Shannon Paulk //////

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All right, everybody, gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer.

Let's talk some true crime.

In true crime stories, we often hear statements like, that is when our town lost its innocence, or that sort of thing just doesn't happen here.

Many times, those are the words of sad and confused, concerned citizens of a community rocked and shocked to the core with a recent, unimaginable crime.

Big city problems come to a little town, as they say.

Today, we examine a terrible crime.

One that for some very strange and indescribable reason has caused me to question so many aspects of the crime, the concealment of evidence, and the nature and secrets of this little girl's neighbors and the persons that lived in the town that was suddenly struck with a big city problem.

That sort of thing doesn't happen here.

Well, this sort of thing shouldn't happen anywhere.

This is True Crime Garage, and this is the still unsolved homicide case of Shannon Paul.

This week we head on down to the Prattville, Alabama area.

More specifically, Captain, we're going to the nice, quaint neighborhood of Candlestick Park.

Sports fans will recognize that name as the one-time home ballpark for the San Francisco Giants and the home field for the 49ers, but no longer as the last event held at that wonderful stadium was a 2014 Paul McCartney concert.

For the sake of our case, in the case that we're talking about here this week, we're going to go back to 2001.

The Prattville population at this time is just under 30,000 folks, and the Candlestick Mobile Home Community is located in the southeastern part of Prattville, Alabama.

The focus of our case is going to be 11-year-old Shannon Polk.

And the date is August 16th, 2001.

This is a Thursday.

Now, Shannon's mother is heading off to work first thing in the morning.

When I say first thing in the morning, some sources say that she's up at 4 a.m.

to get things going so she can get out the door.

Now, keep in mind, this is summertime.

So this means no school for the kids on this day, but mom is going to work.

Shannon and her 16-year-old sister, Lisa, will be staying home that day.

Sounds like the protocol

is that the girls have some chores and

just make sure everybody's home after mom returns from work and home in time for dinner.

So the girls were allowed to leave the home and go out and visit with friends and play in the neighborhood and such.

Just be home before dinner, and you can go out as long as your chores are done.

Shannon's mom, Marie Polk, as said, had to be at work early that morning.

She says that when she left the home just before she saw Shannon was asleep on the couch, so she kissed her on the forehead before leaving for the day.

Now, we do get a pretty detailed timeline of events.

I'm not going to say it's perfect.

Obviously, we have some gaps here and we have some details that are missing that could certainly help solve this mystery.

But we do get some good information because

this neighborhood, this candlestick park, is described by several of the residents as a live community.

And what they mean by that is there's always people outside and there's always people interacting with one another in this neighborhood, be it people out mowing the grass, people out riding bikes, kids playing, people sitting on their front porches.

So it's referred to as a live and active community and neighborhood.

As said, her mother has to be up early that morning.

She's leaving the house rather early that morning, and she has a stop on her way to work.

She's dropping off a baby nephew back to his parents' home on the way to work.

So she kisses Shannon on the forehead and she walks out of the house.

She leaves.

This is supposed to just be another ordinary Thursday.

One thing that is going on here, they live on Expo.

The name of their street is Expo, by the way.

All the streets in this neighborhood are named after baseball teams.

Shannon's father is living about two hours away.

Dad and mom are in the process of a divorce.

One of the items here, Captain, is stated that Shannon was supposed to be grounded that day, which is a little tricky because in my household growing up, grounded for the day meant you weren't to leave the house, but nobody seems to be questioning her leaving the house.

Now, at 9 a.m., Lisa, this is Shannon's older sister, said that she woke up and the TV was on in the living room and said that the TV was loud.

And she noticed that Shannon had made herself some breakfast and that she had already left the home for the day.

One account and report that is not

that there's no discrepancies in when you go to different sources is Shannon's personality.

She's a very active child,

so her already being up for the day and out of the house was nothing out of the ordinary.

Not out of the ordinary for Shannon, but not out of the ordinary for the other kids in the trailer park.

Around 10 a.m., Shannon is over at a neighbor's house on Metz Street.

She stayed with this neighbor for about 30 minutes or so.

Shannon had asked this woman if she could take her up to the gas station so she could buy some candy.

She said that she could later, but at the time, her child was still sleeping in the other room.

And so she told Shannon to come back later and she would take her to get some candy.

From there, Shannon went over to another friend's home.

So now on our timeline, I have a marker of about 11.45 a.m.

This is to see if

some friends could come out and play.

However, the friend is said to be too busy, couldn't come out and play with Shannon.

These neighbors reported seeing Shannon with a baby walker or baby stroller.

From my understanding here, Captain, there is a stroller

that even though she was grounded, part of that day, it was understood that she was going to go out and retrieve this stroller from somewhere in the mobile home park.

I would like to know more about where this stroller came from.

Was this just something

that was spotted that somebody was discarding?

Or was this an arrangement to pick it up?

I don't have great details on this, but the stroller has become a rather large part of the story because some of our witnesses that see her that day see her toting around the stroller.

Now,

Shanna was a very

helpful kid, as we'll see in some of this timeline, but she loved babies.

And the purpose of her getting the stroller was to bring it back to her own home because she was going to give it to

her relative for the new baby that mom just returned home that morning.

When I hear that she's told to retrieve this stroller, to me, it's maybe an item that she was playing with that she left somewhere.

