Zachariah Juwaun Shorty ////// 847

TV's number one drama, High Potential, returns with star Caitlin Olson as the crime-solving single mom with an IQ of 160.

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

let's talk some true crime.

While every murder represents a tragic, personal, and familial loss, the case we are covering today is sadly just one among many, far, far too many.

The statistics on the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous relatives in the United States reveal a substantial and distressing issue, not limited to a specific region or area, but rather the entire country.

Before we dive into the case, let's examine the numbers.

In the United States, American Indian and Alaskan Native populations experience much higher death rates for assault, homicide, and intentional self-harm and suicide compared to other Americans.

And Indigenous women in particular face disproportionately high rates of violence.

More than 84% will experience violence in their lifetime.

meaning they have a better chance of being a victim of sexual or domestic violence than they would of attending college.

These statistics emphasize an urgent need for continued efforts to address and prevent violence against Indigenous communities.

However, it is crucial to first closely examine the underlying causes of these widespread failures.

First and foremost, a complex and jurisdictional landscape.

Depending on location, and other specifics, crimes involving Native Americans can fall under multiple jurisdictions, federal, state, or tribal.

However, it isn't always clear which agency is in charge, and this complexity often leads to confusion and delays in investigations.

Anyone who follows true crime understands that a lack of coordination and poor communication leads to cases going neglected, unworked, and cold.

Moreover, tribal law enforcement frequently faces challenges stemming from a lack of resources, including inadequate funding, limited staffing, and restricted access to technology.

Finally, there are also legal barriers to contend with, including laws restricting the ability of tribes to prosecute non-native offenders who commit crimes on tribal lands.

When 23-year-old New Mexico resident Zachariah Jawan Shorty was found murdered on Navajo Nation land in 2020, his mother, Evangeline Randall Shorty, would embark on a mission to hold accountable those responsible for his death.

Along the way, she would find herself becoming a powerful advocate for a larger movement.

She became a spokesperson for the loved ones of missing and murdered indigenous relatives across the country.

One woman's quest to attain justice for her son would lead to the exposure of a broken system, one hampered by a dismal mix of jurisdictional confusion, a lack of law enforcement resources, and a culture of indifference.

This is True Crime Garage, and this is the still-unsolved murder of Zachariah Jawan Shorty.

Zachariah Jawan Shorty was born May 5th, 1997.

He was the youngest child of Evangeline Randall Shorty's three children and the only child of father Myron Shorty.

Evangeline prefers to be called Vangie, so we shall do just that.

Zach had an older brother, his name is Christian, and a sister, Katrina.

For simplicity's sake, we will refer to him as Zach going forward.

However, it should be noted that his mother, Vangie, alternatively called him Zach, but also called him by his middle name Jawan.

This family of five, they were lifelong residents of Kirtland, New Mexico, and enrolled members of the Navajo Nation, more accurately known as the Denis Nation.

My apologies if I'm not saying that correctly.

Zach was a happy baby.

a chunky, lovable toddler who adored his siblings, particularly his older brother Christian.

Growing up, Zach enjoyed all of the everyday kid stuff, but he especially enjoyed football as well as chess and cooking.

Now, as he matured, his creative tendencies began to emerge.

Music became his passion, particularly rap and hip-hop music.

He also became a skilled tattoo artist and had an interest in welding.

In 2015, sadly, Zach and the family suffered an unspeakable loss.

This is when brother Christian was killed in a tragic vehicle accident.

Zach both admired and idolized his older brother.

Christian was driving drunk the night of his death, and he was not wearing his seatbelt.

There were some other persons in the vehicle with Christian, and thankfully they survived.

And from my understanding, Captain, there was not another vehicle that was involved in this accident, this very tragic accident that will will forever change this family.

Vanji and Zach witnessed Christian's broken, lifeless body at the scene of this accident, and both mother and son would be forever traumatized by the sight.

In the following year, Zach graduated high school in nearby Farmington, New Mexico.

But he had at some point turned to drugs and alcohol, and it's believed, and there's proof of this, that this was straight up an attempt to cope with the bottomless sorrow that he felt from losing his older brother.

Something that's pretty common, especially with a young person dealing with such a traumatic time in their life, and they start self-medicating.

And not just a loss that is this profound and this significant, but it's also you got you compound that with the fact that he went to the scene and witnessed his brother dead there.

I mean, that's with some of what we do here.

I have to remind myself sometimes that we can't, as much as we want to get hands-on with the evidence in these cases, we have to remind ourselves that there are things that you cannot unsee and things that you cannot unhear.

These can have a very long-lasting and profound effect on people, especially when we're talking about a loved one.

And Zach was very close with his family.

He also began expressing suicidal ideations

as he descended further into this drug-fueled darkness that he was kind of putting himself into.

Although undoubtedly troubled, Zach consistently shared a deep and loving bond with the remaining family members, particularly his mother.

He even went to,

this is such a nice, kind gesture that, and I always fear that families don't communicate and don't talk enough and don't tell each other what they actually mean to one another.

But Zach often would tell his mother that she was his best friend.

He was a devoted father.

He, after high school, had a young daughter.

Her name was Christiana.

clearly named after his older brother.

