00:00:46
Speaker 1: School of Humans. Helen Gone 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 inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
00:01:30
Speaker 2: It was a really hot night in the.
00:01:39
Speaker 3: 17-year-old Shane Stewart was gearing up for the Fourth of July holiday celebrations by picking up his girlfriend, 18-year-old.
00:01:45
Speaker 2: Sally McNelly, and they were going to watch the fireworks.
00:01:48
Speaker 3: Shane and Sally had started dating in the fall of 1987 when they were both students at San Angelo Central High School.
00:01:55
Speaker 2: They fell in love fast.
00:01:57
Speaker 3: They even ended up moving in together into an apartment where both of them worked in fast food to pay the bills. Sally got a job at a taco place. Shane worked at a burger joint. But then, according to reporting by Texas Monthly, they broke up at some point, and both Shane and Sally left San Angelo for a while. But they went in different directions. Sally went to Lubbock. Shane went to Kansas. Eventually, they both came back. And it's not clear in the reporting I've seen exactly when, but sometime that summer, shortly before that fateful Fourth of July holiday, they met again and sparks flew. And just like that, they were back together. In that summer of 1988, Shane was living.
00:02:40
Speaker 2: With his father, Marshall Stewart.
00:02:42
Speaker 3: Marshall later said that Shane left the house at around 6 o'clock on the evening of July 4th. Some other reports said it was actually closer to 7 p.m. But either way, as Shane headed out, he told his dad he was going to pick Sally up and they were going to watch the fireworks. And Shane specifically said that he was not planning to stay out late. According to Marshall, the last thing Shane said to him was, I love you, Dad. Shane drove a few miles to where Sally was living with her mother, Pat, and her stepfather, Bill Wade. Pat and Bill had recently had a baby, Sally's little brother, and apparently Sally absolutely adored her little brother. Sally was working at a local nursing home, Meadow Creek, and according to her obituary, she was due to report for duty in the Navy in March of 1989. That night, Sally told her mother she was going to spend the night at her girlfriend's house, but apparently that wasn't the real plan.
00:03:39
Speaker 2: She was actually planning to stay with Shane.
00:03:41
Speaker 3: Shane picked Sally up in his copper-colored 1980 Chevrolet Camaro. This car was Shane's pride and joy. He loved that vehicle, and it was very recognizable around town. This was one of those small towns where everybody knew what everyone else drove. Actually, this story took me back to my own high school days, both the lying about when Sally was sneaking out with a guy and also everyone knowing everyone else's locations based on their vehicles, which may be why I found what happened next so horrifying. Sally and Shane were headed toward Lake Nasworthy. It was one of the most popular places in San Angelo to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. It was also somewhere where teenagers would go to park, hang out, and get away from adults for a while. After the fireworks ended, Shane and Sally apparently left the lake and went to Whataburger. We know this because there was a receipt. Later, Marshall found that receipt inside Shane's car. The receipt was time-stamped at around 11.40 p.m., so at that point, Sally and Shane were still alive. And we have a pretty good idea of where they were headed next. After they grabbed their food at Whataburger, they went back out toward the lakes. This time, their destination was another body of water, O.C.
00:04:57
Speaker 2: Fisher Reservoir. And according to.
00:04:59
Speaker 3: Reporting in the Texas Monthly podcast, Shane and Sally, two fishermen later said that they saw the couple that night. One of those men was Randall Littlefield. Randall Littlefield told the podcast that he and another man were out checking to see if they'd caught any catfish that night. And he said they saw Shane and Sally near Shane's Camaro. Then they saw another vehicle pull up, a pickup truck Randall described the truck as having KC lights, those big auxiliary lights mounted above the cab. He said those big lights were shining toward Shane and Sally. Then Randall said he heard arguing. According to Randall, there were at least two other men there that night, and at one point, he said he heard Sally say words to the effect.
00:05:43
Speaker 2: Of that she would not do it again.
00:05:46
Speaker 3: It's not clear exactly what she meant, but from what Randall described, it sounded like she was saying, She didn't want to hang around those people again. Then the truck left. Randall believed this happened sometime after midnight. After that, Shane and Sally disappeared. They never made it home. That was almost 40 years ago. And since then, this case has been caught up in rumors of satanic panic, a devil-worshiping cult, a man who was arrested with blood and fingernails in his house, and whispers of a police conspiracy. But it all started on July 4th, 1988, with two missing teenagers. I'm Katherine Townsend. Over the past eight years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I've 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 Hell and Gone Murder Line on 678-744-6145.
00:06:50
Speaker 4: That's 678-744-6145.
