Jenny had never seen the man in her life, but Jamie Shank recognized him immediately.

And she realized that this wasn't just some crazy fluke or some prank.

This heist was premeditated.

He came a couple weeks before, and that's how I recognized him on the cameras, because the whole situation was very unique and different and raised red flags.

The thief had come to the aquarium under the guise of a salesman from Instant Oceans, a salt supply company that helps aquariums maintain their mineral levels and check on its water quality.

However,

well, Instant Oceans never come through.

We just talk to them on the phone.

The only vendors we have that come through on a regular basis would be

vendors for our gift shop.

So he shows up and he's like, we want to test your salt.

And we think the salt is a bad batch and is going to hurt your fish, your livestock, whatever you have, blah, blah, blah.

There was no company shirt, no card.

We hadn't received an email or anything like that.

And I was like, well, we haven't had any issues.

So I think we're okay.

And he kept pressing the matter and wanted to do a walkthrough.

In fairness, it didn't seem like a big deal to Jamie.

Everything at the aquarium seemed to be running smoothly, and she didn't seem the harm in showing him around.

Best case scenario, the guy was legit and could help her catch a bad batch before the fish got sick.

Worst case, this was just a weird guy trying to get a free tour.

So, Jamie agreed to show him around.

So, we did do a walkthrough through the aquarium.

Nothing serious, nothing outside of what a normal guest would be able to do.

The fishy salesman got a tour and left.

And that was that.

To be clear, Instant Oceans was never actually involved in any of this.

But as soon as Jamie saw the man in the grainy security footage.

And at that time, it just collected.

He was totally scoping out the place.

Now they had a prime suspect and video evidence, but they still didn't know what had actually been stolen.

I thought maybe he had stolen like a starfish or something.

Something really easy, something kind of portable.

You can just throw in a little bucket or whatever.

But once they examined the video, we realized that he wasn't in the starfish tank.

He was in the shark tank.

Now, before you start imagining the shark tank from Austin Powers, the little jacuzzi with two great white sharks in it, let me clarify things here.

The sharks we're talking about are not big, man-eating, shark weak, nightmare fuel-type sharks.

The sharks in question were a lot smaller, about a foot or two long, and a hell of a lot cuter.

The tank was about the size and height of a dinner table, and the top was totally open.

because you were allowed, encouraged, to reach inside and touch the sharks.

Yeah, we saw exactly what happened, stirring up the sharks to get them really excited and pulling a nut out of his pants, reaching down, scooping one up, and then like hurried walking over to one of our back rooms and disappearing with that.

Jenny called the animal caretakers to check on the tank.

They went and looked and did inventory.

If he took a bamboo shark, it would have been a lot harder for us to identify because we have like hundreds of bamboos and it would have been more difficult for me to identify.

After a quick headcount, it was clear which shark was missing.

They had to take the one horn shark, and that was so easy.

It was Miss Helen.

Of course, Jamie was concerned before.

What professional animal caretaker wouldn't be?

But this was different.

This was Miss Helen.

She was the only horn shark we had.

I knew exactly which one she was.

I knew her really well because I really wanted to care for a horn shark.

They're one of my favorite species.

They're very cute and they have great personalities.

A horn shark like Miss Helen was perfect for a touch tank aquarium.

Horn sharks are pretty small, about the same size as a catfish, with the same dour whiskered face and the fins and tail you'd expect on a shark.

She was fairly young.

She was a juvenile.

She was really sweet.

She was a polite eater.

I just called her like a little lady because she was very patient and she wasn't just going to rush to the dinner plate.

But now,

now she was gone.

So with the license plate number in hand, Jenny placed a call to the Leon Valley Police Department.

I said, hey, we have somebody here.

I have their license plates, but they stole the shark.

And they all just laughed.

They They took the license plate number.

They

laughed some more.

You could hear laughing in the background.

And then they said, Okay, we'll be in touch.

And three days later, they weren't in touch.

So I reached out to my friend at the police department in San Antonio and had him kind of talk to his superior officers.

And that's when they actually started getting some traction on the case.

As soon as the cops got more involved, that's when the media circus began.

I was taking calls until about three in the morning.

