Heaven LaShae Ross ////// 859

So, um, I was just parking my car, and then I saw you, the Gecko, huge fan.

I'm always honored to meet fans out in the wild.

The honor's mine.

I just love being able to file a claim in under two minutes with the Geico app.

Well, the Geico app is top-notch.

I know you get asked this all the time, but could you sign it?

Sign what?

The app?

Yeah, sure.

Oh, that means so much.

Oh, it rubbed off the screen when I touched it.

Could you sign it again?

Anything to help, I suppose.

You're the best.

Get more than just savings.

Get more with Geico.

Thumbtack presents.

Uncertainty strikes.

I was surrounded.

The aisle and the options were closing in.

There were paint rollers, satin and matte finish, angle brushes, and natural bristles.

There were too many choices.

What if I never got my living room painted?

What if I couldn't figure out what type of paint to use?

What if

I just used Thumbtack?

I can hire a top-rated pro in the Bay Area that knows everything about interior paint, easily compare prices, and read reviews.

Thumbtack knows homes.

Download the app today.

Welcome to True Crime Garage.

Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening.

I'm your host, Nick, and with me, as always, is a man who is mentally spicy.

Here is the captain.

My hot sauce flavor would be DeBomb.

It's good to be seen and good to see you.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks for telling a friend.

Today we are drinking Lil Heaven by the hardworking folks at Two Roads Brewing Company.

Little Heaven is a session IPA, meaning it has the typical great boldness of a traditional IPA, but a lower ABV.

Little Heaven is made with three exotic hop varieties, and they added in tastes of passion fruit, grapefruit, and apricot, making for one hell of a good heavenly brew.

ABV, 4.8 percent garage grade three and three quarter bottle caps out of five and let's give some thanks and praise to our good friends for helping us fill up the old garage fridge for this week first up a long distance shear to cat in hungary who was kind enough not to ask us to read the city name because i would struggle mightily my friends and a big wee like to jib goes to andrew from west hartford connecticut next we have a shout out to angela Hudgens in Western Montana.

And a big tall canes in there to Morgan from Albany, New York.

And here we go, Captain.

Here's a cheers to Megan in Glenshaw, Pennsylvania.

And last but certainly not least, we have Kelly from Austin, Texas, who says, see y'all at Crime Con.

That's right, we will be at Crime Con in Denver at the start of September.

If you're still considering going and you want to get tickets, use our code TCG, save yourself a little cash.

And thanks to everybody who contributed to the beer fund.

Yeah, BWWRUN, Beer Run.

Check out TrueCrimeGarage.com while you're there.

Sign up on the mailing list.

And Colonel, that's enough of the BS.

Yes.

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

Let's talk some true crime.

Evan Lache Ross was 11 years old.

Friends and family called her Shea and or Shea Shea.

She was described as a friendly and obedient child.

Several sites and online posters say that Shea was a sweet girl who adored her father and was known as the peacekeeper in the family.

On Tuesday, August 19,

2003,

what would become a stormy morning, Shay Shay set out solo on foot, walking to the morning pickup bus stop.

She never arrived.

Something happened between home and the bus stop, and it seems she was intercepted and removed quickly from the area.

A very small window of just a few minutes remains the time frame in question.

A few minutes that turned into years and then decades of wondering what happened to Heaven Lache Ross.

This is True Crime Garage.

Heaven Lache Ross was born June 11, 1992.

We talked a bit about Shea, her personality, and good nature during the trailer for this week's true crime story.

Known as Shea or Shea Shea to family and friends, she loved bike riding, swimming, basketball, and her favorite restaurant was Red Lobster, and she was a hugger, a big hugger.

I love those Red Lobster rolls.

Mom, her name is Beth Lowry or Beth Thompson.

She remarried at some point, and she says of Shay that she was spoiled in a good way as she was the baby of the family.

One of Shay's teachers, talking about the little girl, wrote,

I had the amazing privilege of knowing your daughter.

She touched my heart with her sweet spirit and hugs.

It always made my day to get a hug from her, end quote.

So for this week's true crime story here, Captain, we are going down to Northport, which is a city in Tuscaloosa County in western central Alabama.

This is located on the Black Warrior River across from downtown Tuscaloosa.

The 2020 census tells us that we have a little over 31,000 people living there.

But more importantly, where our story starts off and our timeline starts off, we have considerably less than that with about 21,000 people.

That's because because we are going to go back way back to 2003, 22 years ago.

In August of 2003, little Shay Shay is living with her mother, Beth Lowery, Kevin Thompson, her stepdad, who she considered to be her dad, both due to their closeness and the long-term nature of Kevin and Beth's relationship.

They had been together for years, and Shay was only 11 at this time.

Also in the home is Shay's older sister, Alex.

Now, some articles refer to her as Jamie.

As I understand it, Jamie is her first name, but back then, 20 years ago, she went by Alex, an abbreviation of her middle name.

They lived at the Willow Brook Trailer Park, which is an all-ages manufactured home community located at 2823 Hunter Creek Road in Northport.

They are lot number 25.

Shay is in the sixth grade attending Collins Riverside Middle School located at 1400 3rd Street in Northport, Alabama.

Let's start our timeline off in the early morning hours of Tuesday, August 19th, 2003.

This was Shay's first few days as a sixth grader at Collins Riverside Middle School.

It would become a stormy morning after she set off for the bus stop down the street from the family's mobile home in Willowbrook Trailer Park.

Starting at 6 a.m.

at the 6 a.m.

hour, the stepdad, Kevin, says that the girls and everyone in the house slept normal and through the night.

As we said, August 19th was a Tuesday, a school day.

So starting between 6 and 6:30, Kevin wakes up the girls.

They each have their own rooms.

The girls start getting ready for school.

Kevin then lays back down in bed with Beth, who is still asleep.

Now, I won't pretend to know the family's typical routines, but what I do know per the family's words, two things.

One, it was not abnormal for Kevin to get the kids up and off to school in the morning.

And two, Beth had been working a lot lately.

This is like several long shifts in a row, many days in a row.

And because of that, on this morning, Kevin agreed to step up to the plate, get the girls up and off for the day.

Yeah, one of the things I was wondering when looking at this case, was the mother working overtime because they were tight on money?

Or was it a situation where she worked at a job that if they told you you had mandatory overtime, that you had to work the overtime?

When you have two kids, you're always tight on money.

So that's probably part of the equation.

But I believe this, she started a new job recently and she had had one or two previous jobs.

I wonder if there was some overlap between starting the new job and still being committed to the old jobs

as you

transition out.

Sometimes you give two weeks' notice if you're responsible, if you care about your resume.

I've even given several months' notice before for people that I've worked.

for very long for and had a great relationship with.

