School of Humans. Helen Got Murder Line actively investigates cold case murders in an effort to raise public awareness invite witnesses to come forward and present evidence that could potentially be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights from family and community members, their statements should not be considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts
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On August twenty first, twenty seventeen, seventy year old Larry Shulman was sleeping in his upstairs bedroom at his home on outer Bridge Lane in the Providence Commons Area, an affluent suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina. Providence Commons is a quaint area in South Charlotte. It's located off a highway, Glenn McConnell Parkway, and it only has six streets. It's a quiet little neighborhood, but that was about to change.
Larry was on his own in the bedroom. That night, his wife, Andrea was out of town on a trip to New Orleans, where she was visiting family. And his twenty five year old son Josh, also lived at home, but Josh was out for the night with friends. Josh worked behind the bar at an upscale steakhouse, the Capitol Grill. Larry said that he went to bed at around nine pm, then at some point later in the evening, Josh came back home and went to bed. Then at around three am,
Larry was woken up in a daze. He found someone on top of him brutally beating him with a gun.
So I was sound asleep as I could be, and all of a sudden, somebody was hitting me in the forehead pistol, whipping me and yelling where's the safe, where are the watches, where's the money? Stuff like that. It's all swelled motion for me, and I'm crying and he puts me on the ground. He puts the gun on my shoulder, my back shoulder, and choots me. And then I had one of these things and I fell and
I can't get up. I pushed the button and yelled at the machine, get the police, get the police up, and shot up and shot up and shot.
The machine Larry was referring to was a life Alert system, which is a medical alert device targeted at seniors. It's usually worn around the neck. This device became very famous after advertisements in the early two thousands. Larry's medical device was wired so that if he pressed a button, he was immediately connected to life alert personnel. He could notify the police in the event of an emergency. So that's what he did. He pressed his life alert button and
the gunman took off. But Larry soon realized he wasn't the only victim in the house. Down the hall. His son Josh had also been shot.
I did not hear Josh being shot, so then I went to the phone and called the police and myself and they said, no, we know, we're on our way. We're almost at your door. And so I crawled out of the room and we were on the third floor and I looked to the left and there's Josh in his T shirt underwear laying on the ground and he takes a deep press. I never heard his shot and he was shot in the head.
I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the past eight years of making my true crime podcast, Helling Gone I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's
affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five, or you can send us a message on Instagram at Helen Gonepod. This is Helen Gone
Murder Line. This case is still classified as an open investigation, which means that our FOY request has not been answered yet, so we're still trying to get exact details of what went down that night. Was this a robbery gone wrong or mistaken identity or could the killers have been targeting Larry or Josh or both, and if so, why Josh was in the hallway outside his bedroom when Larry saw him.
It's not clear whether he was shot there or whether the paramedics moved him out into the hallway to administer first aid. Larry can't be sure. Still in a daze. Larry looked on in horror as he realized he was watching his son Josh, take his last breast.
And then I kind of pulled myself down the stairs and opened the door, and they came running in with the ambulances and stuff and the stretchers, and they're yelling the guy upstairs his words, the guy upstairs his work. So they take him and take his both to the hospital. I grabbed my cell phone. Andrew was in New Orleans, and I called her and I told her what happened, and then they just took us to the er. One of the er doctors came in to see me and he said, your son is a lot worse than you.
It's not even clear who got shot first, Larry or Josh. WSCTV did an interview with Larry in twenty twenty two, and in that interview, Larry said when he pressed the life alert button, he heard another shot in the hallway, which the news channel said must have been the second shot, one that killed Josh. One year after the shootings, Larry told WBTV quote, I never saw anybody. He had total control of me, but I heard a shot down the hallway.
