The Plot

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Speaker 1 I'm your host, Delia Diambra. And the case I'm going to tell you about today is dark.
There's no other way to say it.

Speaker 1 It's a disturbing set of circumstances that I feel requires me to say up front that it might not be a story for all listeners.

Speaker 1 If you find yourself particularly sensitive to subject matter involving violent pornography or allegations of sexual abuse, please take care while listening.

Speaker 1 The crime itself occurred in Big Bend National Park, which comprises more than 800,000 acres of mountainous desert landscape that sits along the border of southwest Texas and Mexico.

Speaker 1 Nationalparks.org states that Big Bend is known for having more than 1,000 species of plants and 450 types of birds.

Speaker 1 Every year, more than 500,000 people visit the area to stargaze, go on scenic drives, and admire the Rio Grande River.

Speaker 1 Big Bend was designated as a national park in June 1935, but for a long time, it was only accessible by miles of dirt roads.

Speaker 1 The National Park Service's website states that because of its unique landscape conditions, some folks considered it to be a desolate or uninviting place.

Speaker 1 The park has a lot of different features though.

Speaker 1 In one section along the river there's lush vegetation, but if you go further into the Chihuahuan Desert, you'll find out pretty quickly it's dry and barren.

Speaker 1 Then there's the Chisos Mountains and many other canyons in between.

Speaker 1 And it's somewhere amongst all of that grandeur in a remote patch patch of sand that a gruesome burial site was hastily created and then abandoned.

Speaker 1 And it was only by sheer luck and a totally unrelated crime that the horror of what happened there was ever uncovered.

Speaker 1 This is Park Predators.

Speaker 1 On the morning of Friday, March 31st, 2000, a park ranger named Kerry Brown was less than an hour into his routine patrol of Big Bend National Park when he spotted a pickup truck driving way too fast.

Speaker 1 He pulled the pickup over and noticed that there were two men sitting inside of it.

Speaker 1 While he walked towards the vehicle to speak with the driver, he glanced over into the truck's bed and saw a tarp and what he believed were several packages of processed marijuana.

Speaker 1 Kerry wasn't taking any chances if this was a pair of drug runners he'd just pulled over, so he ordered both guys to get out of the truck.

Speaker 1 However, before he could even finish getting out that command, the guy riding in the passenger seat snatched a bottle of water from beneath his seat and then bolted off into the remote terrain.

Speaker 1 I imagine not wanting to leave the driver there alone on the side of the road with the marijuana and a vehicle he could just drive off in, Kerry decided to stay put and not pursue the suspect who'd ran.

Speaker 1 This way, he at least could make sure one of the two men was taken into custody.

Speaker 1 After securing the driver and calling for assistance, several other park rangers on horseback arrived as well as two U.S. Border Patrol agents.

Speaker 1 Everyone in that group fanned out to search for the fugitive who'd fled the traffic stop.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, Kerry took the drug evidence and the one suspect straight back to his office.

Speaker 1 Turns out the guy had been transporting 400 pounds of marijuana, which Kerry told producers for Pandora's box, Unleashing Evil, was worth several million dollars dollars at the time.

Speaker 1 When Kerry sat the driver down and asked him for the name of the man who'd fled, the driver wouldn't cooperate.

Speaker 1 So with not much else to go on, Kerry ended up turning the drug case over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, also known as the DEA.

Speaker 1 But it was still the Park Service's responsibility to find the suspect who'd fled and was now somewhere inside Big Bend National Park.

Speaker 1 For the next four hours, Kerry's colleagues and Border Patrol agents scoured the landscape for any sign of the wanted fugitive, but nothing turned up.

Speaker 1 However, something else, equally, if not more alarming, did.

Speaker 1 The two Border Patrol agents who'd been assisting with the manhunt were walking in a rural stretch of desert about two miles south of a roadway called Dagger Flat Road when they discovered a bizarre scene.

Speaker 1 There, partially buried in a sandy bank, was chicken wire, a multicolored blanket, a piece of gray duct tape, several tent tent pegs staked into the ground, some rope, a pickaxe, and a shovel.

Speaker 1 As the agents looked around trying to make sense of what they were seeing, they spotted several bones that they immediately recognized as human.

