Colonel Phillip Shue Pt. One

dead in the ever seed. Even though his death is ruled to be a suicide, there are a number of suspicious discrepancies, as there's duct tape around his wristen feet, a large gash in his chest, and both of his nipples have been removed. There's suspicion that Sho's ex wife had him tortured and killed in order to cash in on some life insurance policies, but even though a judge eventually rules that she was the victim of a homicide, his official cause of death is never changed.

from the pack. Colonel Phillips Sheue was a psychiatrist with the United States Air Force who was only months away from retirement and had future plans with his wife, Tracey. But after leaving his home one morning for what should have been a routine work day, he was killed in

a car crash less than three hours later. But this was no ordinary car crash because when Scho's body was found, he had duct tape wrapped around his wrist and feet and a number of unexplained injuries which could not have been caused by the accident, as there was a large gash in his chest and both his nipples and a digit from one of his fingers had been removed and

could not be found at the scene. And believe it or not, the authorities were inclined to believe that Colonel Chue inflicted these injuries on himself before intentionally crashing his car in a very elaborate suicide. Prior to his death, Shue had displayed a lot of paranoid and erratic behavior because he was convinced his ex wife was planning to kill him in order to cash in on some lucrative insurance policies she had taken out on his life as

part of their divorce settlement. For this reason, some people, including Schu's widow, believed that his ex wife abducted and tortured him, and when he attempted to make an escape, he wound up losing control of his car it was killed in a fatal crash. At a civil trial years later, a judge publicly expressed his belief that Colonel Shoe was the victim of a homicide, but since he did not have the legal authority to make that ruling, the authority

still officially consider Shoe's death to be a suicide. It's a pretty baffling case because even though there are a lot of odd discrepancies about the suicide ruling, which cannot be adequately explained, it's not that easy to come up with a scenario involving foul play which makes much sense either. So we're going to explore both sides on today's episode.

But then there's the question if the car crashes, how does the person who's attacking him guarantee that they're going to get out right or they're going to get away And there's no sign of another individual. No one sees someone fleeing from the car, but someone had to have gotten into a argument with him or injured him, or he completed these injuries elsewhere or through his nipples out

the window. I mean, it seems incredibly bizarre if this is a stage suicide because of the way his body's found.

what happened to him. So, either he was abducted and someone was torturing him and he managed to make an escape before he crashed his car, or he just drove to some remote area and was doing stuff like cutting off his own nipples and then just decided to crash his intentionally. And it's just so wild that all this time has passed and no one has been able to find any conclusive evidence of where he was during that window of time.

United States Air Force. Born in Brooksville, Ohio, Phil joined the Air Force in nineteen seventy and served as a navigator for four years, but had to cut his career short after he was diagnosed with Minier's disease, a disorder which was caused by the build up of fluid in the chambers of the inner ear. As a result, Phil had several episodes in which he experienced a sudden loss of consciousness, and of course, this made him too much

of a liability to be an aviator. After leaving the Air Force for ten years, Phil trained to become a physician's assistant and completed medical school before he was accepted into a four year residency program at the Wright Patterson Air Force Medical Center in Dayton, Ohio. Upon completion of this program, he was assigned to Eggland Air Force Base in Florida and became their chief medical director of impatient

mental health. It was here where Phil became acquainted with his future wife, Tracy, who was assigned there as an Air Force forced nurse, and they gradually began a relationship. During this time period, Phil was legally separated from his first wife, Nancy, whom he had originally married back in

nineteen seventy. The couple were high school sweethearts, but Phil would later say that there was no real love or compatibility in their relationship, and he only agreed to marry Nancy because she was six months pregnant at the time. She soon gave birth to a son named Jeffrey, though many people noticed that he did not appear to look

all that much like Phil. At the time, Nancy had supposedly been carrying on an affair with another man, but Phil never asked for any paternity testing to confirm that he was Jeffrey's biological father, and raised him as if he were his own son. Even though Phil and Nancy's marriage had completely fallen apart by the end of the

