Tameshia Shelton

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Tamisha Shelton came from a close-knit southern family.

Her mother, both of her sisters, her nieces and nephews, lived right behind her.

But she was closest to her little sister, Katina.

She kind of felt like she was protecting her.

So she was thrilled when her sister met Danielle.

They was talking about getting married and everything.

He really loved her.

This was going to be the one.

But the wedding wasn't to be.

The call come out over the radio.

Accidental shooting.

You can hear T in the background scream.

No, what happened?

What happened?

What happened?

No, he's not dead.

He's not dead.

Was the shooting simply a tragic accident?

They said he was hunting and the bullet ricocheted and came back and shot him.

Would the evidence suggest another explanation?

Maybe it was a self-inflicted gunshot.

Or did Tamisha and Danielle share a scandalous secret?

He would come here, she would be on a couch in lingerie.

And would it cost Danielle his life?

It was jealousy.

It had to be.

West Point, October 16th, 2009.

It was a typical Friday night in this town of 11,000 in rural northeastern Mississippi.

Snicel, small, friendly town.

Hardworking people.

It's a sports town.

We love

football teams.

And like every other Friday night in the fall, most of West Point was packed into the stadium at the local high school, cheering on the home team.

This is the South.

We do football.

That's just sort of where you'll find everyone on a Friday night.

Including the on-duty deputies from the Clay County Sheriff's Office.

A lot of local law enforcement go to the games, provide security, and want to support the team.

But at around nine o'clock, the deputies rooting for West Point High were suddenly interrupted.

Me and the other investigator, we're at the game.

The call came out over the radio: accidental shooting.

The caller was 31-year-old Tamisha Shelton.

There's obvious concern and fear in her voice.

She's very, very

agitated.

Tamisha told the operator that she'd heard a shot, gone outside to investigate, and found her friend, 21-year-old Danielle Young, lying at the foot of a tree outside her trailer.

She tell Nawan that he's making sounds.

Look like he's breathing, so the dispatch tell Tamisha not to touch him.

All thoughts of football forgotten.

The first responders raced to the scene.

But would they get there in time?

Moon Valley is a very rural area of a very rural community.

A lot of dirt roads, gravel roads in that vicinity.

You can get out there and feel like you're lost, even if you're not.

Tamisha stayed on the line and did what she could to help.

She was trying to describe where the house was and giving the address and explaining where they were located.

And she was still on the line giving giving directions to the first responders when Tamisha's little sister, Katina, arrived at the scene of the shooting.

On the phone with 911, you could hear a car pull up and hear someone get out and start basically screaming, calling out for Danielle.

Man, real hysterical.

But how did Danielle end up outside of Tamisha's trailer?

Was it simply a tragic accident?

Or would a scandalous secret about Tamisha and her sister's boyfriend reveal that there was more to the shooting than she had let on.

Born in 1978, Tamisha Shelton had spent all her life around West Point.

The Sheltons are a large family here in Clay County.

They're a close-knit family and they're hardworking people.

And Tamisha appeared destined to become another hardworking member of the family.

But after graduating high school and getting her associate's degree at the local community college, a sudden illness derailed those plans.

She had a seizure, went into the hospital for a long period of stay.

Tamisha recovered, but the episode had lasting effects.

She was on disability and wasn't working.

But while her disability kept her from working, it did little else to impede her life.

And while she never married, she did give birth to a son.

Her baby dad was back and forth with her.

Luckily, Tamisha could count on the support of her close-knit family.

Her mother, both of her sisters, her nieces and nephews, lived right behind her, kind of on the same plot of land.

They looked out for Tamisha and she looked out for them, especially her sister Katina.

T to her family and friends.

She was 10 years younger than Tamisha.

Katina was the baby's sister, so she kind of felt like she was protecting her.

Although Tamisha couldn't always be there for Katina, after high school, Katina actually left West Point and went all the way to Nashville, Tennessee to pursue a graphic design degree, which is how she met Danielle Young.