Could be.

Again, I wish that we had a great understanding of the significance of the stroller because there are some sources that put a lot of thought and speculation into the movement of the stroller.

And then there's other times where I just go, maybe it has nothing to do with the story at all, other than it's something it was part of her day that day.

Yeah, it makes you wonder, did people see her playing with this stroller before the day she went missing?

There's a neighbor called

Ms.

Mary.

So a lot of these neighbors seem to have nicknames that

as we go through some of these nicknames, you'll see it's obvious that the nicknames are created by the kids in the neighborhood.

So this Ms.

Mary

says that she used to wear all black.

She saw Shannon out of her window over at this friend's house that we talked about.

She said that she saw her knock on the door and talk to them.

She said that she then saw Shannon leave with the baby stroller and walk around to the other side of the pond over to the, quote, Halloween man's house.

Miss Mary says that she saw Shannon knock on his door, but he must have not been home.

Not scary or anything.

The Halloween man.

Yeah, so he must must not have been home because miss mary says that this halloween man does not answer the door now miss mary is this she's very important to our timeline because from my understanding miss mary is somebody that shannon even though miss mary's an older woman this is someone that shannon would actually go and hang out with you know we talked about her sitting on somebody's porch and and talking earlier she would go and say hello to ms mary and things like that so this appears to be a trusted individual within the neighborhood.

And what we're going to see with some of the players in this neighborhood, maybe some of them should not be trusted.

So when we have Ms.

Mary saying that she sees her knock on the Halloween man's door and nobody answers,

her statement is that the Halloween man was not home.

I don't know how she knows that the man wasn't home other or is she just assuming that because he does not answer the door.

Because it's not out of the realm of possibility that he was home and saw it's a little girl knocking on my door and I don't want to be bothered today.

Or busy or still in bed.

You know, we don't know what his schedule would have been for that day.

And we do know his name.

We'll get into some of the players here as we go.

But continuing on the timeline, according to witnesses, Shannon then walked back toward the back of the park.

to one of the homes closer to her own.

This is reported as being a little bit before noon that day.

Shannon knocked on the door of a home only a couple houses over from hers.

So she's now back on Expo or Expos.

The neighbor was a Prattville police officer.

He lived there with his wife and his boys, his kids.

Shannon had recently rescued a puppy.

and his family had been taking care of that dog because Shannon was not allowed to keep keep it.

Right.

This neighbor, however, was getting ready for work.

The statement here is it was just him and the boys.

So his wife wasn't home.

And people have really red-flagged this thing, saying that

the man, the police officer,

told Shannon she couldn't come in to visit with the dog or the boys because his wife wasn't home.

It's been stated that this is some kind of house rule.

Okay.

I want to investigate this a little bit before we move on here.

Some people have suggested that maybe the wife created this house rule because there's something weird about this dude.

Like, you can't have kids in here that aren't ours because he can't be trusted around them.

That's a rumor that's circled around this portion of the timeline.

Well, if he's a Mr.

McFeely type, then we need to create rules and boundaries for this pedo.

Well,

the rumor is that the rule

was created because he might be weird, the adult male, the father.

Again, I want to point out this is a rumor.

It may be true that he says, you can't come in because my wife isn't home.

What I'm saying is there could be a house rule that has nothing to do with him being a weirdo.

You know, there are some homes that

either mom or dad or what have you just doesn't want to deal with extra kids.

And if the wife or husband's not there, they don't allow extra kids into the home.

Or was he busy getting ready for work and didn't have time?

You know, there's a million reasons why she would be denied access into this home.

Like you said, maybe he just doesn't want to deal with her.

And maybe she's a little bit of a bugaboo.

Without him being some kind of weird, strange guy.

But I pointed that out because that is the rumor.

So let's leave that door a little bit open on the possibility that that could be the truth but also possibly not a complete scumbag because they find this dog and they take the dog in to take care of the dog well and he is a later they're going to narrow down the time of concern for noon a lot of scum

1 15.

you know there are there's often psychological tests and all kinds of other tests that individuals take to become a police officer or work for a

city or a town.

So

I'm choosing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The listeners out there can decide if your boy is right or wrong here.

I think that there's enough.

Don't bet a Franklin on it.

I think there's enough mystery here

in this case that

we don't want to spin our tires too long on just this one individual.

Now, well, the fact of the matter is this is a small community, like you said, under 30,000 individuals, but in this park, even less.

And anybody that saw her that day or anybody that was in that park during this time that she went missing has to be looked at.

That's just the way.

That's just the way the world works.

Absolutely.

So thank you for the nudge there, Captain.

So

a little background on this trailer park.

The Candlestick Mobile Home Park, as it's called.

It's an all-ages manufactured home community located on South Memorial Drive in Prattville, Alabama.

It's a land-lease community.

It was built in 1986.

It has 220 home sites.

Okay, that doesn't mean that they are all filled, but they have enough room for 220 homes.

And the

lots vary in size.

And we know that because the lot rent ranges, there's quite a big range of prices that a person could pay per month to live there.

So the lot sizes must vary.

But keep in mind, if this thing's filled, 220 homes, that's a lot of people in this community.

So this is a big neighborhood.

And I think there's

a lot of information here to suggest that whenever she went missing, whatever caused her to go missing very likely could have happened right inside of this community, inside this neighborhood.