They shot my son in the head. The bullet came out the other side, went through the floorboard three floors down and came out in the kitchen, So they had to have held him down and shot him in the head end quote. So in some of these previous interviews, Larry said he did in fact hear the gunshot that killed Josh, but when we spoke with him, he told
us he did not hear the gunshot. Of course, memories, even traumatic ones, can fade and shift over time, and because the killer immediately started berating him, Larry was more focused on staying alive than paying attention to his surroundings. He wasn't able to get a good look at the gunman, so police had no description of the suspect to go on. But Larry does wonder why other than a few things that he says the killers grabbed in his room, they
didn't steal anything else. Since the person beating him was demanding to know where the watches were and the safe were. It was all very strange, but Larry says that he believes that it's likely that his life alert and hearing someone say the police were on the way saved his life.
I was on the ground shot and he left the room. Now you know, they didn't take anything. So when the voice came on, we're sending the police, were sending the police. Could that have frightened them in some way? I don't know.
That was another big question because the Shulmans lived in a big house and had lots of nice things inside, and yet absolutely nothing of value was stolen. According to Larry, this home invasion did not seem to fit the pattern of other home invasions that had taken place in that area. So what happened? Did the home invaders realize they had the wrong spot or did they not count on Josh and Larry being home and then things got out of control?
Could Josh have been the target? Larry said that everyone loved Josh. He was gregarious and very popular At his high school, Charlotte Latin School. Josh was a pretty serious athlete. He played football, basketball, and baseball. After high school, Josh went to the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. He joined the ZBT fraternity. He seemed to thrive there. He made lots of friends. His obituary described Josh as quote a caring, loving, generous soul who never met a stranger. He enjoyed the
company of many lifelong friends, including furry friends. Josh loved all animals, particularly dogs, and they loved him. End quote. According to his obituary, Josh liked to play fantasy football, to hang out with his friend and watch football games
with his family. One year after Josh's shooting, Larry talked to a local news station about what he remembers from earlier in the day of the home invasion, which he said he replays constantly for any clue to the horrors that were coming, but what Larry described seemed like a very routine day. On the day of Josh's murder, Larry
said that he and Josh talked. He remembers them having a conversation about sports, which they did a lot because Josh loved sports, and Josh had told him he was going to come home early that night because he said he had an interview the next day. Then Larry said that he talked to his mother on the phone and went to bed. Larry did say that Josh's job put him into contact with a lot of different people, and the police had been asking Larry questions about Josh's friend
group at the time. Larry said the family didn't have a ring camera or any kind of surveillance. In twenty seventeen, ring cameras were definitely around, but I'd say they were still a few years away from having the type of mass saturation they have now where it's just kind of assumed almost everyone has one. But again, because this is still an open investigation, we don't have concrete details about
this case. We don't know whether police canvass and ask neighbors if they had cameras that could have seen something that night. Police were also mystified as the motive because there was no sign of forced entry into the home. Larry said, Josh often left the back door unlocked.
My son often would go on the patio at night and leave the door unlocked in the back, and I think they just came straight into the back door. There was no sign of breaking in.
Though Charlotte does have crime and property crime, South Charlotte is one of the safest areas in the city. It's known for excellent schools and a low crime rate, so this home invasion shocked the neighborhood. Larry, who was being treated for a shot to the scapula in the same hospital where his son had been rushed, remembers the doctors giving him the heartbreaking news that Josh was not going
to survive. And then just as he was processing that information that Josh, his only son, was dead, tragedy struck again because the next day, Larry was told that his mother, Dorothy Shulman, had died.
The day after this happened, my mother, who was an hospice in her apartment, died. We had a funeral that following Friday for my mother and my son. It was standing room only. My parents had lived there since nineteen fifty four, and they were just well loved and liked people in the Jewish community. And my son was an athlete and a good student and also loved so for him. I was basketball coaches and different teachers and all his friends all that were there. One guy gave the eulogy,
and my mother and my son were the same. They had the ability to make people feel better about themselves, so there was a lot of very grateful people there.
Josh opted to be an organ downer, so even though Josh was legally dead and brain dead, he was kept on life support for the next three days so that the doctors could harvest his organs. Eventually, Josh's organs would be given to six different people saving lives. A few days after the funerals of his mother and son, grief stricken, Larry said that he and his wife were called to the police station. They were expecting answers or maybe closure.
