EP272: Lured, Loved, and Left for Dead

The dark haired, brown eyed beauty was born in historic Youngstown, Ohio two Christine Graves and Ronnie de Paul. When she was about six, Shannon learned that she had a half sister, Nick Debbie, and Debbie and Shannon shared a father. Okay, so the sisters were shocked but excited to learn about one another, and Shannon also had a little brother, aj who joined the family. Shannon was immediately smitten with her little brother, and the sister brother duo shared a very

strong bond for the rest of Shannon's life. Family meant everything to Shannon. Debbie, her half sister, says that everyone would gather often for celebration such as birthdays and holidays, and they even often had Sunday dinner. She remembers the first time she met Shannon, which was on Christmas Eve at the home of Debbie's aunt Joanne. Debbie, who previously had believed she was an only child, knocked on the door and a woman answered, yelling, Shannon, your sister's here.

Shannon ran into Debbie's arms and hugged her tight, and Debbie remembers thinking that Shannon was full of spunk, calling her a pitbull. In a chihuahua's body. There was no half in these relationships. Debbie and aj were simply Shannon's sister and brother, and she had a strong bond with both, especially AJ two. So Northwest Ohio was always home to Shannon, who lived in either Youngstown, which was a city halfway

between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, or in small towns nearby. Shannon was described by many of her large group of friends as a light, always kind and wanting to help others. She was even known as Star to her friends because of the brightness that she exuded. Shannon was just as likely to london ear or hand to a stranger down on their luck as she was to help a good friend. But behind that shine was pain. Shannon had a rough time growing up and sometimes hung around with a rough crowd.

She lost her mother and all four of her grandparents, and those passings hit her really hard. Early life events left her feeling ungrounded at times, and her bold personality mixed with emotional upheaval, built a hardened exterior around her sensitive and beautiful heart. She liked to have a good time like most young people, but she gravitated toward people who could be a bit dangerous. And sometimes your friend's

bad habits run off on you. So it should be noted that young'stown had a reputation as a hotbed for crime. In fact, in the nineteen sixties it was known as Murdertown, USA, and Youngstown's murder rate was double what the rate was for the whole state of Ohio. Organized crime was involved in many and afarious activities around the area. So just let you know this is the environment that Shannon grew up in. Shannon was arrested in May two thousand and

nine and charged with two felony drug crimes. Eventually, one of those charges was dismissed and the other was reduced to a misdemeanor drug charge. Shannon pled guilty on July thirtieth, two thousand and nine, and was sentenced to a six month suspended sentence plus a fine of one hundred dollars. The next year, on August eighteenth, twenty ten, Shannon was

arrested again, this time for felony theft. In that case, she also had a felony reduced to unauthorized use of property, which was a misdemeanor, and she was sentenced to thirty days suspended and a two hundred and fifty dollars fine. Interestingly enough, that wasn't the end of her legal issues. She maintained that in both arrests, a deputy clerk signed and issued her arrest warrants without establishing probable cause, which

is a huge problem wow. She and eight other women filed a suit against Mahoning County, Ohio, where all of their arrests were made, with the claims that their sentences were avoid because of the lack of establishment of probable cause. This suit focused on their belief that their arrests violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.

Their suit was initially dismissed, then appealed, and there was a lot of legal back and forth with the appeals court reversing the case, dismissal, and pushing the case back for resentencing. But ultimately Shannon and one other woman, who had pleaded guilty already to at least one charge, had no change to their outcome because they didn't claim the lack of probable cause until after they had been convicted.