nineteen eighties. Their divorce was not actually finalized until nineteen ninety two, as Phil wanted to complete his service commitment and ensure that Nancy, who was unemployed at the time, would still be allowed to retain all of his military benefits. By this point, Phil was already deeply involved in his relationship with Tracy, and they would get married less than

one year following the divorce. Ten years later, Phil and Tracy were living together in Kendall County, Texas, as he was assigned to work as a staff psychiatrist aerospace medicine physician at the Wilford Hall Medical Center located at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio. The Shoes had made plans for the future, as Phil was finally going to

retire from the Air Force. During the fall, he was accepted into a forensic psychiatry fellowship program at the University of Alabama, and the couple had already put a down payment on a new lakefront home near Birmingham.

Z diagnoses and I need help. And even if he wasn't going outside of his practice to seek professional help, he and his wife should have had many discussions where he was talking about his own mental health. And if I don't know, I just don't think that someone that was a psychiatrist could be pursuing so many big things

and have such a significant break so quickly. Yes, he was paranoid about his ex wife, as you alluded to in the intro, but you would think there was a rapid decline or you would see signs pointing to this mental health episode, and that Phil himself would likely have noticed it as well, wouldn't you.

his finger. And like we just said, they had plans for the future, they were planning to do a They just did a down payment on a new home in Alabama. So even though you can never really predict if someone is going to be suicidal, there just aren't signs here that he would be capable of doing what they accused him of.

to you for. And so often I've heard that therapist counselors, psychiatrists, psychologists, that a lot of them is kind of routine to go ahead and see another specialist because you're dealing with that mental health crisis all the time in your professional life.

He's got a really popular they've got like a million subscribers on YouTube's called the Behavioral Panel. They read body language and they do statement analysis and that type of a thing, and it's really good if anyone's interested. But he would go on these YouTube videos and he would like gray out. He wouldn't realize that he was having these moments where he was having a seizure. Essentially, they'd be like not like a grand Mall seizure, they're like

these little seizures. But it got to the point where he just didn't see it in himself. But when he looked back in retrospect after getting this diagnosis, he realized, like, oh my god, this is something that's been happening for years, and people that are close to me might have noticed little things, but they just thought he's the top of his field, this is what he studies. He is going to recognize this in himself, and like nobody said anything to him.

going to get the answer. And he's luckily he did all of these different protocols and managed to make I think, like pretty much a full recovery, but which is rather miraculous given to his diagnosis and what the long term the prognosis was really negative.

place which have never been adequately explained. Sometime between eight and eight fifteen am, a pair of motorists would report seeing Phil's Mercury Tracer erradically swerving while driving westbound off Interstate ten. This location was relatively close to San Antonio, but he was traveling in the opposite direction of the air Force base. The tracer would drive onto the Interstate Center Medium and travel several hundred yards negotiating between two

light poles before it struck an object. This caused the vehicle to briefly go airborne, but after it came back down on all four wheels, it returned to the interstate and continued traveling westbound. The two motorists behind the tracers said that it drove between sixty to sixty five miles per hour for the next few minutes, but after it passed the exit for John's Road, it veered off the

right shoulder. It then crossed the side medium and the access rode for about forty three feet before it clipped a tree and spun sharply in a clockwise direction until it crashed into a second free with great force. When emergency workers arrived at the scene, they discovered Colonel Shoe's body in the driver's seat as the impact of the crash. It caused a driver's side to cave in, and he

was killed instantly after suffering fatal head trauma. However, it soon became apparent that this was not a normal accident, as Shoe had duct tape wrapped around each of his wrists as well as the top of each of his boots. The loose end of each piece of tape was dangling about four to five inches from his wrists, and since no roll of duct tape could be found at the scene, it almost appeared that she had been bound at some

point before he managed to break free. The colonel also had a number of strange injuries on his body which had clearly not been caused by the crash. The T shirt beneath his Air Force uniform was ripped open from the chest to the navel, and he had a six inch vertical gash in his chest. The distal joint from the pinky finger on Shoe's left hand had been removed, and most disturbingly, both of Shoe's nipples were cut off.