Danielle told us he met her at the art college down there.

Born in 1987, Danielle was a Mississippi native from a town two hours south of West Point.

He was raised in Forest, Mississippi.

It's a small country town, very quiet.

And much like Tamisha and Katina, he'd grown up surrounded by his immediate family, as well as numerous aunts, uncles, and cousins.

It was 13 of us, and my brother David and Edith Fay Young.

They have five children.

And the last two was the twin Dominique and Danielle.

And all of them lived within a mile or so of one another.

It's our family land.

We was on a farm.

We grew up working hard, learning how to work hard.

We didn't have no silver phone spoon in our mouth.

You know, we're basically living off the land.

What we ate, we grow to our parents grow.

When that chicken crow, we're gonna get up.

We're gonna be in the garden.

We're gonna break that ground.

Growing up, Danielle had two passions.

One was hunting.

All my brothers, they love to hunt.

I used to go with them sometimes, but they like to hunt a lot because my dad, he has

all type of rifles.

And when they weren't hunting or working on the farm, Danielle and his brothers would typically be under the hood of a car.

They always loved to work on cars.

It was, you know, the favorite thing Danielle like to do is work on cars all the time.

And he planned to turn it into his career.

He would say, when I graduate, I'm going to be an auto mechanic.

After graduating high school, it appeared that Danielle was destined to realize his dream.

He went straight to Tennessee to NADC National Auto Diesel College.

Everybody was proud of a young man leaving and fulfilling his goals.

It was while attending school in Nashville that Danielle met Tamisha's little sister, Katina.

We all called her tea.

They had a relationship.

He brought her home.

We met her.

She was a nice young lady to meet.

And she was obviously taken with Danielle.

If you met him, there was just something about him, a cherism about him.

Everybody just loved Danielle because he make you smile.

Even on a bad day, he made someone smile.

If he see something wrong with someone he would go to them and ask them is they okay

you know he would you know joke or make them laugh or something you know to make a person feel better and once he brought katina home to meet his family it was obvious what danielle saw in her she was a nice girl she was a good person she was kind of quiet but she was sweet And it wasn't any mystery why Danielle had brought Katina home to meet the family either.

They was talking about getting married and everything.

They was talking about getting him a house together.

Whenever he graduated, he was talking about come home, finding the job so they could get started on what they was trying to do with themselves.

He really loved her.

This was going to be the one.

That's all he always said.

This is going to be the one, Mama.

By 2009, Danielle had finished school.

He come out like Second in the class, you know, as far as grades.

He pushed himself.

He really did.

And while Katina finished up her education in Nashville, Danielle focused on setting himself up in his career.

He had went to Louisiana with his brother, and he was working at a shop down there.

But every chance they got, Katina and Danielle would both return to Mississippi to spend time together, mostly at her sister Tamisha's trailer in Moon Valley.

Her parents didn't allow like the man staying in the house with the girlfriend.

So that's why Danielle and T stayed at the sister's house.

And since she'd recently given birth to a new baby, a daughter, 31-year-old Tamisha was more than happy to have her sister Katina and her future brother-in-law around to lend a hand.

He's working on call for Tamisha, you know, so

that's just go back to show you the type of guy he was.

You know, I'm up here for one thing, but I'll help you out.

Still, while Danielle didn't hesitate to help Tamisha when she needed it, it was her sister Katina he came to see.

And on the weekend of October 16th, when Danielle made the long drive to Moon Valley, he was more anxious than ever to see his fiancé.

He actually came up here for her birthday that weekend.

But the celebration would take a tragic turn.

Coming up, Tamisha says the shooting was a freak accident.

She said he was shooting a red cone and the bullet ricocheted.

But something about the scene seems off to the investigators.

If I see a raccoon, a 22,

it's not my weapon of choice.

At a little after 9 o'clock on October 16th, 2009, sheriff's deputies and EMTs raced out to a remote rural home on the outskirts of West Point, Mississippi, responding to a 911 call that had come in moments earlier.