Speaker 1 There was a skull, along with several other bones and an upper torso with no arms attached to it.

Speaker 1 Some of the bones were together while others had been strewn about 20 to 25 feet away from the rest of the remains.

Speaker 1 All signs pointed to this being a makeshift grave because it was clear that someone had intentionally and hastily dug up the ground and then tried to bury the person.

Speaker 1 At that point, Ranger Carrie Brown and his team knew that this scene likely had nothing to do with their missing fugitive.

Speaker 1 So the NPS suspended its manhunt and called for an FBI agent based out of Midland, Texas, more than four hours away, to come and take over the crime scene and begin a death investigation.

Speaker 1 That agent's name was Steve French, and he decided to have an FBI evidence team from El Paso, Texas come out and handle the removal of the partially buried body and collect all the physical evidence.

Speaker 1 The only problem was that team from El Paso wasn't going to be able to get out to Big Bend until Sunday, April 2nd, two whole days later.

Speaker 1 So in the meantime, the Park Service was responsible for guarding the crime scene. As promised though, around 8.30 a.m.

Speaker 1 on Sunday the 2nd, the FBI's evidence team arrived and got to work right away photographing and processing the crime scene.

Speaker 1 Agents carefully exhumed the human remains and noted that the upper portion of the torso and head had been sticking out of the makeshift grave, which is why those remains were skeletonized, but the legs and feet, essentially the lower half of the body, was still discernible.

Speaker 1 I mean, there were even socks still on the individual's feet and a pair of size 13 green, black, and purple Nike brand shoes next to them.

Speaker 1 The deceased also had on what appeared to be a denim shirt, underwear, athletic shorts, and Medline brand medical scrubs that had a drawstring in the front.

Speaker 1 These scrubs had been torn in the back below the waist, and which I found out was a strange detail, investigators found rocks embedded in the knee section of the pants.

Speaker 1 As agents continued to work and kind of wrap their mind around all these things, they found more chicken wire buried in the ground near the body and determined that whoever the victim was, they'd most likely been covered with additional wire before being placed in the grave.

Speaker 1 Essentially, the assumption was that this person might have been wrapped in the wire and then put in the ground, but at some point the top layer of the wire had come off, possibly due to animal scavenging activity.

Speaker 1 The FBI also believed that the multicolored blanket found at the scene had initially been laid over the upper portion of the remains, perhaps in an attempt to conceal them, but they'd eventually become exposed because they'd never been fully buried.

Speaker 1 Before clearing the scene, the feds bagged everything up as evidence, including the clothing, shoes, and socks, then transported the body and bones to the Lubbock County Medical Examiner's office for an autopsy.

Speaker 1 When that exam got underway one day later on Monday, April 3rd, a doctor along with a forensic anthropologist and graduate student entomologist from Texas Tech University determined that the victim was a male who'd been dead for six weeks to three months.

Speaker 1 He was approximately 5'9, probably weighed 150 to 165 pounds when he was alive, and had dark-colored hair.

Speaker 1 The upper portion of his body, which had been protruding from the burial site, had been mummified due to the desert's unforgiving environment.

Speaker 1 And there was very little soft tissue left on the rest of his remains, which made it difficult for the doctor overseeing the autopsy to determine exactly how he died.

Speaker 1 There were no major signs of trauma to his bones or skull either, which only made it that much more difficult for the doctor to rule one way or the other on his cause of death.

Speaker 1 Despite this, though, law enforcement decided to treat the case as a suspected suspected homicide.

Speaker 1 And thanks to all the information from the autopsy, they now had several good clues to probe further into. Things like those medical scrubs, for instance.

Speaker 1 That attire probably wasn't something the average person would wear if they didn't work in the medical field.

Speaker 1 So I imagine investigators were curious to find out if their John Doe had perhaps ever worked as a doctor or nurse.

Speaker 1 They also learned that the guy had had a noticeable amount of dental work done in his life, including braces, which meant he probably wasn't someone who lived a transient lifestyle, at least not for an extended period of time anyway.