At the time, when he was taking care of his daughter, his young daughter, he did share this baby with his live-in girlfriend.

Her name is Ingrid Toledo.

So they did, she did live with Zach's family for a period of time.

That will change at some point in the timeline.

When, I don't know exactly.

Despite these challenges, Zach worked several jobs and supported his loved ones the best he could.

Zach worked for a while as a tire technician at a place called Desert Mountain.

He enjoyed his work changing tires on semi-trucks, always challenging himself to perform faster than his previous times.

Beyond trying to be the best tire guy in the biz, Zach had a big heart, was known to go out of his way to help hungry and homeless people, even at times coming up with creative ways when needed to figure out how to feed the needy.

Not unlike many of the victims discussed here in the garage, Zach, while a great guy and a kind man to his family and even strangers, he was no saint.

Due to the deep depression caused by the death of his older brother, along with his increased drug and alcohol use, and then exacerbated by all of that with the fact that Zach was seeking comfort and friendship from others who were regularly doing drugs and abusing alcohol as well, this truly captain was setting the table for something terrible to happen to this young man.

Eventually, Zach becomes seriously dependent on drugs and alcohol, and often talking about suicide.

His drug of choice was methamphetamine.

Our good garage friend Mike Morford's show, The Murder in My Family, featured Zach's mother.

And with brutal honesty, his mother shared on that show that Zach was a totally different person under the influence of meth to the point of calling him a monster and characterizing him as an angry and hateful young young man when he was under the spell of this terrible drug.

Yeah, it's a sad story because you don't know if he would have gone down this path if his brother didn't pass away.

Then it's hard to wrap your head around why anybody would want to do methamphetamines, but it also just didn't seem like he had much of a will to live.

So it's like, well, if I do methamphetamines and they kill me, well, that's not going to be that bad because whatever I'm dealing with in my head and my heart is something that I'm not able to cope with right now.

This is one of those horrific, horrifically sad situations.

And we've seen it.

We've all seen it.

And a lot of us listening to this and even us here in the garage, we have either experienced this with somebody in our family, somebody we're related to or friends of friends, friends of

family.

that there's somebody out there.

This young man desperately needs help.

He desperately wants help.

And what I'm talking about is at the core of it, not help from getting clean from these drugs.

He wants help to just feel better.

He's choosing and finding whatever comfort that is or whatever help that he thinks he can get, even if it's just temporary from the use of these drugs, where he has loving individuals around him that could help him in a different healthy manner.

And I just hate to, I hate telling this story, but it needs to be told.

But I hate telling it because we've all, in some form and fashion, I believe, witnessed this, where the individual needs help and they just got blinders on.

And

it's a very difficult situation, very difficult situation, not just in Zach's, but in all of our experiences.

out there.

And Vanji, his mom, is doing the very best she can with this.

She says that on every anniversary of Christian's death or Christian's birthday, she feared that her youngest son, Zach, would that she would find him dead from suicide because she was monitoring, like she was aware of his drug use, and she would keep mental note of that.

It seemed to escalate, and his suicidal thoughts seemed to escalate around these difficult times.

Well, sometimes because they feel that the pain is so

deep in their heart and in their head, they overdose on purpose, or they just

or they feel like if i just keep taking more drugs it will it will eventually numb the pain and it and it doesn't it cause it causes a accidental overdose zach was always turning to music in dark times he it's he begins to write song lyrics and to

express his pain and anguish over his brother's death he's getting creative and he's writing music.

He's making music.

He created a YouTube channel where he wrote and produced original rap music.

He began under the moniker of Shorty Styles, which eventually morphed into isolated.

Music helped him process the loss, but it wasn't enough to quiet his addictions.

Due to his drug use, Zach began to get into trouble with law enforcement.

But the other problem with music, especially this style of music, and the early 2000s, that's mainly the work that I would get was guys that wanted to be rappers or wanted to be producers.

And every time there was a session, it wasn't a guy showing up by himself with acoustic guitar singing love songs.

It was 20 people in the mixing room drinking and smoking pot.

And so even though some people would view this as like a positive thing, normally the people in those sessions, it's a party.

It's not just a positive outlet.

It can be also a negative thing when you have a drug addiction.

Let's go to 2019.

And many people wonder if this next event in this young man's life, if it may have had some direct relation to Zach's murder.

This is when Zach gets arrested on drug charges.

Several of these charges come as a big surprise to Zach's mother, Vanji.

Now, she was worried about her son, obviously, right?

Knowing about his drug use.

and addiction, but this is when she finds out that Zach gets caught for selling drugs.

She's worried about her son knowing that he's a user.

He gets busted for selling, and that was news to Vanji.

She had no idea that he was selling drugs.

And it gets even worse than that for Vanji because the arrest is, it's both her son, Zach, and his father, Myron, who get arrested for selling drugs to an undercover police officer.

Zach's father had also at some point become dependent upon drugs.

This leads to the San Juan County Sheriff's Office attempting to get Zach to turn babyface and become a police informant or a CI, confidential informant, in exchange for reduced charges.

Now, I want to be clear on this matter here, Captain.

It sounds to me they call them confidential informants for a reason.

It's not known.

