Shanda Crain

Affordable and easy access to therapy is something everyone should have.

It can help you find the silver linings even during tough times.

Telehealth is one-way accessibility is more convenient than ever, thanks to Rula.

Rula isn't just affordable.

They stick with you throughout your journey to make sure you're getting the best therapy and that you're making progress.

With Rula, every provider is carefully vetted and chosen for their expertise, making the first step towards better mental health easy.

Rula starts by asking you some questions about what is important to you and then provides a list of licensed providers who match your preferences.

You can have an appointment as soon as the next day.

Thousands have already trusted Rula to support them on their journey toward improved mental health and overall well-being.

Head over to rula.com slash snapped to get started today.

After you sign up, they ask where you heard about them.

Please support our show and tell them our show sent you.

Go to rula.com slash snapped and take the first step towards better mental health today.

You deserve quality care from someone who cares.

Let's go.

Bravos, the real housewives of Salt Lake City are back.

Here we are, ladies.

I don't like it.

And they're taking things to the next level.

You know, some people just get on your nerves.

You questioned every single thing I have.

You're supposed to be my sister.

I am your sister.

No, you're not.

We have to be honest about this.

I'm afraid.

You should pay them losses off.

No one sues the bottom.

They all go for the top.

Can I have the crazy pill that y'all took?

Apparently, you're already taking it.

The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, September 16th i'm bravo and streaming i'm peacock

even at 29 shanda crane was still her parents princess she was a daddy's girl whatever my mom wanted my mom got

but then tragedy struck

they found landor and Bobby Spears shot to death.

She just looked like it was an execution.

And it looked like someone was targeting the family.

There had been two other homicides in their family.

Was Shanda in danger?

Authorities looked hard to see if the murders were related.

Or did Daddy's girl have a deadly secret?

They've been so disappointed in me.

Washington Parish, Louisiana, January 25th, 1995.

It was a quiet winter day in this rural community, an hour and a half northeast of New Orleans.

It's mostly farms, woods, fields, no really city, little bitty country stores.

And at around noon that Wednesday, 29-year-old Shanda Crane and her eight-year-old daughter were on their way to see Shanda's parents, Lander and Bobby Spears.

The Spears owned a dairy farm and it was in a rural, very rural area.

It was just farms, a few small stores, and a few houses.

But as they neared her parents' farm, Shanda spotted something unusual up ahead.

The hired hand that worked on the farm was out by the main road.

A young fellow who was a milk can that had been hired to, I think, maybe just come help clean up around the barn.

As Shanda approached, the hired hand flagged down the car and told Shanda that he'd spent the morning working around the dairy barn like he always did.

But then around noon, he'd gone to the house and knocked on the door to speak to Lander.

Couldn't get anybody to answer the door.

And when he looked in, he saw something disturbing.

Mrs.

Spears was face down in the hall unable to get inside the farmhand ran toward the road hoping to flag down someone who could help it scared him and uh he went back out to the highway where shanda crane ran across him he says something's wrong with your mama frightened by what she'd heard shanda immediately drove up to the house with her father's hired hand He showed her what he could see.

And what Shanda saw was enough to send anyone into a panic.

Her mind was bloody.

From the porch, Shanda ran back to where her daughter waited in the car and then sped down the road to a small country store.

She went to the store to call 911.

Deputies were on the scene within minutes.

When the call came over the radio, I was the closest officer to the residents.

And once they made entry, the deputies uncovered a scene that would strike terror into the tight-knit rural community.

They found Landor and Bobby Spears shot to death.

Even more terrifying, there had been two previous murders within the family in the past six weeks, leaving the authorities wondering, Was someone killing off the spears one by one?

They were suspecting the people that killed my uncle was who killed my grandparents.

And if so, could Bobby and Lander's daughter Shanda be next?

Born in 1965, Shanda Spears spent her entire life in Washington Parish.

It's a nice community.

Good people.

Very quiet town, nice people.

Everybody looks out for everybody.

People know who you are and you know who people are.

And pretty much everyone in Washington Parish knew Shanda's parents, Lander and Bobby Spears.

They're a very prominent, well-known, well-liked family.

They had money.

Money that mostly came from the family's successful dairy farm.

There used to be a large number of dairy farms across the northern part of the parish.

On the side, Shanda's father also owned a small roadside bar.

It's on one edge of their property up on the highway.

As a child, Shanda grew up roaming the fields of her family's 200-acre dairy farm.