Speaker 1 It was his x-rays though that were the real gold mine for investigators because those scans revealed that the victim had a two-inch screw in his left ankle, which the doctor determined had been placed there at some prior point in time to repair a fracture.

Speaker 1 This clue was what authorities really began to focus on.

Speaker 1 They scoured missing persons reports throughout Texas looking for any men who'd been reported missing since the start of the year, who also might have had surgery on their left ankle.

Speaker 1 And wouldn't you know it, they found one.

Speaker 1 The investigative team, which at that point was comprised of park ranger Carrie Brown, FBI agent Steve French, and a Texas Ranger named David Duncan, learned from speaking with a detective at San Antonio Police Department, more than 400 miles away, that a 43-year-old man named Shannon Roberts had been reported missing from their jurisdiction on March 9th, 2000.

Speaker 1 So So just a few weeks before the John Doe was discovered in Big Bend.

Speaker 1 Shannon had been attending classes at the University of Texas Medical School in San Antonio.

Speaker 1 And when the team of investigators from West Texas reviewed his missing person report, they saw that one identifying characteristic listed for him was that he'd had a metal screw surgically inserted into one of his ankles due to a prior injury.

Speaker 1 At that point, they felt pretty confident they'd identified their John Doe, but they still needed to do a bit more work work to make sure their suspicions were correct.

Speaker 1 So on April 10th, they continued speaking with San Antonio police detectives and learned that Shannon's father, George Roberts, had actually been the person who'd reported him missing after not being able to get a hold of him.

Speaker 1 Shannon's family lived in Moscow, Idaho, though, not Texas.

Speaker 1 So after they'd filed the missing person report, they weren't really able to do much other than wait to hear from San Antonio police about the progress of the investigation.

Speaker 1 Police reports do state, though, that one of Shannon's classmates from medical school had periodically checked in with detectives throughout the month of March to see if there were any updates in the case, but there hadn't been.

Speaker 1 Initially, detectives had gone by Shannon's apartment to do a welfare check, but they didn't find anything that set off alarm bells.

Speaker 1 Shannon hadn't been home when officers came by, but other than that, it didn't seem like anything suspicious had gone down inside his place, so the officers just left.

Speaker 1 After learning all of this information, NPS Ranger Carrie Brown looked up Shannon's name in Big Bend National Park's visitor records and discovered that he'd entered the park and registered as a solo hiker on January 18th, 2000, nearly three months before his body was found.

Speaker 1 He'd gotten a backcountry use permit for an area of the park known as Dagger Mountain. On the paperwork, a silver Nissan had been listed as the vehicle he was in at the time.

Speaker 1 And when authorities looked up the registration for that car, they discovered it belonged to Shannon. It also had the same address as the one he'd provided on the rest of the backcountry use permit.

Speaker 1 What was puzzling though was that NPS records indicated Shannon or at least his car had left the national park on January 19th, the day after he'd entered and registered for his permit.

Speaker 1 And based on the results from his autopsy that indicated he'd been dead at least six weeks before his remains were found, Investigators surmised that it might be possible he died right around the time he was visiting the park, if not shortly thereafter.

Speaker 1 During the first two weeks of April, the West Texas investigators and San Antonio PD worked together to obtain Shannon's dental records and prior x-rays to compare to the remains from the park.

Speaker 1 When those records were finally compared, authorities could confirm once and for all that the victim who'd been partially buried in the desert was 43-year-old Shannon Roberts.

Speaker 1 Now all investigators needed to do was figure out why he was out there and more importantly, if he'd entered Big Bend by himself or with someone else.

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Speaker 1 with shannon's identification confirmed the investigative team from west texas traveled to san antonio and interviewed dozens of his friends classmates and professors to learn as much as they could about him what they discovered during these conversations was that at the start of 2000 right when shannon took his trip to big bend national park he'd been struggling with his medical school studies and entered a state of what one friend described as depression.

Speaker 1 According to police reports, one professor told investigators that Shannon was in his final year of medical school, but had not attended his classes during the fall 1999 semester, even though he'd paid in advance for the 1999-2000 school year.

Speaker 1 This professor had thought that was kind of unusual, so in February or early March of 2000, he'd contacted Shannon's father, George. who then, as I mentioned earlier, filed a missing person report.