It's not supposed to be known that somebody is doing this work or turning in people, snitching on people.

And we need to be clear here.

I couldn't find a statement that 100%

confirms that that is what Zach did.

All I can say is it appears to be there was speculation and that

people close to Zach believe that the San Juan County Sheriff's Office attempted to get him to be a police informant.

Now, whether he did or not, we don't know.

The police would know, of course.

Zach pleads guilty to one felony count of trafficking a controlled substance, and his father pleads guilty to one felony count of conspiracy to commit drug trafficking.

Both men were convicted and given probation as their punishment.

Van G puts Zach into counseling, but his dark thoughts persist to the point where in June of 2020, Zach attempts to hang himself in the backyard.

However, the belt that he used broke.

So he survives this.

When he comes to and finds himself lying on a punching bag, so the way that I understand this, Captain, you know, people will hang up a punching bag.

I think he may have removed the punching bag and set it down to put the belt up there.

Right.

And the belt broke.

So he comes to and he actually assumes that either his mother or father had cut him down.

And he approaches them and he is angry.

He is extremely angry at them for cutting them down.

And both of them tell them, like, we didn't even know you were doing this.

They were asleep.

So they deny this.

And then he wonders if maybe perhaps the spirit of his brother somehow saved him from death.

I went onto YouTube and I found some of Zach's music.

And while...

A musician's lyrics are not always about the musician themselves and what they are feeling, but in Zach's case, it seems kind of obvious to me that going off of his words and the songs I listened to, he mentions his brother and his brother's tragic death often.

And what I heard in those sounds

like Zach was very angry at God for taking his brother.

Right.

To simplify what I heard,

it was because of his brother's death that...

it sounds like he lost his faith and his hope in this life.

Yeah, and he's probably a a little bit mad

at his brother for drinking and driving.

He's probably disappointed in his brother because of that.

And so that's, those are just layers of emotion.

And then obviously, like you said, probably mad at the world, mad at God, mad at his family.

And that's when

I just wish he was here so I could shake him.

and just go, dude.

And I don't know.

I'm not pretending to be any kind of therapist or anything.

I don't know what's up or down when it comes to mental health.

But I just want to shake this guy and go, dude, use this anger.

Use this anger that you have for your brother making mistakes.

Use this anger you have at God or for this situation and let it fuel you and drive you to take care of your daughter.

Focus on the living more and not the dead.

And don't make the same mistake that your brother did.

Don't do.

I'm not trying to accuse his brother of anything, but his brother made choices that were bad choices.

Right.

And don't do to your daughter what your brother did to you.

Sorry.

Yeah.

Gonna be a little worked up here, a little heated in the garage.

No, but I had a friend I grew up with that became a junkie.

And then we don't know if it was an accidental overdose or if it was on purpose.

But after his death, I ran into his older brother, and his older brother was mad and angry, but seemed mad at his brother.

And

he used terms like,

my brother was a loser and he was a junkie.

And then cut to five years later, the older brother just couldn't get past that hurt and the anger and he became a junkie as well.

And

like you said, you just want to shake the individual.

And say, you're going to put your mom through all this shit again.

Like you see how much you're grieving and you can see how much your family's grieving and you're making these decisions.

And I think, you know, I think it's fair to say, I think his family would say

because of Zach's grief and anger that he's making decisions that are putting him in bad situations.

Eventually, Vanji calls.

Zach's probation officer in Aztec, telling him that her son desperately needs help.

The social worker contacts him, Zach, persuading him to check himself into the San Juan Regional for a mental health evaluation.

Upon arrival, Zach decides he doesn't want to be there.

He's attempting to leave.

So the facility puts him on suicide watch, to which he's then flown to Albuquerque so he could be observed more closely.

He does remain in Albuquerque for a week, at which time Van G asks his probation officer at Aztec if Zach could be fitted with an ankle monitor.

They agree,

but when she takes her son to the facility, he leaves the next day without an ankle monitor.

Okay, so he's not given a GPS or an alcohol monitor, which could at least have prevented drug and alcohol use.

Van G is on the record saying that he did at some point have an alcohol and drug monitor, which helped him to get clean and sober, and he was much better when that was taking place.

However, it doesn't take place here.

What's interesting to me is because he's an adult, but still lives with mom and dad,

he's not leaving their house and property to go out and do drugs and alcohol.

He is on occasion, but he's also doing a lot of this at home.

And mom and dad have to work, and they can only monitor him so much.

And this monitor, while the GPS might make sense to some, I think the alcohol and drug monitor makes more sense in this scenario because

he's not leaving to go

to go get messed up.

Yeah, or they could try to put him on a prescription that would just make him sick anytime he uses.

But I mean, this would be a very difficult difficult situation because obviously their decisions are going to be different now that they lost a child.

TV's number one drama, High Potential, returns with star Caitlin Olson as the crime-solving single mom with an IQ of 160.

Every week, Morgan uses her unconventional style and brilliance to crack LAPD's most perplexing cases.

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High potential premieres Tuesday at 10-9 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.

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All right, we are back.

Cheers, mates.

Cheers to you, Colonel.

Cheers to you, Captain.

Look, I know we promote

sipping cold beers here in the garage, and we always will.