00:06:50
Speaker 2: Or you can send us a message on Instagram at hellandgonepod. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line.
00:07:50
Speaker 3: When Shane didn't come home, Marshall Stewart was worried immediately. It was not like Shane to say that he was coming home and then to never show up and stay out all night. So Marshall and Shane's brother, Sean, started looking for him, but eventually they went home empty-handed. Then at around 7 a.m. the next morning, a Lake Ranger found something. He saw Shane's Camaro abandoned in Isabel Hart Park near the O.C.
00:08:17
Speaker 2: Fisher Reservoir. There was nobody inside the car.
00:08:21
Speaker 3: Sally's work uniform was there, but she had been wearing a purple blouse and jeans when she left her house. Police ran the license plate. They connected the car to Marshall and they called him. And almost immediately, there was a decision in this investigation that Marshall would question for years. Police let Marshall drive the Camaro home rather than processing it for evidence immediately. Marshall later said that even at the time, he wondered why the car wasn't being treated like a potential crime scene. At home, Marshall started to do some of his own detective work and look for clues inside Shane's car. That's when he found the Whataburger bag with the time-stamped receipt. He also saw Sally's uniform, and there was no obvious sign of struggle inside the car.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: But there were some things missing. There are different.
00:09:10
Speaker 3: Accounts over the years about exactly which of Sally's personal belongings were or were not inside that Camaro. Former Tom Greene County Deputy Larry Counts said on the Shane and Sally podcast that certain things were missing, including Sally's wallet and purse. He also said an item, a stuffed animal, that normally hung from Shane's rearview mirror was gone. Now, some of those items might have made sense if the motive was robbery. Others didn't seem to fit that pattern. Why would someone steal a stuffed animal? Was law enforcement dealing with a robbery gone wrong? or a killer taking trophies, or something else. Law enforcement did eventually ask Marshall to bring the Camaro back so they could examine it. But according to Marshall, they only had the car for a few hours, and that same day, they let him drive it home again. And pretty quickly, there seemed to be an idea that maybe Shane and Sally had just left voluntarily. The investigating agency was the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office. And on July 6th, Shane and Sally were officially classified as runaways. Now, this happened even though Shane's family was adamant that Shane had given no indication that he was planning to leave. He said he was coming back that night. It was the same story for Sally. There was no indication at all that Sally had been preparing to disappear. She had been happy at home, and from what her mom told investigators, actually, Sally had said she was thinking about spending more time there, not less. Police's theory in spite of this was that Sally and Shane may have run away to elope. And this is where that Camaro becomes much more important, because Marshall knew how Shane felt about that car. This wasn't just transportation for a teenage kid. This car was Shane's entire life. And Marshall said whatever happened, there's absolutely no way his son would simply abandon that car and walk away from it. So from Marshall's point of view, the idea that these two teenagers had simply run off made zero sense.
00:11:11
Speaker 2: But by then, time had already been lost.
00:11:13
Speaker 3: The car had been moved from the original spot where it was parked, and Marshall said the police did not dust for fingerprints or send the car in for any other forensic testing.
00:11:22
Speaker 2: So Marshall told Rob.
00:11:24
Speaker 3: D'Amico, one of the reporters on the Shane and Sally podcast, that he started going out at night looking for clues. And one night, he was near the area where Shane's Camaro had been found, and he smelled something bad, something that was unmistakably the stench of human remains. Marshall shined his flashlight near the source of the smell, and he found a body. With police dismissing his concerns, Marshall Stewart began his own investigation. According to the Shane and Sally podcast, Marshall went out looking for his missing 17-year-old son. And instead, he found another dead man. But it wasn't Shane. Marshall later said police told him that this man's death was drug-related. He said he remembered police describing it as essentially a drug deal gone wrong.
00:12:28
Speaker 2: And according to Marshall, police told.
00:12:30
Speaker 3: Him that this victim's death had nothing to do with Shane and Sally. Meanwhile, rumors about Shane and Sally were spreading through San Angelo. Now, this was 1988, right as America was in the middle of what became known as the Satanic Panic. Across the country, people were seeing supposed Satanic conspiracies everywhere. At first, they were mostly related to things like heavy metal and occult symbols and Dungeons & Dragons.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: Kids playing with Ouija boards, and goth kids in general. But the whole.
00:13:01
Speaker 3: Thing blew up, and soon investigators in multiple locations were investigating rumors of satanic cults abusing and murdering children and drinking their blood, among other things. These theories have been widely debunked. There's absolutely no evidence that any of these alleged satanic cults committed any crimes at all. But despite that, people in America were scared. It's hard to imagine, but during that time, the satanic panic really was everywhere. even in small Texas towns. A lot of people were asking questions about Shane and Sally's friend group. And there were reports that some of their friends may have been involved in a cult activity. According to an Unsolved Mysteries episode about this case, Sally began attending what they called ritualistic parties regularly.