Speaker 1 Turns out, Shannon was much further behind in his studies than any of his family members knew.

Speaker 1 During his third year, he'd been floundering in his program and as a result, accumulated a lot of student loan debt. He was also much older than the rest of his peers.

Speaker 1 At the age of 43, becoming a doctor was a second career venture for him.

Speaker 1 He'd worked for more than a decade as a geophysicist in the oil industry, but after getting laid off from that job, he decided to change career paths entirely.

Speaker 1 When investigators visited his apartment in San Antonio on April 10th, they spoke with the complex's manager who told them that Shannon was up to date on his rent payments for January, February, and March because he'd paid in advance for those months back in December of 1999.

Speaker 1 This manager couldn't tell authorities much else about Shannon though, because she'd only been managing his apartment complex for like six months.

Speaker 1 She did, however, give them the number for the previous manager who'd worked there before her.

Speaker 1 She also allowed investigators to review Shannon's tenant file, which had several credit references and some of his banking and credit card information listed on it.

Speaker 1 After poring over that document, investigators were briefly walked through Shannon's unit by the manager, but they didn't find any major red flags.

Speaker 1 Just a few missed calls on his caller ID, a bunch of clutter, books, junk, and some animal skulls.

Speaker 1 Which I know what you're probably thinking, having animal skulls just lying around is kind of odd, right?

Speaker 1 Well, apparently not, because the way NPS Ranger Carrie Carrie Brown described it to producers for Pandora's box Unleashing Evil, the skulls were, I think, the kind of thing that maybe someone who has an interest in anatomy or taxidermy would keep as decorations.

Speaker 1 My sister actually had a huge bull skull in her house for the longest time because it was very much her home decor vibe, but like, I get it, it's not for everyone.

Speaker 1 Anyway, the day after visiting Shannon's apartment, authorities interviewed one of his classmates from medical school.

Speaker 1 It was actually the one guy who'd been checking in with San Antonio police about Shannon's missing person case.

Speaker 1 His name was Jason, and he revealed to detectives that Shannon was gay, and as far as Jason knew, he had a much younger boyfriend.

Speaker 1 The only problem was Jason didn't know Shannon's boyfriend's real name. He'd only ever heard Shannon refer to this guy as Sweet Thing.

Speaker 1 The same day authorities learned this information from Jason, they spoke with the previous manager of Shannon's apartment complex, who told them something very interesting.

Speaker 1 She said that Shannon usually kept company with a handful of young men who he just let come and go from his apartment whenever they wanted.

Speaker 1 Some of these guys had keys to Shannon's place and would hang out there even if Shannon wasn't home.

Speaker 1 The manager described the group of young people as misfit teenagers who, in her opinion, looked like they liked to party.

Speaker 1 NPS Ranger Carrie Brown told producers for Pandora's box Unleashing Evil that authorities eventually learned these young people would call Shannon by the nickname Doc, and he was known to supply them with substances they weren't old enough to purchase for themselves.

Speaker 1 Things like alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, and so forth.

Speaker 1 And when I say these teenagers who hung out at Shannon's place were young men, I'm talking about people who were decades younger than Shannon, which is why I think their friendship with someone so much older like Shannon stood out to this former apartment manager.

Speaker 1 She passed along the names of four of the young men so law enforcement could follow up. An investigator spoke with one of the teens who told them a very disturbing story.

Speaker 1 The young man's name was Larry, and he told authorities that about two years earlier, he'd come to know Shannon through another one of the teenage boys who'd hung around Shannon's place.

Speaker 1 Larry and the others would chill at the apartment on a regular basis, and Shannon would often give them money to buy clothing and video games.

Speaker 1 Over time, though, Larry started to feel uncomfortable with Shannon. Then, one day while alone with Shannon, Larry said Shannon put on a pornographic movie and made an unwanted sexual advance at him.

Speaker 1 The two of them got into an altercation, and that was the last time Larry said he ever went over to Shannon's apartment.

Speaker 1 When investigators asked Larry if he'd been involved in what happened to Shannon, he told them he hadn't, and authorities believed him.

Speaker 1 When they spoke with the other teens who'd regularly visited Shannon's place, those folks revealed even more alarming behavior by Shannon.