But of course, drink responsibly.

And if,

you know, this is one of these cases, and this is not, you know, while he went by the name isolated on his YouTube channel, this is not an isolated incident as far as the garage is concerned.

We've featured many cases that have similarities to this one.

And well, no, and it's, it's, it's sad.

I mean, because one,

let's just state the obvious.

There's people out there that

if something bad happens to somebody that's doing bad things, some people just don't care.

But the problem is, you have this young individual that went through a tough time, didn't know how to deal with it.

And the other difficult thing, too, is a lot of these families they lose the person before they lose the person.

Yeah.

And, you know, like I said, with my buddy, it was like when I'd run into him,

it was, it was sad.

And if I found out that he was working as a cook or somewhere, you know, at a local restaurant, I'd not go there because I, one, I couldn't get through to him.

I couldn't get him to change his lifestyle.

And every time I saw him, he was so happy to see me.

And I think it's because I was a representation of what life was before

this mess that he got into.

And there are people out there that lack empathy for these types of victims, for persons who are in the throes of alcohol and drug abuse.

I want to

point out here in this specific situation and in others, but this one specifically, we are talking about a young man here.

He was very early in his life and

he may have gotten clean.

He may have turned this around.

He didn't get the opportunity to.

Somebody denied him and his family of that opportunity.

And if you ever have a friend that turns their life around,

it's one of the most amazing things.

And you cherish those moments.

In the back of your head, you can remember when you almost lost them or when you did lose them for a time period because they weren't the person that you knew.

Well, and we can see evidence of Zach fighting as well and trying to get better.

He maintains a job.

He continues working despite all of his troubles.

He maintains a relationship with his daughter and close relationship with his mom and dad.

He does talk about a desire to get clean, and he is busy working on his passion project, creating content for his YouTube channel, more music, more songs under the name Isolated.

This provides his, what may be his only outlet for his, his own, only positive outlet for his grief over the loss of his brother.

Creating these songs was truly a powerful thing for this young man.

He had so many reasons to keep fighting.

And when I say keep fighting, it was a fight for this young man, a fight to just keep going.

Many, many of these days and nights were a struggle, not just with the addiction, but with a lot of inner demons.

And he fought because of his daughter and he fought because of his music and his mother.

On July 20th, 2020, Zach goes out to record music with some of his friends.

According to his mother, one of the guys that he was meeting was someone that he had a strained relationship with for years.

So this sounds like it was somebody that he was friends with when he was a youngster.

And at some point, these two had beef.

They didn't get along.

It sounds like this was an ongoing theme that she was a little curious why he was hanging out with this guy because they didn't seem to like each other.

They didn't seem to get along, but they were going to get together.

with some other folks and make some music.

I guess the way this was originally going to go down down here, Captain, is that Zach wanted to have these people over at his house work on the music there, record the music there.

But Zach's father was not having it.

He did not want these people coming over.

He didn't want them in his house.

So instead of doing it at the Shorty's house, they, this group, Zach and this group, they go to a motel.

This is the nearby Journey Inn Motel in Farmington.

The plan is to stay there all evening and all through the night working on their beats and creating music.

Well, like I said, some of these music creating sessions were also aka a party.

They were going to be renting a room for at least one night.

Now, in the room, Vanji, Zach's mom, would later confirm that four people, in addition to Zach, were in this room.

So two men and two women.

One of these people was a young woman named Kay, or that could be a fictitious name, and we'll get into that here in a minute.

Now, I have to be perfectly honest, I couldn't sort out what kind of relationship these two, Zach and Kay, had, but they were definitely in some kind of relationship.

I don't know if they were just having fun or if they were simply in the early stages of a relationship, but

there's conflicting reports on what kind of relationship they had, but it was kind of ongoing and and it was, there was romance involved, as I understand it.

According to what I heard from more than one interview with Zach's mother, Vanji, her thoughts were that Kay considered herself to be in a serious relationship with Zach, but Vanji thinks that Zach was trying to and hoping to work things out with his daughter's mother, Ingrid.

Unfortunately, Zach is not here to tell us any better, but we know that Kay is one of the people staying at this Journey Inn motel.

The other people

are known to people close to this case, but I've not seen their names in any publications.

All right, now pay attention closely because in these next several paragraphs here in our notes, these are the details to concern yourself with, in my opinion, in this mystery.

Let's start at 4 a.m.

So it's now July 21st at 4 a.m.

This is when Van G receives a call from Zach asking if she can come and pick him up from the motel.

She and Zach's father get in the car and drive to the journey in to pick up their son.

When they get there, Zach gets in the car with a friend.

This is the woman Vanji identifies as Kay.

Now, this could be a pseudonym, as I have not seen a last name from Kay provided in any publication.

Vanji assumes that they will drop K off somewhere on the way home, but on the ride, Zach asks if she can come over to their house.

And mom is uneasy with this idea and denies the request.

She knows her son is in this, what she refers to as a short-term relationship with this woman.

Vanji believes that he's only in this short-term relationship with this woman simply in order for Zach to have easy access to drugs, which sounds like persons believe that this K did have easy access to drugs.

They argue a bit, mom and son, but ultimately Van G drops off both her son and Kay at

Troy King Road.