Larry was shocked to discover police considered him their number on the one suspect. A few days after Larry Shulman's only son, Josh, was fatally shot during a home invasion, Larry said that he and his wife, Andrea, were called in to the Charlotte Mecklenburg police station. Larry said he expected to hear that police were pursuing a suspect and was stunned to discover the person of interest that police
were focused on was him. The reason police suspected him, Larry said, was because of a family trust that had been set up by his mother. Larry was Dorothy's only son,
Josh was her only grandson. Larry's father had already passed away, so police somehow believed that if Josh died, Larry would inherit that money instead, and apparently police believed Larry might have orchestrated Josh's murder in order to collect Larry said the police's belief there could have been a financial motive just didn't make any sense, because he said his mother was a wealthy woman and she left her estate to him to Larry. Larry claimed that Josh could only have
collected if Larry died. Larry said that law enforcement had their financial facts backwards. He believed that unfortunately influenced the direction of the case.
So they're asking me questions, and then it was obvious the questions were leading toward them accusing me of murdering my son. My family was a wealthy family, and there was a trust involved that my mother lived on and I was the next beneficiary in the trust. Somehow, in their convoluted ways of thinking, they thought like me, having Josh killed would give me the trust, which is really the opposite. So then I came to have it there.
I said, so either arrest me or let me leave, and they said, well you can leave.
Larry worked as a psychotherapist who specialized in trauma and grief skills that he needed to get through the brutal reality of what occurred. On August twenty first, Larry hired a private investigator, who he said was a former FBI profiler to help him get answers. Police immediately concluded they did not believe this was just a random home invasion gone wrong. They believed the home invaders were targeting someone in the home. That could have been partly because of
the time that the crime happened three am. This is a very high risk time. It's not like coming in during the day when you believe people could be at work. Coming in at that hour, it's very likely someone will be in the house. The home invaders had to know that if they did have a target. Another theory that has to be considered is what if the time target
wasn't Larry but Josh. Police have said very little publicly about the investigation, but in twenty eighteen, on the one year anniversary, Detective Antonio Eccles told WBTV quote, it was a breaking and entering end quote, but then he wouldn't specify if any items were taken. Police did say at
that time they did not recover the murder weapon. Detective Eckles said, quote, We've been interviewing a lot of people, a lot of people that were close to the family, a lot of people that were close to Josh, a lot of people he worked with hung out with end quote that does make it seem like police considered the possibility that the home invaders could have been acquaintances of Josh. But again, there's so much mystery surrounding this case. We
don't have a description of the gunman or women. We don't know how many people were in the house that night. Larry said he believes there were at least two home invaders who came in and attacked and shot him and Josh, but a lot of that was still a blur, so he doesn't know for sure. Larry said the private investigator he hired looked into Josh's friends. Josh was very social, so he had a big social circle and also just had a lot of contact through his job at the
Capitol Grill with the public in general. So one theory could be maybe someone knew that Josh lived in a nice house with a lot of expensive things and decided to break in, or maybe one of Josh's friends knew he had a habit of leaving the back door unlocked. Larry said he does remember one particular friend of Josh's, someone who came into the hospital on the night Josh was killed.
There was a friend of my son who came drunk to the hospital that night. He was the last person to see Josh alive. They were really descriptan sees between what he said when he said he left Josh and what he told the police row what that means. That may mean something. There was some thought that my son was involved in something, that that people had it out for him and this was a hit of some kind.
Now I don't believe that, and then my detectives didn't and I talked to all this friends and stuff like that he wasn't up to anything.
Larry claimed that because the police were so focused on him, he believes they missed many opportunities to find out who was really responsible for his son's death, and because they treated him like a suspect, police were not giving Larry as much information about the developments of the case as they could have.