The missing digit and the nipples could not be found inside the vehicle or anywhere near the accident scene, even though she was carrying forty seven dollars in his pants pocket. His wallets and military dog tags couldnot be found either and were never recovered. Since no one could place the colonel at the Wilford Hall Medical Center that morning, it seemed apparent that he never arrived at work and something very odd happened to him during the two and a half hour window after he left his home.

would then remove his nipples. I mean, did they say that the nipples were removed with any kind of like surgical certainty or anything, Robin.

at around three pm. According to Tracy, even though they did not mention that tape had been wrapped around Phil's wrists and ankles, she was not told about the strange injuries and mutilation to her husband's body until a San Antonio newspaper reporter phoned her up and asked for comment about it about a month and a half later. On the surface, it almost appeared that at some point during his commute to work, Phil had been abducted and tortured

at an unknown location, but managed to escape. He made it back to his own car and attempted to flee, but lost control of the vehicle and was killed before he managed to get help. But believe it or not, after a lengthy investigation which involved several agencies, including the local and state police and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, they all reached the conclusion that Colonel Schue had suffered some sort of psychological breakdown and his death

was an elaborate suicide. Shoe's autopsy was performed at the office of doctor Vincent Demyo, Medical Examiner of Bear County, Texas. Doctor Demyo was also considered to be one of the top forensic pathologists in the country, and he concurred with

the suicide ruling. According to the two motorists who would follow behind Shoe's Mercury Tracer on Interstate ten, the brake lights never went on when the vehicle veered off the road, and since no skid marks could be found at the scene, it appeared that she made no attempt to stop himself

from crashing into the tree. There were no defensive wounds found on Shoe's body to indicate any struggle had taken place, and the autopsy uncovered scratch abrasions near the gash in his chest, which appeared to be consistent with hesitation marks, almost as if he had been working himself up to

self inflict those wounds. She also had two point four milligrams per leader of an anesthetic called letocane in his system, and it wouldn't have made much sense for a third party to inject him with a pain killer if they were planning to torture him. This made doctor Demiyo suspect that she injected the litocane into himself in order to dull the pain while he slashed his own chest and

cut off his own nipples and fingertip. Demayo did not buy the theory that she was in the midst of attempting to escape from his captors, because he did not make any apparent attempt to seek help. Right before he crashed his car, Shoe drove past several businesses as well as three exits which would have taken him back to

his hometown of Born. In addition, he passed by a patrol car from the Born Police Department, which had pulled over by the side of the interstate to assist a motorists and was easily visible because of its flashing lights. Shoe's cell phone was also found inside his vehicle, but records would show that no calls were made from the phone that morning.

you're doing. There seems to be some kind of plan, whether it be by his ex wife or by Philip. I'm not sure. I just I also think it's possible that an outside party could if they were trying to make it look like some kind of strange suicide. Maybe there could be the inclusion of LTA Kane. It seems far fetched, but anything is possible.

which had nothing to do with torture. But a lot of these points they bring up about why he did pull over and try to seek out from the police, Well, Jules just talk about that a few moments ago, about how he must have been terrified and not thinking rationally, so I could give him a pass, Like even though he passed by a police car, if he was in such a panic and it had such an adrenaline rush going on right now, he may not have even noticed it.

And that's why he's driving so fast, because he's terrified and fleeing for his life, and unfortunately he wound up crashing his car.

him depressed, anxious, and paranoid. In the months before he was killed, she had been receiving treatment from Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Dion, a staff psychiatrist to the Brooks Army Medicals, and six months before he died, she reportedly told Dion that he'd experienced a dark and disturbing associated episode in which he imagined his cargoing out of control on his way to work while great violence was done to him.