She had a good childhood.

I never seen her with a frown or nothing on her face.

She always had a smile.

And from an early age, Shanda learned to handle the family's dairy herd.

We had to go get them up in the backfield and get them up to the barn.

And while Shanda may have worked hard on the farm, her parents also spoiled her.

She was a daddy's girl.

She had everything she wanted, a big in-ground swimming pool, private school.

And when she turned 16, a sporty convertible.

She drove a little MG midget.

At Bowling Green School in Franklinton, Shanda was an excellent student.

She's very smart.

She was involved in a lot of stuff at school.

And the pretty privileged team was popular, too.

She was somebody somebody everybody wanted to be.

I knew that she was a cheerleader.

And during her senior year in high school, Daddy's little princess became a beauty queen.

She got Farm Bureau queen one year there in Washington Parish at the fair.

Two years after graduation, the former Farm Bureau queen had a new boyfriend and a new baby.

He was not married to Shanda when she was born.

They never would marry.

Soon after her daughter was born, Shanda broke up with the baby's father.

She took the little girl and moved back in with her parents.

She always had a good relationship.

Well, the family was all very close.

You know, they looked out for each other.

Shanda lived with her parents for two years before moving out again after falling in love with a local truck driver named Brent Crane.

He drove all over, he sold wholesale flowers out of an 18-weeker to force.

In 1987, 22-year-old Shanda married Brent.

And soon after, she gave birth to a second daughter.

And two years later, she had a third child, Megan.

But with a growing family, life was tough for Shanda and her truck driver, husband.

We moved a couple places.

I know we live right on the Mississippi border.

My dad and my mom had a place.

Then we moved out to Pine, Louisiana.

Although whenever they needed a little extra money to get by, Shanda could always lean on her parents, Lander and Bobby.

My grandparents was very supportive of my mom.

My mom could go to them.

Shanda's parents were always happy to help and dote on her little girls.

They spoiled us, especially Lander, who now had three little princesses to indulge.

Paw Paul did a lot with us girls.

Took us to the store, always bought us candy.

And thanks to her parents' supportive example, Shanda seemed to excel at motherhood.

Mom would cook for us,

sit down with us, watch TV, and play with us.

She was a good mama.

She always took care of her girls.

But even with her parents' help, being a stay-at-home mom wasn't quite within Shanda's reach.

Mom would work for my dad's brother, who owns a forest.

She helped helped him with delivering flowers and depositing checks and stuff.

Shanda also helped out at her father's phone.

She was a bookkeeper for the dairy and she also milked the cows.

I don't think she had a salary that they were giving her.

They were taking care of things for her, getting her groceries and paying bills and things like that.

Still, it allowed her to spend a lot of time with her children.

My mom would take us to school, go to work.

She'd pick us up.

We had a normal life.

And at 29, the mother of three had a family that loved her and would do anything for her.

My papa would have sold all of his inheritance, all of what he worked for, to make sure my mom had what she needed.

But in January of 1995, a horrible tragedy would tear Shanda's loving family apart and strike the two people who loved her most.

Coming up, deputies make a puzzling discovery.

Nothing really was taken.

And that leads them to wonder, is the entire family in danger?

Landor Spears' cousin, Howard Spears, was murdered.

It was a little after noon on January 25th, 1995, when 29-year-old Shanda Crane called 911 from a country store in rural Washington Parish, Louisiana.

Shanda Crane made a call from a little grocery store that was maybe a mile or so down the road going east from her parents' house.

And the reason Shanda called for help, she had just seen something disturbing through the window of her parents' house.

She goes to go get in the house, couldn't get in the house.

She seen her mom had blood on her, so she went and called 911.

Within minutes, sheriff's deputies had converged on the isolated farm of Shanda's parents, Lander and Bobby Spears.

They were dairy people.

A high percentage of the population are dairy farmers in Washington Parish.

The Spears were well known, too, even to the first deputy who arrived at the scene.

It's a small community, and you pretty much know everybody.

Although when Deputy Stevens first arrived at the Spears farm, the place appeared deserted.

No one was around the house.

Shanda and the hired hand who'd first discovered something was amiss were still a few miles down the road, waiting at the country store where they placed the 911 call.

I knocked on the door.

I didn't get an answer.

And when the deputy went inside, he confirmed Shanda's worst fears.

Shanda's mother was dead outside the bedroom door.

Her mom was in a hallway laying down.

She had blood on her.