Here is a point for me that I don't love, or I do not love to see this in our timeline.

And we can get into the whys of that here in a bit.

But originally, police were working on the idea.

So what we're going to end up with is that police...

are notified when Shannon never comes home for dinner and they're called in.

Now early in the investigation, investigation, they are working through this timeline that we've just spoke of.

And they're saying that, look, this, the last sighting, confirmed sighting we have of her

is Shannon leaving this house around noon.

Remember, she knocks on the door of the Prattville police officer and family, is denied access.

She's seen leaving.

there around noon.

And from my understanding, this might be multiple accounts.

We have multiple witnesses saying that spotted around noon.

So, early in the investigation, police are going to hone in on the timeline of noon to about 7:30 p.m.

Okay, so that's when everybody's out in the neighborhood looking for her.

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Power to the people.

Around 1.15 p.m., the prattville police officer leaves his home for work see this is why i i really kind of got the feeling that this was more of just a situational thing like hey i'm trying to get ready for work there's no other parents here and we don't know exactly what was said though right i mean because well i believe that he gave the statement of i told her she couldn't come in because my wife was at home and i think that people have kind of just run with that statement of like well that seems weird which is weird in itself i mean it literally could be, my wife knows you.

I don't know you that well.

You can't come in.

Sorry.

Or maybe it was meant to be, if my wife was here, I'm getting ready to leave for work.

Right.

Right.

In an hour and 15 minutes.

If my wife were here, you could come in because she would be here for the remainder of the day.

Yeah, we don't know what he needs to do.

We don't know if he needs to shit, shower, and shave.

Or just be straight up weird for an hour and 15 minutes.

He has to do the chicken dance very slowly.

Yeah.

So around 1.15, we we get more of this statement here.

That Prattville police officer is leaving his home for work.

He says that he sees that baby stroller that Shannon had been toting around.

He says he spots it left on the curb outside of the Halloween man's house.

He says he does not see Shannon anywhere.

So this window of time is...

What the police will eventually come up with is most believed to be when she was abducted or something happened to her, right?

It's not out of the realm of possibility that she went back to Halloween man's house.

She could be safe and sound in somebody else's house at this time.

We know she was, what was she doing that morning that we know 100%

toting around a stroller and knocking on people's doors.

So she could have knocked on anybody's door, went in and actually been safe and sound and just left the stroller outside somewhere to retrieve it later.

Or, and this is a sad possibility, she could have already been picked up somebody could have picked her up in a car or she's in someone's home and things are not not great anybody that has grown up in a community when where there's other kids

you've experienced this you wake up you're looking for somebody to hang out with you start going door to door you have your favorites you go to first or maybe the kids that you know are their go-to kids.

They're going to be home.

And it seems like every person that she's going to hang out with is just not available.

And if somebody was available that day, then this might have never happened.

Yeah.

A little background here on Shannon.

So she's 11 at the time, as we said.

She's five foot tall, 83 pounds.

This is according to her missing poster: Caucasian with green eyes and sandy brown hair.

I don't know how tall a kid's supposed to be at 11 years old.

That seems tall

to my

mind, but she is reported to have been very friendly, very outgoing.

She saw everyone in that neighborhood as her friend.

She's remembered for visiting the trailers of other persons of her neighbors to ask if they needed help with anything.

In particular, she was known for visiting an elderly resident known as Ms.

Mary.

to help her bathe and brush the teeth of her small dog.

Listen to how much care this little one had, right?

She's retrieving a stroller for her cousin, her baby cousin.

She's rescued a puppy and gave it to a neighbor to take care of and is going over to check on the dog.

She's helping an elderly resident bathe and brush the teeth of her small dog regularly.

So she's extremely kind-hearted, extremely outgoing, which might be,

might end up being a big problem here.

she was a person that was described as she knows no stranger she never met a stranger

and her mother marie stroud stated she had a heart of gold and just loved people all people and everybody loved her so do we have any more information on this halloween man a little bit let's let's we have a couple more items here on the timeline we have a pregnant neighbor who came home sometime later.

I don't have a marker, a time marker for this, but it stated that she came home later that day to see the stroller on the curb.

She thought that it had been thrown away.

I guess she retrieved it, thinking that it was just, you know, somebody had tossed it, was discarding it, and so she could use it.

So she retrieved it.

Now, she did clean the stroller, and I don't know what kind of evidence anybody would think that they could have retrieved from the stroller, but we should note here that if there were to have been any evidence, physical evidence on that stroller, it was cleaned that very day, the same day that Shannon goes missing.

And we don't have a time marker for this individual, but we do know that her mother left early in the morning because she had to work, so she's going to get home earlier.

So she comes back around 2:30 or so.

And she doesn't see any signs of her daughter.

Yeah, Shannon's not at at home when mom returns.

And I guess the breakup was fairly recent, maybe six months prior or just a few months prior between mom and dad.

And so, look, Shannon's not the only big heart caring person in this family.

Mom says she knows her daughter was upset and sad about the situation.

She came home.

Her daughter's not there.

She's like, okay, cool.

She's just out playing with some friends.

I'm going to swing over to Walmart and pick up a couple of items to surprise my kid and try to cheer her up.

And so she goes over to the store, purchases some items, comes back.

Shannon's still not there.