So I think that it's a a matter of she's kind of transitioning into this new position.

I think she took this new job just a couple weeks before our timeline starts.

It might even be as much as a month before.

You can find a bunch of different versions of this morning timeline in old newspaper articles and online.

And I'm not, I don't say this to be overly critical.

of the reporting on this case, but I cannot stand how brief and vague these reports are.

You will often hear me sending out kudos to the different news outlets when they have great coverage.

This case, thankfully, did receive a lot of media attention, something that we can only hope for for every case out there, God forbid.

But I think a more detailed timeline of that morning could have helped to eliminate a lot of the confusion and the misconceptions from the public about this case.

If we can do only one thing here today, Captain, I hope that it is to have us clearing up some of the information and us cleaning up any of the confusion and those misconceptions about this story.

Most of the cases that we cover here, the timeline is absolutely crucial.

That's typical.

It's a no-brainer.

But here,

it is the most important part of this case.

So please listen up and pay attention.

Digging in here, the girls are up and getting ready.

At 6:50 a.m.,

Alex, the older sister, she's 13 years old at this time.

She leaves the house to walk down to the bus stop.

The two girls share the same bus stop and they share this bus stop with several other kids that live in the neighborhood as well.

Right.

Most articles say 6:50 a.m.

I believe that it would be most appropriate to adjust that to 6.50 to 6.55 a.m.

that Alex leaves the home.

And my adjustment will make more sense as we go through the information.

Most reports states that Shay then left the home after Alex with Shay leaving at 6.55 a.m.

I question that timestamp.

The key here is absolutely 100%.

We know that Alex left first, then minutes later, Shay leaves.

That's not in question.

It's just the timestamps that are in question.

On this morning, Captain, Shay is wearing hot pink shorts and shirt, blue shoes, and she's carrying her yellow and gray book bag.

Now, mom says that her book bag, Shay's book bag, contains Shay's math.

and science books and a folder for her schoolwork.

And mom says she knows this because the night before, her and Shay were cleaning out and organizing that book bag.

And the bus stop is roughly 50 yards or so from their house.

That is, every report says 50 yards.

Kevin, the stepdad, later says that that Tuesday morning, Shay was in a cheerful mood.

The last thing that she said before leaving for the day was, quote, I love you, Daddy.

I'll see you in a little while.

Now, as the story is often told, at 6:55 a.m., Shay left home that morning to make that short walk to the bus stop, as the captain pointed out, 50 yards roughly.

Then a storm erupted a few minutes later.

And at 7.01 a.m., Kevin, after hearing the storm roll in, he leaves the trailer.

He went to go pick the girls up from the bus stop because of the weather.

Anybody that was a kid that had a bus stop knows this all too well.

If your bus is supposed to get there at 7 o'clock, it might be 5 minutes early.

It might be 10, 15 minutes late.

So you could be out in that thunderstorm for 10 or 15 minutes waiting for the bus to come.

Yeah, and this is one of those thunderstorms where you can hear it from inside your home, right?

You know that there's trouble abrewing because you can hear it rolling in, just like Kevin said.

And I did a little checking on this trailer park, this neighborhood in particular, and it was prone to flooding.

There were many people that would say that it would flood once or twice a year just because of the landscape, kind of the layout.

So if you get this big storm rolling in, it's double trouble for you if you live in this neighborhood.

So as said, Shay left the house about, let's say about 7 a.m.

And we'll find out that that seems to be more accurate.

Her older sister, Alex, 13, had left earlier.

That's not in question.

The bus bus stop is on Hunter Creek Road in front of their trailer park.

Just after Shay left the house, a large clap of thunder boomed overhead, and Kevin sprung into action.

He decided on the spot to drive Shay and the older sister, Alex, who was already at the bus stop, to school instead.

When Kevin drives up to this bus stop, he finds Alex there,

but discovers that Shay,

for some reason, had not shown up and is nowhere in sight.

Yeah, so my first question was: did Shay even leave the house?

But it seems like we have eyewitnesses that spot her going to the bus stop.

Yes, I struggled with those eyewitnesses for a good deal of time when examining this.

Why was that?

It'd be more clear as we go through.

The point here is: based off of these timelines that are often put out, Shay seemingly vanished during a span of just six minutes.

Now,

that seems like pure insanity.

But keep in mind, when we covered the Amber Hagerman case,

that was reported as what, Captain, eight to nine minutes time that she vanished?

Or the Mara Murray case, that's a very short time period.

The Brian Shaver case, a very short time period.

While it may seem on the surface to be pure insanity and could not be accurate at all, we're here to tell you this is not the first time that we've experienced such a small window of time that is in question.

Yeah, but you know what's extra bonker butts is not just a six-minute time period, but the distance.

It's 50 yards.

That's not that far of a distance.

It's not like, well, my sister left to go to the bus stop and it's a half a mile away.

And

then the dad leaves to go pick them up in his car.

And I'm guessing he headed down the same path that Shay should have went down.

So that's just extra bonkers.

Yeah.

So if you look up the trailer park on a map and where the bus stop is located is on Hunter Creek Road.

So Hunter Creek Road comes in off off of Hunter Creek Road comes in off of McFarlane Boulevard.

And another road there that would be of importance is Watermelon Road.

So going off of memory here, Captain, the

Hunter Creek Road where the bus stop is located runs from McFarlane to Watermelon.

And I believe it continues on.

But the key here is trying to paint a picture for all the listeners out there.

Hunter Creek Road, off of Hunter Creek Road, to go into any of the lots, the parking lots, if you want to call it, for the trailer park, each one of these lots, it's one way in and one way out.

All roads leading to Hunter Creek Road.

So it only stands to reason that Kevin Thompson, unless he hopped in his monster truck and decided to drive over top of several trailers, he went straight down the same path that the girls walked to get to that bus stop.

So that's how the story has been told.

And it is, some may say, very accurate.

I say that it is fairly accurate.

Time and distance is everything in this case.

It's absolutely everything.

Now, back to the story.

Her stepfather, Kevin Thompson, he's 32 back then.

And again, he said he went outside to drive the girls to school because of the oncoming storm.

He says that when he couldn't find Shay, he went inside the house, back home.

He shook Beth awake and said something to the effect of, baby, did Shay come back in the house?

No, the mother says.

Why?

And Kevin says, I can't find her.

Then the three of them, Kevin, Beth, and Alex,

they all drive to the school.

off to Collins Riverside Middle School together.

Once there, Beth says that she runs up to bus number three.

This is Shay's bus.

The driver said she never saw Shay that morning at all.

So Shay's not on the bus.

Driver never saw her.

Mom says, Beth says that as soon as Kevin woke her up, said that he couldn't find Shay,

she just something in her gut told her that something was terribly wrong.

Right.