That initial 911 call stated there'd been an accidental shooting out on Moon Valley Road.

According to the caller, 31-year-old Tamisha Shelton, she'd heard a shot, gone outside, and found her sister's boyfriend, 21-year-old Danielle Young, lying at the foot of a tree.

The 911 operator tells Tamisha not to touch the body or to do anything to the body until EMTs arrive.

She, at some point, starts talking to someone else who's walked up.

It was Tamisha's sister, Katina, also known as T.

She'd been dating Danielle since college.

Niggas talking about getting married as soon as she finished her

schooling.

But would their wedding day ever come?

You can hear T how she's like, no, what happened?

What happened?

What happened?

No, he's not dead.

He's not dead.

When the deputies and EMTs arrived on the scene, they found Danielle exactly as Tamisha had described, lying at the foot of a tree, face down.

They found a handgun that was located where Danielle had been laying face down.

It was a.22-caliber revolver and appeared consistent with the single gunshot wound to Danielle's chest.

It was a small gunshot,

a little speck.

But it was enough.

The EMT tried to resuscitate him, but all their attempts were futile.

They wasn't getting a pulse from him.

Danielle was dead.

And the Clay County Sheriff's Office had a mystery on their hands.

Maybe this was an accident.

Maybe it was a ricochet, or maybe it was a self-inflicted gunshot.

We didn't know exactly what we were dealing with, and just the fact that somebody has been shot, whether it was self-inflicted or not, you know, is a grave concern for us.

And until sheriff's investigators figured it out, only one thing was certain.

Every case that involves any type of shooting whatsoever, they treat as if it may be a crime.

So mere minutes after the EMTs pronounced Danielle dead, the work of preserving the scene was already underway.

They collected all of the evidence.

Danielle's body was preserved by

the coroner that had arrived.

They bagged his hands up up as well so it could be tested for gunshot residue at a later time.

And while they worked, the lead investigator got a brief statement from Tamisha.

The initial statement that she gave to Chief Deputy Williams was that she was laying in bed watching TV.

She had her newborn daughter with her in bed.

Tamisha said that Danielle and her sister had gone up the road to her mother's, but then at a little before nine, there had been a knock on her bedroom window.

She stated that Danielle came to her bedroom window, knocked on the window, and said he seen a raccoon in the tree.

And then, according to Tamisha, Danielle had asked to borrow a gun.

According to Tamisha, she said, well, come around to the door and I'll go get the gun.

She goes and get a 22 pistol.

And she tell him when he shoot the raccoon, the brain, so she can see it.

Tamisha told the police that Danielle had said, sure, taken the pistol, and headed off toward the tree.

She said once she gave the gun to Danielle that she closed the door and stayed inside.

She said it may have been two or three minutes and she heard a gunshot.

Tamisha said she'd looked out the door and called Danielle's name, expecting Danielle to reappear with the dead raccoon.

But when he didn't respond, she'd started to worry.

She called Danielle, Danielle.

He never announced.

So then Timmy says she went outside, and that's when she seen him, Danielle, laying on the ground, gurgling, making a little noise.

So she called 911.

The investigators also spoke to Tamisha's sister, Katina, but she had little to tell them.

Katina was at the home with her mama that night.

Apparently, they heard the old police scanner that they had missed a shooting out on Moon Valley.

So that's how they initially found out that something had happened just right down the road from them.

Katina said that she had rushed down to her sister's trailer while Tamisha was still on the phone with the 911 operator.

You can hear her on the phone hollering and screaming.

With Danielle's distraught girlfriend unable to add anything, the deputies widened their investigation.

But when they canvassed the handful of nearby houses, they found that the neighbors were equally in the dark.

Some of the neighbors told them that they had heard a gunshot, but they really didn't hear anything else.

Which meant that the closest thing the lead investigator had to an eyewitness was Tamisha.