This is where Kay's family lives.

She then returns.

Mom returns home to sleep before she had to go to work the following morning.

A few hours later at 7 a.m., Zach calls again, asking for another ride.

Vanji agrees, but knowing that he had stayed with Kay, reminds her son before agreeing to pick him up that she's not welcome to come home with him or not welcome to come with him.

He says, okay, let me call you back.

He calls back five minutes later and asks her to drop them both off at the journey end.

So now he wants to return to the motel where they were previously.

He says they needed to finish some of the music that they were working on prior.

It's still July 21st on our timeline.

Vanji picks Zach and Kay up, drives them back to the journey in.

On the way, she repeatedly reminds her son that he has a virtual court date.

We are in the COVID year.

So he has a court date that he absolutely cannot miss.

After dropping them off at the motel, she texts him throughout the morning until around noon, reminding him of the appointment.

He's responding up until about noon-ish.

Then it is nothing from Zach until around 3 p.m.

So three hours later when Vanji hears from her son, who is now calling from a phone number that is different from his own.

She doesn't recognize his phone number.

He tells her his battery, his phone battery has died.

He's requesting that she bring him a charger for his phone.

She's only like five minutes away.

Mom's only about five minutes away.

So she does leave the home to drop off a phone charger.

When she arrives at the journey in,

she says her son was intoxicated and probably high.

She gives Zach the charger.

She's warning him, you better be careful.

She tells him she gets off work at six and she can come back and get him then.

Yeah, but think about this situation.

I mean, Zach's at the point in his life that he's supposed to be going off into the real world and being an adult.

And all day long, you're now having to give your adult kid rides to places.

You're not picking him up and sending him to places to make his life better.

But because of this tragic situation with your other son, it's understandable why she's doing this because somebody from the outside could look in and go, man, she seems like she's really babying her adult son.

But that's the situation that a lot of these people put their parents in.

Yes, and it's a unique situation when we're viewing everything here.

I think one factor we need to remind ourselves about is his age, right?

He's of age, and he could he could walk away from this family if he wanted to.

And I'm sure the family feared that outcome because at least with at least in this world that they're living in at the the moment, they feel some control over the situation that they that they can at least are there to help.

And while I believe for a very long time, up until a few years ago, maybe 10, that the word enabler or enabling was not used enough.

And then at some point, I think it's overused.

And I think that somebody could look at this scenario and say, well, she's enabling him.

She's practically waiting on him hand and foot.

But I don't, I don't see it at that.

I, I almost feel like as much as he loved his mother, his addiction and his demons are kind of holding his mother and his family hostage in a way.

Well, again, I think if you ask her personally, would would she change anything or how she was reacting?

She already lost a son.

So when you watch shows like Intervention, you'll hear the people doing the intervention or

telling the parents, you got to let him sink or swim on his own.

But that becomes way more difficult when you've already lost one of your kids.

Zach calls his mother back around 6.45, maybe 7 p.m.-ish

to tell her that they are still working on their music, but they're hungry.

He's requesting if she could pick up some food.

She agrees.

She goes to a nearby little Caesar's, picks up a pizza for Zach and his friends, or people he thought

were his friends.

While she is picking up the food, she gets a call, another call from Zach, and he's asking if she could go pick up Kay on her way to the motel to drop off the pizza to them.

Yeah.

And this is confusing to Van G because she

was under the idea that Kay was still with the group.

Right.

But Zach tells her that actually that Kay had left earlier and was now at the economy hotel in farmington so vanji drives to the hotel in farmington kay's waiting outside and then now they're on their way to the the journey inn and as vanji and kay are pulling up to the journey in they can see zach he's outside talking to someone on the phone he's talking to the mother of his child And he's begging her.

I mean, this is, it's obvious to everybody what's going on.

He's begging the mother of his daughter that they work things out between the two and that they get married at some point.

Kay,

who he has this short-term relationship with, is standing right there listening to the man that she believes she's in a relationship with, begging the mother of his child to give him a second chance.

Zach sends Kay into the room while handing the phone to his mother, pleading with her to fix the relationship for him.

Get on the phone,

talk to Ingrid, and fix this relationship for me.

Vanji gets on the phone, tells Ingrid: look, my son is completely out of it.

Zach's completely out of it.

He's not in his right mind, and she is going to try to talk some sense into him once he sobers up.

She tells her son, you better get something to eat, eat some pizza, and ask him if he's ready to come home.

He tells her he just has to finish up the track they were working on before returning home and that he'll call soon when he's ready.

Vanji tells her son that she loves him.

She gives him a hug.

She cautions him to be careful and then leaves.

This will be the last time that she sees her son alive.

At 11.30 p.m., Vanji receives a Facebook messenger call from Kay.

Kay claims that Zach had stepped outside for a cigarette and never returned to the room.

Vanji asks Kay to go back outside, look around, see if she could find him, and then call her back.

Meanwhile, she calls her son's phone, right?

She's on high alert now.

I got to get a hold of my son.

She calls her son's phone, but Kay picks up the phone.

Vanji's baffled, obviously.

Why would Kay have his phone?

Yeah.

Kay brushes it off, claiming, saying that, well, the phone kept falling out of his pocket, so I held it for him.