If true, this seemed to support the idea that she would stage the fatal car crash on his own accord well. Needless to say, Tracy Chu did not believe her husband would have taken his own life, as she and philid made plans for the future, and he actually put a deposit down on the house they purchased in Alabama the

day before he died. Tracy's original plan was to have Phil's body cremated and his remains interred at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, but the suicide ruling changed all that, and she ordered the funeral home to store her husband's body in a refrigerated crypt.

Two he has these issues with his ex wife I believe you guys alluded to. That's really stressful. He's retiring, changing jobs, moving, starting a new career, and a fellowship for a new medical adventure. So there's a lot of pressure on his shoulders. It doesn't make you suicidal to be anxious and depressed and worried about things. So I mean, yes, that alludes to it, But everyone who's anxious and depressed

is not suicidal, is what I meant. So when you look at this, I just unless he really did predict this, which again would be a tally over in the suicide category, it just seems like, yeah, he was struggling, he's getting help, and he's making plans with his wife. I'm with Tracy where she says, why would he do this? I don't think he would do this? And I think it's incredibly bold that she says, you're not going to get rid of my husband's body yet, I'm not cremating him. You're

actually going to keep him in the refrigerated crypt. How long does he stay there?

Tracy eventually hired the services of another famous forensic pathologist, doctor Cyril Weckt, who performed his own autopsy. He expressed his disagreement with doctor Demio's original conclusion, as he believed

that another person was likely involved in Shoe's death. Even though Demyo believed that she had injected himself with lydocane in order to dull the pain while inflicting wounds on himself, Wack could not find any injection marks on Phil's body and did not believe there was enough lytocane in his system to have caused much pain relief. Tracy confirmed that on the night before he was killed, Phil was complaining about itchiness since he had chaved his chest in order

to take a cardiac exam. Since Phil had recently self prescribed e MLA cream to himself, doctor Wex's theory was that he may have applied it to his chest in order to combat the itchiness, as e MLA cream has lydocane as one of its ingredients, and a small amount of it could have slipped into Phil's bloodstream after his

chest was sliced open. However, the counter argument to this theory is that the cream also contained an anesthetic called prilocane, but no trace of it was detected in Shoe's system. Another troubling discrepancy Weckt found was that no fingerprints belonging to Shoe or a third party could be found on the duct tape on his wrists and boots, which seemed to go against the idea that Shoe applied the tape himself.

Even if Shoe used gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints, none could be found at the scene, and while a late text glove was visible in the original crime photos, it

looked like it had never been used or worn. So if Colonel Shoe was responsible for inflicting the injuries on himself and staging his own suicide, he would have needed to leave a cutting instrument, both of his nipples, the distal joint from his left pinky finger, his wallet, his dog tags, and possibly some gloves at a location where they were never found, before driving several miles and intentionally crashing his car.

really odd. Even if he was going to complete suicide, I feel like he would have his dog tags on because Tracy needs to know it's him, And again, I mean, it's something that's also symbolically important. So I'm wondering what he really take it off when his whole life had been dedicated to the military.

very little blood on the outside. However, since the phone was never taken into evidence and examined, this detail about the blood could not be corroborated. The psychiatrist Phil had been seeing, Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Dion, also believed that he'd been responding well to treatment and did not appear to be suicidal. There's also been some about the story that Phil supposedly shared with him six months prior to his death, where he described an associative episode about his car careening

out of control while traveling to work. Even though this information was included in psychological autopsy report, Dion supposedly maintained that he never shared this story with anyone from the Air Force's Office of Special investigations, and there was no

documentation about it in any of Dion's notes. Tracy managed to exert enough pressure on Kendall County's district Attorney Bruce Curry that he agreed to convene an investigative grand jury to examine her husband's case, but they ultimately concluded that there was no evidence of homicide and the initial suicide

ruling was correct. When Tracy testified at the grand jury proceedings, she mentioned that she had not cremated Phil as originally planned, and instead brought in doctor Wet to perform a second autopsy. This revelation caused Curry to become enraged to confront Tracy in the stairwell, where he stated, quote, since you liked to testify so much, perhaps I should accuse you of the crime and have you end up in the defendant seat end quote.

