Our case begins on October 27th, 1992, in oil city PA. 11-year-old Shauna Howe loved Halloween & was a loved child. Although her parents were divorced, she had a good relationship with both of them. She was born in July 1981 in PA. She woke up that morning to remind her mom, Lucy, about her girl scouts event at the nursing home later that evening. They were doing an event where each of the girl scouts adopted a grandparent to spend time with. So as the time came for her to meet at her friend’s house to go to the nursing home, she got ready in her gymnast costume. She says goodbye to Lucy, & leaves.
It was around 7:30-8 when the event ended & she started walking home with her friend. As they got closer to their homes, her friend kept walking straight & Shauna turned the corner. As 8:30 rolled around Shauna still had not arrived home, Lucy’s boyfriend, John, called her work & told Lucy, Shauna did not arrive. They assumed maybe the event was going long & waited another hour before worry overcame them. No girl scout event had ever run this long, especially at a nursing home.
When Lucy got home before Shauna at around 10:30, that’s when they called the police. The police began to investigate & assumed she got lost or went home with a friend. Then a man named Dan Paden had reported witnessing an abduction of a little girl that night.
He reported that he was walking west on 1st street in oil city that night when he saw a little girl walking alone on the other side of the street. It was dark out, but he said he did see her wearing what looked like a bodysuit & tights, which is what Shauna was wearing. He then noticed a tall skinny man wearing a baseball cap. Also on the other side of the street. He looked away, but then he heard what sounded like a scream. He turned around & now there was a red car where the two had just been standing & when it drove away, they were gone too. Dan panicked & started knocking on every door he could to use a phone to call the police. Since it was the 90’s, he doesn’t have a cell phone.
The police send out 20-30 officers to look for her & set up a roadblock to talk to people. Police were on foot & in cars & were asking everyone they could. They knew the chances of finding her alive were statistically decreasing by the minute. Lucy & John are told to stay home with the phone just in case someone calls, either it is someone with information, Shauna, or the abductor calling for ransom. By the next morning, the news was made public about Shauna’s disappearance & hundreds of people volunteered to help.
By October 29th, two days after her disappearance, spirits were low. The searchers had now made their way to Coulter’s hole, which is a secluded hunting area a little out of town. There was a deep stream in which locals swam in, people liked to drink there, etc. In the area there were campsites & it was this day where a man was driving away from his campsite & caught a glimpse of something under one of the bridges.
Back at home, Lucy & John are told to go to the bridge to identify something they may have found. They arrive & John walks down to where police are surrounding something. His fear lessens when he realizes it wasn’t a body since, at that point, that’s all they were worried about. His heart drops though when he sees what the police were surrounding, Shauna’s gymnastic Halloween costume she had been wearing the night she was kidnapped, laying on the ground. It looked as if it had been there overnight since it was wet from the moisture. Although it was a relief it wasn’t her body they found, It was still implying something awful had already occurred. It was tested & found several semen deposits on it. But, there was enough semen on one of the stains to obtain DNA from it.
On October 30th, 1992, three days after her abduction & one day after the bodysuit was found, a guy who had gone to a nearby cottage in Coulter’s hole called the police. He told them he was walking on a bridge & looked over when he saw something. Just three days after the abduction, Shauna’s body was found in the open at the bottom of the bridge. Police were confused because they were there just the day before across the street investigating the bodysuit. She also was not hidden at all, it was very easy to see her as she was just laying there. Anyone who would have even driven past would have been able to see her. They were confused as to why they didn’t see her & no one else did either & were convinced that she was not there the day before. They assumed that the killer must’ve gone back during the night with the knowledge that the police had just been there, but something wasn’t adding up. They thought either the killer wanted her to be found, or they were taunting the police, but either one doesn’t make sense. They believed she had been thrown off the bridge, which is a 33 ft drop. They believed she was alive when thrown & stayed alive for another 5-10 before she passed from blunt force trauma to the head & chest from the fall.
Lucy & her brothers (Shauna’s uncles) confirmed the body of Shauna. After the news, Oil City had banned Halloween, which ended up lasting a decade.
It had been a few years since her disappearance, & every time the police thought they found something, it was a dead end. They had taken over one hundred blood samples & none came back matching the DNA.
Around this time, it was brought up that the description of the tall skinny man who abducted Shauna fit the description of a local man named Ted Walker, who worked at a pizza shop & was known to be creepy towards kids. He had also had past experiences with being creepy towards Shauna, & Lucy brought this up. He also drove a red car, but again, after testing his DNA, it was a dead end.