Speaker 1 They said he'd often allow them to watch violent pornography that depicted death. And in general, Shannon seemed obsessed with the idea of death.

Speaker 1 He'd even taken one of the teens to the medical school and shown them cadavers.

Speaker 1 It's unclear from the source material which of the teens provided this next bit of information to investigators or if it came from somewhere else.

Speaker 1 But the team from West Texas learned that the young man that Shannon always referred to as Sweet Thing was 20-year-old John Michael Baker, who sometimes went by the nickname Mike.

Speaker 1 And he was a frequent guest at Shannon's apartment. Investigators also received another big break.

Speaker 1 One of Shannon's classmates connected them with a longtime friend of Shannon's named Ray McQueen, who informed law enforcement that he'd gotten an email from Shannon on January 29th, 2000, about 10 or 11 days after Shannon visited Big Bend National Park and applied for that backcountry use permit.

Speaker 1 Ray lived in Dallas, but kept in regular contact with Shannon because they'd been friends for years. They often discussed how things were going with Shannon's medical studies.

Speaker 1 During one of their last conversations, Ray said that Shannon mentioned he'd gotten into some trouble with the law thanks to his much younger boyfriend, Sweet Thing, because Sweet Thing had gotten caught with cocaine.

Speaker 1 According to Ray, Shannon and Sweet Thing had gone camping together and gotten pulled over by the police.

Speaker 1 During that traffic stop, officers had searched Sweet Thing's backpack and found cocaine inside.

Speaker 1 Both he and Shannon were arrested and afterwards, Shannon had contacted Ray for advice on how to handle the situation.

Speaker 1 Ray gave Shannon the name of an attorney to contact and Ray said that Shannon told him later that the whole cocaine arrest situation had ended up getting expunged.

Speaker 1 When investigators asked Ray to provide more details about Shannon's boyfriend, he told them that as far as he knew, very few people had ever met the young man.

Speaker 1 But Shannon claimed they'd been seeing one another for a few years.

Speaker 1 However, according to Ray, Sweet Thing had a girlfriend too, and apparently apparently was keeping his relationship with Shannon on the down low.

Speaker 1 Now, authorities looking into Shannon's murder followed up on the cocaine arrest Ray said Shannon claimed had gotten expunged, but turns out it hadn't.

Speaker 1 Investigators found the police report for that incident, which took place in 1997, and it detailed all the information Ray had provided.

Speaker 1 Plus, It confirmed the name of the young man who'd been with Shannon during that traffic stop. And it was, you guessed it, John John Michael Baker.

Speaker 1 So in mid-April, the homicide detectives from West Texas went to interview John. At the time, he was living with his mom and was unemployed.

Speaker 1 Authorities didn't bring up that they'd been told John and Shannon might have had a relationship.

Speaker 1 Instead, they just asked John basic questions about when he'd first met Shannon and what he thought of the 43-year-old.

Speaker 1 John agreed to talk with them and explained that he'd met Shannon a few years earlier through his girlfriend who regularly hung out at Shannon's apartment.

Speaker 1 In general, John thought Shannon was a nice guy. Initially, he seemed like someone he could rely on to help him if he had car troubles or needed assistance with his homework, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 But John said that Shannon could also be kind of odd at times.

Speaker 1 On more than one occasion, he said that Shannon had brought up conversations about death and at one point had even asked John if he'd be willing to kill someone for money.

Speaker 1 And like this wasn't just a one-time conversation, according to John. Shannon had asked him that question multiple times, like to the point where it had gotten super uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 At no point during his interview, though, did John mention anything about being in a relationship with Shannon, romantic or sexual?

Speaker 1 And without much else to go on, and no solid evidence linking John or any of the other teens to the crime, investigators were kind of stuck.

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Speaker 1 A few weeks into the investigation, authorities received a phone call from a man who told them that he'd answered a personal ad that Shannon Roberts had placed in an underground gay newspaper.

Speaker 1 The caller said the ad was inquiring about living out a sexual fantasy.

Speaker 1 The tipster explained that he'd met up with Shannon to discuss the proposition, but during their conversation, Shannon had asked him to not only fulfill the sexual acts, but also to kill him.