00:13:46
Speaker 2: And she introduced Shane to this group of friends as well. But was any of.
00:13:50
Speaker 3: This stuff real or was it just part of the mass hysteria of that time? Shane's father, Marshall, was interviewed by Texas Monthly in 2024. He told them he had noticed Shane becoming more distant over the course of his relationship with Sally. One of Shane's cousins told the Shane and Sally podcast that shortly before his death, Shane apparently changed his appearance pretty dramatically. Shane bleached his hair peroxide blonde and started wearing a lot of black. There was a name in this friend group that came up pretty early in the investigation. One of Shane and Sally's friends was a guy named Steve Schaefer. Now, Steve was supposedly the leader of the so-called occult group, and he lived in a house that people in town nicknamed the Devil House. At one point, police went into the so-called Devil House, and according to media reports, they actually apparently got a priest to bless the house before they investigated it. The Shane and Sally podcast reporter Rob D'Amico talked to Steve Schaefer. Steve said the rumors about him were completely untrue. He said that on the night that Shane and Sally disappeared, he had been staying with his grandmother. He said he had an alibi for the whole night. Steve said the rumors about him had been started by some of the cult, meaning the group of occult kids around town had started some rumors about him. But he told Rob something else. He said Shane had come to see him before he died. and that Shane told him, quote, I need a gun.
00:15:16
Speaker 2: I need money.
00:15:17
Speaker 3: Steve said Shane had seemed scared, so Steve claimed that he told Shane to come back in the morning, but he said that Shane never showed up. Steve said the murders had deeply affected him, so much so that he also did something else. He had Shane and Sally's names tattooed on his left arm. Over the years, there were some other random leads, like a man named James Caldwell. who police say drew a map and claimed to know where Sally and Shane were buried. But the map was apparently just a crude rectangle, and nothing much came of that lead.
00:15:49
Speaker 2: But the name is interesting for another reason.
00:15:51
Speaker 3: When I was looking for any evidence of a cult activity, I found an article from a local paper in 1994. The headline read, Apparent Satanic Ritual Ends in Suicide Pact in Oklahoma. It turned out that James Caldwell and his girlfriend were in an apparent suicide pact, where they took a rifle and positioned it so that when the bullet fired, it.
00:16:11
Speaker 2: Would go through both their heads at once.
00:16:13
Speaker 3: Both 22-year-old James and his 17-year-old girlfriend died at the same time, and there was a circle of candles around their body. So it seemed as though the satanic ritual references were because of the candles and because James' girlfriend had a pentagram tattoo and pentagram jewelry. There were also rumors about secret ceremonies, and in some of these cases, law enforcement started treating those rumors like actual evidence. Shane and Sally knew people in San Angelo's alternative teenage scene. But the stories about the Devil House seemed to be primarily because it was abandoned and it was just.
00:16:50
Speaker 2: A creepy house with some graffiti of occult symbols.
00:16:55
Speaker 3: There were also rumors that the kids who gathered and performed these crude occult rituals did it in that house. Now, Steve Schaefer said, These rumors were totally false, but Shane and Sally did seem to be afraid of something. According to people later interviewed about the case, Shane and Sally had gotten scared of some of the people around them. There was even an account that Sally told a friend that she and Shane were planning to leave Texas. According to Unsolved Mysteries, two weeks before her disappearance, Sally frantically called a friend named Helen, saying that she believed someone was trying to kill her. So right after Sally and Shane went missing, a natural question to ask was, did they fake their disappearances because they needed to get away from something or someone? Then, on November 12th, 1988, more than four months after Shane and Sally vanished, 17 miles from where Shane's Camaro was originally parked, a hunter was near Twin Buttes Reservoir when his dog ran ahead of him and found a human skull. There were more bones nearby and some clothes, including a purple blouse and blue jeans that investigators said were the ones worn by Sally on July 4th. Investigators went back to search the area again, and a few days later, they found a second group of skeletal remains about 75 feet away from where Sally's bones were found, with cowboy boots nearby and clothing that looked like Shane's.
00:18:22
Speaker 2: This included a jacket that he was.
00:18:23
Speaker 3: Wearing on July 4th, with three figures related to Dungeons & Dragons inside, according to police. Of course, even though Dungeons & Dragons is now thought of as a harmless game, which it was, the presence of D & D paraphernalia only increased the rumors that Shane and Sally may have had something to do with the occult. The remains were taken to the medical examiner in San Antonio, and it was later confirmed the remains were Shane and Sally's.