He wanted to take her back to the sheriff's office and do a longer interview at that time.

And she said she didn't have any problems doing that.

I told the deputies to take her on to the station.

I know she had on a house code.

I told her family.

I said, Tamisha is going to need some clothes to put on.

Because the clothes Tamisha was wearing were all taken into evidence so that the investigators could test them for gunshot residue and rule her out as a suspect.

From her statement, she was in the house.

She wasn't around the gun when it was fired.

She didn't touch him, says she touched his foot.

There shouldn't be any gunshot residue on your hands or on your clothing.

The residue test was a routine matter, as was the record check that the investigators ran on Tamisha.

We didn't find any criminal background on her.

I can't recall in the 20 years I've I've been at this department going out to the shelter's

residence for anything.

Her formal interview didn't add anything either.

He asked her to describe what had taken place.

Her story was consistent with the 911 tape

as well as the initial statement.

And once again, she explained that she hadn't seen how Danielle had been shot.

One of the things that she was asked about specifically was, were you outside when the gun was fired?

And she said, no, I wasn't.

So according to Tamisha, all she could do was speculate about what had happened.

She said it was raining and he had a gun in his hand and he slipped the fell and it went off.

Or maybe he had fired at the raccoon and missed with fatal results.

That he was shooting a raccoon.

and the bullet ricocheted off the tree and it hit Danielle in his chest and it killed him.

But were those the only possible explanations?

In the early hours of the morning after Tamisha finished her statement and went home, there was something about the incident that definitely bothered the investigators.

Them going out, you know, and shooting a coon in the middle of the night, it just didn't feel right, you know, to us.

And there was one thing in particular that struck the investigators as odd.

When we start sitting down looking at everything, you know, trying to kill a raccoon with a 22 pistol is not

a common thing, you know.

My brother's a hunter.

He's not going to use a revolver or a pistol to shoot an animal.

Of course, Danielle hadn't really been hunting, just taking a pot shot at an animal that had wandered into the yard with the only weapon available.

She gave the 22 pistol.

to Danielle because that's the one at the house.

However, even if Danielle had shot at the raccoon raccoon with the 22, what were the odds that the bullet would ricochet and hit him square in the chest?

Sometimes a scene will tell you a story, and we just felt that this particular scene we were looking at was not telling us the whole story.

But something just wasn't quite adding up.

And according to Danielle's family, a suicide didn't appear too likely either.

He had dreams.

He wanted to be a family man.

He wanted to start his own business one day.

He had worked hard to get to where he was at.

He was making plans.

He just wasn't that type of person.

But if it wasn't an accident or a suicide, one possibility remained.

I believe this was a homicide.

Coming up, Danielle's family reveals a possible motive.

It was jealousy.

It had to be.

And Tamisha changes her story.

That threw up a flag.

Why are you going to say something like this?

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By the morning of October 18th, 2009, it had been barely 24 hours since 21-year-old Danielle Young had been shot dead in West Point, Mississippi.

The victim of what police were initially told was an accidental shooting.

They were told that he was trying to shoot a raccoon that was up in a tree and he shot himself.

At least that's what the woman who lived in the trailer, 31-year-old Tamisha Shelton, had told the investigators.

danielle young uh was dating Tamisha Shelton's sister but was Tamisha telling the truth the investigators had some doubts from a person that hunt myself you know I'm looking at if I see a raccoon at 22 it's not my weapon of choice so that kind of kind of threw up some flags for us Their suspicions were reinforced when they talked to Danielle's family.

I said, you don't hunt with a pistol.

Danielle know how to hunt.

And he was bought up hunting.

I said, I don't believe he'll try to kill no coon in no tree with no 22 pistol.

The family also insisted that there was no chance that Danielle had intentionally killed himself, that he and Tamisha's sister Katina had big plans for their future.

They were going to get married.

She finished her degree.

Then they were going to talk about marriage.

And there was no way that his relationship with her had turned deadly either.