And the bloody scene in the hallway wasn't the only indication of foul play.

In the bedroom just beyond where Bobby lay dead was yet another victim.

Her dad was dead in the bed with a gunshot wound to the head.

There were bullet holes in the wall behind the bed.

Bullet holes that allowed the investigators to reconstruct what must have happened.

Someone had walked in the room.

He had set up in the bed,

and they shot him.

And based on where the deputies found her, Shanda's mother, who slept in a different bedroom, must have heard the gunshots.

Evidently, when she heard the shots, she got up out of bed and came out of the bedroom.

At that point, she was shot.

But why would someone kill the couple?

It didn't appear to be a robbery.

Burglary never crossed my mind.

It didn't look like a robbery to me.

Nothing really was taken.

Instead, it looked as if whoever shot Lander and Bobby had come to the house that morning with one thing in mind.

Just looked like it was an execution.

And the fact that Lander and Bobby's killers hadn't ransacked the house wasn't the only thing that led the investigators to believe that the couple had been targeted.

It was discovered that the telephone lines had been cut.

But most disturbing of all, the double murder was only the most recent in a string of incidents involving Lander's family.

Six weeks prior to this, Landor Spears' cousin, Howard Spears, was murdered.

And a few weeks after that.

Lander's brother Richard, he was murdered.

Was it merely a coincidence or was someone stalking the Spears family?

Authorities looked hard to see if the murders were related.

Law enforcement were trying to connect the dots.

And they found that the deaths of his cousin and brother had clearly put Lander and his wife Bobby on edge.

Some members of the Spears family at that point were extremely fearful for their lives.

In fact, Lander had been so fearful after his brother's murder that just days before his own death, he'd gone out and bought a gun.

And he asked a friend who was a sheriff's deputy for advice to show him how to use it and operate it and all that.

Yet for all his fears, as far as investigators knew, Lander didn't have any enemies.

He got along with everybody.

I've never heard him have a crossword with anyone.

And they were soon able to rule out any connection between his death and his brother's murder.

There had been an arrest in the Richard Spears homicide.

The person that killed Richard, he was in jail.

You know, there was no way he could have done it.

With no other leads, the next morning, the investigators turned to the dead couple's daughter, Shanda.

I took her in my office and interviewed her.

I didn't interrogate her.

I just talked to her at some length.

According to Shanda, her day had started like every other.

She headed to her dad's dairy barn.

Anywhere from a quarter after seven to 7.30, because it took me about 20, 25 minutes to get up there after I've got my kids on the bus.

She arrives way before daylight to milk the cows.

Shanda told the investigators her parents had both been asleep when she arrived.

I said, I'll go get the cows up.

and get everything ready.

And she expected her parents would sleep in.

My grandparents and my grandma had been at the bar very late.

They had came in maybe two, three o'clock in the morning.

Shanda had her oldest daughter with her that morning.

The eight-year-old had stayed home from school.

My sister had an ear infection.

And she stayed at the farmhouse while Shanda milked.

She dropped her off at my grandparents' house and put her in the bed with my grandpa.

According to Shanda, her parents had still been asleep when she finished her milking.

So she brought her daughter back out to the car and drove to town.

So I went home and I cleaned up some.

I had to go pay my electricity bill.

But around lunchtime, as she drove back to her parents' farm, Shanda said she was surprised to see her father's hired hand standing out by the highway.

He says, Shanda, something bad happened.

Somebody's landing in the highway.

He says, and they just covered with blood.

Bloods everywhere.

They'd rushed back to her parents' farmhouse, and Shanda said the sight of her mother's bloody body on the floor had sent her into a panic.

I said, I got to go call mommy at once.

At that point, she left there, went out to the little store, made the call.

Then, after calling 911, Shanda had called a neighbor and returned to the farmhouse.

Not knowing, frightened my mom and then flaining there, you know, and that I can help them or something.

But when Shanda and the neighbor forced their way in, she discovered that her parents were beyond help.

Then they found both her parents were shot.

You were in the house.

Yeah.

But with her parents dead and the authorities on the way, Shanda hadn't stayed at the farmhouse.

Instead, fearing for her children's safety, she'd gone to her mother-in-law's and arranged for her to pick up the kids from school.

My grandma and my aunt come and pick this up.

That was very unusual because they've never done that.

We went to my grandma's house and my mom told us what happened.

Shanda's daughter, Megan, was only five when her grandparents were murdered.