00:18:50
Speaker 2: And the medical.
00:18:51
Speaker 3: Examiner determined that both of them had been shot. So this was a homicide, no doubt about it. According to the case material, Both Sally and Shane had suffered shotgun wounds to the head. Because their bodies had been outside for months and because they had been exposed to heat and weather and animals, the forensic evidence had obviously been compromised. But there was one strange detail that made it into media reports. A Stetson hat pin had reportedly been placed on a tree limb above or near his remains. Was it deliberate or random? Could it have belonged to the killer or was it just something that was there before and put there by someone else?
00:19:34
Speaker 2: But this became.
00:19:35
Speaker 3: Just another strange piece of a case that was already drowning in theories. And one of the biggest theories was Satanism. While a lot of people were talking about Satanic rituals, a lot of the local reporting neglected to mention a very real and traceable piece of physical.
00:19:51
Speaker 2: Evidence, a gun.
00:19:55
Speaker 3: Months before Shane and Sally were killed, Sally apparently gave a gun to law enforcement. Former Deputy Larry Counts later said that he met with Shane and Sally when they were still living together. He claimed that they handed him a firearm. They told him there was a group they were trying to get away from. And according to Deputy Counts, they told him that that gun had supposedly been used in a murder in San Angelo.
00:20:21
Speaker 2: But then the gun seemed to disappear.
00:20:25
Speaker 3: Larry Count said he turned the gun over to the San Angelo police, and he said he gave them Shane and Sally's names.
00:20:32
Speaker 2: But that gun was never bought.
00:20:34
Speaker 3: Tested, and at some point, it reportedly disappeared from an evidence locker. Obviously, we have no idea if the gun had anything to do with Shane and Sally's deaths, but it's bizarre that the weapon disappeared from the evidence room and that both Shane and Sally were killed just a few months later. Over time, another theory emerged. that Shane and Sally may have been involved in some drug dealing gone wrong. Years after the murders, people started telling investigators there may have been a narcotics angle. In 1995, an inmate named Heath Big Heath Davis reportedly gave information about the San Angelo drug world in the late 1980s. According to accounts of that tip, Heath Davis claimed that a local drug dealer kept a ledger of debts. And according to the allegation, Sally McNally's name was on that list The claim was that Sally owed thousands of dollars involving cocaine and marijuana. Again, we don't have access to the case file, so we don't know how thoroughly this tip was ever investigated, but it does seem to fit with a conversation that Marshall remembered Shane having. Marshall said he overheard an intense phone argument shortly before the murders, something involving money. I did some more digging because honestly, I was wondering something else. Why did Shane and Sally both leave town at the same time? Sally went to live with her grandmother while Shane stayed with relatives in Kansas. Did they just need a break from each other or were they scared of something? Sally's mother told.
00:22:05
Speaker 2: Local newspapers a few more details.
00:22:08
Speaker 3: She said that Sally had dropped out of high school suddenly in the fall of 1987. At the time of her death, she was taking steps to get her diploma and enlist in the Navy. So were she and Shane just being rebellious teenagers in love? Or was there something more sinister going on, something her parents didn't know about? Sally's mother told the Standard Times that she believed that Sally would have confided in her if her daughter believed something was seriously wrong. Yet at the same time, in the same interview, she said Shane seemed concerned when he got back to town and found Sally there, which seems contradictory. Did Shane or Sally owe money to the wrong people? Or could someone else believe that they did? Further complicating things was the fact that because of the missing gun, some people in town believed that someone in law enforcement may have had something to do with the killings. Over the years, there have been allegations that other evidence from this investigation disappeared. Interview tapes, notes, and physical evidence. But I think it's important to make a distinction between the handling of the evidence in this case... and the allegations that a police officer could have had something to do with Shane and Sally's deaths, because those are two different things. Then, almost 30 years after Shane and Sally were murdered, something happened that suddenly put.
00:23:25
Speaker 2: This case back in the news.
00:23:27
Speaker 3: And it started with a traffic stop and spiraled into a search warrant, decades-old writings about the murders, locks of hair, a fingernail, possible blood, and a man investigators had known since the days when Shane and Sally were alive.
00:23:43
Speaker 4: On June 20, 2017, police in San Angelo stopped a 47-year-old man named John Cyrus Gilbreth.
00:24:04
Speaker 3: The traffic stop was connected to suspected marijuana possession, but according to reports, police found other things in the vehicle, including drugs, weapons, and.
00:24:13
Speaker 2: Tactical body armor.