It was insane.

I did so many interviews, I lost my voice.

It was absolutely out of body.

I spent the first two weeks that I was there, like not only learning my job, but also fielding as many interview requests as possible, you know, get all the publicity we could.

And I understand, like, it's, you know, any publicity is good publicity for them.

Almost overnight, Miss Helen became an international celebrity.

Something about the absurdity of the theft, a shark in a baby stroller, was just absolutely captivating.

All right, a trio of thieves took Shark Week too far.

They walked right into a busy Texas aquarium and then right out with a live shark.

Three people accused of taking a horned shark from a tank and putting it in a baby stroller, then driving away with it before authorities could find them.

Yes, we love Miss Helen's name just alone.

Good morning to you.

Something about the name Miss Helen just made the shark so knowable and familiar.

Like she was your first grade teacher or the nice old lady you see at the post office sometimes.

It felt personal.

Actually, if you want to know a secret, she was given that name on that day.

For the media.

I'm sorry to ruin your world.

She had another name, but Jamie just didn't know what it was and she just threw out Miss Helen.

Yeah, well, now I'm upset.

You're upset.

No one's happy.

But the story isn't over yet.

The main mission at the time was how do we get her back?

What do we need to prep?

We didn't think we would get her back alive.

That's really the truth.

But we still prepped and made preparations.

Most sharks can only survive a few minutes out of water.

Horn sharks are also super sensitive to light, super sensitive to chemical changes, and require pretty large tanks for their size.

So being yoinked out of a touch pool, wrapped in a towel, thrown into a bucket, taken to God knows where in the bed of a truck isn't exactly optimal conditions.

And the San Antonio police were dragging their feet.

It took them two days to follow up on the license plate number that Jenny had written down.

They traced it back to an address in a small suburb outside town, and when they drove by the house, they saw the red truck sitting in the driveway.

They knocked on the door and the owner of the truck stepped out.

He told the cops he'd been out of town, that his truck may have been used without his knowledge.

Before the cops left, however, they spoke with a neighbor who said they'd seen another guy next door carry a large fish into his house a few days earlier now they had a solid lead and the cops returned later that day to investigate but they didn't really have a protocol for what to do if they actually found the shark so the police called up jenny and jamie and asked them to come over so i rushed over there because i wanted to be a part of it and jamie came as well and brought equipment for bringing her back an officer showed up And then two or three other police cars showed up and then they went and knocked on the door.

We were made to wait in the driveway while they they searched the house, I'm just watching all this, and I'm just like, I just want my shark back.

Like, you can take him away.

I just want my shark.

They walked in, they walked through the living room, looked at some of the fish tanks in the living room.

And then the man that stole the shark volunteered that it was in the garage.

So they opened the garage door.

As the garage door slowly raised and rolled up, a full picture came into focus for Jenny and Jamie.

And finally, the police let them come inside to see everything for themselves.

The whole back wall was covered with tanks and fish.

So he was a hobbyist.

He definitely had experience.

He wasn't some newbie that never took care of fish before.

There was a huge above-ground swimming pool full of salt water.

So it was about a 400-gallon tank.

It was large.

However, the filtration system, it was like ran on something really small, like a canister filter or something like that.

And in the center of it, he had

some live rock and some faux coral.

They had a file fish and three or four bonnet head sharks, little babies.

And

then I

saw Miss Helen.

I was able to identify her.

I couldn't believe she was alive.

I really couldn't believe she was alive.

I was like, oh my gosh, she's swimming.

She's swimming.

She's alive.

I was absolutely elated to see that she was still alive and kicking.

I was kind of proud of her.

I was like, man, that's a she's a hardy little shark.

And she had a strong will to survive.

God truly saves his biggest biggest battles for his littlest sharks.

You know, I am grateful that he wasn't some newbie person that just grabbed her and had no idea what they were doing.

Because if that was the case, then she probably wouldn't be with us.

So we brought her back, then we acclimated her to her QT pool.

We had her in the back in quarantine because we wanted to monitor her and make sure she was okay.

The headlines went crazy once again.

Missing shark found.

Miss Helen was dominating the news cycle for the whole week, and the aquarium was getting more attention than ever.