It's almost bizarre when you look at the fact that this psychiatrist says, I never told anyone about this supposed disassociative episode where he's predicting his death in the same way. But it is in the military documents. Could someone within the military have a reason why they want it to look like this was a suicide. Is there a reason why that could have been added in there to justify the suicide ruling and not have it be opened into a possible homicide.

was stationed in Florida. But then again, if the ex wife wasn't involved and Phil was murdered by someone completely different associated with the military, than perhaps they would have reasons to fabricate all this evidence and hope that it got ruled as a suicide. So right from the outset, Tracy believed that the person who seemed like the most likely suspect to have murdered her husband was his estranged

ex wife, Nancy Chu Timpson. By this point, Nancy had gotten remarried to Lieutenant Colonel Donald Timpson, who was an active duty pilot in the Air Force Special Forces Unit, and they were both living in Florida. While Phil was with Nancy, she became the beneficiary on a pair of life insurance policies totaling one million dollars, and as part of their divorce settlement, Nancy retained the right to hold on to these policies even though they were no longer married.

Over the years, Phil frequently asked Nancy to cancel the policies, but she refused, claiming she could not afford to the Suspicion about Nancy began in May of nineteen ninety nine, nearly four years before Phil's death, when he received an anonymous, typewritten letter which read quote, please read this letter. You may be in danger. I'm writing because I remember you as such a kind and caring doctor, and I can't just sit by and not help you by telling you

what I know. End quote. The writer then went on to say that a friend of theirs worked with Nancy's husband, Donald, and had heard them say they wished Phil was dead so they could collect his life insurance. The friend apparently thought that the couple may have been planning something, so the writer said they felt the need to type up a letter and send it to Phil in order to warn him. It's been reported that Phil received a second cryptic, anonymous note at a later time, which read quote the

plan is now delayed, but not canceled. Be careful. I can't identify myself because they may find out and stop letting information slip end quote. Phil's response to these letters was to write to Nancy and confront her, and he once again demanded that she dropped the life insurance policy she had on him, stating, quote, I feel helpless to prevent my eventual murder if you hire good assassins and quote.

Nancy wrote Phil back and denied their conversation with Donald about wishing him dead ever took place, and she expressed her belief that someone was playing a sick joke on him and refused to cancel the policies. When Phil tried to lobby the two insurance companies holding the policies US Double A and Northwest Mutual to cancel them on his behalf, they refused. The companies told Phil they were not authorized to cancel the policies since Nancy owned them and kept

paying the premiums. He responded by sending them a letter which read quote thoroughly examined my death for evidence of foul play, even if on the surface the cause would appear natural or accidental end quote.

think God fills out there getting help. It's really interesting when he does reach out to her, he's pretty desperate, demanding that she dropped these life insurance policies, and he even mentions eventually, if you hire good assassins, right, how would I avoid getting murdered? Really sad and the way that everything's kind of dissolving in regards to his feeling

of safety because of his ex wife. But once you receive a written letter, knowing that he's on to you, and knowing that there's been this conversation with life insurance policies and things like that, don't you think you need to kind of do it about face and leave the plan because he's on to you. Right, He's already called you out for planning his murder in writing. Wouldn't you stop at that point and be like, oh gosh, we got to do something different.