The family said, yeah, they would have

arguments occasionally, but they were the typical arguments of kids that were 21 years old.

However, while the family said there was nothing unusual about Danielle and Katina, they did have some concerns about Tamisha.

One of the things that came up was in conversation with Danielle's family.

The young family, multiple people had told us that Danielle had told them in the past that Tamisha had made advances upon him.

I definitely believe that Tamisha had a crush on Danielle.

She was trying to get him to get into bed with her.

And if what Danielle had told his sister was true, Tamisha hadn't been shy about it either.

She was getting naked and stuff, walking around the house.

He'd come in.

She would be on the couch in lingerie.

You know, she would be exposing herself.

According to the family, Danielle swore that nothing had happened between him and Tamisha.

He said that he never touched her.

He wouldn't do that because him and T is getting married.

And now the family wondered, had Danielle's rejection angered Tamisha enough that she'd taken her revenge by murdering him?

It was jealousy.

It had to be.

He didn't want her.

You could tell that she was obsessed with Danielle.

She really was.

Danielle's family was convinced that Tamisha had killed him, but the investigators would require more evidence, especially the results of the gunshot residue tests on Tamisha's hands and clothing.

At that time, all indications were that Tamisha had been inside during the entire shooting.

The gunshot residue tests could reveal whether or not Tamisha was telling the truth, but getting the results from the crime lab would take time.

We have one crime lab that serves all 82 counties, and we frequently have to get in line and just wait our turn for our evidence to be processed.

So while the investigators waited for the results of the residue tests, they asked Tamisha to come in and take a polygraph.

And while she agreed, when she came in to take the test, it appeared that Tamisha was having second thoughts before she was even hooked up to the machine.

The polygraph examiner, when he spoke with Tamisha, for the first time, we hear her mention that she had, in fact, fired a gun.

According to Tamisha, she had shot the gun on Wednesday, two days before Danielle was killed.

She said that there had been a dog in the area chasing her

son or her nephew or somebody there in the area.

She said that she fired the gun trying to scare the dog off.

Tamisha said the fact that she had fired a gun had previously slipped her mind.

during the turmoil that followed Danielle's death.

She started telling the story again of exactly as it matched up with the 911 tape that she heard the gunshot and that she ran outside to check on Danielle and that he was groaning.

However, as Tamisha wrapped up her preliminary interview with the polygraph technician, her story changed again.

She tells him that she had, in fact, handled the gun and shot that gun on Friday.

And according to Tamisha's new story, she'd fired it just a few hours before Danielle died.

That threw up a flag.

Why are you gonna say something like this you know was it because she was worried about what the gunshot residue test might reveal it was our interpretation at that time that the timing of those changes in her story were were extremely relevant the investigators hoped that the polygraph would reveal the truth but would the stress be too much for tamisha to take

We set up for the polygraph, and right before the polygraph, she had a seizure.

seizure.

She had some health issues.

She had had seizures and various things.

The investigators called an ambulance.

She was taken to the emergency room.

And when she was evaluated and released within an hour, the investigators were left wondering, had Tamisha really been overcome by stress?

Or was the timing of her seizure just a little too convenient?

I'm not a doctor, so I can't tell you what brings them on and whatnot, but this particular day when you're going to take a polygraph that's going to ask you questions where you did this murder or not, you have a seizure.

Who's to say?

However, by then, the investigators did know one thing for certain.

The medical examiner had ruled out any possibility that Danielle's death might be a suicide.

The autopsy confirmed that Danielle had died from a single gunshot, but that wasn't all it revealed.

The autopsy gave us the trajectory on the bullet that entered the body.

And according to the medical examiner, the bullet had entered Danielle's body from dead ahead, almost a perfect 90-degree angle.

She's seen hundreds of suicides, and her explanation was in every suicide that she's ever seen by gunshot,

there's always some deviation.

She's never seen one in a suicide go straight through the body at a 90-degree angle.