So her half sister, Debbie, was like a surrogate mom to her during this tough time, listening when she needed to talk through problems and giving her advice on how to get out of a jam and keep her life on track. As you might expect, Shannon didn't want to see the inside of a jail again. She always had a talent for hair and makeup, so she decided to go to cosmetology school. Shannon buckled down and earned her cosmetology certification in twenty sixteen through Raphael's School of Beauty

in Boardman, Ohio. She was proud of her accomplishment and she was excited to start her new career. She had no idea that it would be a short one. However, her sometimes dubious associations extended to her romantic relationships. Unfortunately, Shannon's attraction to one of the bad boys you know she liked those that her friend had mentioned, ended up being her undoing. In early twenty sixteen, Shannon met Arturo Novoa,

a known drug dealer with a bad temper. By September of that year, Navoa had already moved into Shannon's place. From the very beginning, their relationship was volatile. Shannon was small but mighty, standing less than five feet tall and around one hundred pounds. However, even she didn't fully understand the depths of Novoa's anger and depravity. Turmoil was a constant in their relationship, and by December twenty sixteen, Shannon

was done. She kicked Novoa out and he moved in with a woman named Katrina Layton, in a move typical of Shannon and Novoa's romance. He made it just a week without Shannon before he was moving right back into her place on Mahoeing Avenue. Katrina Layton was completely obsessed with Novoa and she was beyond angry that he had left her to go back to Shannon. She wanted him back badly. Shannon and Novoa continued to have the same problems they had had before she kicked him out. In fact,

the turbulence seemed to increase. On the flip side, Shannon was enjoying her job and still spending time with her family. She celebrated Christmas with her family and that was the last one that they would all have together. Katrina just couldn't get over Novoa. He continued his criminal ways, selling drugs and participating and other illegal activities, but she didn't care. Her obsession with him and jealousy towards Shannon grew stronger

every day. It isn't clear if he was seeing both of them at the same time, but he was calling Shannon his ax as he went back and forth. It became a lethal balance of the continued problems with Shannon and Katrina's constant push for him to stay with her that set a plan in motion. Finally, Novoa exploded on February twenty fourth, twenty seventeen. Katrina later said that she was at the home Novoa and Shannon shared when novoah completely lost control, beating Shannon to death in the bathroom

with a hammer. Of course, that sudden decision left the remaining pair, Katrina and Novoa with a big dilemma. What were they going to do with Shannon's body? For some reason, Navoa shaved Shannon's hair off and sent Katrina shop for big fifty five gallon bins that they planned to use to store Shannon's body while they came up with some sort of plan. Navoa and Katrina tried a couple of things to hide the gruesome deed. First, they wrapped Shannon in garbage bags and then stuck her in the trunk

of her own car. They brought her to Katrina's home, and Navoa reached out to a man named Andrew Herman. Herman and his wife, Michelle Iholmfeld, help Navoa dismember Shannon's body. They put her arms and legs in one of the bins Katrina had purchased, and used another of the bins to store Shannon's torso and head. Sometime around the first week of March twenty seventeen, those bins were taken back

to Shannon's home on Mahoeing Avenue. By then, Katrina had moved herself in to that home along with her thirteen year old and ten year old children, and they were living there with Novoa. She basically took over Shannon's life, driving her car, using her credit card cards, and taking

care of Shannon's beloved dog, Molly. Novoa and Katrina continued to keep the body at the Mahoing house in a freezer for months while they continued to think of ways to dispose of it and how to dispose of Shannon's belongings. Navoa didn't want to dump her in the nearby river because bodies put their tended to float up. Eventually, Navoa and Katrina knew they had to get rid of Shannon's body and belongings like time was a ticken, right, somebody's

gonna notice that she's missing. They were apparently fans of the series Breaking Bad, and they talked about how there was a storyline that was focused on the use of acid to melt a body and to get rid of evidence. So Katrina jumped online and, using the screen name Chickenman, ordered twelve gallons of sulfuric acid from Walmart. I didn't

know you could get sulfuric acid from Walmart. Yeah, she used an alias, but when she arrived at the store to pick up the order, she was told that she had to show her actual ID before she could complete the purchase. Katrina did so and took the acid back to the house that Novoa and Shannon had once shared. However, these numb nuts had underestimated the amount of sulfuric acid that it took in real life to dissolve an entire

adult body. Novoa and Katrina started with the huad, but they weren't even able to get the head completely dissolved. They put what was left of Shannon's head back into the freezer and the rest of her body and they put their thinking caps on Shannon's family, So you're probably wondering, like, what's on Shannon. Yeah, So, her family had been asking Novoa where she was, and he kept telling them that Shannon had taken off with another man and gone to Columbus, Ohio.