He went out and smoked a cigarette and never came back.

So Vanji and Zach's father, Myron, they drive to the journey in.

They decide to take two separate vehicles.

So once there, if they have to drive around looking for him, they can cover more ground more quickly.

Kay is waiting for them there.

Vanji and Kay, Kay gets in the car with Vanji and drives around the neighborhood looking for any sign of Zach.

It's very late at night, very early in the next morning when

they agree that they simply can't find any trace of Zach.

It will be on July 23rd that after the family and Kay continue to search for Zach, finding nothing.

They've been reaching out to family and friends, but no one has seen the young man.

So Van G makes it official and calls the Farmington Police Department for a missing person's report.

After giving them the details of her son's disappearance, they make flyers.

Vanji and supporters are passing out these flyers, handing them out, posting them.

Zach is listed as an endangered missing person.

Vanji goes to the Journey Inn with the purpose of handing out flyers.

She's going door to door, asking people that are there if they had seen her son.

Several people actually say yes, they had seen him, but didn't know where he was currently.

One man who introduced himself as Justin confirms that he had seen Zach and that he was, quote, starting shit around here.

No further details are available to us at this time on this matter.

On Friday, July 24th, they decide to organize a search party since law enforcement, according to the family, did not appear to be doing much of anything to find Zach.

Vanji received some strange phone calls that day as well.

One from a person who claimed to be in the motel at the recording session.

She claims she'd heard, so it's a female caller.

She claims she'd heard that Zach was gone, meaning dead.

Then Kay contacted her again through Facebook Messenger, alleging that she was being held hostage and needed Van G and Myron to rescue her.

Vangie suspected, yeah, Van G suspected that she was being set up and she's too smart for this.

So she wisely contacts the Farmington Police Department who locate Kay along with a female friend of Kay's, find the two young women unharmed.

The friend, however, has an outstanding warrant and is promptly arrested.

Well, a big problem with this investigation is, and it's not privy to the public, so we don't know who was in this quote unquote recording session but like i said i've been the producer behind the computer in these quote unquote recording sessions it wasn't uncommon for throughout let's say a four or five hour period for people just to stop by And maybe it's just a group of five people, or maybe it's a group of 10 people, or it's a group of two people.

And they stay for 30 minutes and get bored and they leave.

So who knows how many individuals were coming and going from this quote unquote recording session that lasted

all night and until the next day.

And a recording session at a shit motel.

Okay.

This motel is, this is not the only room at the motel that has drug activity and people with outstanding warrants.

Right.

So how many people were just staying there had nothing to do with this recording session that just dropped by.

And some of these, look,

I've done it myself.

I've stood on corners of the street just handing out free records before because you're just trying to get noticed.

So somebody just stumbles upon the recording session and goes, hey, what are you guys doing in there?

Oh, we're making some music.

Come check it out.

I'll be in a minute with my glass pipe.

Right.

Or, hey, man, I'm a rapper too.

Let me spit everybody through quick.

Yeah.

That's why it's so hard to break into the biz.

So let's go back.

Speaking of warrants, let's go back to this female friend of Kay's getting picked up, right?

She has an outstanding warrant.

She has a boyfriend there.

The friend that gets picked up has a boyfriend there with her

who is upset about the arrest.

This boyfriend with his phone is taking pictures of Van G's car and license plate.

His name has been mentioned several times.

as the group was searching for any signs of Zach.

Later, Van G would surmise that this had been orchestrated as some kind of distraction, that we've been taken hostage, Ruse, right?

This was just meant to be a distraction.

This makes a whole lot of sense because later we're going to learn that they're only a few miles away from the site where Zach was murdered.

On Sunday, July 26th, Van G takes a break from the search, but Myra and her husband continues looking for their son.

Vanji had heard a rumor that a body had been found and it may have matched, maybe a match for Zach's description.

On Monday, the 27th, she learns that the body at San Juan Regional Hospital had been taken to the office of the medical investigator in Albuquerque.

She tried calling Farmington PD, but no one answered the phone, despite it only being late Monday afternoon.

She drives to Farmington only to find the police station closed and locked up.

This is what she's saying.

I can't verify that this is fact, but

if this is correct,

this is five years ago, not even five years ago.

So it sounds to me like if you're looking to do something bad, do it on a Monday evening.

The police might be gone there in Farmington, gone for the night.

Nobody's watching.

Nobody's watching the place.

Meanwhile, Van G's calling the medical examiner's office.

She gives the person that she speaks with a description of her son.

This includes like what he was wearing and his tattoos.

And this person does confirm that they do have a body there that is matching that description.

However, they would not confirm it was or was not Zach without running the fingerprints first.

So mom and dad are desperate.

They're trying to figure out what's going on here.

The family is simply told to wait for these fingerprints to come back.

Throughout this night, while they're waiting to receive information, if it was, if the body was that of their son or not vanji receives this is a more strange communication receives text messages and phone calls from a phone number that she does not recognize the mystery caller is demanding ransom a ransom for the release of her son zach and telling them do not contact the police the contact the caller is demanding $7,000 for the safe return of Zach.

Think about this.