So there,

mom is in full on panic mode right here.

Mother intuition stepping in saying there's something serious going on here.

She's desperately trying to find her little daughter right out of the gate.

Well, and I think one of the problems too is if you think

that the father,

the stepfather had something to do with this.

or that the mother had something to do with this, you have to remember that the older sister,

even if you take that six-minute six-minute gap and turn it into 10 minutes, that's not a lot of time for the stepfather or the mom to do something and hide the child and basically cover up all your tracks so nobody else in the family is suspicious.

So if you think that one of the parents is involved, you almost have to think that both of the parents are involved and also the sister is involved.

Yeah, so let's throw another wrinkle into all of that as well.

So So once at the school, after they talk to the bus driver,

Beth calls the Northport Police Department.

She reported that there was a problem and that her little girl was missing.

This next part is reported two different ways.

One, police met the parents at the school and then followed them home back to the trailer park.

Two, police told the parents to return home and they will meet them there and did so.

It's hard for us to say going off of simple reporting which is more accurate.

Regardless of which is the true statement, police are back at the home with the parents very quickly.

I actually believe the more logical sequence of events here is that the police tell them, go back home and we will meet you there.

And I say that because of several things.

One, the two most likely places that this 11-year-old girl would be is school or the bus.

The bus is at the school.

She's neither at the school nor the bus.

Bus driver never saw her.

We,

law enforcement, are going to want to go to your home and talk to you there, get the information there and search your home.

Right, because it's a possible crime scene.

Exactly.

So what I would be telling the parents, if I'm the one taking the call or the responding officer, I'm telling them, look, and I think it's like three miles between the distance of the home and the school.

So I would be telling the parents, look, I think you guys should return home because if she, let's say she decided to, you know what, I'm going to fart around.

I'll go play with some kids or I'll go check something out or go exploring, whatever.

And she happens to miss the bus,

she's going to go back home and either enter the home if it's unlocked or if she has a key, or she's going to be sitting on the front porch, hopefully somewhere sheltered out of the rain, waiting for somebody to take her to school or let her into the home.

So naturally, you should go home anyway if you've already covered your bases at the school.

So we will meet you at the home and I want to search their home.

So that seems the most logical

of the two options here.

So with that in mind, the parents return home.

Very quickly, the trailer park will be swarming with law enforcement officers from the North Port Police Department.

What we're told here is that police spoke to various residents at the mobile home park.

They learned, like the captain had said, that a few neighbors had seen Shay that morning walking by herself toward the bus stop.

No one reported seeing her with anyone, nor did anyone report seeing her get into a vehicle.

The other part of this that is very problematic is you have mom and stepdad who are adamant when talking with police that she would not get into a stranger's car willingly.

She wouldn't go with anybody unless she knew them.

They even say she wouldn't get in someone's vehicle unless she knew them very

well.

So police are combing through Shay's room.

This is in the back of the mobile home looking for clues, leads, or anything.

You're also looking for the little girl.

Kids hide, right?

Sometimes there's been several missing kid cases where police show up and they find the kid in a closet hiding in the basement or at a friend's house.

This is all very common stuff.

Unfortunately, none of this was the case here.

And as I understand it, they didn't find any clues or leads as to where

she may have gone or why she was gone to begin with.

When she did not return home, by the time that school was over for the day, now a full-scale investigation was launched.

And some people point at this as a big misstep.

And look,

this is not a perfect investigation.

I'm not going to tell you that.

Very few of them are.

I will tell you that.

But here with this case, what I think that we're looking at is

police are probably, while they are actively working the case, looking for the little girl, there's also a thought by, well, we're not going to call in every resource that we have because if this kid decided to just skip school, it would be natural for her to return by the end of school to her home because, oh, she pulled the wool over mom and dad's eyes and went out and did whatever for the day.

But at some point, she has to be home.

So if she wants to try to sell it to mom and dad that she went to school that day, she's going to return home after school.

She does not.

I really wish that she would have, but she did not.

And then a full-scale full-scale investigation was launched at that time.

We love Simply Safe.

Simply Safe makes me feel protected because they're not just reacting, but they're proactively deterring crime before it starts.

Feeling safe in your home is about security that is proactive, not just reactive.

Most security systems only take action after someone breaks in, but that's too late.

With Simply Safe's new active guard outdoor protection, you get a system that works to prevent that break-in, that violation to your space from ever happening in the first place.

AI-powered cameras plus live monitoring agents deter suspicious activity around your property.

If someone's lurking, agents talk to them in real time, turn on spotlights, and they can call police, proactively deterring crime before it starts.

This is why we love Simply Safe.

Simply Safe is easy to use, it's easy to set up, but more importantly, so many other home security companies only help you once a crime happens.

What's better than that?

Proactively deterring crime before it starts.

This is why I use Simply Safe to protect my home, to protect the garage studios.

And you deserve the same great protection too.

You deserve Simply Safe.

Your family deserves the protection of Simply Safe.

Visit simplysafe.com slash garage to claim 50% off a new system with a professional monitoring plan and get your first month free.

That's simply safe.com slash garage.

There is no safe like SimplySafe.

The first few weeks of school are in the books.

Now it's time to keep that momentum going.

IXL helps kids stay confident and ahead of the curve.

IXL is an award-winning online learning platform that helps kids truly understand what they're learning, whether they're brushing up on math or diving into social studies.

It covers math, language arts, science, and social studies from pre-K all the way through 12th grade with content that's engaging, personalized, and yes, actually fun.

And in case you didn't know, IXL is used in 96 of the top 100 school districts in the the U.S.

It's the start of school.

This is when you learn if your kid is struggling with a specific topic.

And if so, IXL is the way to catch up.

It's the way to give them a leg up and to keep up.

Or if you want to get ahead, it's great too.

Studying for test, they have features on there that families are finding especially helpful.

I think you are going to like and enjoy, and your kid is going to like and enjoy and learn with IXL.

Make an impact on your child's learning.

Get IXL Now and True Crime Garage listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at ixl.com slash garage.

Visit ixl.com slash garage to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Where do you go in order to solve your life's problems?

Do you call your best friend?

Do you have a group chat?

Are you standing in line to get coffee over sharing with strangers?

Well, let me tell you, don't do that.

There's a difference between that and actually talking to a therapist.

That's where BetterHelp comes in with clinically trained and licensed therapists.

They've been around for over a decade, helped millions, and out of 1.7 million client reviews, they got a 4.9 rating.

BetterHelp does the initial initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals a short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences and if you aren't happy with your match switch to a different therapist at any time it's fully online and you can pause your subscription whenever you need to with over 30 000 therapists better help is the world's largest online therapy platform having served over 5 million people globally As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of experience.

Find the one with BetterHelp.

Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash garage.

That's better,

H-E-L-P.com slash garage.

This show is proudly sponsored by BetterHelp.

Check out betterhelp.com slash garage today.

While you're buying new school supplies and trying to plan a new schedule this season, the last thing you want to factor in is a giant wireless bill.

But with Mint Mobile, you can get the coverage and speed you're used to for way less money.

For a limited time, Mint Mobile is offering three months of unlimited premium wireless service for $15 a month.

That's right, $15 a month for really great premium wireless service.

I love Mint Mobile.

Why?

Because it's the same great service that I get with other providers that shall not be named at a fraction of the price.

So, great service, save money.

That's Mint Mobile.

Get this new customer offer and your three-month unlimited wireless plan for just $15 a month at mintmobile.com/slash TCG.

That's mintmobile.com/slash TCG.

Upfront payment of $45 required, equivalent to $15 a month.

Limited time new customer offer for the first three months only.

Speeds may slow above 35 gigabytes on unlimited plan.

Taxes and fees extra.

See Mint Mobile for details.

All right, we are back.

Cheers, mates.

Talk hands in the air.

Cheers to you, Colonel.

Cheers to you and cheers to everybody out there.

Cheers to the folks that are going to CrimeCon this year.

It is inching its way here, and I'm very much looking forward to it and to seeing everybody.

Heaven Lache Ross, at the time of her disappearance, was four feet six inches tall, weighing approximately 100 pounds, brown eyes, red hair.

She was wearing a hot pink shirt with brats.

Some people may remember the brats brand.

So the brats were on the front of this shirt.

She's also wearing hot pink shorts and a light blue canvas shoes and carrying a book bag.

At first, Northport police were treating Shay's disappearance as a missing persons case rather than an abduction.

The department also decided against issuing an Amber alert as Shay's disappearance did not meet the criteria for an Amber alert to be issued at the time.

Very quickly, authorities from both local police agencies were involved.

To recap, on August 19, 2003, Heaven Lache Ross, an 11-year-old girl, disappears from the Willowbrook Trailer Park in Northport, Alabama, while on her way to the school bus stop.

Later that day, a large-scale search effort is launched by police, but it is initially yields few leads, if any.

They were going door to door, a little knock and talk action here.

Near the bus stop, there was a business within view of the bus stop.

This is Steve's Grill and Billiards.

So police naturally go there.

They collected all the video from Steve's hoping maybe to pick up something from one of the outdoor cameras, but ultimately found nothing related to Shay.

That was Tuesday.

By Thursday the 21st, now we have some roadblocks set up in the area.

We're stopping drivers, we're asking questions, showing pictures of the little girl, hopefully searching cars.

The local businesses jumped in in a big way, in a very big way here, Captain.

The Winn-Dixie donated yellow ribbons.

you know, the return home ribbons that teams of searchers pinned to their shirts.

We had all kinds of volunteers show up to help search for Shay.

Well, this was a huge case in that town.

This is a pivotal moment.

Buddy's Food Mart immediately offered a $5,000 reward.

The Olive Garden, the local Olive Garden, sent food for the volunteers, for the searchers, for the families, even for the media people that were starting to gather.

Kmart sent snacks.

Kinkos

and Office Max and Quick copy.

They ran off tens of thousands of missing flyers.

And as said, several agencies, including the Northport and Tuscaloosa police departments, were involved.

After a couple of days, we get the FBI involved.

We also get the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Department joined forces in the search efforts for Shea.

Ultimately, None of this, all of this work led to finding the little girl.

They never found found her.

And in fact, they didn't really find any trace of where she had gone or any explanation as to

thoughts of where she might be, even speculation.

There was a command center that was set up at the Northport Police Headquarters.

I think they called it Heaven's Team,

something with her first name,

which was very smart.

Members of the local and the Birmingham and the national media were involved with some even camping out with family and friends under tents at the trailer park, waiting for any kind of update.

I can't remember what company, what box store it was that donated these tents so that people could, they would have a place to set up shop, so to speak, at the trailer park, but be shielded from the August heat and sun a little bit standing out there working together, trying to formulate a plan as to where to search and who to call, and all of these things that you're doing out of desperation in these frantic moments.

Do you know if they ever called in scent dogs?

I would hope that they did.

Because I didn't see any report of that.

There was, you're correct.

I didn't see any report of that either.

We also have that thunderstorm that rolled in very quickly.

The scent dog thing is a little difficult here, and I'm basing that off of what I think happened in this case.

How much fruit would that have beared?

I don't know.

I don't know.

It would have, not saying that you don't go to the effort.

You always go to every effort in the investigation, but I don't know how much it would have panned out as far as leads go.

And again, I'm simply basing that off of what I believe happened here.

And I could be completely wrong.

Even with what I think happened here,

it could have told you everything.

Talking about leads, you have the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office.

The division chief, Lloyd Baker, goes on record very quickly saying, we checked out every lead.

You never know if someone is giving you a good lead under a guise because they don't want to incriminate themselves or someone else.

What he's referring to here, Captain, is there were a lot of these reported possible sightings of Heaven Lache Ross that were phoned into police.

There were a lot of tips that were being called in.

Many of them were very strange and bizarre.

I don't even care to go down the road to tell you some of the weirdness that I encountered when going through some of these tips that were phoned in, but that's what he's referring to.

He's like, he's like, even if it's something crazy, we check out the lead

because we want to know, of course, your number one goal is to find the kid.

Goal number two, when anybody's phoning in leads, is I want to know why that person is calling.

Did they just simply, are they trying trying to be helpful and they may have seen something that could be helpful to the investigation?

Or are they connected to the missing person's case in some shape or fashion?

Right.

Now, let's jump ahead just a couple of weeks.

So let's get into September of 2003.

We get a couple of potentially positive things that happen for our investigation.

The story is covered on America's Most Wanted.

The FBI had a member of the behavioral science unit sent to Northport working on the case.

But we also have some other situations play out in September as well that are not so good for our investigation.

Actually, I would say three important things that take place.

This is from AL.com, and it reads, the relationship between the family and volunteers disintegrated as the case dragged on without a resolution.

They say Lowry, but we'll use her first name to keep things simple.

Beth accused the head of the volunteer group of stealing $500 donated by a church, and police were called to the volunteer center to resolve a shouting match that erupted between family members of Shays and the volunteers.

Another thing that happened here is

there was a fire, a house fire that started in Shay's room a month after she disappears.

The fire starts in her room, and the report is that it destroyed furniture and most of Shay's belongings.

Which some people speculate online that maybe this fire was started on purpose to get rid of evidence.

It could be a complete accident, coincidence.

I think that it was as you said, or as people online are saying, that it

likely was started to destroy potential evidence

or to cause confusion and chaos within the investigation.