I was so small.

I was aware of what was being said,

but I don't think I could feel any emotions behind it because I didn't understand it.

According to what Shanda told the investigators, she couldn't really understand why someone would kill her parents either.

All she could tell them was that perhaps it had something to do with the bar her parents ran.

My grandpa had had a lot of altercations with people at the bar because they drank and fighting and he didn't allow it.

And as it turned out, Shanda was right.

The murders did have something to do with her parents' bar.

Coming up, the investigators uncover something suspicious.

There were checks coming through that were not Landers and Bobby's signature.

And I asked Shanda some tough questions.

But you need to tell me about your particular little problem that you had, okay?

As much as I'd love to hold on to summer for as long as I can, I get excited for fall by thinking about my wardrobe.

Cozy sweaters, layering my scarves.

Quince nails it with luxury essentials that make your capsule closet effortless, easy, and always so stylish.

Think chic cashmere wraps or cotton sweaters.

The best part?

With Quince, everything is half the cost of similar brands.

They work directly with top artisans and cut out the middleman to give you luxury without the markup.

One classic I've been using every day since I got them is the Bally Polarized Sunglasses in green.

They're great for road trips, pumpkin patches, or early mornings.

I don't want to risk my eyesight for style, so I'm glad Quince offers polarized frames in a cute style.

I've also been eyeing the Italian leather laptop backpack for a while.

I might just have to check out my cart right after this.

Elevate your fall wardrobe essentials with Quince.

Go to quince.com/slash snapped for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns.

That's q-u-i-n-ce-e.com/slash snapped to get free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com/slash snapped.

Streaming now on Peacock.

We sell toilet tissue and local newspapers.

That is in order of quality.

From the crew that brought you the office.

My name is Ned Sampson.

I am your new editor-in-chief.

Comes a new comedy series.

Have you read this paper?

Uh-huh.

It sucks.

But we are going to make it better.

Meet the underdog journalists.

I hope it's not too disruptive to have me shake everything off.

Don't be so self-defecating.

With major issues.

Oscar.

Oh, God.

Not again.

The paper.

Only on Peacock.

Streaming now.

By the afternoon of January 26, 1995, it had been more than 24 hours since Lander and Bobby Spears had been found dead on their dairy farm in rural Washington Parish, Louisiana.

Her father shot in the head and her mother dead on a floor.

The couple's daughter, 29-year-old Shanda Crane, was the one who called the authorities.

Shanda.

Crane made a call to the sheriff's office to tell them something had happened and to get somebody out there.

It appeared that Shanda was the last person to see her parents alive, and that made her a key witness.

She was not really in my mind a suspect.

And as a matter of routine, investigators had ruled out everyone else who had contact with the couple, the hired hand, even their son-in-law, Shanda's husband.

My father was eliminated as a suspect because my dad was way off, some hours away on a truck.

In short, the investigators were stumped.

We have really scratched our heads and scratched our heads.

But was that about to change?

Shortly after they spoke to Shanda, the Sheriff's Department received a concerned call from a local bank.

Apparently, in the days before the murder, there had been some irregularities in the late couple's account.

They had noticed that there were checks coming through that were not Lander's and Bobby's signature.

The bankers know their customers and they knew their signatures.

Not only had the bank noticed something was wrong, they'd been trying to contact the couple about it prior to their murders.

To let them know what was happening.

But the bank could never reach Lander and Bobby.

The telephone lines had been cut.

Was the forgery somehow connected to the murders?

It was too soon to know for sure.

But as far as who was forging the checks, Lander and Bobby's bankers had a pretty good guess.

Shanda.

She had control of the books.

And as the dairy's bookkeeper, it appeared that Shanda had skimmed a significant amount of money off her parents.

She had drained the balance from $4,000 or $5,000 down to about $300 or $400.

And when the investigators looked into the florist business that Shanda also kept the books for, They made a similar discovery.

She wrote some checks on her husband's company that he worked for.

But if Shanda had taken the money, where had it gone?

The answer turned out to be right at the end of her parents' bar.

In 1991, the state of Louisiana legalized video poker.

And unlike some other states, Louisiana didn't restrict the machines to dedicated casinos.

State legislature had legalized the machines in any business that had a license to sell alcohol on premise.

Before long, the machines were everywhere.

Restaurants, bars, pizza parlors, even donut shops got the liquor license to have video poker machines.

Shanda's father got a machine for his bar, too.

Her dad's bar.