Speaker 1 The caller told police that he was completely creeped out by Shannon's request and ended up abruptly leaving their meeting.

Speaker 1 Through further investigation, authorities learned that Shannon had asked several other men to kill him in exchange for money, but everyone had refused the offer.

Speaker 1 I imagine this new development was alarming to investigators because it kind of widened the potential suspect pool.

Speaker 1 But NPS Ranger Kerry Brown, FBI agent Steve French, and the Texas Ranger David Duncan who'd joined the case were all still kind of suspicious of John Michael Baker.

Speaker 1 There was just something about his story that didn't sit right with them. For three weeks, the case stalled as they tried to make headway.

Speaker 1 But then Kerry got a a hold of Shannon's bank records, which included recent activity on his debit card.

Speaker 1 Those documents showed that towards the beginning of 2000, there had been unusually long periods of time between transactions.

Speaker 1 But then suddenly on March 7th, 2000, two days before Shannon's father reported him missing, someone had used the debit card to stay at a Hilton hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana.

Speaker 1 A few weeks before that, on February 2nd, the card had been swiped at an ATM in Sanderson, Texas.

Speaker 1 Authorities spoke with the hotel in Louisiana, figuring staff there probably kept good records of who had used the card, and they discovered that it was none other than John Michael Baker who'd presented Shannon's bank card to rent a room on March 7th.

Speaker 1 That did not feel like a coincidence to law enforcement. Unfortunately, though, they still didn't have enough evidence to arrest John for murder or confront him with the hopes of getting a confession.

Speaker 1 They'd sent off all the physical evidence collected at the crime scene to the FBI's crime lab, but by March of 2001, almost a year after Shannon's remains were found, Tex still hadn't analyzed the items for DNA.

Speaker 1 So the evidence was then sent off to the Texas Department of Public Safety's crime lab in Austin.

Speaker 1 From March until December 2001, staff there conducted all the testing, but did not find any DNA or fingerprints on the pieces of evidence.

Speaker 1 By the start of 2002, the investigation was sort of back to square one.

Speaker 1 In April, more than two years into the investigation, the team from West Texas met with the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit to figure out the best way to approach John Michael Baker again.

Speaker 1 Since they didn't have any physical evidence connecting him to the crime, they wanted to come up with a plan on how to interview him and maybe find something else to use as leverage.

Speaker 1 The BSU recommended investigators tell John that they'd become aware that Shannon had solicited other people to assist him in taking his own life.

Speaker 1 The hope hope was that John might admit to perhaps helping Shannon die by suicide. Several weeks later, after authorities had gotten the green light from the U.S.

Speaker 1 Attorney's Office to use the BSU's recommended approach with John, they located him in his dorm room at Texas Southwest State University in San Marcos, Texas, and asked him to come in for an interview at the school's campus police department.

Speaker 1 Once in the interview room, authorities revealed to John that they'd learned Shannon was not doing well in medical school and had accumulated a lot of financial debt as a result.

Speaker 1 They explained that there had been other men who'd turned down Shannon's request for help taking his own life.

Speaker 1 Investigators even told John that there was no federal statute they could use to punish someone for assisting in a suicide.

Speaker 1 And the only state law that existed for that kind of thing was a misdemeanor.

Speaker 1 Basically, they conveyed to John that they just wanted to wrap up the case so they could give Shannon's family some closure. Not because they wanted to necessarily pin his death on someone.

Speaker 1 But John didn't seem to buy that. He told investigators that he knew Shannon seemed obsessed with death and suicide, but he didn't know anything about him soliciting others to help him die by suicide.

Speaker 1 Just like the first time he'd spoken with law enforcement, John emphasized that as far as he knew, Shannon was a nice guy who, yeah, was kind of creepy, but he always was there if he needed him and would willingly buy him and his friends things they couldn't get due to their age.

Speaker 1 John said that he knew Shannon was gay, but in all the time he'd known him, he'd never come on to him.

Speaker 1 When investigators asked John if he'd ever been to Big Bend National Park with Shannon, he told them he hadn't.