How are you going to try to turn your wrist to shoot yourself, you know, right here?

You know, and that's

an awkward position.

But if Danielle hadn't fired the fatal shot, did that mean Tamisha was the killer?

For the authorities, it was still too soon to say.

It took a while until we had sufficient evidence, which meant getting everything back that we had from the crime lab.

It was a frustrating time for Danielle's family.

Many times I did call there to the Sheriff's Department and speak with Mr.

William.

He himself and he would constantly tell me that they were still working on the case.

And when, after months of waiting, the test results finally came back from the crime lab, one thing immediately stood out to the investigators.

In addition to testing the sample swab from Danielle and Tamisha's hands, the crime lab also tested their clothes, Tamisha's for gunshot residue, and Danielle's to determine where the gun was fired in relation to his body.

You can request that they make a determination based on the

stippling on the clothing, whether or not there are burn marks from the flash of the muzzle.

And according to the crime lab, the scorch marks on Danielle's clothes were revealing.

He was shot with the gun pressed into his chest, into his clothing.

And tests of the clothing Tamisha had been wearing the night of the shooting were just as telling.

She had gunshot residue on her pajamas.

Which meant she couldn't have been in the trailer when the shot was fired.

You have to be in that area when that gun is fired to get this much residue on you.

And that wasn't the only place Tamisha had gunshot residue either.

It was in the palm of her hands, on the back of her hand.

All the evidence pointed to Tamisha as Danielle's killer.

Chief Deputy Williams at that time thought he had enough to go to the grand jury.

But an actual arrest would take time.

Our grand jury only meet twice a year.

And with the next meeting still months away, their prime suspect would remain free.

Tamisha just went on living her life.

She stayed in the same house, lived there close to her family.

Meanwhile, Danielle's family's frustration grew.

There was times I felt like his case was going to go unsolved.

What I was feeling was concern for my auntie.

The look that she told it, that she bared upon herself, it wasn't

something that you would wish upon anybody.

It wasn't until April of 2011, a year and a half after Danielle's murder, that the moment the family and the authorities had been waiting for finally arrived.

The grand jury returned a true bill, which basically meant that there was more than probable cause that she committed a crime.

Once she had been indicted, a warrant is issued at that time.

From my understanding, she was told that it was there and came and turned herself into the sheriff's office.

Tamisha was finally in custody.

But could the prosecutors make the charges stick?

Coming up, will Tamisha's case ever go to trial?

I thought they would probably let her go.

Or will the investigators uncover shocking new evidence?

We actually did a DNA test on her young baby.

On July 14th, 2015, Tamisha Shelton finally went on trial for murder at the Clay County Courthouse in West Point, Mississippi.

The 37-year-old was charged with killing her sister's boyfriend, Danielle Young, who'd been shot dead almost six years earlier in October of 2009.

You watch TV shows and it's like the crime happened and next thing you know they're in court and the person is convicted.

When it comes to life,

it don't work that way.

Which wasn't much consolation for Danielle's family.

I know they were frustrated and we had a lot of conversations with them that were not pleasant to have, that were difficult to have.

But we wanted to make sure that we were confident in what we were putting in front of the jury and that we we could strengthen our case in any way possible.

We was told that if they went ahead and she were not found guilty, we could never have another trial.

And that's why it took them so long.

Just as frustrating for the family, Tamisha had spent almost the entire four years since her arrest out on bail.

The bond was set at $75,000, I believe.

And shortly thereafter, she and her family were able to make bond and she was able to stay at home awaiting trial.

Not only was she in her own home, the mother of two went on with her life as if she'd never been charged with murder.

She was dating somebody and after this happened, she had two more children.

Which only added to the delays in bringing the case to trial.

Every time it was time for us to go to court, Ford, they would change it.

Either she was having a baby or something else was going on.

Danielle's family had almost lost all hope.

I thought they would probably let her go.

But finally, after years of waiting, it was time to find out.

Did the prosecutors have enough evidence to send the mother of Ford to prison for murder?