That's where she went to play most of the time.

she played alongside with her mom however unlike her mom once shanda started playing she had a hard time stopping she became addicted to playing video poker and when it came to video poker addiction wasn't shanda's only problem either she wasn't good at it shanda crane apparently had lost thousands of dollars in the machines she was going through any money she could get her hands on although since shanda's parents were her primary source of money, wouldn't their deaths cut her off?

Not if there was a way she could cash in.

Her parents had a $300,000 life insurance policy.

And the insurance payoff wasn't all that Bobby and Lander would leave behind.

Asset-wise, dairy farmers own tremendous amounts of property.

Not just farmland either.

They owned all the cows, tractors, and all kinds of equipment and, you know, everything that goes with it.

And of course, the Spears also owned the bar out by the highway.

However, their sizable estate would be split between their three children.

She was not going to receive the whole amount.

Not of the estate or the life insurance.

$50,000 of it

as a beneficiary.

Still, with no other viable leads, Shanda's gambling debts, her inheritance, and the fact that she'd been at the farm earlier that morning were enough to give investigators pause.

And the police began to suspect that perhaps Shanda had something to do with her parents' murder.

Once we found out the problem she had, it kind of narrowed the field down.

And on January 30th, five days after her parents' murders, the investigators brought her in for further questioning.

They at that point decided to interrogate her, question her like she was a suspect rather than a survivor of murder victims.

They fingerprinted her, they booked her, they subjected her to a modified strip search.

And then, just to make her sweat a little more,

they took my mom and put my mom in a holding cell for close to two hours.

Shanda was becoming increasingly upset.

So upset that when the investigators finally brought Shanda into the interrogation room, she completely broke down.

Oh, God, what am I doing?

Shanda's new story started out just like the first, that she'd gone out to the farm that morning to do the milking, same as always.

So you took her?

To your daddy's house, your mama's house.

What time did y'all get there?

Somewhere between seven and seven thirty i'm not sure

but after the milking and after she carried her daughter back out to the car shanda's story took a radically different and deadly turn at that point she went back inside the uh the house got her daddy's gun

on the floor

laying by your daddy And just as the investigators suspected, Shanda said she'd taken the gun her father bought for for protection and turned it on him.

He woke up when you got the first time?

I think so.

Do you remember shooting again?

Just take your time.

It's okay.

No, it's not okay.

One gunshot went through his head and killed him instantly.

There were two shots, I think, maybe three, that were fired in the room, and she missed him with at least one of them.

Then, once her father was dead.

What did she holler?

She just hollered.

She just screamed.

Shanda went into the other room and shot him up.

She made what I could only be described as a very gripping, emotional confession.

After shooting her parents, Shanda said that she had gone outside and disposed of the gun.

I guess I throw the gun in an oxidation pond.

Now, did you throw that gun in an oxidation pond?

I need a yes and no answer on that one.

I think I did.

I think that's well with that one.

I think so.

And then, once she ditched the gun, Shanda got in the car with her daughter and drove away.

Sanda was out running errands.

But why kill her parents?

Shanda had a surprising explanation.

Her husband.

He was so jealous of my mom and my daddy.

So jealous.

And he didn't want me up there.

He never wanted me up there.

And if my mom and daddy was out of the way, he'd feel sorry for me and he'd want things.

But investigators suspected her motive wasn't love.

She was in financial trouble and she needed some money.

But you need to tell me about your particular little problem that you had, okay?

Your gambling problem, okay?

At that point, Shanda admitted to stealing money from her parents and trying to hide her gambling problem.

Shanna resorted to robbing money from her father's bank accounts by writing

forged checks and that sort of thing to cover her losses.

And then, to keep her parents from discovering the theft, she did something drastic.

I went to shot the motherfucker.

Not for the money, according to Shanda.

Instead, she claimed it was for the simple fact that she couldn't face them and admit what she had done.

They've been so disappointed in me.

I just wanted to make a fun of it.

Her confession complete.

The investigators placed Shanda under arrest for the murder of her parents.

Then, they allowed her to speak to her family.

My mom called and we talked to her, and she told us that she was sorry.

But within weeks of her confession, Shanda would be saying something else.

Coming up, Shanda takes it all back.

I'm tired of sitting back taking a rep for something that I didn't do.

But can she keep her confession out of court?

The entire confession was unconstitutional.

On January 13, 1997, Shanda Crane went on trial for murder at the Washington Parish Courthouse in Franklinton, Louisiana.