And if that's what someone's goal was, well, they were successful because all around the same time, what do we have here?

We have family fighting with volunteers, a strange fire that starts in Shay's room, destroys a bunch of the belongings and the things that were in Shay's bedroom.

One would think that if you are going to find a connection to what happened to this girl, you might be able to find some kind of clue in her room.

And you also have members of law enforcement, you have volunteers, and members of the general public that are openly speculating out loud

that,

you know what, as this thing drags on, we're really starting to think that Shay's parents know a lot more than what they are telling us.

Maybe Kevin's to blame.

Maybe Kevin and Beth are to blame.

Maybe something was going on inside that house that we should know about, but we don't know about.

And so, this really, to me, throws a big wrench in the whole investigation for a multitude of reasons.

But what it also does is many of the volunteers are going to withdraw their support, right?

They're no longer going to volunteer their time.

People are going to stop volunteering and donating their money.

Things are going to really start to fall apart at the ground level, at least for the family in this investigation.

And we're sitting here just at most six weeks after the little kid disappears.

Were they able to figure out if it was arson or was it an accidental fire?

So I'll jump ahead here because the fire took place September 26th, 2003.

I don't have it in my notes here, Captain, but going off of memory, I believe that the fire was phoned in at about two in the morning.

So they show up.

Responders show up.

They put out the fire.

They figure out that the fire started in the missing girl's bedroom.

So let's jump forward here to early in the next year of 2004.

this is when it was announced to the public that the fire was ruled suspicious

i think what happens here i don't love this i think this circles back to what we were talking about prior where some of local law enforcement were really starting to believe that you know what these parents

they likely know more than what they're letting on maybe one of them's responsible Maybe one of them knows who did this.

I don't like this because I think that what the general public

natural reaction to this: oh, the authorities ruled this fire suspicious.

These parents, this stepdad,

don't like them.

Don't like them.

They're up to no good.

I'm on to you now.

Yeah, I'm the stepdad.

Could I be any more suspicious?

The problem with that is it's such a generic sentence.

So let's take it apart and analyze it for what it is.

The fire was ruled suspicious.

It's not ruled an arson, right?

It wasn't, they're not coming out and saying this is absolutely not an accident and we can scientifically prove it.

They're saying the fire is suspicious.

I think that was to maybe turn up the heat, no pun intended, on the family, probably the stepdad.

But Even if that's your intention, your generic statement is still true that it could mean something entirely different.

The fire was suspicious means it, we, that to me tells me that you're, you're dancing around the idea that it was arson.

Right.

You're leaving the door open as to who could have set the fire.

Just because a fire is suspicious doesn't mean that it was set by a family member.

It could have been set by anybody.

Yeah.

And just because somebody wants to destroy potential evidence or physical evidence that may be used at a later time doesn't necessarily have to mean that it came came from one of the parents or somebody inside the home.

So while the statement I believe is true, I think that most of the herd of the public very quickly turned an eye to one of one or both of the parents when really you should you should be looking at anybody who had the means of setting that fire.

I think the other problem with this case, short time period, short distance.

So you start leaning towards this idea that maybe maybe it's somebody in the family but because of the neighborhood and that it's a trailer park it's a condensed congested area and so it's possible that somebody could have grabbed her really quick and took her into the into the trailer and there are some eyewitnesses that claim that they saw her i don't know how legitimate these eyewitnesses are because i think a lot of times when you have kids in the neighborhood if you don't know the kid personally, you're like, all these kids look the same.

The thing here is that I want to circle back to, Captain, is

right around the same time.

Okay, we got the fire going on.

We talked about some of the arguments and the falling out between the volunteers and the family.

And I praise them for this because they are on the edge and they don't deny, like, they don't claim to be above any of this.

Beth and Alex, I would think this would carry over to Kevin, too, but I couldn't see any direct statements from him.

I do know there are two articles that I could not find that were cited in other articles where he seems to be

being directly interviewed, which I would have loved to have reviewed those, but they say that

the internet never forgets.

Well, they managed to forget at least one of these articles.

But I know for a fact by reading the words and hearing the words, Beth and Alex, mom and daughter, duo, separately and together were both very open about their family and about what was going on in the community after Shay went missing.

Beth said at the time that the scrutiny of her family was likely because she and Kevin Thompson were an interracial couple and because they lived in a trailer park.

Alex, God bless her, says that kids were very mean to her her after her sister went missing.

I also think that she

probably struggled with the idea that her sister went missing and may have been abducted between their home and the bus stop.

I mean,

what are you going to do?

You stand out there and wait for the bus every day after your sibling goes, potentially got abducted?

Not me.

No.

So

she's starting to have problems with kids picking on her, teasing her, and probably telling her, like, hey, your stepdad's a killer.

Hey, your mom's a bee, all this.

I guarantee you, she heard every bit of it.

And so

Beth, God bless her, she goes and gets a certificate so that she can homeschool Alex.

Okay.

Now, if you think that they're closing doors, that they are banding together, you could look at it that way, that the family's closing off everybody outside of the family.

And they definitely have something to hide.

But I think, Captain, it was even as early as November of 2003.

Alex is now, from my understanding, being homeschooled.

That fire was in September, late September of 2003.

So even before it was publicly announced that the authorities believed that the fire was, air quotes, suspicious.

We're going to jump ahead quite a bit here.

We're going to go to August.

of 2006.

So this would be just before, just days before the

three-year anniversary.

heaven

Lachey Ross is still missing at this time.

The police come out and they're talking with the papers and they say that heaven Lachey Ross's disappearance may be linked to two other abductions from trailer parks.

And I hate this.

I hate this because the summary of all of these reports are like two other abductions from trailer parks in the same area.

These are not the same area.

I would not, I don't know who, who came up with that general term other than they probably listed it this way so somebody would read the article.

It goes on to say that, which occurred two years apart and within one week of August.

Information adds that

the girls look the same, right?

So

there is a bunch of similarities.

I'm not going to argue that, right?

Trailer parks,

the girls that were listed here were about all the same age.

Some have said that they look very similar.

But I also find that this to be a very odd point in our timeline here, Captain, because

some of these connections were made right from Jump Street.

So one was this.

This is from an August 2003 article from

three years prior, right when Shay was missing, just for about a week.

And it reads a possible link between Shay's case and that of a Nashville girl who'd been missing since April 29th.

Her name was Tabitha Tudor.

She was 13 years old.

She also disappeared on her way to the school bus, to the bus stop.

So you can see the similarities there.

However, she lived in Nashville.

She lived in a different state, hundreds of miles away.

Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Should we go through any of these cases or should we, and I'm asking you, your opinion,

should we go through any of these cases, even just kind of on the surface level here, or go right to what happens next in our timeline?