On the morning of trial, the last thing that Danielle's mother said was, do the best you can.

In his opening statement, the prosecutor told the jury that the evidence proved Tamisha had pulled the trigger.

She had these particles on the palms of her hands, on the back of one hand, and on both her pajamas, shirt, and pants.

She had to be in the area of a discharged weapon.

And yet, as the prosecutors pointed out to the jury, Tamisha had always claimed that she had been inside the trailer when the fatal shot was fired.

At no point did she admit that she was anywhere in the vicinity of that gun being fired.

Although once she realized that the investigators were testing her for gunshot residue, she had started coming up with explanations for why they might find some.

We had been told that she had, in fact, shot the gun on Wednesday,

and then that she had handled the gun on Friday, but not shot it.

Finally, she had in fact shot the gun earlier that same day.

The story basically changed every time they talked to her.

And according to the prosecution, even if she was telling the truth, if she had fired a gun several hours prior to the shooting, it was unlikely that it would have skewed the test results.

During the course of those interviews, she also explained that she had cooked dinner for her family.

She had taken care of her baby, a newborn, grabbing diapers, using wipes, things like that.

Could she really have done all that without washing her hands at least once?

There's no way she had gunshot residue on her from hours before.

But would the forensic evidence alone be enough to secure a conviction?

We don't have to prove motive, but we also know it's human nature to expect that there's going to be some bow that we can tie this up with at the end and say this is what happened in order to satisfy the jury.

But why would Tamisha kill Danielle?

After all, he was her sister's boyfriend, not hers, which was precisely the problem, according to Danielle's family.

They believe Tamisha acted out of jealousy.

Danielle told us that she was coming at him.

She was trying to get with Danielle and things.

And he was like, he wasn't going to do that.

And the family was convinced that by remaining faithful to Tamisha's sister, Katina, or t as everyone knew her that danielle further enraged tamisha i feel like if she was jealous of my brother and tea relationship because he was a good guy and he was talking about marrying tea she didn't have a man like that

they felt like she was i guess a spurned lover or somebody that got her feelings hurt in this and maybe that was the motive Or was it possible he hadn't been faithful?

She did have two children at home with her.

One of those was a relative newborn.

One of the things that came up, whether or not that child may have been Danielle's child.

Was it possible that Danielle had hooked up with Tamisha, only to turn his back on her?

It would have made a compelling motive for murder, if it were true.

We actually did a DNA test.

on her young baby, but it came back that he was not the father.

The paternity test may have exonerated Danielle, but it left the prosecutors in a bind as far as the rumors that Tamisha had become infatuated with her sister's boyfriend.

We didn't have anything that was substantive that could prove that.

Any statements that the family had were hearsay from Danielle.

We didn't have anything that led us to believe there had been any relationship other than those statements.

And since it was hearsay, the jury would never hear it.

If we had followed that line and introduced that as a motive,

the concern is we lose credibility with the jury.

If we don't have something to back up what we present before them, the case will be over before we even get to closing arguments, and we didn't want to risk that.

However, that presented the defense with an opportunity, one they took full advantage of when presenting their case.

The defense's position was, why would Tamisha Shelton have killed Danielle Young?

There appeared to be no ill will between the two.

After all, she'd let her sister and Danielle stay at her trailer, and he'd been helping Tamisha out, tinkering with a couple broken-down cars she had parked in the yard.

He was trying to get those up and running.

And the lack of a motive wasn't the only thing the defense had to raise reasonable doubt.

They also did their best to undermine the forensic evidence that provided the foundation of the prosecution's case.

Their argument was that he it was self-inflicted that he killed himself.

And they had a powerful witness to back up those claims, Tamisha's sister, Katina.

During her testimony, she tried to say that Danielle had tried to take his life when they lived in Nashville, that he had taken pills at some point.

Katina's testimony took the prosecution by surprise.

That flew in the face of everything that we had learned from Danielle's family.