Speaker 1 Seemingly frustrated with John's responses, authorities straight up told him that they didn't believe him and felt that he knew much more about Shannon's death than he was saying.

Speaker 1 In an attempt to make him more cooperative, the detectives informed John that they could charge him with credit card fraud for using Shannon's debit card after Shannon was known to be dead.

Speaker 1 Basically, I think they were trying to intimidate John by hinting that they could find a way to charge him for crimes unrelated to Shannon's death unless he started talking.

Speaker 1 Not long after delivering that threat, John started to change his story. He told his interrogators that Shannon had asked him to help him commit suicide in exchange for a $1,000 payment.

Speaker 1 He said sometime in early February 2000, they'd taken a six-hour road trip to Big Bend National Park and pulled up to a remote spot in the desert known as Dagger Flats.

Speaker 1 He said Shannon had previously visited that specific area and pre-dug a grave for himself. They'd made the trip during the night to avoid being stopped at the park's toll booth.

Speaker 1 When they arrived, Shannon told John that the $1,000 would be waiting for him in a mailbox back at his apartment, but there was a catch.

Speaker 1 The only way for John to get into the mailbox was to use Shannon's key, and Shannon Shannon told him that he'd swallowed it.

Speaker 1 So the only way for John to retrieve it and access his payment was to cut Shannon open. John told investigators that he refused to do that.

Speaker 1 He said that he ended up just striking Shannon in the head a few times with a shovel, but when that didn't work, the pair decided to leave the park.

Speaker 1 On their way back to San Antonio, Shannon stopped at an ATM and got $1,000 cash out and paid John anyway.

Speaker 1 Over the next week or so, John said that Shannon basically stalked him and kept harassing him to please finish the job. He promised he would pay him $4,000 if he went through with the request.

Speaker 1 And eventually, John agreed to go back to Big Bend to appease Shannon.

Speaker 1 Around February 10th, 2000, they arrived at the same spot they previously visited, but this time Shannon had brought chicken wire.

Speaker 1 John said Shannon believed it would protect his body from being scavenged by animals. He instructed John to stake him to the ground and mutilate his body, body, but John just could not do it.

Speaker 1 So he ended up strangling Shannon with some rope and then put him in the grave, draped the chicken wire and multicolored blanket over his body, then partially buried him and left.

Speaker 1 When investigators asked John why they'd found tent stakes pushed into the ground at the crime scene, John clarified that Shannon had put those there, not him.

Speaker 1 After giving his confession, John was allowed to leave the campus police department and return to his dorm room. The homicide investigators needed to discuss the case with the U.S.

Speaker 1 Attorney's Office to figure out how to proceed.

Speaker 1 I know, kind of wild, right? It struck me as odd that they didn't just arrest John right then and there.

Speaker 1 But I think the reality was they didn't have any evidence that refuted his version of events or cast doubt on his story.

Speaker 1 In the end, all they had was a young man who said he'd been paid $1,000 to help Shannon take his own life. And they had other witnesses stating that Shannon had made it clear he wanted to die.

Speaker 1 So I think the big question weighing on investigators' minds was: could they even prove that a crime had been committed?

Speaker 1 According to reports filed by the Texas Rangers, the case was recommended to go to a federal grand jury in December 2002 or January 2003.

Speaker 1 But it looks like that proceeding was delayed because a new assistant U.S. attorney had been assigned to the case during that timeframe.

Speaker 1 And in early February 2003, authorities sat down with John John again and asked him to detail his story about what happened to Shannon in a written statement because park ranger Carrie Brown reportedly wanted this done.

Speaker 1 John agreed to the request and wrote out his story.

Speaker 1 The statement is several paragraphs long and goes into some gruesome details I don't want to get into, but all you need to know is that much of John's account stayed the same from when he'd previously confessed to investigators back in May 2002.

Speaker 1 The only additional information he provided was that after he'd killed Shannon and returned to San Antonio, he checked Shannon's mailbox and discovered the 43-year-old had only left him less than $2,000, not $4,000 like he was promised.

Speaker 1 After this chat with investigators, John was once again allowed to leave his interview room and return home, but he wouldn't stay a free man for long.