the entire threat from his ex wife. They found it odd that Phil never made any attempt to bring the letter to the police, but Tracy maintained that because Phil held a top secret security clearance, he had to follow a specific chain of command and notify his own superiors about what was happening before he involved any outside agencies. Tracy claimed that Phil did show the letter to his superiors, but they seemed to dismiss the idea that it represented

a real threat against him. No conclusive evidence was ever found to prove that Phil was the author of the letter, and unfortunately, it was never tested for DNA or fingerprints. When questioned, Nancy claimed that both she and Donald had alibis, which proved they were at work in Florida on the

date that Phil was killed. Nancy also turned down the police's request to take a polygraph, and since Donald held a top secret security clearance, he would not have been allowed to take a police polygraph even if he wanted. At one point, Nazi's lawyers stated that he believed Phil's death was a result of attempting to fake an abduction in order to make it look like his ex wife had harmed him.

million dollar life insurance policies. Nancy was named as a defendant in addition to the two insurance companies US Double A and Northwest Mutual, as Tracy believed they had a legal obligation to cancel the policies after being informed the threat to Phil's life. Phil and Nancy's son, Jeffreyschue, was named as a third party defendant in the lawsuit, as Phil had removed Jeffrey as the secondary beneficiary from his will only five days before his death and replaced him

with Tracy's sister. According to Tracy, Phil was concerned about Jeffrey's ability to manage money, as he had gone through a bankruptcy the previous year, which was partially brought on by gambling debts. Jeffrey was also in the midst of his second marriage, which Phil did not believe have much stability, and he feared that any inheritance his son received could

be squandered in a divorce settlement. When Nancy was given a videotaped deposition as part of the lawsuit and asked about her re ex husband's death, she pleaded the Fifth Amendment on over twenty questions in order to avoid self incrimination. It was never established if Jeffrey found out he had been removed from his father's will prior to his death, as he filed an affid David invoking his Fifth Amendent privilege and declined to speak with law enforcements and military investigators.

In June of two thousand and eight, Tracy civil lawsuit was ready to go to trial in Kendall County Court of Law, but by this point Nancy, Jeffrey, and Northwestern Mutual have been dropped as defendants as one million dollar settlement agreement have been made between them. US double A was the only remaining defendant and they were still facing potential liability issues for refusing to cancel their life insurance

policy on phil. Halfway through the trial, Judge Bill Palmer suddenly dismissed the jury after announcing that the two parties had reached an agreement and he could make a ruling about the case on his own. In the end, Judge Palmer ruled that US double A had done nothing wrong by refusing to cancel Colonel Shoe's insurance policy and were not liable for damages. But he also surprised everyone by stating, quote, the evidence considered by the court substantiates of finding that

Colonel Philip Schue was murdered. The Court therefore finds that the April sixteenth, two thousand and three death of Colonel Philip Schue was a hobbs hide end quote My goodness.

pleading the fifth either. She doesn't have anything to gain or to lose in this whole element because she didn't do anything wrong on paper, she paid a premium, the man who is the deceased is dead, and now she gets to collect the life insurance policy. It's pretty darn simple happens. I did what I was supposed to do by paying it, he died, I get the money. Anything she says does not work in her favor. She doesn't

supposedly know anything about it. So on the surface, as dysfunctional as their divorce was and continued relationship was, what does she gain by saying anything in that deposition. Worst thing that happens is they have to prove that she likely killed her husband before they take her money away. Otherwise she's sitting pretty just keeping her mouth shut.

what would you be incriminated on? And I get your point, ash for sure that like opening your mouth, you know, you could open a door to any number of things, and a good attorney can cut into your words that you're saying and pick them apart and maybe weed out some deception in there or weed out some things that don't look good. So it's better to just say nothing at all. But it just it always looks sketchy when people do it.

officially listed as a suicide to this day. In March two thousand and nine, the story would receive national exposure when the TV show forty eight Hours aired an episode titled The Curious Case of Colonel Shoe. Shortly Thereafter, Tracy was contacted by a witness who'd watched the show and thought they might have an important piece of new information.