Then he changed his story and said that when Shannon and the other man had reached Columbus, that she took up with yet another man. But that didn't sound like Shannon. Her family's feet. Debbie, Shannon's sister, was getting suspicious. It wasn't unusual for Shannon to take off for a while without telling her family or friends, but she never missed a birthday or holiday, and she didn't show up for

Debbie's March birthday or the family's Easter celebration. Debbie sent Shannon a text about brother AJ and the reply her text made her blood run cold. It said, quote, I don't have a brother end quote And they were tight. Remember I told you? Yeah? Yeah. So Debbie knew Shannon's car, dog and cell phone were still at her home, but

Shannon wasn't. She would have never left Molly behind her dog, and that text about not having a brother just sealed the deal for her, and Debbie reported Shannon missing on June twenty second, twenty seventeen. Police wanted to know about the people in Shannon's life, and Debbie said that one of her exes, a man named John, would know Shannon

better than anyone. He said he and Shannon had been together for a couple of years previously and worked together in John's roofing business until he was busted on drug charges and to prison. John really wanted to start right back up with Shannon once he was out, but he found out that she had started dating Novoa. He said he last saw her on Valentine's Day twenty seventeen. He was upset that she was with someone else, but still

held out hope that they would find each other. Just to let you know, this was about four months after he was killed that her sister reported her missing. Okay, okay, So back to John. He said he last saw her on Valentine's Day twenty seventeen, and that was about ten days before she was killed. He was upset that she was with someone else, but still held out hope that

they would find each other again. Police dug deeper into John's whereabouts at the time of Shannon's disappearance, and they determined that he had nothing to do with it at all. For Novoa and Katrina Leyton, the pressure was on. Navoa had a friend who lived on Sherwood Avenue in Youngstown and often had bonfires in his yard. He contacted the friend and said he had some trash he wanted to get rid of and asked if he could have another bonfire.

Novoa and another friend spent the evening tossing clothes and other items such as papers and even Shannon's hair, into the fire. Another item thrown into the flames was a bracelet with the name Shannon and bossed on it. The fire was huge, so huge, in fact, the fire department came to investigate and make sure that it wasn't getting

out of hand. Navoa's friend, who had allowed the bonfire, was curious as to what Novoa and Katrina had been pitching into the pit for hours, especially because they both just kept taking things out of baskets and bins and burning them all like it was like endless, Oh my gosh. So the next day the friend went digging in the ashes to see what he could find. He found the bracelet, and he put all the ashes from the fire into

a laundry basket, including the piece of jewelry. The police eventually recovered the ashes and bracelet later in the investigation. Katrina had rented a bottom floor apartment and used Shannon's credit hard to buy a freezer and they moved the body into that. The landlord was getting suspicious because the lice was signed, but no one seemed to be moving in like the only thing in this apartment was the freezer.

He told the police that he thought something odd was going on there, and the police got a search warrant. In a panic, novoa In Katrina knew they had to move Shannon's body out of the apartment. He called a friend named Kenny Eschenbah and asked if he could store a freezer in his basement for a while. He told Eschenbah that his electricity had been cut and the freezer was full of meat that he didn't want to spoil.

Eschanbah agreed, and novoa In a friend brought the freezer over at night and brought it through the back door and into the basement. The freezer was at the house in Campbell, Ohio for a couple of weeks. When Eschenbah's wife was preparing dinner one evening, she planned to make spaghetti but didn't have any ground beef. Not wanting to go to the store, she thought that maybe some of the quote unquote meat that no Voa had said was in the freezer in her basement was ground b for

something that she could use to complete the meal. It was then that she noticed the freezer had a pad lock on it. She obviously didn't have the key, but my girl pried it open. She wasn't when going to the Kroger. No, she was like, I'm not making a trip if I don't have to. That's right. Plus, Shannon, if you bring freezer over and there's a lock on it, girl.

gotten in honor of her astrological sign. Horrified, the Eschenbos called nine one one at three forty one pm on July thirtieth, twenty seventeen, so ken Eschabab told the authorities that the freezer wasn't they, and that a friend named Anthony Gonzalez had asked to keep it there because his electricity was off. So please soon discover that Anthony Gonzalez was really Arturo Novoa. Liice had already talked with Novoa previously when Shannon was reported missing, and they went back

again to talk to him. He denied that the freezer was his, but police found the exact key that fit the freezer's padlock in Novoa's pocket.