Now it's time to start making dinner.

Shannon never comes back.

And it's, as we said earlier, it's understood that by 7:30 p.m., whatever happened, happened.

She was, she was gone by 7:30 p.m.

To me, I would like that to be a big marker on our timeline.

So what we do know happens is mom and sister Lisa, they're out in the neighborhood knocking on doors.

Shannon knew no stranger.

So a lot of these neighbors start joining in, helping to look for the little girl.

They're going through the neighborhood.

They're checking people's yards.

They're knocking on doors.

They're doing everything they can.

This all goes down approximately 60 minutes, let's say, one hour's time.

Now, we know at about 8.30, this is when Shannon's mom calls Shannon's father.

In fact, he was supposed to come and get the kid the next day

and keep her for the weekend.

And of course, he's like, yeah, I've not heard from her, but he lives two hours away at this point.

He says, I've not heard anything from her.

He's extremely concerned.

So he's like, I'm jumping in my car.

I'll be there as quickly as I possibly can.

But if I'm clear on something, the last person that actually saw her was the police officer.

That's what it sounds like to me.

Yes.

And so you're making a big marker at this 7.30, 8 o'clock.

But I think when you look at when he saw her last, the mom getting home, other people in the neighborhood getting home.

The abduction to me seems like it happened before 2 p.m.

I can agree with that, but the reason why i want to make this 7 30 marker very important is because i think that i think that people have created a narrative here that she must have gone because of the stroller right again i think that a lot of times i think that there's way too much weight put into the movement of this stupid stroller and because it's found it's seen just sitting there unattended by shannon at 115 that that there's they've created this narrative that has stood now for 20 years that, oh, something must have happened to her between noon and 1.15.

I think it's, it's very, it could be very likely.

I'm not saying that that's impossible.

I'm not saying that that is not likely at all.

I'm saying it could be very likely.

I think it's irresponsible to start creating a window for which you have no verification.

The problem, I guess, is that we have no witnesses saying that they've seen her after that time.

And she had a lot of friends and knew a lot of the neighbors.

So it would,

it would make sense that we would have good people saying, yeah, I talked to her.

Oh, yeah, I saw her walking there.

But what I'm saying is I don't know that she 100%

had to be in the possession of her abductor by 1.15.

And

you'll see why I think that that's irresponsible.

Well, and I also think, too, it's like she could have retrieved the stroller, walked around with it for a little bit and went, yeah, not today.

I'm going to

leave it here.

I'm going to go to a couple more places and I'll come back and get the stroller, but I'm not going to just push this around with me all day.

And now, what we have here is the police are called.

The marker I have on my timeline, Captain, is around 9 p.m.

The police are called.

They do come out.

They are talking to neighbors, talking with the family.

I've not seen Shannon's family say a bad word about the police.

I have seen not a bad word, but

neighbors saying that they didn't think that the police were taking it very seriously until the next day.

Now,

this is why I really have a problem with that

noon to 1.15.

So neighbors went around, they're searching for Shannon that night.

Around 10 p.m.,

they said that everyone was very helpful and very concerned.

Now they're talking to police, right?

Everyone's very helpful.

Everyone's been very concerned.

But

the neighbors, the people out searching for her,

they've got a problem with two of the people that they speak with that night.

It's two men, two individuals.

When they knocked on the Root Beer Man's home.

So he lives right across the street from the Halloween man.

This makes the story creepier, though, right?

Do you agree with that?

I mean, you got one guy called the Halloween man.

This other guy called the Root Beer Man.

It

sounds like a story that children are telling you, but these are probably nicknames that are thought up by children.

Well, so from my understanding, the reason why Root Beer Man gets his name is, and

this is absolutely creepy, in my opinion.

He was known to invite neighborhood kids into his home.

He lived by himself, to invite them into his home or to have them do chores or work around his home.

And he would either pay them or often he would give them a can of root beer as payment.

So he gets this nickname Root Beer Man.

Halloween Man, from my understanding, it's a very similar situation, but he was known to hand out candy to the kids in the neighborhood.

Oh, I'm Halloween Man.

Give me some candy.

I would say, hey, give them the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe they're just, you know, nice guys that are misunderstood that are handing out root beer and Halloween candy.

But we'll see with Root Beer Man.

There's a a lot of reason to have some concern here.

So, Root Beer Man lives across the street from Halloween Man.

People got a bad vibe about him that night because they say when they knocked on his door, he took forever to answer the door and he only cracked the door.

He refused to open the door all the way.

When asked if he had seen Shannon, he said no, she was probably just out getting candy.

That seems like a strange statement to say at 10 p.m.

at night that an 11-year-old is probably out getting candy and that's why she's not home.

And then people were concerned that he took forever to answer the door.

It could be simply that he was sleeping at the time.

They did say he was fully dressed, which some people thought that that was strange as well, because he too worked early in the morning and typically would be up and out of the neighborhood early in the morning to be off to work.

Yeah, just a little over-the-clothes, flicky-flicky.

Extensive searches of the area were done by local, state, and even federal law enforcement as the days went on.

Waterways were searched, dogs were used, helicopters, the whole nine yards, but they couldn't find her.

The state police were involved

and the FBI even got involved as well, but nobody really had any idea what had happened to her.

Now, there was a man who had a dog trained in either search and rescue or cadaver search.