But if it wasn't true, why would Katina lie for her fiancé's accused killer?

Obviously, she's torn in two different directions.

She very much cared for Danielle Young.

I believe that.

However, she also had a sister that she had known her entire life.

Katina was probably doing whatever she could to protect and cover for her sister.

On cross, the prosecution did its best to contain the damage, pointing out that the bullet had entered Danielle's body at a 90-degree angle.

We argue to the jury that seemed far more consistent.

with someone placing the gun and pointing it straight ahead rather than the person shooting actually turning the gun on themselves and firing the gun into their chest.

And while Danielle did have gunshot residue on his hands, the residue on Tamisha was far more damning.

The gunshot residue on Tamisha was on the palms of her hands.

It's common to see gunshot residue on the palms of the person who actually fires the weapon.

Danielle had

gunshot residue on the back of his hand.

Did Danielle get gunshot residue on the backs of his hands because he'd been trying to ward off Tamisha Tamisha when she pulled the trigger.

If there wasn't any on the palms of the hands, it probably meant you weren't the person holding the gun.

That's what the prosecution claimed.

But Tamisha didn't appear to be too worried.

Just sit there like,

you know, just calm on nothing.

Did she want to take the stand to speak on her behalf?

Which meant that when the jury retired to reach a verdict, their decision would depend entirely on how they interpreted the forensic evidence.

For both sides, it was: this is what couldn't have happened, and this is what probably happened.

Nobody could say this is what happened.

Coming up, tempers flare as the jury struggles to reach a decision.

We can hear raised voices.

But what will it mean for Tamisha?

She was finna get off on this murder charge.

On July 17th, 2015, almost six years after Danielle Young had died mysteriously outside a trailer, a Mississippi jury announced that it had reached a verdict in the murder trial of 37-year-old Tamisha Shelton.

It came down to one of two people pulled the trigger on that gun, and it was either Tamisha Shelton or it was Danielle Young.

It had taken the jury two hours to reach a decision.

It got heated at times.

We could hear raised voices.

You can't tell what they're saying, but there is always

heightened anxiety once that jury goes out.

You don't know what they're going to do.

But for all the prosecutor's anxiety, Tamisha appeared confident.

She sat there just smiling, you know, like she didn't have a care in the world.

I feel like Tamisha felt like she was finna get off on

this murder charge.

But was her confidence misplaced?

The jury returned with a verdict of guilty

on the charge of murder.

The courtroom erupted at the news.

They read the verdict in court.

Her sister started hollering.

She has kids.

She has kids.

Although Tamisha took her conviction surprisingly well.

We didn't see tears.

We didn't see any cries out or anything like that from the defendant.

Danielle's family was an entirely different story, however.

There were a lot of hugs and tears in that room after the verdict was read.

It's just,

you know, it's over with.

You know,

he's free.

Although after waiting so long to see Tamisha convicted, the family's relief was tinged with more than a little bitterness.

No one should have to wait and suffer the length.

that our family have had to wait before justice was served.

The only question remaining was how long Tamisha would pay for her crime.

And on July 20th, she was back in court to find out.

She received a life sentence with the eventual possibility of parole.

The way she was sentenced, she'll have to serve until she's 65 years of age.

Although, even then, there's no guarantee she'll get out.

If my family has any say-so, she won't get it.

Because you took a life.

And I feel like she should sit in jail for it, you know.

She should never be able to get out.

However, despite all the pain Danielle's death caused the family, his mother has tried to forgive Tamisha.

My children, you know, they had a lot of hatred.

I told them I didn't hate the girl.

I couldn't feel no hate.

But even forgiveness won't change what happened.

It shouldn't have to come to all this.

All she had to do was tell the truth.

Just say you did it.

We knew you did it.

In March of 2017, the Mississippi Supreme Court denied Tamishia Shelton's appeal.

Tamishia will be eligible for parole in 2043.

Tamishia's four children went to live with members of her family.

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