00:24:15
Speaker 3: That information led Texas Ranger Nick Hanna and Tom Green County investigators to obtain a search warrant to search John Gilbrest's property. They were reportedly looking for evidence connected to drug trafficking, but during that search, they found something else, something that brought investigators straight back to 1988. John Gilbreth had been 17 years old when Shane and Sally were murdered. He knew Shane and Sally, and he had moved in some of the same social circles. During the 2017 search, investigators found old writings in journals that discussed the murders of Shane Stewart and Sally McNally. They also found cassette tapes. Some were reportedly marked with the initials SS. And investigators found biological material, including hair, a fingernail, and material believed to possibly be blood. There has been some confusion in the reporting over the years over exactly how that possible blood material was stored or what form it was in. So I don't want to make any assumptions here, but investigators clearly thought that biological material was worth testing. And because this was now 2017, they had the technology in place that police in 1988 barely had access to.
00:25:27
Speaker 2: So they tested the material. During that testing, the story broke and went national.
00:25:32
Speaker 3: And this time, it wasn't just West Texas newspapers covering the story. John Gilbreth's arrest and mugshot made it into the Daily Mail and onto Fox News. Everybody was talking about the small Texas town and what they called the satanic panic killings. But then things went quiet. And when the test results came back, they didn't fit the story that everybody was expecting to hear because it turned out the samples did not match Shane and Sally. John Gilbreth acknowledged that the journals and tapes did belong to him but he completely denied murdering Shane and Sally. His explanation was essentially that he was a true crime fan. He was fascinated by the case. He said back in the day when he knew Shane and Sally, he was a teenager interested in dark subjects and that the writings police found were connected to his own interest in trying to understand or solve the murders. John said the biological material came from other people and had nothing to do with Shane and Sally. And again, there was no official report of what these tests found. But John Gilbreth was never charged with murdering Sally and Shane. He did eventually go to federal prison on a firearms charge and served around two years. He was released in June of 2019. But to me, the strangest question from the 2017 search isn't necessarily did John Gilbreth kill Shane and Sally because the biological evidence wasn't connected to them. But I do wonder, who did that biological material belong to? Why did he have a human hair and a fingernail? Was the blood fake or was it someone else's blood that he had for other reasons?
00:27:08
Speaker 2: We just don't know.
00:27:10
Speaker 3: I'm also curious as to what exactly that DNA was and whether investigators ever compared any of it to other unsolved cases. Because it turns out Shane and Sally were not the only people who reportedly had frightening experiences around those reservoirs. There were accounts from that era of people being attacked or threatened around isolated lake areas. An article from the Standard Times on July 8, 1990, said that a man and a woman at a boat ramp at the O.C. Reservoir said they were threatened by a man in a pickup truck on the same night that Shane and Sally went missing, and that the pickup truck, possibly one with four-wheel drive, had a roll bar and mounts above the cab. The fishermen told police... he had picked up a big rock and that after that, the man in the truck backed out and drove away. And according to materials surrounding this case, there were also reports of couples being approached by an armed man. In some accounts, victims described someone appearing from the darkness with a shotgun. There were reports of people being restrained and assaulted. And if those accounts are accurate, that opens up another completely different possibility. Maybe Shane and Sally were not killed because of Satanism or a drug debt or because they knew information they couldn't know.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: Maybe they were a.
00:28:26
Speaker 3: Young couple parked near an isolated reservoir at night and encountered the wrong person. The Son of Sam-style killer explanation is much less elaborate than some of these other theories. But if these murders were random, what do we make of the pickup truck and the fishermen saying that Shane and Sally were arguing with other people that night and Sally allegedly saying no, she would not do it again? I wonder about the accuracy of the statement because memory does change over time. And newspaper articles in 1990 have police saying that a fisherman heard loud noises after noticing the pickup truck, but wasn't able to make out what was said due to the fact that his motor was so loud and rumbling. Could police have been mistaken back then or could a witness's memory have changed over time? If it's true that Sally was arguing with a group of people, it does seem to point to someone targeting Shane and Sally, someone who had a history with them. That's part of what makes this case so frustrating. We talk a lot on this podcast about the noise around a case and how it can make it hard to see the facts.
00:29:33
Speaker 2: The noise in this.
00:29:34
Speaker 3: Case is, in my opinion, Satanism, because there is zero evidence that Shane and Sally were targeted in any kind of cult killings. The law enforcement theory has the missing gun and serious questions about evidence handling. But there's no proof that a police officer murdered Shane and Sally. The random predator theory may fit the isolated location and reports of other attacks around the reservoirs.