Let's go to the next stop on our timeline.

We can circle back, okay?

Because this is December 19th, 2006.

This is when Heaven Lache Ross's skeletal remains were found in an abandoned house located in Holt, Alabama.

So this is approximately eight miles from her home.

The story's told, no, the story's told several different ways that a man was out collecting cans.

He was out walking his dog.

What is not in question is a dog was present, so he could have been doing both.

So in mid-December of 2006, three years and about three months from the day that she disappeared,

her remains are found.

This man is walking in the area of on a dirt road off of 44th Court near Holt,

Alabama, when his dog runs into the house's crawl space.

The man follows his dog and then notices inside this crawl space, there's a bright pink shirt.

Some articles say that he saw the brat's doll logo and a backpack.

What all the articles state is that he could see, visibly see human skeletal remains.

So he calls the police.

Police arrive on the scene.

And this is really one of the detectives.

He said, as soon as he stuck his head into the crawl space, he knew even before they went and did the scientific positive identification, he knew that it was Shay because he says, I saw that backpack.

He goes, I've been looking for that backpack for three years.

He goes,

believe me,

I know what that backpack looked like.

It was tattooed on my brain.

They find the little girl in this crawl space.

She's wearing the same clothing that Shay was wearing when she left her house on that morning of her disappearance.

And as we said, they found the backpack as well.

Every article with this case and with the other cases, okay, the other cases, some reference two cases.

I've found enough information out there that

when talking about Shay's case, they've mentioned up to four other child cases.

Okay.

Now, to be

fair to the authors that penned those articles or typed them up online.

All these cases are still unsolved.

And as we've always said, they're unsolved for a reason.

We don't know everything.

We clearly don't know everything in all these cases.

And in one of the cases, at least one of the cases, the remains have never been found.

So there's a whole lot of mystery.

So I think that you can say grain of salt, there's a chance that they're connected.

I think it's highly unlikely that all of them are connected.

I actually think it's highly unlikely in my humble, agriculture my humble garage opinion that any of them are connected at all.

One thing that I don't like is we are told what is found at the scene, general description.

We're not told what was missing from the scene.

I

believe there's a high probability that there was something, some piece of a personal item.

That was with her when she left for school that day or woke up that morning, whatever.

I think that there was something that's missing from that scene police aren't going to tell us that what they're also not going to tell us is the exact cause of death

they did

rule the death a homicide

so it went from a missing person's case to a homicide investigation and i'm not trying to muck up anybody's investigation here captain but i also think that as where some people were giving the police kudos for not releasing the the cause of death, the exact cause of death.

Look, they deserve it for that.

You have to have some holdback information.

We know that.

But we've also been doing this long enough that I can tell you,

if she lay there for three years,

they may not know themselves.

Also, the difficult thing is because she wasn't sitting at this bus stop for a while with her sister.

She was running late.

How much time did she spend with her stepfather in that morning?

Obviously, her mom was asleep, laying down.

Back to your point of was there something missing, they might not be able to state every item that she left the house with.

Correct.

Correct.

There's, and I don't want to go down too far down this road because she's a child.

There's a couple of items that I think we can all assume she would have left the house with.

And if those items weren't found at the scene, that would be of particular interest to me, especially when I'm trying to

figure out the suspects here.

Now,

this house, as we said, where she was eventually found, is an abandoned house.

The other thing that is, it's reported two different ways that either they couldn't conclude if she was killed where she was found or they didn't know.

One of the other items here, Captain, is it sounds like they are saying, openly saying, they being the authorities, that they were unable to determine if she was killed where she was found or if had she been killed elsewhere and then placed there at another

time.

As we said, this home was abandoned.

It's run down as all get out.

There's broken glass, there's trash, there are stained carpets.

The part of the, it's a shame too, because the pictures I saw, it looks like at one time it was a nice home, but the front porch had kind of collapsed in, and they were saying it was even dangerous to walk on some of the flooring inside of the home when they're in there trying to collect items and debris.

So a rough place to find, but this was also, it's been reported that this was kind of a known area for transients, for homeless, for drug activity, maybe even criminal activity.

So if she was there the entire three years

or any extended period of time, which I think just based off of the general descriptions, we have to believe that she was there for an extended period of time.

If it was, in fact, being frequented by people, I have a hard time believing that nobody else ever saw the bright pink outfit that came along with this finding.

I agree.

I do want to point something out here, too.

Several news articles go way out of their way to report, and I think this is just good reporting.

I'm not being critical.

In fact, this comes from a woman named Stephanie Taylor for the Tuscaloosa News.

She reports: hey, by the way, Shay's mother and stepfather at one time lived in Holt, Alabama.

Also, not completely crazy, it's eight miles away.

It's not crazy to think that at some point they didn't live in this general area.

She does also point out, though, that it has been told to her.

I don't know if this is coming from police or if this is coming from the family, but the reporter states that both Shay's mother and stepfather took polygraph examinations, police administered polygraph tests, and that they passed them as well.

Talking about accidental fires, suspicious fires, whatever, the house where she was found eventually was destroyed because of a fire.

And I think that one may have been ruled an accident.

Very strange, though, right?

Very strange.

She goes missing.

Some point her room catches on fire.

Then three years and three months later, she's found at this location.

And then that location is burned as well.

Seems like it's too much of a coincidence.

Let's get back to these eyewitnesses because, dude, I'm not going to lie.

I struggled mightily with this case for three days.

And I'm talking migraine headache for three days because.

Usually when we review a case and we spend enough time on it, I can't usually tell you who's responsible, but I usually walk away.

And I'm not saying I'm right.

I want to be clear here because I think people get crazy with thinking that I'm some kind of know-it-all.

I'm not saying I'm right.

What I'm saying is that when we review a case for long enough, I can usually walk away feeling confident that I have a general understanding of what happened.

Here, I had that migraine headache because I had, I sat there and go, this doesn't make sense.

There's something missing.

And I've bumped up against this a few times during our garage experience.

And anytime there's something missing, there's one of two, I'm usually left with one of two conclusions.

Either A,

somebody

that is crucial to the timeline and to a relationship with the victim is lying.

And that's what's mucking everything up.

Or

there's such big gaps and holes in the information that's been reported or even that made its way to police that it's hard to kind of tie everything up and make it nice and neat to have a conclusion or a general understanding of what probably happened.

So I'm going to give a big kudos here.

We'll get into these eyewitnesses because I questioned deeply the eyewitnesses.

I had a problem with the eyewitnesses, and you touched on this a bit earlier.

here today.

We had three people

that were potential eyewitnesses, right?

One is a person that's sitting by a window.

I think they had like a computer or TV by their window so that it's natural things catch your eye.

That person said, told police, yeah, I saw Shay walk by this morning.