Then there was a rumor, you know, this was this was a rumor in town that my gambling debts, that the gamblers had this happen. I'm a psychotherapist, I'm not a gambler. Just crazy shit. So we started having these TV interviews and we're having giving this one interview for
mothers of murdered people. And this was on the ABC station and they interviewed the other mothers, and while I'm in this room with all the other fathers, their experience with the police was, Yeah, they're giving us all this information, They're following this, they're following that it self phenomenally supported. I have not yet heard from the police on their own in these nine years now.
A natural question and one that I asked was how could police think that Larry shot himself in the back. This was one of their assumptions, since police apparently believed Larry could have been responsible for the murder of his son. Larry believes that police considered the possibility that he hired a hitman. He was talking to us about the Alec Murdock case. He said that in the Carolinas stranger things have happened.
You know. This was at the same time, shortly after that guy Murda on South Carolina he killed the Nami lady. He had somebody shoot him in the head. I have no history of deviant behavior or criminal behavior.
Another possibility that Larry considered was could the killers have come into the wrong house, especially since they were asking about safes and watches Larry said the family didn't have. Larry said someone had moved into the house next door shortly before the murder of his son, and that he had been getting their mail and vice versa. Could this whole thing have been a case of the killers mixing
up the wrong address and getting the wrong house. I was looking at photos of Larry's house, and like I said at the top, the Providence Commons neighborhood. It only has six streets. A lot of the houses have a similar vibe, but they're not all identical. Still, some of them do look very similar. It is possible that the home invaders had the wrong address. Then again, maybe they just went around trying doors until they found one that was open. But if that's the case, why did they
specifically ask for watches in a safe? Was that just random or did they think the Shulman's had these specific things in the house, And if so why? Normally home invaders who target specific homes have information that the people there have something they want. The most common items home invaders target first are cash, expensive jewelry, and gold, followed by electronic devices like cell phones that can be wipe clean,
and prescription drugs. Back in the day, home invaders tended to take things like TVs and computers, but the resale market for those items has plunged, Plus they are really hard to carry, so those are not the items of choice anymore. The set of circumstances of this home invasion actually most closely matches very targeted robberies. When the home invaders go into a house where they know the person inside has a lot of cash or high value items, they want those items, and they are willing to use
extreme violence to get what they want fast. The home invaders asked Larry where's the safe? They went in at a time when they knew he would be in bed vulnerable. They clearly believed they needed him in order to get what they wanted. It's also interesting that the angle of the bullets shows that Larry and Josh were shot while lying down, So the home invaders made a deliberate choice to go into two bedrooms to confront these two men,
rather than just grabbing stuff lying around and leave. That could mean they believed there was something hid in Larry's bedroom like a wall safe. People often hide cash or valuables in their room. Most home base take place when the home is empty, which is what the people stealing things normally prefer because it's much less risky. These killers chose to go in at three am. They chose to stay once they knew there were people upstairs, and then
they chose to confront them both and to use lethal force. Finally, even though according to Larry, he was cooperating, the home invaders fatally shot Josh and shot him and they got nothing of value in the end. Larry told the news station WBTV that one theory he considered was that a new neighbor, someone who moved in a few weeks before
Josh was shot, might have been the actual target. He said, quote, by some of the questions the guys were asking me, the assailants, I wondered whether they just had the wrong house, and that the moving company movers had seen something in that guy's house because I didn't have the things they were asking about. But the police have checked that out.
The house is very identical end quote. However, Larry said that the private investigator he hired looked into that possibility but found nothing that would indicate the house next door had those kind of valuables either.
Just shortly before that, somebody moved into the home next door, and I thought maybe they were looking for that home. My detective followed up on that, and they didn't have a safe. I didn't have a safe. But we did live somewhat of an affluent lifestyle, and you know, Josh worked at the bar of Apital grill restaurant. He was part of the late night world. He had nice things, you know.