Speaker 1 Just a few months later, on May 1st, 2003, the grand jury weighing the case formally indicted John for Shannon's murder.

Speaker 1 And a few days later, on May 8th, he was arrested and taken into federal custody. His trial was scheduled for September 2003.

Speaker 1 According to articles by the Associated Press, the Odessa American, and My Plain View, in mid-August, he briefly escaped from custody after discovering a vent in his cell that was big enough for him to slip through.

Speaker 1 Two articles I read though said the vent was actually located in the jail's gymnasium or possibly a mop closet.

Speaker 1 But whichever it was, most of the coverage explains that John had been smart enough to abandon his inmate clothing inside the vent and snag a gray t-shirt and a pair of blue jeans from the facility in order to carry out his escape.

Speaker 1 The San Antonio Express News reported that he then hopped on a moving train headed toward Fort Worth.

Speaker 1 But his journey didn't last long because within 36 hours of being on the lamb, he ended up turning himself into his lawyer near Abilene, Texas.

Speaker 1 He'd been unable to get in touch with any of his loved ones or friends and had become dehydrated, sunburned, and worn down.

Speaker 1 His lawyer arranged for him to be taken back into custody, and as a result of his seemingly easy escape, the jail he'd been housed at planned to install mesh wire in its vents to avoid another jailbreak.

Speaker 1 Which, duh, how was that not already a thing before this happened? Anyway, a few weeks after his brief escape, John decided it was in his best interest to take a plea deal.

Speaker 1 And on August 25th, 2003, he agreed to a second-degree murder charge for strangling Shannon Roberts. At his sentencing on November 12th, the judge ordered that he serve 17 and a half years in prison.

Speaker 1 According to John's U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate profile, he was released early in September 2018.

Speaker 1 A few years before he finished his sentence, he spoke with author and journalist Rachel Monroe several times in prison about his life and the case.

Speaker 1 Her article for Medium.com is robust and dives into a lot of detail about John's upbringing and what led his life to intersect with Shannon Roberts in the first place.

Speaker 1 Growing up, John had come from a broken family, and after moving with his mom to San Antonio, he spent much of his time unsupervised.

Speaker 1 During his teen years, he'd started hanging out with a rougher crowd, began smoking marijuana, got arrested for drugs a few times, and eventually met the girl who introduced him to Shannon.

Speaker 1 In the summer of 1997, he'd stopped attending a Christian school and begun regularly hanging out with his girlfriend at Shannon's apartment.

Speaker 1 John told Rachel Monroe that during his very first interaction with Shannon, Shannon had asked him, quote, have you ever thought about killing someone? End quote.

Speaker 1 Shannon had reportedly grown up in a loving home in Idaho, and his mom and dad worked as artists and professors.

Speaker 1 He had a sister he spoke with often, and before losing his job as a geophysicist in the 1990s, he'd led a fairly normal life.

Speaker 1 Rachel Monroe wrote that his decision to pivot careers and become a doctor so late in life was more for the the money and prestige, so I guess an image thing for Shannon, and seemed to have much less to do with him really loving the medical profession.

Speaker 1 According to Rachel Monroe's piece, she explained Shannon's parents planned to scatter his ashes at a meadow near where they were from. They did not have a formal funeral service for him.

Speaker 1 As far as whether or not there was ever any relationship between Shannon and John and that somehow is related to the crime, it remains unclear.

Speaker 1 NPS Ranger Carrie Brown told Rachel Monroe, quote, quote, We never could confirm it. Shannon told people that Baker was his lover.
Baker always denied it.

Speaker 1 My gut feeling was that it was a fantasy of Shannon's. He was infatuated with him.
Baker had a girlfriend. My read on it was that it probably never happened, end quote.

Speaker 1 In the end, Carrie said it didn't really matter all that much to investigators whether there was something more between the pair. They didn't need to prove that detail in order to solve the case.

Speaker 1 Rachel Monroe wrote in her article that when she asked John point blank if he had any regrets about what happened, he responded matter-of-factly: quote, I have no regrets, end quote.

Speaker 1 Park Predators is an audio chuck production. You can view a list of all the source material for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com.

Speaker 1 And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram at ParkPredators.

Speaker 1 So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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