it's halloween in the rust belt
community of oil city twelve-year-old
shauna howe is leaving a girl scout
party
her best friend offers to walker the
extra block home
shawna goes it alone
she would never be seen alive again
and halloween
would change forever i used to love
halloween
i used to love to dress the kids up
shawna loved halloween too
i remember that morning
shawna come over and she says mom i've
got the girl scouts tonight we've got
the halloween thing we're going up to
the nursing home
she gave me a kiss and a hug and told me
she loved me
[Music]
and then she was gone
and that was it
they got out of girl scouts between 7 30
and 8 o'clock
shawna and joey l had left together
nobody was there to pick up shauna
because i forgot
they come out of the alley where the
girl scout meeting was
and at the corner there
joey l went straight down
and uh shauna made the left and was
coming up the street
lucy calls and i said you know shauna
ain't home yet what time's that girl
stout stuff
she says that should have been over
i started getting worried i mean even
the latest party for
the girl scouts wouldn't last that late
i told john to call like the hospitals
to see if there'd been any type of
accidents or anything
the police showed up
they come to the house
maybe she was lost maybe she stayed at a
friends i think that was the hope
and then other reports started coming in
dan payton was walking on west first
street in oil city
he saw
a little girl walking on the other side
of the street
he then sees a tall skinny guy
wearing a ball cap
he hears a short screen
she was grabbed
and taken into a car
that left immediately dan thought it was
a small red car this is before the cell
phones so then he now at eight o'clock
at night
has to knock on doors to have somebody
call the police station we got called in
to help look for shauna howe there's a
lot of emotion involved
there's a little girl missing
how could this happen we got a call that
they found something and they
specifically wanted me to identify it i
walked up to it and took a close look at
it
there in the bush was her uh bodysuit it
had been there like overnight the
moisture was like on it i'd known that
with the gym clothes being there that
way that
she'd been
raped or molested somehow
the lab in erie knew that they had
a semen stain
and there was enough lawn there to get
dna
the day after the bodysuit was found
we were at the station and a call came
in
this guy had gone to a nearby cottage
down by quarters hole
and he said
i just walked out on the bridge
and i looked on and there she was
she wasn't there the day before
because we were out there
her shoes were found on the bridge the
area was combed by law enforcement the
day before
and then she's found there at daylight
clearly indicating that the kidnapper
had went back in during the dark with
the child
and then killed shauna
and disposed of her body there
the likelihood of those shoes being
found on the bridge one facing one
direction one facing the other and not
falling off the bridge
i was placed there
so who killed shawna howe
somebody was toying with us
so i'm sitting there
and uh
all of a sudden i hear clunk clump clunk
coming up the steps
my brother keith literally falls in my
lap
and says sis it's shawna
i'm like no it can't be it just can't
and claire wraps his arms around me
and he says it is sis
i seen her
and i said no
and i lost it
they canceled halloween
people were keeping a real close eye on
their kids they weren't letting them out
if this case was going to be solved
you had to find a match for that dna
we dna tested her stepdad john brown we
dna tested the uncles
it was an intense search there was
nobody not looked at but we never got a
hit
but then somebody called in
and said that the description fit the
guy named
ted walker
ted walker met shauna at the pizza shop
if walker was working for some reason
he'd always want to give the girls a hug
and the girls would run from walker so
that he couldn't touch them
we know he's familiar with the family
and that he had a small red car
but eventually the dna cleared him too
so many dead ends looking at family
friends other possible motives
it just came up blank
i'm on my night off i get a call from
officer tom mcclellan he said winner we
need you down here somebody just tried
to abduct a girl
i said what they tried to kidnap her
they beat her up pretty bad she's down
here i need you down here
she was walking down the street he
stalked her he followed her out and
tried to bushwhacker
it's a violent attack and they're trying
to put somebody in the trunk of a car
who's capable of doing something like
this
jimmy o'brien is
tim and jim o'brien were brothers timmy
older than jim
there wasn't a cop here that didn't know
the o'brien's they're sexually violent
offenders jimmy in particular the guy's
evil the victim said i just know if i'd
gotten a trunk i'd be dead so i fought
with everything i had
i arrested jimmy for attempted
kidnapping
this crime
it was on the same route that shawna had
walked home
still having our meetings
about showing how and i said if you
looked at the o'brien's we knew who the
o'briens were i arrested both of them
many times but they couldn't have done
shauna's kidnapping because they had
been in jail
when
that occurred
around halloween we always had extra
patrols
because when you don't know who did it
you don't know when they'll do it again
i mean i've been waiting five years and
there's still nothing you don't have any
more information to give me in 97 than
you did in 92.
from the outside looking in
what have you done
one of the things was a mark we saw on
her cheek
it appeared to be a partial shoe print
and there was not even any mention of
that in the autopsy
betsy and i went to see helbert
fillinger a renowned medical examiner
halberd agreed that that appear to be a
shoe print we saw on her cheek
he said this was a violent rape
he said somehow they held her in
captivity for a couple of days
but there's no evidence of any
restraints
[Music]
that suggested to him that it was quite
possible that more than one person was
involved
this is not one person this
is
most likely two and probably more
we decide to do a big sweep again
we go back to all the local departments
one of the places we went was the fire
department
1992 fire department got called to a
fire a red car
that car belonged to ted walker
ted walker's name had been brought up
numerous times
he had met shauna at a pizza place
walker opened his house to young kids in
the area
and fit the description perfect if
walker's car was the chevy civet the
witness saw
and he fit the description throw that
together with a car being set on fire
did ted have her in the back seat
did something take place back there
i think that that was done to destroy
evidence
how is it did you first
learn to sean a house abduction
tim and jim o'brien came and told him
[Music]
he hears about the case from jim and tim
o'brien who come into his house he could
have made up any name nobody would have
been able to question him on that they
just came running in telling me that a
little girl our girl was kidnapped
downtown
ted walker says the o'briens told him
about shawna's abduction
so i asked chuck daly
hey chuck do you ever look at the
o'brien's
and chuck said yeah they were in jail
they couldn't done it
[Music]
that's when i realized i had never seen
a report documenting that they had been
in jail on the night of the abduction
so that's when i get a hold of trooper
john mcclane who's a friend of mine
i told him i'd like for you get out and
check if the o'briens were in jail when
sean was abducted
and then he came back to me and said
rick they weren't there
they had bonded up
now i'm believing that these guys are
good for this and we've spent all these
years and all these resources all the
while believing that they were
incarcerated tim o'brien was in jail for
sexually assaulting a girl
and his brother jim o'brien had been
arrested by oil city police for trying
to abduct a woman trying to stuff her
into a trunk
early february is when
i got the call from the crime lab
jim o'brien's a match
jim and tim o'brien and ted walker ted
walker was arrested as an accessory to
the to the homicide issue on how well i
grab a hold of her and take him out did
you grab her around the shoulders
you grab her you carry down andrew to
tim you send her to tim
say come in carrying sean
i'm going up the steps
the o'brien's
those guys have a little girl
that to them
that's a playground
once i got upstairs i heard her
screaming struggling
let me go get off me
we picked halloween night
it was only supposed to be a prank
what happened i think
is they assaulted her upstairs then they
left and that's when they went out to
coders hole
but this bodysuit
i think they took her and they assaulted
her again
not there
now this child doesn't have clothes
so they kept her in that car overnight
in the trunk
[Music]
you