There's no way for any of us to put ourselves in the shoes of this poor woman, but you are holding on to desperation.

You are holding on to any glimmer of hope out of desperation.

Given the options of your son being on the slab at the medical examiner's office or being held for a ransom, you're hoping he's being held for a ransom.

Right.

As strange as it may sound to some people, this is some new hope.

They decide to drive around Kirkland.

This is very smart.

These people are very smart, Zach's parents, because they decide, you know what, we need, we can't call this in.

We want to notify law enforcement about this ransom demand, but we don't want to call it in because what if they send out a call over the scanner and

this is real

and

the people that took our son hostage may hear on the scanner.

about this call

to send an officer to the home to take a report or to meet with these these people.

So they decide, let's go out, hop in the car, we'll drive around until we find a cop car.

And they do.

So they're telling the police officer that they talk to what's going on so he can communicate in person with the other officers, not over CB or not over the scanner.

She, Vanji, surrenders her phone to the officers so that they can use her phone in an attempt to get to the bottom of whatever these messages are.

At 5 p.m.

on that same day,

a couple of police officers along with a family advocate show up at the doorstep of Vangie and Myron's home.

The couple invite the officers in.

The family sits down with the officers only to learn that the body had been confirmed as belonging to their beloved son.

The officers would not, they declined to say where Zach had been found or how he had died, claiming that they could not share the information at the time.

Vanji is not told that her son was a homicide victim, nor is she provided any details around the discovery of his remains.

Some time goes by.

She receives the death certificate

and she makes a request for the autopsy.

It is only then that she learns that her son died of gunshot wounds.

She requests

not just the autopsy report, but toxicology reports as well, and is traumatized to learn the details

regarding his death.

So Zach was shot seven times.

There were seven gunshot wounds.

And

the evidence says he was killed where he was found.

Now,

she still doesn't know where her son was found.

I mean, this is so bizarre.

So she's going to start pretty much her own investigation to try to fill in the blanks of the mystery of her son's murder.

She goes to a location called Nanina Nazad, and I

probably butchered that.

I researched how to say that, and then we talked for two hours before we hit record.

So I've done forgotten.

Well, say it.

If you're going to be wrong,

like Miles Davis said, if you're going to be wrong, be wrong twice.

Well, if I say it slow, I'm a little more confident.

Nanina

Nizad.

I think I added an extra N in there, but that's people in this general area know what I'm talking about.

This is a small community in San Juan County, New Mexico.

It's located on the Navajo Nation lands.

It lies about, so this is like 15 miles west of Farmington and about 24 miles east of Shiprock.

Poor mother, Vangie, is going door to door and just asking the people, whoever answers the door, if they knew anything about what was going on.

I'm guessing she could, she learned from the paperwork that that is the approximate area, right?

The small community where he was found.

And so she's there going door to door.

She eventually learns the name of someone who seemed to know something.

And she goes and finds this person.

This person tells Vanji that it was his daughter who had found Zach's lifeless body.

The way I understand this is this man's daughter would go out for a jog or for a run typically every day, weather permitting, but the weather didn't permit for a couple of days, that likely that couple of days when Zach was missing.

And when the weather, when there's a break in the weather, she goes out and jogs her typical route.

And it's on that route that she sees something that catches her eye.

And sadly, we learn that it was Zach's body.

So he was found on a dirt road trail.

I'm sorry.

He was found on a dirt trail south of the San Juan River, approximately a half mile west of a chapter house there.

The family takes her to this location so she can see where they had found Zach.

It's basically an isolated field.

Later, Van G would refer to it as the lonely spot where Zach's body was laying.

And again,

the evidence says he was killed there.

There's some things about this case that really stand out to me.

One, there's some troubling hurdles to get over.

And now, I'm not saying these are hurdles that cannot be cleared, right?

Maybe there could be some justification on some of these hurdles.

They might be able to be cleared, but I'm having a hard time getting over them without further information.

One, it's very strange to me that this air quotes K

friend, there's obvious speculation that she could have been upset with Zach,

given the circumstances.

She's the one that messenger calls Vanji, but then she's in possession of Zach's phone.

Now, maybe she couldn't unlock it to call her or what have you.

That would stand to some reason, but that one seems strange to me.

Family, of course, saying he's never without his phone.

We do know by his own family's admission that he was intoxicated and probably high.

So maybe he wasn't thinking straight.

Maybe he just set his phone down and went out to grab a smoke.

Right.

I feel like given the location,

it's not out of the realm.

of possibility that he may have started something with somebody or somebody started something with him while he was outside.

As said, this is a shady,

maybe while the owners are not trying to have a shady operation, there are shady people that are in and out of the place.

Right.

And I just feel like with so much drugs involved, with the persons that were sharing the room with him not being named, where he's found being shot seven times, this

feels very much to me like we're talking about.

friends or not friends, but people that were on, at least on the fringes of this young man's social circles.

This all screams to me that these were young people that killed this young man, that they were about his, they were in Zach's age group.

Definitely.

And I think that there are not only,

I think there's a chance that we know there's at least one trigger person.

There could be more than one person that pulled the trigger, but there's every reason, and we don't even have to go down this road too far.

