As time went on, the case grew colder & colder & the family’s spirits were beyond low. The killer was still out there & was still silently terrorizing the citizens of Oil City.
In January 1998, now six years since the murder, a detective named Rich graham is invested in the case. He visits Lucy Howe & tells her he is going to solve this case. He continued to work on it in his off time. He would go home after work & spend hours reviewing the paperwork on the case. Rich is dyslexic, so he would read over things several times to make sure he was right. He went over the case for the third time & he noticed something he didn’t the first two times. The autopsy photos & coroner’s report did not make sense. He recalls a bruise on her cheek but it wasn’t even mentioned in the report.
He takes the pictures to a medical examiner to make sure nothing else is weird. The examiner says besides the mark on her cheek not being noted, there are also no signs of restraints on her ankle or wrists. This makes the medical examiner feel like there was more than one person involved in the murder if they never needed to tie her up because someone else could help. This went along with the storyline about a red car pulling up & the tall skinny man pulling Shauna into the car. Obviously, that would be at least two people. They were confused why they didn’t notice this in the last six years. They think the reason they assumed it was only one was that there was only one person’s DNA found. When this bomb was dropped to the police, they decided to look back through reports, looking for a possible duo or group.
They discovered that in 1992, the same year Shauna was murdered, the fire department was called to a scene where a car was on fire. A red car, & it was Ted Walker’s car. The creepy pizza boy. Even though we already figured out that it wasn’t his DNA, now that we know it could have been more than one person, He might’ve still been involved & it was just his partner’s DNA. They re-interviewed Ted & asked how he found out about the murder. Ted said he found out from James & Tim O’Brien, who were brothers that police originally suspected, as they had attempted to kidnap a girl in July of 1995 but failed. But James & Tim were in jail according to records at the time of Shauna’s disappearance, so they were eventually ruled out.
The detective was confused why three previous suspects knew each other & why they were all getting brought up again so, he checked records to solidify all of their alibis. He was pretty confused since supposedly Tim & James were in jail, but how would they know about Shauna first of all & how would Ted find out from them before it got to him from everyone living there.
He gets a hold of a trooper & asks to check jail records to make sure they were in jail at the time of the disappearance. The trooper comes back & asks where he got that false information from because they were not in jail that day. They had been in jail prior to the abduction, but the night of, they were not & since everyone thought they were in jail, they had never been questioned or tested. Detective Graham & the team have now found two new leads & decided they need to interview the O’Briens.
He decides to test Tim O’Brien since he was currently in jail again for a sexual assault. Tim hesitates when asked & tells the detective he will have to ask his attorney first. At this point, it was around ten years since Shauna died & Detective Graham was on the cusp of solving it. In February 2002, the lab called him about James’ & Tim’s DNA. After all of these years, they had a match for the DNA found on the bodysuit. James O’Brien’s Semen was stained on a costume of a murdered 11-year-old girl ten years prior. The same James had been looked into weeks after Shauna’s death but was pushed aside because no one cared to double-check the information.
Although frustrating, it all added up, James, Ted, & Tim had to be the abductors. Ted Walker was then arrested. Since Tim & James refused to talk to the police, the only proof we have of what really went down is from Ted’s perspective so of course, he tries to make himself sound like the best guy out of the three.
What Actually Happened
Ted Walker tells police that on October 27th, 1992, an eyewitness saw him walk up to Shauna on the way back from a Halloween event. So he admits he was the tall skinny man who they originally suspected. He says he asked her if she was selling girl scout cookies, to put her at ease & to not scare her. James & Tim O’Brien then pulled up in Ted’s red car. Ted put Shauna around his shoulders, making her scream. He then hands her off to Tim, Gets in the car, & they all drive to Ted’s house. The brothers carry Shauna into the house & take her upstairs & give her candy to keep her quiet. He says they picked Halloween because it was only supposed to be a “prank” Ted says he doesn’t know what happened upstairs & he only heard her screaming even though it’s very obvious that he does know. Ted tells them that after that, the brothers took her to Coulter’s hole alone & since Ted didn’t go with them, he doesn’t know what happened there. This is where police have to fill in the blanks but, they believe she was assaulted once arriving & was kept alive in the trunk all night. This is where they think the scrapes on her knees came from because she was probably getting rug burn all night, which eventually turns into scrapes. Police then believe they threw her off the bridge that morning. They believed James was the leader, Tim was the follower, & Ted was just along for the ride but not any less guilty.
Ted Walker was convicted of kidnapping & 3rd-degree murder. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison at the state correctional institution in Albion in Erie county, Pennsylvania.
The brothers were convicted of kidnapping & first-degree murder. They were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. James is at the state correctional institution – Phoenix in Collegeville, Pennsylvania & Tim is at the state correctional institution – Greene in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.