It's not fully explained, and those are two very different things.

Handlers will know that those are two very different things.

But this man offered to provide services to Shannon's family.

And Shannon's father says that the dog went into Shannon's room, smelled some of her clothing.

The dog takes off, running directly over to Root Bear Man's house.

Right over to the creepy fucker.

And it's stated that the dog sniffed around this trailer and tried to sniff under the Root Bear Man's trailer for around 45 minutes.

Once they were able to get the dog to continue, the dog then ran to the nearby forest, up to the railroad tracks and over to County Road 4

and then stopped.

So I love these dogs, but I've pointed out plenty of times.

One problem is they can't talk.

They can't tell us.

When you ran to those, when you ran to the forest nearby and ran over to the railroad tracks, were you still following the scent?

You must be a scent dog because you can't freaking talk either.

Right.

But what we do know is that dog seemed to show great concern for the Root Beer Man's house and under the trailer of that house, so much so that

they had to urge the dog to move on.

It just wanted to stay there.

That's where my concern would go.

Well, why are you urging the dog to go anywhere else other than where it wants to go?

Isn't that the point of having the dog?

Right.

But that's why I pointed out it's different to be trained in search and rescue or cadaver.

Because if that dog's trained in search and rescue,

that dog's job is to find the person, right?

If it's trained in cadaver, it's trained to find a cadaver, any cadaver.

But here,

if it's looking for the person, you get to this man's home.

He answers the door, right?

And this dog is really concerned about this home, but you've not found the person you're searching for.

So you do have to kind of move on.

But it wasn't lost on anybody that this dog showed concern about this home.

This

is one of those situations that we've seen in made-for-TV movies where fictional or whether it's true crime-based,

the whole community.

was constantly

checking in on the news, reading the newspapers.

Where is this little girl?

We're not just talking about Candlestick Park.

We're talking about Prattville, the whole town and city of Prattville.

They were putting up yellow ribbons.

Now, unfortunately, those yellow ribbons did bring her home, just not in the way that anyone wanted.

On October 6th, 2001.

So

remember, she goes missing mid-August.

So this is weeks and weeks that pass.

We have two rabbit hunters, and forgive me if I say this wrong, but they were hunting in the Otaga Wildlife Management Area.

This is a public hunting area.

It's about 19 miles north of Prattville.

They come upon an area that appeared at first to be,

they think that it's just like scattered trash that they find in this hunting area.

However, they quickly realized that they had found a body.

They found the body of a little girl who had been tied with a rope, stuffed inside a trash bag, and found with her underwear around her head.

And enough time has passed that they're pretty certain, unfortunately, that this is Shannon Polk, who they've everybody's been looking for for all this time.

But they're going to have to confirm that.

And in fact, we have the police statements that are saying, you know, we don't have another missing person that even vaguely fits this description.

So we're pretty certain that it's Shannon Palk.

They do run some DNA and get confirmation that it is, in fact, the little girl that everybody was looking for.

We need to point out here that this area, to me, is one of the keys to solving this case, I believe, because

There are several people that have gone on record saying, I lived in Prattville, Alabama my entire life.

And we're not talking about 15-year-old people saying this.

We're talking about 50, 60-year-old people saying, I lived in Prattville, Alabama my entire life.

I didn't know that this area existed.

This hunting area, I had never been there.

Right.

It's like a dirt road off of a dirt road off of a dirt road to get to it.

Which is a tough thing because you look at these crimes where the...

victims are found in remote areas and law enforcement always assumes that that means it's somebody local but i don't necessarily believe that you might not believe it but i'll tell you the first thing i would be doing after after they found this girl if it were my case i would be checking for

i would be cross-referencing hunting licenses right with people that lived in her neighborhood well that definitely makes sense remember just like just like finding the long island serial killer it it was as simple as who owns a truck that the witness saw in this neighborhood.

There was one guy and he fit the description, the physical description of a potential witness in that case.

In this case, I would be looking for,

if I see out of 220 homes in this trailer park, only one dude has a hunting license, I'm going to be on him like white on rice.

So the key players here, the persons of concern that stand out, and again, it's possible that none of these individuals have anything to do with the murder of this little girl or her disappearance for weeks at all.

But the people that remain key players or people of concern in this case for 20 years is the Prattville police officer.

He doesn't seem very likely to me, Captain, because

his kids are home the whole time.

right?

Like we know that he's not alone and then he leaves for work.

Well, because the way her body was discovered, to me, the crime didn't take place there.

It's more likely that it took place somewhere else and she was transported there.

So I think what you're saying,

and not that there's not other possibilities, but it's like the guy's at home.

He has to go to work.

He tells her not to come in the house.

The boys never see her in the house.

And so

we don't have any evidence of him leaving super early and then, you know, picking her up and doing something with her.

The case is unsolved, so he is

one of the last people that we know of to see her.

So he has to stay on the list until we can prove that he didn't do it.

Yeah.

The thing here,

that I keep.

I want to put him at the top of the list.

No, actually, I wouldn't discard him.

I wouldn't remove him from your list, but I'd put him at the very bottom because what I see here, and I look, know Sherlock Holmes, but it looks to me like somebody had to conceal Shannon Palk.

Yes.

And there's no nice way of saying it, so I'll just say it.

They had to conceal this girl either abducted and alive or

otherwise.

