90s

 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.

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.