I told you, the freezer's key in Novoa's pocket. The esshanboss said that Katrina had been in their home before with Gonzalez I E. Novoa, and they had heard her threaten to kill Shannon. It was determined that the Eshen boss had no idea that they were storing a dismembered body, and they were not charged, so shannonsas John popped it back up again. He had been asking questions of her friends and that caught the attention of police. John was friends with a man named Steve Baringer, the man who

had the huge bonfire. Baringer was brought in and said that Navoa had told him that he was upset that Shannon had left him for another man, so he wanted to burn her stuff that she left behind. The friend Navoa had brought to the bonfire was none other than Andrew Herman. The police believed that this circle of friends was all involved at some point in the murder, dismemberment, and cover up, and not one of these people stood

up for Shannon. In front of a grand jury, Hermann confessed that Novoah contacted him and forced him to help him dismember Shannon's body and put it in a fifty five gallon bin. He was also present for the attempt to dissolve Shannon's head with acid. Hermann said that he was remorseful for his part but he was afraid that if he didn't do what Navoa said, he would be killed.

He was sentenced to time served and released. This angered Shannon's family, who said they didn't know about eddy court hearings on Katrina's plea deal. They accused the prosecutors of violating Marcy's Law, which they said would have required the family to be notified of every during or plea negotiation.

In the case, it all ended up not being a major issue because, unfortunately for her, Katrina liked to stay in contact with Navoa while he was jailed, and she's a dumbfuck because she was unaware that all calls in and out of jail are recorded. She called Navoa thirty seven times, and with the information police gained from those calls, her plea deal was rescinded, and she went right back

to jail. Good people are so stupid, they are Bellinger, the friend who had the bonfire, cooperated with police and gave them Shannon's bracelet. When Michelle Ienfeld heard that she and her husband Andrew Herman were going to be called as witnesses, she sent authorities a threatening message. Both were arrested, with Herman getting fourteen charges and i Hanfeld receiving four counts,

including racketeering, intimidation, and obstruction of justice. Navoa finally pled guilty too forty three counts, and authorities dismissed the other five counts he originally faced, and Katrina pled guilty to four counts. Novoah received a prison sentence of forty eight years plus one month, and Katrina was given eighteen years in prison. I Nfeld was sentenced to two point five years in prison, and she had already been in jail for two years, so she just had six months left

to go on her sentence. Andrew Herman was sentenced to four counts and got twelve years. Hermann was sentenced on four counts and received a sentence of twelve years in prison. Navoa tried to take back his plea argument at one point, but it was denied. Shannon's dad, Ronnie DePaul, said after learning that she was murdered that he was dealing with it because he had to. He said, quote what I don't understand is what she could have done to have these two people do what they did to her. I

only got to bury part of a body. Quote. Police stop the search for the missing parts of Shannon's body. Three years after her murder. Debbie visits her sister's grave often and spray paints pink hearts near her gravestone, since pink was Shannon's favorite color. She also took in Molly as her own and gave her all the love that she had in her and according to the Facebook page Justice for Shannon run by Debbie, Molly passed away on February twenty second of this year. Yeah, little Molly, I know.

And that's the end of my story.

out on the street. So yeah, many manufacturers, bad neighborhood, I think they just I think it got out of hand. And Katrina is such a low rent puta that she was all like, all right, I'll just take whatever hers was and fucking like you said, are you kidding me? You you brought in a freezer with a.

is Crimesanconsequences dot com. You can find information there. Shannon and I are working on some new T shirts so there's merch and working on some new designs. Think well, thank you all again for listening, and thank you Shannon, and until our next episode, all