You can just hear the words that we said during this episode, and it's it's not difficult to believe that several people believe or several people know who's responsible and what happened to this young man.

Well, you're not even stating the obvious.

I mean, when you have individuals calling saying, Hey, you give us $7,000, we're going to release your son.

Those individuals have to be suspects.

This K individual has to be a suspect.

But again, it gets very complicated because what do we see from this quote-unquote recording session?

Okay,

she came and went.

Zach himself came and went.

Who else came and went?

Or is it a possibility that there's just some scumbag

that comes around,

doesn't know any of these individuals, gets involved in the situation, and there's an altercation between that individual or multiple individuals and Zach.

And some called us crazy when we reviewed John Benet multiple times.

And we were just looking at the information and questioning it and throwing out some options and some possibilities.

But the pushback we received from some people that heard those episodes was, well, why would, why in the hell

would the person that may, the person that already knows that she's dead be trying to get a ransom?

And we said, it's simply because you got nothing nothing to lose.

You got everything to gain.

And here's a situation, Captain, where we might be faced with a similar idea.

We can't rule out the idea of these people that were trying to squeeze a ransom out of these poor folks of $7,000 that they weren't the ones responsible for killing the young man.

Right.

And Zach has his issues with drugs.

He's a drug addict.

He's hanging out with other drug addicts.

What do drug addicts need to keep their addiction going?

Money.

On August 5th, 2020, the family laid 23-year-old Zachariah Jawan Shorty to rest.

Mourners gathered to remember the beloved son, brother, father, and friend at a funeral ceremony at the Journey Church in Farmington, followed by his burial in Kirtland.

One thing that struck a chord with me well there were multiple things obviously but one thing that that stands out that I want to make sure we point out before we wrap up here today in the garage is the interviews I heard with Zach's mother, Vanji,

she pointed out that some of the people that she thought were her son's friends, whether she liked them or not, right?

Because some of these persons were in and out of trouble and using drugs as well, whether she liked them or not.

But these were people that he hung out with, people that he shared time with.

So he would believe that they were friends.

These people were not present at the gathering to lay this young man to rest or to remember his life, right?

See, I don't find that suspicious, though, in the sense of

what are these individuals?

They're drug addicts, they might not even know what day of the week it is,

they might not even have

heard what really happened

to him.

I mean,

this case is so frustrating.

And like I said, there's going to be some people going, he was a drug addict.

Who cares?

Normally, I'd say

somebody knows something.

Somebody needs to say something.

And we need to get justice for Zach.

But I say, in this case, we need to get justice for Zach's mother and for

Zach's family.

Because could you imagine, one,

you lose one son.

Now you have another son that's going down the wrong path.

You're basically waiting on him hand and foot.

And then this bad thing happens.

And on top of that, it's the cause.

And it's the wild goose chase that these horrible people sent her on.

She deserves justice.

She deserves some answers.

Zach's mother, Van G.

Randall Shorty, is her son's unshakable and relentless advocate.

Following his July 2020 death and months after his burial vanji was at a loss how to cope with her anger and sadness over her son's unsolved murder in october she attended a memorial for victims of gun violence in albuquerque called robbed and thus started her advocacy journey law enforcement offered help and she began to realize the power of collective action at her first missing and murdered indigenous women rally, she was able to publicly speak of her son's unsolved murder.

She continues to advocate for families of the missing and murdered in the four corners, traveling the country and speaking on her son's death and the tragedy of missing and murdered indigenous people.

Zach went missing from a motel room at the Journey Inn located at 317 North Airport Drive in Farmington, New Mexico.

It was a typical New Mexico summer night.

According to Van G's account, there were four individuals at the recording session in addition to her son, two men and two women.

The room number was 129.

In terms of overall crime rate in 2020, Farmington, New Mexico had a crime rate of 36 per 1,000 residents, making it one of the higher crime rates in the U.S.

compared to communities of all sizes.

Violent crime in particular was notably high with offenses including rape, murder, and armed robbery and aggravated assault.

The chance of becoming a victim of violent crime was 1 in 94.

Farmington's crime rate was higher than an astonishing 92% of the communities in New Mexico.

As an overall crime grade, Farmington was awarded a dismal D-.

Zach's music videos can be viewed on his YouTube channel, Isolated.

The FBI has announced a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible for the death of Zachariah Jawan Shorty.

If you have any information regarding the still unsolved murder of Zachariah Jawan Shorty, please contact both the FBI at 1-505-889-1300 and tips at FBI.gov and the Farmington Police Department at 1-505-599-1053.

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

Make sure you go to truecrimegarage.com and sign up on our mailing list.

Colonel, do we have any recommended reading for the beautiful listeners?

Yes, we do, Captain.

This week, you've seen him on TV.

He's a great storyteller.

And so I'm happy to recommend I Will Find You, Solving Killer Cases from My Life Fighting Crime by Detective Lieutenant Joe Kinda.

This is a collection of different stories from his now historical police and detective career throughout the years.

This one's as good of a read, if not better, than the shows that I've seen him on.

So check out I Will Find You Solving Killer Cases from My Life Fighting Crime by Detective Lieutenant Joe Kinda.

You can find that recommendation and many more on our website, truecrimegarage.com.

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

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