On the morning Colonel's shoe was killed. This witness said that they'd been driving on a rural road leading to Interstate ten, which Phil normally would have taken on his route to work. They remembered seeing Phil's mercury tracer off the side of the road, and a blue van with tinted windows was parked directly behind it. What was particularly interesting about this location is that the ground had a natural deposit of calichet, a sedimentary rock which produces a

white clay substance. According to the autopsy report, at the time Phil was found, the bottom of his boots were caked with mud and a white powdery substance, but investigators never bothered to analyze it. The forty eight Hours episode contained interviews with Lieutenant Roger Anderson of the Kendall County Shriff's Office, who'd been the top ranking official at the crash scene that morning and became an advocate for Tracy Schue.

He openly acknowledged that the investigation was mishandled and that he lost control of the scene as there was a jurisdictional beef between all different law enforcement agencies who showed up there, including the Kendall County Shriff's Office, Warrene Police Department, and the Texas State Police. Since Colonel Shoe's death was not believed to be a homicide, his vehicle was never possessed as a potential murder scene, an important evidence may

have either been lost or never collected. Tracy has claimed that even though Kendall County authorities have asked her to pick up her husband's wrecked car from the impound yard on several occasions, she always refused to do so because

she believes the vehicle is a crime scene. After Tracy changed her mind about having him cremated, Phil was finally buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors, But in a tragic PostScript to this story, his son Jeffrey, unexpectedly passed away in October twenty fifteen at the age

of forty five following a brief illness. While Colonel Shoe's death has never officially been reclassified as a homicide, his loved ones are still searching for answers and the official circumstances of what happened remained unclear, So.

appear to be a suicide, it's a suicide. But it's like they called it, and they pushed everything out aside, and they lost that chance to investigate. And I think that's why Tracy was so upset. She got a call that her husband had completed suicide and that he was dead, and then she gets information later of all these bizarre things that occurred, and she said, had I known that, I would have questioned the suicide even more from the start,

Why didn't anybody else? And so I really feel for her where she's just refusing to let go of this idea of someone look deeper into this because it's so bizarre. Why didn't anybody else when they arrived on the scene have that same attitude.

that is pretty frustrating. So, like I mentioned in the intro, we've covered a lot of cases in which a victim's death was ruled to be a suicide, but their loved ones were adamant that foul play had taken place. But the circumstances of this one are a bit more complex. Regardless of what actually happened to Colonel Phillips Shoe, the one indisputable fact about this case is that his exact

cause of death was a car crash. While the authorities believed that Shoe inflicted a bunch of wounds on himself before intentionally crashing his vehicle as part of an elaborate suicide. His loved ones believed that he was in the midst of being tortured by a third party and managed to escape and flee the scene, but wound up getting into

a fatal accident before he could get help. Even if conclusive evidence was found to prove that someone held Colonel Shoe captive and tortured him that morning, could they be charged with murder? I mean, I'm sure they would be charged with something, But Shoe's death technically took place while he was behind the wheel of his own car, and while he was obviously at a diminished capacity because of

his ordeal. I'm sure this would be a pretty complicated legal situation if a suspect was ever brought to trial. But while Tracy Chue and everyone who cared about Phil want justice for his death, I'm sure one of their most important priorities is to clear his name and debunk the official cover story that he killed himself. This was a particular, regularly horrible tragedy for Phil's parents, Bruce and Miriamshau, who both lived until their late nineties and had to

endure the loss of all four of their sons. In addition to losing Phil, they lost an infant son named Stephen, back in nineteen forty six, their oldest son, Norman when he passed away in nineteen ninety nine at the age of sixty four, and their last surviving son, Roger, who died of a sudden illness in twenty ten at the age of fifty nine. And if that wasn't enough, Phil's son Jeffrey, would also unexpectedly pass away due to illness

at age forty five. And virtually every case like this, the victim's loved ones will insist that they were not suicidal and had everything to live for. But like we've mentioned countless times on this podcast, sometimes people will suddenly take their own lives without any warning whatsoever and completely

surprise everyone. I know that Phil and Tracy had made a number of plans for the future, and he was only six months away from retiring from the military and starting a new chapter of his life, But since he had spent the past few years seeking treatment for depression and anxiety, I think it's a stretch to say that suicide was an absolutely impossible option.