Looked like she was heading in the direction of the bus stop.

One person

tells police, yeah, I saw Shay.

this morning and even described the outfit that she was wearing.

So this sounds like a very legit eyewitness account.

Where I had problems with these eyewitness accounts was this was the second week of school.

And remember what we had said earlier: that the police, yeah, they're working the case, they're looking for the little girl, but they don't seem to really step it up until after the school day is over.

The older I get, the more I sympathize with this and the more I understand it to be true.

If you ask me at seven o'clock tonight, if I saw some little kid in a pink shirt walk past my front window at any time today,

I am not immune to confusing it with seeing that same little girl in a pink shirt walking by my front window two days ago, three days ago.

Yeah.

But I think that's most people.

Yes.

And I think the older we get,

to me, that's been my experience.

The older I get,

the softer the brain is getting, my friend.

Squishy.

It's so squishy at this point.

The more

squishy, squishy.

But here's the reason why I kind of questioned that for a while is

one thing is,

what if this was her favorite outfit?

It's not crazy to believe that maybe she wore it on that Friday morning to school and then wore it again on Tuesday morning.

Right.

You know how kids are.

There are some kids that you're like, man, that kid is always wearing the same shirt.

And so you think like maybe their parents are lazy.

They don't do laundry.

Maybe they can't afford a bunch of clothes.

And no, you, you, once you get to know the kid a little more, you figure out very quickly, that's his favorite shirt.

And you have to fight him every day so that he doesn't wear that shirt every minute of every day.

So that's why I question that.

And I just felt like...

I think it was an interesting thought.

I think that I just felt like there's something missing.

And so back to the 50 yards, right?

I went out, marked 50 yards, and walked it three times.

And I get it.

I'm six foot one.

I'm a grown man.

Maybe I'm moving a little faster than Shay would have moved in her 11-year-old body.

I walked it three times.

And on all three occasions, my time with the stopwatch ranged from 38 and a half seconds to less than 44 seconds.

And the reason why that was so important to me is we talk about the timeline, but it's also the distance.

Timing is more important than the timeline.

Distance is more important than the timeline because every article, every regurgitation of this story has always been: it was six minutes between the time she left the trailer and the time that dad went outside and couldn't find her.

So she disappeared within six minutes, or Dad did something to her, and

now we've been looking at an abduction case all these years, and it's not an abduction.

I say no.

It's not the six minutes that are in question.

And we'll go back to that.

We'll go back to that timeline because that timeline's off.

It's askew.

It's the 38 and a half seconds to 44 seconds that it takes to walk from the trailer to the bus stop because it's a straight shot.

Guess what didn't happen?

Sister doesn't see Shay walking to the bus stop.

Sister doesn't see Shay arrive at the bus stop.

We have these other eyewitnesses, but the sister, who is a distance of 50 yards from the trailer, doesn't see sister.

And if we're to believe the dad's story, he goes out of the trailer and between his route of the trailer to the bus stop, he doesn't see Shay as well.

So it's really just those 44 and a half seconds.

And so this migraine headache of mine was only relieved by a gentleman that we've met a few times.

His name, Derek Lavasser, from Detective Perspective.

He had the opportunity.

We've met him at CrimeCon a few times.

Great guy, smart guy.

He had the opportunity to speak with Alex and Beth.

They filled in a lot of the blanks here.

Because I got to tell you, Captain, where my suspicions were

was that

Kevin

did something in the middle of the night and got rid of

the evidence in the body

before the bus stop story even starts.

Right.

And that's why I saying, like,

did the sister actually see the other sister in the morning?

We know that she did.

So, because where I was with this for a while was that the timing was so short, right?

Remember, police meet them back at the mobile home, meet them at their trailer shortly after they call it in.

And so there's no time to get rid of

the body

if something happened after she left that morning to walk down to the bus stop.

And thank God Derek spoke with Alex and Beth.

And this should clear up.

I think that people have looked at Kevin and Beth the wrong way all of these years.

And that's why I was critical at the top of the show, saying that I think that if had this been reported differently, differently,

had the reporting not been so brief, not been so vague, that these poor people wouldn't have had to deal with people looking at them with a suspicious eye for all of these years.

Because Alex says this of that morning, we got up, our dad woke us up, and I was helping Shay get ready that morning.

And she does say, yes, I left the house before Shay, but that was common.

I would typically, she's a couple years older.

She would usually leave a little bit earlier.

The other information that she filled in was fantastic because she says, look, my sister, while she was not interested in boys at the very least, but she had friends.

She was outgoing.

And she would typically, her and a boy would typically walk down to the bus stop together.

And she would pass that kid's trailer on the way to her bus stop.

So most mornings, they would pair up and walk down to the bus stop.

They kind of hung out.

She says on that morning, yes, I left early, as usual, walked down to the bus stop.

No, I never saw my sister after that, but she absolutely woke up that morning and absolutely was getting ready for school because, and she remembers something very specific.

She asked me to borrow some colored pencils, so I gave them to her.

Furthermore, look, so one thing I learned prior to Derek's information was that unfortunately, the parents have divorced.

They actually separated about 10 years after

Shay went missing, seven years or so after her body was found.

But you know that.

It's very common when a couple loses a child.

Even if it's an accident.

It's very common for the parents to split up.

Very difficult to stick together afterwards.

It's

a medical issue.

Well, and the thing, too, is The relationship wasn't Disney World

prior to Shay going missing.

And that's what I give Beth a world of credit for.

She says, Look, I get it.

We lived in a trailer park.

We're an interracial couple.

We got in arguments a couple of times where police showed up.

She goes, But we're not bad people.

He's not a bad guy.

These kids love this dude.

And Alex says, many years later, she's like, the guy wasn't perfect, but he was a great dad, filled the role of father wonderfully.

He never did anything weird to the kids.

Anyway, to further fill out the timeline, Beth too says that she saw Shay that morning.

She says, while I was laying in bed, half asleep, whatever, she says, I specifically remember, remember how good this little kid was?

What a sweet little soul she was.

She popped her head into the bedroom to say goodbye to her mom or say good morning to her mom, something to that effect that morning.

And Beth says, I looked over at her, said something nice to her, and I happened to look at the the clock before I laid my head back on the pillow and fell back asleep.

She says, it was 7.03.

She goes, I last saw my daughter at 7.03 that morning.

So that's why I moved that marker of 650 to 650 to 655, because the story always said that Shay left the home at 6.55, and then it was at 7.01 that dad realized that she was missing.

No, that can't be.

She left the home shortly after 7, and then a few minutes after that, Kevin realized that she was missing.

Those statements by both Alex and Beth to me tells me that that eyewitness statement of seeing that little girl walking in her pink shirt that morning is accurate.