00:29:56
Speaker 2: But then you have the fisherman's.
00:29:58
Speaker 3: Account, which suggests Shane and Sally may have been interacting with people they already knew. And then there's John Gilbreth, who seemed like a promising lead, but the biological material investigators tested did not belong to Shane or Sally. So where does that leave us? There is one more piece of the forensic story. In July of 2014, Shane and Sally's remains were exhumed for additional DNA work, and there was also a human hair found on one of Shane's boots. According to the materials surrounding the case, the results of that testing have not been publicly released, but we do know the hair was eventually sent in for DNA testing. But that testing happened in 2016, and the lab was reportedly unable to obtain a usable DNA profile from it. I do want to go back to clear something up. Remember that one of Shane's relatives said that Shane had bleached.
00:30:50
Speaker 2: His hair and started wearing a lot of black.
00:30:53
Speaker 3: Once this satanic panic narrative took hold, you can see how people could have turned that into something ominous. But the relative told the Texas Monthly Podcast there was a much simpler explanation. Shane loved the movie The Lost Boys.
00:31:07
Speaker 2: Of course, I remember that movie because I absolutely loved it too. I was just a few.
00:31:12
Speaker 3: Years old at the time when it came out in 1987. It was about teenagers living in the fictional town of Santa Carla, California, and how they interacted with and eventually battled a group of vampires led by Kiefer Sutherland. The leader of the vampire cult had a distinctive look.
00:31:27
Speaker 2: He had bleach blonde hair and an earring. That's what Shane wanted to emulate.
00:31:32
Speaker 3: The movie was so popular, in fact, there was even a local Lost Boys group formed in Texas.
00:31:38
Speaker 2: But instead of causing mayhem, this.
00:31:40
Speaker 3: Group reportedly did volunteer work, and Shane was associated with it. Who killed Shane Stewart and Sally McNally? If I were starting this investigation today, if I were law enforcement, I would go back and look at the actual pieces of evidence, the car, the receipt, the witnesses who supposedly saw an altercation between Sally and some.
00:32:02
Speaker 2: Men on the night they were murdered. Because underneath all.
00:32:05
Speaker 3: The satanic panic and all the rumors and competing theories are two real teenagers who were taken from their families. And on July 4th, 1988, somewhere between the late night Whataburger run and the next.
00:32:17
Speaker 2: Morning, they were brutally murdered.
00:32:20
Speaker 3: If you lived in San Angelo, Texas in 1988, or if you spent time around Lake Nasworthy, O.C. Fisher Reservoir, or Twin Buttes, knew Shane or Sally, remember the Devil House or know anything about the gun that Shane and Sally reportedly gave to Deputy Larry Counts. Or if you remember the mysterious pickup truck or know anything about who was driving it or who owned it, or if there's anything else about this case that you've never told law enforcement, we want to hear from you. Because once you get past the 40 years of rumors and the satanic panic headlines, there's a much simpler truth here.
00:32:55
Speaker 2: Two teenagers were executed. And someone out there knows who did it and why. I'm Katherine Townsend.
00:33:03
Speaker 3: This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. Hell and Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast. It's written and narrated by me, Katherine Townsend, and produced by Edelise Perez. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah Kammerer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Salit.
00:33:25
Speaker 2: Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L.C. Crowley.
00:33:30
Speaker 3: Listen to Helen Gone Ad-Free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at HelenGonePod or Katherine Townsend Investigates on Patreon. 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 678-744-6145.
00:33:51
Speaker 4: That's 678-744-6145.
00:33:51
Speaker 2: School of Humans.
Speaker 1: School of Humans. Helen Gone 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 inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening.
00:01:30
Speaker 2: It was a really hot night in the.
00:01:39
Speaker 3: 17-year-old Shane Stewart was gearing up for the Fourth of July holiday celebrations by picking up his girlfriend, 18-year-old.
00:01:45
Speaker 2: Sally McNelly, and they were going to watch the fireworks.
00:01:48
Speaker 3: Shane and Sally had started dating in the fall of 1987 when they were both students at San Angelo Central High School.
00:01:55
Speaker 2: They fell in love fast.
00:01:57
Speaker 3: They even ended up moving in together into an apartment where both of them worked in fast food to pay the bills. Sally got a job at a taco place. Shane worked at a burger joint. But then, according to reporting by Texas Monthly, they broke up at some point, and both Shane and Sally left San Angelo for a while. But they went in different directions. Sally went to Lubbock. Shane went to Kansas. Eventually, they both came back. And it's not clear in the reporting I've seen exactly when, but sometime that summer, shortly before that fateful Fourth of July holiday, they met again and sparks flew. And just like that, they were back together. In that summer of 1988, Shane was living.