happen to us, she would have never done that. I don't think that that's ever a statement that can be one hundred percent true, because again, it's not the rational person that you know thinking in that moment.

the military. He's gonna have the best package and financial situation.

making really irrational decisions. But if he did indeed do this to himself, he was rational enough to think, I will inject myself with Leta Kane before I do these grievous injuries to myself like cutting off nipples and finger and gashing oneself across the chest. And maybe there was those hesitation marks. If that's indeed what it was if he did do this. I'm just really really struggling with why.

The reason that vehicular suicides are so risky is that you could end up paralyzed or a vegetable, which would be a fate worse than death for a suicidal person. One of the big issues with how Colonel Schue died is that he didn't crash head on into a tree, but instead drove off the road and clipped one tree before he spun into his second tree with such force that he was killed by the impact. I don't think anyone could predict with absolute certainty that a crash like

that would end their life. But then again, if Shue was in a very dark place and suffered a complete psychological breakdown, he may not have been in the most rational state of mind that morning. And all that being said, even though there are a number of details about Sho's death which point to the involvement of a outside party, it's really hard to come up with a scenario involving

abduction and torture that makes much sense. We've read the psychological autopsy report that was produced by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, and while there are definitely issues with some of their conclusions, they do make some valid points which seem to blow holes in the foul play theory.

She left his home and his Mercury tracer that morning in order to make the thirty mile commute to work, and theoretically there should have been no reason for him to stop anywhere and put himself in a position to be abducted. You also have to take into account that she took a break from his ordinary routine by leaving an hour earlier than usual in order to catch up

on some paperwork at his office. So unless someone was watching him when he left, how could they have known that she would be out there driving on the road at that particular time. The biggest issue with figuring out what happened is that we've got zero evidence if shees whereabouts during the two and a half hour window between when he left his residence at five forty five A and his car was seen driving erratically down Interstate ten

between eight and eight fifteen am. All we really have is an eyewitness who came forward six years after the fat and recalled seeing the mercury tracer off the side of the road with the blue van parked directly behind it. This sighting took place on a road Shoe ordinarily would have used to drive onto the interstate during his commute to work, so I could see someone intercepting and abducting him. But if so, where did they take him to be tortured?

Since the duct tape on Shoe's wrist was torn, this suggests that he might have been tied to a chair at some point before he broke free. But where was this location if she was abductor or abductors forced him into the van against his will and traveled elsewhere did someone else drive the tracer there? Remember Shoe died while driving the tracer, so if he managed to escape, he had to wind up back in his own car at

some point. No matter which side of the fence you're on, there are a lot of unexplained gaps about how she got from point eight to point B.

They're cutting his chest, they're cutting off the nipples, they're cutting off a digit of his finger. All that's incredibly bizarre. But what would motivates you to actually do exactly what you said? Fake that you were almost tied to a chair somewhere and had to break free, which would make sense if he had been abducted, that that really occurred.

So it's all very confusing. You have that maybe someone pulled up behind him at some point, which could be that second party, but we know nobody was in the car.

Be one of the most bizarre suicides in history, probably, but the other being abducted, being tortured, breaking free from some cherry or taped to seems very plausible when you look at this evidence. I don't think he would have pulled over to get help. I think he would have been in a state of shock, and then when that's wearing off is when he would crash the car.

somehow and that's when he was abducted. But it still makes you wonder like where, if he was being tortured, where exactly did this occur. Where was there a chair to duct tape into? And what happened to these people after Shoe tried to flee the scene, And he.

the ten dollars Tier. One of the features we offer is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of UNSAWD Mysteries, where you can download an audio file and then boot up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very first episode that I did a commentary track over was

the episode featuring this case. So if you want to download a commentary track in which I make more smart ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join Tier three.