And

I don't, given the timeline.

That's a pretty solid alibi.

A police officer is at work.

He leaves at 1.15 and is very likely trying to help the investigation by saying, yeah, she knocked on my door.

I told her to go away.

And then when I left for work at 1.15, I saw that stroller that was with her earlier and I didn't see her.

If he is involved, he's got a short window of an hour and 15 minutes to do whatever happened and conceal her, abducted and alive or otherwise.

There just doesn't seem to be enough time for any of that.

And he's not alone at any point in that timeline.

The Halloween man is of concern.

I wish I had more information on this, on this individual.

He lived across the street from Root Beer Man, handed out candy to the kids in the neighborhood.

I'd love to know if any of these guys are registered sex offenders.

Well, we do have somebody on our list that is.

So I wish that we knew more about this Halloween man.

But he became under suspicion because of people in the neighborhood.

So that does hold some weight to me

that he's, he's rumored as being thought as could be possible.

I got to admit, Captain, when I found out that he handed out candy to the kids, that completely made sense why he had this nickname.

I was hoping that it was more of a he looked like Michael Myers situation.

But then I guess nobody would knock on his door if that was the case.

Ty Foster is a person that's named as a person of concern.

And I'm saying a person of concern because the police have not outwardly named anybody as a suspect or person of interest in this case.

So let's just say person of concern.

And a lot of this concern is coming from individuals in the neighborhood.

This is an individual that he was a neighbor of Shannon's.

He lived there with his wife and kids.

His kids were similar age to Shannon.

He frequented their, I'm sorry, she

frequented their trailer to play with his kids.

Another tie to the family is that Shannon's older sister, Lisa, babysat his kids.

The Root Beer Man,

I say pay attention to this guy.

His name is Jack Earl Gibson.

He lived a couple blocks from Shannon.

He lived on Metz Street, I believe.

He's the one known as Root Beer Man.

He would have kids do odd jobs around the trailer in his trailer.

He would pay the younger kids with candy and/or soda.

I'm sure sometimes he was paying them with money.

But the reason why I say pay attention to this man is

the same night that Shannon goes missing, Jack Gibson is arrested for possession of child pornography.

So this makes him

a strange

suspect, right?

Like, wouldn't you move him directly to the top of the list knowing this?

But also, think of the timeline.

If he's arrested that night, that means police were in his home and found this stuff that night.

So they had concern enough to go in or he allowed them to go in.

And again, if,

and I firmly believe she had to be concealed, had he already made provisions to move her at another time?

Was she under his trailer?

Is that why that dog paid so much attention to his trailer?

Right.

Did he hide her for, did he conceal her on his property before he moved her?

Which I think that's what somebody did here.

But again,

we don't know the details that the police were working with at the time.

He gets problematic for me because of my earlier statements of she needed to be concealed, and he's he's arrested that night.

Yeah.

I wish I had a better timeline on that.

It's just stated that he was arrested that night.

Now, he ends up being charged with all kinds of possession.

They go through his computer and

the type of images and files that he had stored on his computer were of kids that were around the same age of Shannon.

If you're looking to make an arrest and close out this case, unfortunately, what you're looking for on this guy's computer and his belongings and his home are images of Shannon.

That's what they don't find.

They find images of other kids, but not of her.

Now, to take this a step further, this doesn't sound like it was just something where he was collecting these images off of the internet or wherever he's getting this gross stuff from.

But

it sounds like he,

on several occasions, had lured children into his home and he was physically taking photographs of kids.

One thing that I want to point out about him, I think that, like I said earlier, I would be cross-referencing hunting licenses with persons that live in this neighborhood.

Whether those licenses are active or not, that's a paper trail that police could easily find.

That's something I don't have access to.

We here at the Garage Task Force, we don't have access to that type of information.

But I can say this.

His email address, I found his email address.

The word hunter is in.

His email address.

Yeah, our task force didn't find that, but our ass force did find that information.

I'm concerned that this guy is a hunter.

I'm concerned that he lives in the area.

I'm concerned that he has all this child sex abuse material

and pornography in his possession.

He's a creep.

He's super creep, root beer man, and

he fits.

He checks a lot of boxes here as a great suspect.

Now, I've seen several statements that this guy has been cleared.

Yeah, do we have DNA?

Do we have fingerprints?

Do we have anything?

And look, I don't, I don't know, I don't, this is not,

we don't need to be privy to this information, but I do get mad as hell when I see somebody that's cleared and we get no explanation as to why.

Now, I've heard a few different persons' thoughts that live in the area and both would make sense.

So one thought is that he's been cleared either by DNA, like you just said, or that he has, or that his alibi is rock solid.

And before we wrap up here today, make sure that you make me circle back to that because I got a lot of thoughts on that.

But let's continue on with these persons of concern, right?

We already mentioned the police officer.

We mentioned Halloween Man.

One thing that makes him a little concerning, too, is we do know that Shannon knocked on his door close to the time that she is believed to have been abducted.

But we do have the witness saying that he wasn't home, that he didn't answer the door.

Like you said, Root Beer Man lives right across the street from Halloween Man.

mana.

So whether she's knocking on Halloween Man's door or Rootbeard Man's door, they both, I think, equally become suspects because of the proximity.