And so then what we are left with here, Captain, is

this.

If you can figure out how in the hell somebody got her out of that trailer park, you can really start to hone in on who is responsible.

Dude, there's one way in.

There's one way out.

There's a, there's, even with her little legs, there's a 50 second walk from trailer to bus stop.

50 seconds, somebody took her.

And guess what?

I don't think I'm going back, circling back to what parents said.

They were adamant.

She would not get into somebody's car that she didn't know.

And I don't think she got into anybody's car at all.

I don't think that she got into anybody's car at all.

Because had somebody snatched her in a vehicle between the trailer and between the bus stop, I think it puts a high probability probability that somebody sees her in a car leaving that area even though you could get to two pretty well-traveled thoroughfares rather quickly that um mcfarland boulevard is also state route six and interstate 82.

so i mean you could you could get out of dodge real quick but but there's no reason for us to think that the killer got out of dodge The body's found eight miles away.

She did not walk to the bus stop with her little friend that morning.

Many questions.

One, if she was abducted, was she abducted by somebody in a car or was she abducted in the sense of somebody took her back to their trailer?

And the other question would be, was it common for her to

was it common for her to walk with different individuals?

And is it possibility before going to the bus stop, she stopped at one of these individuals' houses.

If she had people that she walked to the bus stop with, did we question their parents?

Did we question their step parents?

And then also

with this time passing and with really lack of information, where does this investigation go?

I'll tell you where it goes.

Again, I think that the probability of her being spotted in a vehicle would be extremely high.

If somebody was trying to tear out of there with a little girl in their car, I just don't think that happened.

If you look at this on a map, there is no way that you don't encounter people seeing you try to pull her into a vehicle or her being spotted through one of the windows of your vehicle as you're driving out past the kids at the bus stop.

It just, it cannot happen.

Again, unless you have a monster truck and you tear over top of a bunch of trailers, it ain't happening.

And what we do know based off of those eyewitness accounts is two things.

These folks lived on lot number 25.

So she would walk out of their trailer on lot 25, make her straight shot all the way down to walk down to Hunter Creek Road, where the bus would pick her up at the bus stop that she shared with a bunch of other kids.

The eyewitness that spots her in the pink shirt that morning, one of these eyewitnesses, lives in a trailer on lot 18.

The boy that she would walk, that meet up with and walk the rest of the way to the bus stop, lived in a trailer on lot 10.

He and his family says she didn't show up that morning, so he walked alone.

Somebody that lives between lot 18 and lot 10 took that girl.

I think they convinced her to go into their trailer and something happened inside that trailer.

I think it was somebody that she knew from the neighborhood or somebody that maybe even knew her family fairly well.

And she was tricked and trusted and went into that trailer.

And I think she was probably moved to that abandoned home fairly quickly, probably that Wednesday, maybe

by the weekend.

I think she was there for a long time.

I think there were several people that probably saw her there and didn't know exactly what they were seeing, or they were too drugged out to know or to give a shit.

And as far as I know we're getting kind of in the thick of it here, and I did want to touch on some of these other cases real quick.

One of the other cases that has been mentioned in the same coverage as Shay's case is Shannon Nicole Polk.

She was 11 as well.

She was snatched from her Candlestick Park neighborhood in Prattville.

Out of all the cases that are listed and talked about with Heaven Lache Ross's case, you also have Teresa Melissa Dean

of Georgia, near Macon, Georgia, actually.

You also have the case of another girl who went missing from a bus stop, Maria Salis.

But she was 16 and that case took place in in Houston.

One interesting part here, though, is she was catching a bus

in March of 2003, so it's the same year.

Her remains were found months later.

She wasn't identified until February of 2005.

If you want to try to link that case to anything, I would be looking at the Texas Killing Fields cases, who multiple perpetrators, but that one could be tied to that.

If you want to look at it, tied to any other case.

Shannon Palk's case.

We covered Shannon Palk's case pretty extensively in a single episode, and we did that in episode 780, August of 2024.

So a little less than a year

ago.

If you,

before you start to go down the rabbit hole of these cases being connected, I would say go listen to that episode because we point out several good suspects that lived in Shannon Palk's trailer park

back in 2001 in Prattville, Alabama, 2001.

And as far as proximity goes, that's the closest case

to Heaven Lache Ross's case.

And unless you can tell me and prove to me that one of those suspects that we mentioned or somebody that was living in that trailer park in 2001 also lived in Shea's trailer park in 2003.

They're not connected.

Somebody in

one of those trailer parks, respectively, for each victim, pulled or snatched up the girl or tricked her into their trailer.

Absolutely convinced of it.

And while I cannot tell you who is responsible, look at suspect types, right?

I don't want to go down this whole, I don't want to do a whole profiling thing here, but I would look to similar types as to that of Joseph Condro, who we talked about with John Douglas.

and a serial killer that we never mentioned.

Well, I shouldn't say never mentioned.

I'm sure we mentioned him, but we've never covered him.

And his name is David Elliott Penton.

He killed girls in Ohio and in Texas.

And while I don't think he had anything to do with this particular case, in fact,

he would have been locked up years prior.

It's those types of killers that you're looking for.

Somebody that knew the girls, knew the girls' families.

And I think the exact same thing happened here in this case.

I really think that someone that lived between lots 10 and 18 convinced this little girl to go into their trailer and

probably had been planning this.

And I'm not trying to do any survivor's guilt here, but she may have been one of two targets.

She may have been one of many targets that lived in the neighborhood, but she also, her and her older sister both could have been a target, especially if they were walking alone.

on these mornings.

I agree.

It's a very sad case.

And I hate, I sit here and I'm, while I think that we have a better understanding of what may have happened, while

I feel some relief that we don't have to keep pointing a finger at Kevin or Beth, I hope whatever happened to this poor little girl, that it was quick.

It's, it's such a sad, sad story and such a sad, sad case.

And I just, her mom has been through hell.

And I won't get into the events of her life since, but I can tell you, she's been through hell.

And I hope she gets some relief, some form of healing.

And again, that can only come if we can figure out who is responsible for this.

If I were detectives, I would be looking at somebody that lived between lots 18 and 10 back in 2003

in

that trailer park.

Those of you, anybody out there with any information at all, or information on people that lived in that area at the time regarding Heaven Lache Ross's case, are urged to call the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit, or you can call the local Crime Stoppers at 205-752-7867.

That's 205-752-STOP.

I want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage.

Make sure you subscribe, tell your mother, tell your brother, and check out Off the Record.

A bunch of interesting episodes have been released in the last three months.

And if you're not listening, you're missing out.

Don't forget about the Shannon Polk episode.

That is True Crime Garage episode 780 from August of last year.

And until next week.

Be good, be kind, and don't worry.