Television stations from Baton Rouge and New Orleans covered the case, as did all the newspapers in the area.

The interest was due to two things.

The first was the crime the 31-year-old was accused of committing.

Double homicide of your parents was a pretty, pretty heinous thing.

And if she were convicted, the punishment could be severe.

It was made pretty clear early on that they were going to be seeking the death penalty.

The second thing that made Shanda's case stand out was what had allegedly motivated the murders.

Well, the video poker was new in the state of Louisiana, so the press had made it out to be the first big crime case based on a gambling addiction.

And Shanda had admitted to the murders in a confession she'd made shortly before her arrest.

The strongest thing the prosecution had without any question was her confession.

The confession was the basis of their case.

But would the jury ever hear it?

Six months after her arrest, while held in jail awaiting trial, Shanda had contacted the detectives and requested another interview.

And when she sat down with them, she had yet another version of her story.

I'm tired of sitting back taking a rep for something that I didn't do.

I'm tired of it.

Shanda retracted her confession.

And the defense would make an issue of just how much pressure the investigators had allegedly put on her once Shanda's trial got underway.

We had a motion to quash the confession.

I believe the entire confession was unconstitutional.

According to her attorney, it had to do with the extreme pressure they put on Shanda in order to wring a confession out of her.

They immediately took her down, locked her up in a cell.

They fingerprinted her twice.

They mug-shotted her twice.

They interrogated her and gave her a modified strip search.

And it was only once she was thoroughly intimidated and humiliated that they started grilling her hard.

They told her that they knew she had done it.

They had the evidence to prove it.

They told her that if she did not confess to the crime, that she would die by lethal injection and it would be televised for her children to watch.

And the only way to avoid that, according to the defense, was for Shanda to say that she killed her parents.

Y'all locked me up back there for starters in this little bitty thing and then pal told me if you confess uh we'll send you to a mental hospital but if you don't you're gonna get lethal injection.

I was scared death.

They told my mom that if she confessed that she did it they would send her to a mental hospital and she would get to go home with her kids.

And with three children under the age of 10 Getting home was Shanda's primary concern.

She was a young mother.

She had some kids who she was trying to protect.

They were aware of her fragile state when they asked her to come in.

My mom had felt guilty because she had took money from my grandparents for her gambling problem.

And according to the defense, when Shanda still refused to confess, the investigators had made one last attempt to exploit the fragile young mother's guilt.

They brought in a civil deputy who was also a Baptist minister to sit and talk to her about redemption and God and forgiveness.

And according to the defense, it was only then, after hours of grueling intimidation and manipulation, that Shanda finally broke.

She just wanted them to leave her alone.

When police officers use those tactics, people will confess to crimes that they don't commit.

At least that's what the defense claimed in their motion to suppress the confession.

But would the judge agree?

They allowed the confession to be presented to the jury.

Because in the judge's experience, recanting a confession is not unusual in criminal cases.

After reflection and talking with an attorney, say, oh wait, you mean that's going to happen to me because of this confession?

And I didn't mean to confess.

It was a devastating blow for the defense.

With the confession, it was a very, very strong case.

And to make the most of it, the prosecutors began their case by playing a section of the tape, the moment where Shanda described just how the gun felt in her hands when she killed her mom and dad.

It was cold.

And the gun was cold.

What have I done?

What if I did?

I got chills when I heard it.

And that quote still sticks.

I still remember that quote 20 years later.

And unfortunately for Shanda, the confession wasn't the only evidence they had against her.

After her arrest, the investigators had focused their attention on the oxidation pond outside the family's dairy barn.

She told the deputies that that's where she threw the gun.

It's a pond, just kind of lyphoseptic tank.

Took about three days, four days to ever drain drain it, but eventually we found the gun.

The grime-coated gun was a.38-caliber revolver.

The weapon turns out to be a gun that belonged to Landers.

And not only had the investigators found it exactly where Shanda said it would be, ballistics testing proved it was the murder weapon, too.

The crime bag was able to match the bullets and the casings and everything else to the gun that was used to kill Bobby and Lander.

And in addition to the murder weapon, the prosecutors also produced a witness who was with Shanda the morning of the murder, her 10-year-old daughter.

My sister got up on the stand and testified.

Shanda's oldest daughter had only been eight years old when she accompanied her mother to the farm on the morning of her grandparents' murder.

But the judge allowed the little girl to take the stand anyway.