Ty Foster becomes a person of concern because

they found a small, a very small amount of blood in his home.

This

was collected.

It was tested.

It was believed to be Shannon's blood.

I don't know if they ever confirmed that it was 100% Shannon's blood, but we, but he says to police,

you know, because they're going to, they're, they're smart.

They're going to ask these questions.

You try to trip these dudes up, right?

You don't say, why did, why did we find this blood in your home?

No, you say, hey, buddy, why would we have found Shannon's blood in your home, whether it's hers or not, right?

That's how you word that question, try to trip this guy up.

His statement to police is that

she would come over to his home.

Remember, she played with his kids.

Her older sister babysat Ty Foster's kids.

So there is an easy explanation for Shannon to have been in his home.

He says on one of those visits, she had a nosebleed.

Shannon's mother did confirm that Shannon often got nosebleeds.

So this seems to

maybe explain this away.

It does make some sense, but then you don't love to hear this at all that later he pleads guilty to charges of

assault and sodomy on a nine-year-old boy.

Jesus.

He is somebody that remains a person of concern.

You just wonder if

when I compare him to somebody like Rootbeer Man, Root Beer Man checks a lot more boxes, I believe, than Ty Foster.

But obviously, you can't move off of this guy.

And then, of course, you have

the...

low probability of a random abduction.

And I think here we can't rule that out, obviously, because

we just don't know.

It's unsolved for a reason.

But we do have statements by local kids.

And this, I don't want to get all weird and Stephen King on you here, Captain.

Dude, you're weird as shit, Broseph.

But I've had, like, this case gives me a really weird and uneasy feeling.

I mean, of course,

any child abduction, murder case should make us all feel

something very strange, depressed, what have you.

But there's something about this case that almost feels like

it cannot be solved.

And I don't mean because of police or because of the actions of the perpetrator.

This just feels like there's something out

in the ether.

I don't know.

Like, I can't explain it, but there seems to be something preventing this case from being solved.

And when I first got this uneasy feeling, it was because of the next detail here is that we had a couple of kids who gave a description of a person that they said that Shannon was last seen to be speaking with.

I hesitate to know how much time to spend on this next detail because

years later, we're told by the authorities to disregard

that sketch.

That it's not part of the case, that it may have been simply a hoax or that they were given bad information.

Right.

But

part of that information that came from teenagers, this was teenagers that gave the information to police, was that

she was seen spotted talking to this individual near where the bus would pick up the kids to go to school.

This could point more towards a random stranger abduction, or it could also point to somebody that maybe lives in the larger community of Prattville, but not in the trailer park community.

Because

I have to wonder, did they come up with this idea?

Because was there someone that would stop and talk to the kids at the bus stop?

It's very possible.

Because that's part of the story, that this was an individual that may have stopped on more than one occasion and talked to kids at the bus stop.

Well, if you're looking for kids, the bus stop is a good place to find them.

So, part of that, let's include this here because this could still be important.

Again, we were told eventually to disregard that sketch.

Supposedly, there are witnesses that saw Shannon talking to a stranger on the day of the abduction.

They claim that Shannon was speaking to a man in a red Jeep Wrangler or a red Jeep with a soft black top.

It It was said that

Shannon seemed to be familiar with this person.

There was also word of a white sedan spotted in the area that day that was dirty, that had a braided license plate, like a metal braided license plate holder.

That was part of the description.

The description of this man is pretty detailed.

Kind of a square-shaped head.

SpongeBob.

With facial hair.

Nope.

Goatee down to a beard.

Short dark hair.

A tan male.

White male.

Well, what I wonder, and I don't know if law enforcement has come out and said anything.

They're saying, disregard the sketch.

Are they saying disregard

these eyewitnesses altogether?

Because it's such a detailed description of the individual, the description of their car.

It seems like law enforcement would have figured out who this individual was and they would have talked to him.

So the information I have is that simply that years later, the persons that provided this information to police recanted the statements

and even told law enforcement that the sketch was made up.

Strange.

Why would you make this shit up?

Right.

And

these are not like adults that had a...

that had reason to point the finger elsewhere, right?

To, hey, don't look at me too much because you should be looking looking for this guy in this Jeep or this white sedan.

Here's what he looks like.

This is coming from youngsters at the time.

And again, that's why I, not to get all Stephen King on you, but I, there's just like some, some like dark force, I feel like, that is preventing this case from being.

I don't know.

I know I'm not making any sense, but I can't.

I've had that like weight on my chest all week long and I don't know how to describe it.

A couple things here.

It could be, and probably most likely,

it's a pedo.

It's a creep.

Oh, it couldn't control their urges.

But then you get this weird eyewitness, very detailed report coming from teenagers.

Like you said,

why would they be making stuff up?

Well, maybe something bad happened.

Maybe,

and that's not out of the realm of possibilities.

Because, yes, hunters would know about very weird, remote locations,

but who else knows about weird, remote locations?

Kids and teenagers.

Yeah.

That's something, if you're law enforcement, you have to question why did these kids make this up?

Yeah.

Well, exactly.

And

the other thing, though, we need to keep in mind is what at its simplest form

makes your best suspect.

Well, it's one, a person that

was around

in the area with Shannon at some point that day.

And two, had the ability to,

sorry, but there's no nice way of saying this, discard her body in that location that is miles and miles away.

Right.