Tonight, an exclusive update on the condition of the horn shark named Miss Helen that grabbed national attention.

Needless to say, the story has captivated the internet, which isn't surprising considering it's shark week.

But all of that fame was dangerous for such a little fish who at the time didn't have an agent, a manager, or a bodyguard.

The hype hadn't gone down, and we had to brainstorm and come up with a plan and like, hey, we can't just put her back.

What if somebody tries to come in thinking they can do it again or something like that?

Or just all the attention itself could be stressful for one individual animal.

And that's when we came up with: okay, we're going to get more horn sharks and we're just going to put them in a bunch of different random exhibits.

And one of the exhibits she'll be in.

We don't release where Miss Helen is because after that incident, a lot of people were flocking in to be like, where's Miss Helen?

Where's Miss Helen?

And we're like, well, we don't know.

She's here somewhere.

With Miss Helen and Witness protection, things began to settle down and return to normal at the San Antonio Aquarium.

News slowly dribbled out about the theft as the thief, a 38-year-old plumber named Anthony Michael Shannon, went through the court system.

The two accomplices that had been caught on video alongside Shannon had been his wife and his neighbor.

Both claimed that they had no idea what Shannon had in mind when he took them to the aquarium that day.

which explained why he also left his wife in the dust making his getaway.

And when they all got home, he told his neighbor to tell the cops that he'd been out of town.

Shannon had seemed cool as a cucumber through the entire heist, which made sense considering it hadn't been his first time using the five-finger discount.

I think he has a problem with stealing.

I think he's kind of addicted to it.

Based on his prior record, he had a long rap sheet with stolen cars, all kinds of stuff like that.

Rumors were floating around about why Anthony had taken the shark, especially given all the work he did planning the operation.

One theory was that he'd had a horned shark before, but that it had died, so he went out to find a replacement.

Another theory was that he'd done some plumbing for the aquarium, but had been stiffed.

There was no evidence to support either theory.

Eventually, Anthony did an interview with a local news station to settle the question.

I actually took a shark, which was wrong, but it needed help at that point in time.

As an activist, you know, I have a mission.

So it's not a mission to steal for profit, it's a mission just to give the fish a better health.

But if there's any other animals that need help, yes, I will still do it.

I still will go out there and rescue them.

I'm sure with the media what's going on, they'll take better care of their animals from now on.

Well, I'm sorry to say, Anthony, but your activism wasn't really received the way you thought it would be.

By and large, Anthony was painted as a kleptomaniac who'd combined his two favorite hobbies, marine life and petty crime.

Eventually, he was sentenced to two years in prison on felony theft charges, and the whole thing was simply forgotten.

Another crazy Texan behind bars, and another weird series of headlines to put to bed.

Nice and tidy.

But that's a damn shame, because it turns out that all of Anthony Shannon's crazy claims of mistreatment and negligence at the aquarium-well, they might not have been totally untrue.

Whatever you think about his methods, Anthony might have been onto something after all.

That's next week on Big Time.

Amon Cavino pled guilty to wildlife trafficking charges.

I spent two years, 23 months in federal prison lockup.

And why?

Why do that?

What did I do?

I bought a fish from a guy who lied about catching it.

We're the fastest growing zoo aquarium company in the world.

We have continuous disputes with animal rights activists and over 35,000 animals.

But it's the crew of SeQuest that make this place one fishy business.

Next week on Big Time, Ammon tells all.

This has been Big Time, an Apple original podcast produced by Peace of Work Entertainment and Campside Media in association with Olive Productions.

It's hosted by me, Steve Bussemi.

This episode was reported and produced by Rajiv Gola and Morgan Jaffe.

Our story editor is Audrey Quinn.

Lane Rose is our showrunner and managing producer.

Our production team includes Amy Padula and associate producer Dania Abdelhamid.

Fact-Checking by Mary Mathis.

Sound Design and Mixing by Shawnee Aviron.

Our theme was written by Nicholas Principe and Peter Silberman of Spatial Relations.

Campside Media's executive producers are Josh Dean, Vanessa Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Scher.

Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

Thanks for listening.