She seemed to be very very cognizant of her surroundings, of the ramification of her testimony.

But just how serious would those ramifications be?

Her oldest daughter testified that when she and her mother went over there, Shanda left her with her grandfather and went and milked the cow.

She says a little while later, mama came back, came into the house, got me out of the bed, took me outside the house, and then she went back in.

Shanda's daughter said she'd waited in the car while her mother went back inside.

The car was parked about 50 to 60 yards from the house.

The radio was on.

And in addition to that, the little girl said that while waiting on her mother, she'd sat in the car with the door open.

She says we didn't hear any shots or anything like that.

But there was something Shanda's daughter did hear.

What her mother told her when she returned from the farmhouse a few minutes later.

Then she came back into the car and told her daughter not to tell anyone that they had seen Mamo or Papa.

It was a tough blow for the defense.

Her oldest daughter saying something very damaging against a mother that she loves.

That was a very difficult part of the case.

The defense did its best to counter it, though.

Much like their claim that Shanda's confession had been coerced, the defense suggested that the prosecution had unduly influenced her daughter's testimony, slowly turning the little girl against her mother over the last two years.

She was not in the presence of her mother for a long period of time prior to the trial.

The defense also did its best to raise reasonable doubt about the murder weapon.

Because while the investigators had found the gun exactly where she said it would be, there was no way to forensically place the grime-coated weapon in Shanda's hands.

When they pulled the gun up, they didn't take no fingerprints, no nothing.

They said they couldn't.

The gun was never connected to Shanda Crane in any way.

They also did their best to cast doubt on Shanda's so-called motive.

Their best defense was it's ridiculous to think.

that someone would kill their parents for $50,000.

I mean, who would do that?

But most of all, since they hadn't succeeded in keeping it out, the defense made the case that Shanda's confession had been coerced.

There have been many, many cases, particularly since DNA has come out, where they have been able to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that people have confessed to crimes that they don't commit.

And while her attorneys didn't put Shanda on the stand to profess her innocence, Even the judge agreed that the sight of the anxious young mother sitting in the courtroom only underscored the defense's point.

She did not seem to be the kind of person who would shoot anybody, more or less her parents.

Coming up, will the defense strategy pay off?

She's not that person, she's not a violent person.

And what will it mean for Shanda?

I was trying to keep her from having her life taken from her by the state of Louisiana.

On January 21st, 1997, the jury announced that it had reached a verdict in Shanda Crane's murder trial.

They were only out for like four or five hours.

Not only had the 31-year-old mother of three been accused of killing her parents, Lander and Bobby Spears, inside their Washington Parish, Louisiana home, She'd confessed to the crime.

She originally confessed to the detectives about about five or six days after the murder.

The confession was audiotaped and played to the jury during her trial.

At trial, Shanda's attorneys had argued that her confession had been coerced.

I believe we were able to show the jury the real serious

problems with the confession.

But had they done enough to raise reasonable doubt?

It all came down to the verdict.

The jury unanimously determined that she was guilty.

Shanda's daughter, Megan,

is still shocked by the verdict.

She's not that person.

She's not a violent person.

I believe my mom's innocent.

But in the courtroom, those who'd heard the evidence against Shanda found the prosecution's case compelling.

They were able to support every element.

of her confession.

Determining Shanda's guilt or innocence wasn't all the jury had to do, though.

There was also her sentence, and the stakes couldn't be higher.

This was a death penalty case.

They were trying to keep her from having her life taken from her by the state of Louisiana.

And this time, the decision wasn't so easy.

The family did not want the death penalty imposed, and I think that had a

big bearing on the jury being deadlocked and not reaching a conclusion to impose the death penalty.

Since the jury wasn't unanimous on the death penalty, Shanda was immediately sentenced to life in prison.

In Louisiana, if you're not put to death, then it's automatic life.

With no chance of parole.

She will die in the prison.

And that's much to the disappointment of Shanda's daughter, Megan.

More than 20 years after her grandparents' murder, she remains close to her mother.

I talk to her weekly.

I go see my mom two, three, four times a year.

She's the same person 22 years later.

There's nothing different about my mom.

She's still nice, outgoing, best mom ever.

Shanda Crane's appeals have all been denied.

In 1996, Washington Parish and 32 other parishes across Louisiana voted to ban video poker.

Bobby and Lander Spears' murders were a major motivation for the referendum.

How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our top.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now by joining Wonderry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.