00:02:40
Speaker 2: With his father, Marshall Stewart.
00:02:42
Speaker 3: Marshall later said that Shane left the house at around 6 o'clock on the evening of July 4th. Some other reports said it was actually closer to 7 p.m. But either way, as Shane headed out, he told his dad he was going to pick Sally up and they were going to watch the fireworks. And Shane specifically said that he was not planning to stay out late. According to Marshall, the last thing Shane said to him was, I love you, Dad. Shane drove a few miles to where Sally was living with her mother, Pat, and her stepfather, Bill Wade. Pat and Bill had recently had a baby, Sally's little brother, and apparently Sally absolutely adored her little brother. Sally was working at a local nursing home, Meadow Creek, and according to her obituary, she was due to report for duty in the Navy in March of 1989. That night, Sally told her mother she was going to spend the night at her girlfriend's house, but apparently that wasn't the real plan.
00:03:39
Speaker 2: She was actually planning to stay with Shane.
00:03:41
Speaker 3: Shane picked Sally up in his copper-colored 1980 Chevrolet Camaro. This car was Shane's pride and joy. He loved that vehicle, and it was very recognizable around town. This was one of those small towns where everybody knew what everyone else drove. Actually, this story took me back to my own high school days, both the lying about when Sally was sneaking out with a guy and also everyone knowing everyone else's locations based on their vehicles, which may be why I found what happened next so horrifying. Sally and Shane were headed toward Lake Nasworthy. It was one of the most popular places in San Angelo to watch the Fourth of July fireworks. It was also somewhere where teenagers would go to park, hang out, and get away from adults for a while. After the fireworks ended, Shane and Sally apparently left the lake and went to Whataburger. We know this because there was a receipt. Later, Marshall found that receipt inside Shane's car. The receipt was time-stamped at around 11.40 p.m., so at that point, Sally and Shane were still alive. And we have a pretty good idea of where they were headed next. After they grabbed their food at Whataburger, they went back out toward the lakes. This time, their destination was another body of water, O.C.
00:04:57
Speaker 2: Fisher Reservoir. And according to.
00:04:59
Speaker 3: Reporting in the Texas Monthly podcast, Shane and Sally, two fishermen later said that they saw the couple that night. One of those men was Randall Littlefield. Randall Littlefield told the podcast that he and another man were out checking to see if they'd caught any catfish that night. And he said they saw Shane and Sally near Shane's Camaro. Then they saw another vehicle pull up, a pickup truck Randall described the truck as having KC lights, those big auxiliary lights mounted above the cab. He said those big lights were shining toward Shane and Sally. Then Randall said he heard arguing. According to Randall, there were at least two other men there that night, and at one point, he said he heard Sally say words to the effect.
00:05:43
Speaker 2: Of that she would not do it again.
00:05:46
Speaker 3: It's not clear exactly what she meant, but from what Randall described, it sounded like she was saying, She didn't want to hang around those people again. Then the truck left. Randall believed this happened sometime after midnight. After that, Shane and Sally disappeared. They never made it home. That was almost 40 years ago. And since then, this case has been caught up in rumors of satanic panic, a devil-worshiping cult, a man who was arrested with blood and fingernails in his house, and whispers of a police conspiracy. But it all started on July 4th, 1988, with two missing teenagers. I'm Katherine Townsend. Over the past eight years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I've 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 Hell and Gone Murder Line on 678-744-6145.
00:06:50
Speaker 4: That's 678-744-6145.
00:06:50
Speaker 2: Or you can send us a message on Instagram at hellandgonepod. This is Hell and Gone Murder Line.
00:07:50
Speaker 3: When Shane didn't come home, Marshall Stewart was worried immediately. It was not like Shane to say that he was coming home and then to never show up and stay out all night. So Marshall and Shane's brother, Sean, started looking for him, but eventually they went home empty-handed. Then at around 7 a.m. the next morning, a Lake Ranger found something. He saw Shane's Camaro abandoned in Isabel Hart Park near the O.C.
00:08:17
Speaker 2: Fisher Reservoir. There was nobody inside the car.
00:08:21
Speaker 3: Sally's work uniform was there, but she had been wearing a purple blouse and jeans when she left her house. Police ran the license plate. They connected the car to Marshall and they called him. And almost immediately, there was a decision in this investigation that Marshall would question for years. Police let Marshall drive the Camaro home rather than processing it for evidence immediately. Marshall later said that even at the time, he wondered why the car wasn't being treated like a potential crime scene. At home, Marshall started to do some of his own detective work and look for clues inside Shane's car. That's when he found the Whataburger bag with the time-stamped receipt. He also saw Sally's uniform, and there was no obvious sign of struggle inside the car.