So those two things have to happen for your good suspect.

Now,

I want to point out here,

this

Root Beer man,

he worked in, he was a maintenance man at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Montgomery, Alabama.

This is a call to action.

This is a little homework for any of our listeners out there.

If anybody in the area knows where this guy worked beyond this, I'm trying to really, I know that that's a pretty good description of where he worked.

But if anybody has more information about where he worked, there is a possible lead on this case that

could be, a connection could be made here if we had more information about his employment at this time.

The reason why, okay, he could have been ruled out by DNA.

And our listeners are out there, we're lucky because we live in the golden age of using DNA to solve these cases, genealogy, detective work.

And I'm sure there's a few listeners out there going, okay, if they ruled him out by DNA, that means they have suspect DNA in the case.

Why aren't they just using genealogy work to get a surname and then figure out a suspect from there?

Hopefully, I have my hands together in the praying motion that that is going on behind the scenes right now, and they're close to finding this dirtbag.

But we could also have a situation where the DNA is not great,

and it's just enough to exclude people,

but not really hone in on the person responsible.

Now, we don't have any confirmation of why

the statement of

this child pornography collecting dirtbag that's taking pictures of kids as well living in the neighborhood, handing out root beer

to kids when they come into his trailer.

We don't have any statement from law enforcement as to why this dude was ruled out other than he's been eliminated.

Now,

I have concern of that because here's where my fear is.

If they didn't use DNA, if they didn't didn't use science to eliminate this guy, there's got to be a detective in this agency that's going, come on, guys, let's take another look at this dude.

Because

the other rumor that I've heard is that he was ruled out due to an alibi, that he was at work all day.

And so he was not in the area.

Remember, we said that two things have to happen for your good suspect.

He has to be in the area at the time that she went missing and has to have the ability to transport her all that way away to try to hide the body.

Okay, so he was at work all day.

That's great.

That works if you are correct in your belief that she went missing during that one hour and 15 minute window that they've created.

If that window is wrong, if you guys are wrong about that, you can't eliminate him.

Absolutely not.

If you take that timeline back out to what you were originally working with, that between noon and 7:30 was your time of concern, he could have been back home and in the area well before 7:30, but still not in the area to meet that noon to 1.15 window.

You see what I'm getting at with that?

That's why I hope that they've not eliminated persons because they were at work at 1.15 that afternoon.

Right.

Because

there could be

a situation where she's not abducted until after that 1.15

timeline.

That marker there.

And the other thing that that brings up, some great questions here, right?

Time of day.

Who has access?

Who's just out and about that time of day?

This is middle of the week.

This is a Thursday.

That plays a part here, I believe.

The other thing, too, that you have to wonder about is the time of year.

This is about a week or so before they would start school.

So who's not working in the summertime?

Somebody had to have access to get her at that time, whatever time of day that was.

They had to have access to actually

getting her.

There's a lot of mystery with this case.

Now, Root Beer Man, Jack Gibson, he has served his time.

He faced a lot of charges.

He served his time.

I believe he's moved out of the area.

As said, though, I think I'm going off of the idea because the word hunter is in his email address, that

he was at one time a hunter

and therefore may have known of this area where the body was disposed of.

I have a lot of trouble moving on from this guy.

Well, that's because he was your high school sweetheart.

And I'm not law enforcement, and I'm not certainly not qualified to say who should be cleared and not cleared in this case.

Well, what's tough is we have a pretty good timeline.

We have a lot of individuals in this neighborhood that searched for her we have a handful of suspects

her body is recovered

we're not privy to what other

what other evidence was retrieved by law enforcement but with all these years later you think

they give us a list like an updated list of individuals they ruled out or ruled in well and this is a big-time case there this remains a case that is hyper-focused on by law enforcement and locals, even more than 20 years later.

So that is one thing that is glass half full here.

Now, another thing that I want to point out is Jim Baird.

This is the one-time mayor of Prattville.

He was, in fact, he was the mayor for 12 years and was the mayor at the time that she went missing and that was later found.

But Jim Baird, he's on record very recently saying, quote, quote, one of the things we have got going on right now is we have another state that we've been working with and also a federal agency that is working with us to review all the information on Shannon's case again.

It goes on to say that is one of those things that we are talking about, trying to link a case in another state to Shannon's.

And that's what we are going to see if they are linked.

It could have been nationwide.

He's talking about kids getting snatched.

Could be nationwide.

And somebody else was involved, you know, somebody was involved that was moving about, or it could be somebody that was going through the state.

He says, we don't know.

We're hoping that one of those cases outside of the state might be of help to Shannon's case.

As said, this is very much on the hearts and minds of of local law enforcement and even law enforcement at the state level.

The FBI has been involved.

This is a horribly heartbreaking case.

I'm hoping that somebody out there somewhere knows something.

Tom Allen from the Prattville Police Department is on record.

He's the lead, I believe, current lead on this case.

He has said that they still receive tips and they still receive information and they still have people reach out that want to help about this case, help with this case.

So that's also something in the positive as well.

For those of you out there or anyone out there with any information at all on Shannon Palk's case, we urge you to call Prattville CSI Sergeant Tom Allen at 334-595-0256.

I want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage each and every week.

And thanks for telling a friend.

Thanks for telling your mother.

And until next week, be good, be kind, and don't live.

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