So according to what Larry told us, it seemed as though the PI dropped that lead, but police seemed completely focused on Larry as a suspect, he says, because he inherited that money. So with the help of the private investigator, he started doing some of his own investigation. In twenty eighteen, a year after the shooting, Larry's family publicly stated there
was a reward in effect. In addition to the five thousand dollars that was pledged by crime stoppers, the Shulman family put in ten thousand dollars of their own, for a total of fifteen thousand dollars. Larry told us that Josh was shot with nine millimeter bullets, which can be used in a lot of different kinds of weapons, from handguns to submachine guns, so that doesn't seem to narrow
it down a ton. Unfortunately, both bullets traveled in a downward path from the third floor, where Larry and Josh were sleeping, to the first floor. Josh was only shot once in the head, which probably means he was either lying in bed when he was shot or that he was held down, But we don't know what direction the blood spatter was in, if there was blood left behind, or even if Josh was shot in bed or in the hallway by the way. There is also the possibility
that this was completely random. People do sometimes die in botched home invasions, but this one seemed more intentional in twenty twenty three. In twenty twenty four, the FBI issued warnings about burglary tourists who targeted wealthy suburban neighborhoods. They
were frequently linked to South American theft groups. Data from the FBI reads quote, these sophisticated, often out of state or transnational crews specifically target high end homes, scouting them for valuable such as cash, jewelry, luxury handbags, and firearms end quote. But then the FBI goes on to say these gangs normally surveil their targets and tend to pick
times when they're not home. They also use things like signal jammers to jam up the Wi Fi and alarm systems, which didn't seem to happen here because, again, Larry said, they did not have that type of security back then. The South American gangs have been most active in California, but cases have also been reported in Michigan, Indiana, Texas,
and North Carolina. There have also been other home invasions that have made headlines in Carolina in twenty twenty six, including one recent case where the perpetrators tied up their victims and tortured them, Which brings me to another fact about Larry's case, and we talked about this briefly with Matt Stewart's case. A couple of weeks ago, someone came into Larry Shulman's house. They demanded certain items, but the killer didn't give Larry a chance to really respond. They
just started beating him. They didn't do what some of these other home invaders have done and tie him up or try to get information out of him. They just attacked. In twenty twenty, Larry told WCNC news police were being more communicative with his family. Larry said he felt that the reason why the case hadn't been solved was because police were so focused on him as their suspect, he said he was happy that police were taking another look
at the case. In twenty twenty three, six years after josh murder, Andrea and Larry met Gloria Lindsay, the woman who'd gotten Josh's heart, on what would have been Josh's thirty first birthday. Gloria said, quote, I really wanted to meet them and just to let them hear his heartbeat, just to let them know that a part of him is still alive. End quote. Understandably, Larry did not look
at the crime scene. His wife, Andrea came back from New Orleans to Charlotte to be by his side at the hospital, and Larry said that after that they never spent another night in their family home again. Eventually, the family relocated to Jacksonville, Florida. And now when Larry thinks about Josh, he prefers to remember the happy times rather than obsessing over how his life ended.
He was a great kid. He was a great kid. I mean, people loved him. You know, there's a story in his true story. When Josh was in the ninth grade, they were a three guy that came to the school and you know it was a clique et, preppy kind of school, and these guys came and they were kind of sitting by themselves separately, and he went over to each each of these kids and said, come on, sit at my table, Sit at my table, be part of things. And he was just a welcoming, welcoming kid.
But Larry said he still hopes that someday someone will come forward with a missing piece of information, something that will help him get answers about what really happened to Josh and why. He has said he is not motivated by revenge or hatred. He just wants justice for his son. I want the same thing, and I am terrified on behalf of the residents of that community that this could happen again and that the killer or killers are still
out there. There is currently still an active fifteen thousand dollars reward in effect if anyone has any information that could lead to the apprehension of Josh's killer or killers. The number for crime Stoppers if you have any information is seven O four three three four one six zero zero. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone Murder Line. Helen Gone Murder Line is the production of School of Humans
and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Etily's Perez Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah camer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Sale, Executive producers of Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley. Listen to Helen Gone ad Freed by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on
Apple Podcasts. If you were interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at Hell and gonepod. If you have a case she'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
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