00:09:07
Speaker 2: But there were some things missing. There are different.
00:09:10
Speaker 3: Accounts over the years about exactly which of Sally's personal belongings were or were not inside that Camaro. Former Tom Greene County Deputy Larry Counts said on the Shane and Sally podcast that certain things were missing, including Sally's wallet and purse. He also said an item, a stuffed animal, that normally hung from Shane's rearview mirror was gone. Now, some of those items might have made sense if the motive was robbery. Others didn't seem to fit that pattern. Why would someone steal a stuffed animal? Was law enforcement dealing with a robbery gone wrong? or a killer taking trophies, or something else. Law enforcement did eventually ask Marshall to bring the Camaro back so they could examine it. But according to Marshall, they only had the car for a few hours, and that same day, they let him drive it home again. And pretty quickly, there seemed to be an idea that maybe Shane and Sally had just left voluntarily. The investigating agency was the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office. And on July 6th, Shane and Sally were officially classified as runaways. Now, this happened even though Shane's family was adamant that Shane had given no indication that he was planning to leave. He said he was coming back that night. It was the same story for Sally. There was no indication at all that Sally had been preparing to disappear. She had been happy at home, and from what her mom told investigators, actually, Sally had said she was thinking about spending more time there, not less. Police's theory in spite of this was that Sally and Shane may have run away to elope. And this is where that Camaro becomes much more important, because Marshall knew how Shane felt about that car. This wasn't just transportation for a teenage kid. This car was Shane's entire life. And Marshall said whatever happened, there's absolutely no way his son would simply abandon that car and walk away from it. So from Marshall's point of view, the idea that these two teenagers had simply run off made zero sense.
00:11:11
Speaker 2: But by then, time had already been lost.
00:11:13
Speaker 3: The car had been moved from the original spot where it was parked, and Marshall said the police did not dust for fingerprints or send the car in for any other forensic testing.
00:11:22
Speaker 2: So Marshall told Rob.
00:11:24
Speaker 3: D'Amico, one of the reporters on the Shane and Sally podcast, that he started going out at night looking for clues. And one night, he was near the area where Shane's Camaro had been found, and he smelled something bad, something that was unmistakably the stench of human remains. Marshall shined his flashlight near the source of the smell, and he found a body. With police dismissing his concerns, Marshall Stewart began his own investigation. According to the Shane and Sally podcast, Marshall went out looking for his missing 17-year-old son. And instead, he found another dead man. But it wasn't Shane. Marshall later said police told him that this man's death was drug-related. He said he remembered police describing it as essentially a drug deal gone wrong.
00:12:28
Speaker 2: And according to Marshall, police told.
00:12:30
Speaker 3: Him that this victim's death had nothing to do with Shane and Sally. Meanwhile, rumors about Shane and Sally were spreading through San Angelo. Now, this was 1988, right as America was in the middle of what became known as the Satanic Panic. Across the country, people were seeing supposed Satanic conspiracies everywhere. At first, they were mostly related to things like heavy metal and occult symbols and Dungeons & Dragons.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: Kids playing with Ouija boards, and goth kids in general. But the whole.
00:13:01
Speaker 3: Thing blew up, and soon investigators in multiple locations were investigating rumors of satanic cults abusing and murdering children and drinking their blood, among other things. These theories have been widely debunked. There's absolutely no evidence that any of these alleged satanic cults committed any crimes at all. But despite that, people in America were scared. It's hard to imagine, but during that time, the satanic panic really was everywhere. even in small Texas towns. A lot of people were asking questions about Shane and Sally's friend group. And there were reports that some of their friends may have been involved in a cult activity. According to an Unsolved Mysteries episode about this case, Sally began attending what they called ritualistic parties regularly.
00:13:46
Speaker 2: And she introduced Shane to this group of friends as well. But was any of.
00:13:50
Speaker 3: This stuff real or was it just part of the mass hysteria of that time? Shane's father, Marshall, was interviewed by Texas Monthly in 2024. He told them he had noticed Shane becoming more distant over the course of his relationship with Sally. One of Shane's cousins told the Shane and Sally podcast that shortly before his death, Shane apparently changed his appearance pretty dramatically. Shane bleached his hair peroxide blonde and started wearing a lot of black. There was a name in this friend group that came up pretty early in the investigation. One of Shane and Sally's friends was a guy named Steve Schaefer. Now, Steve was supposedly the leader of the so-called occult group, and he lived in a house that people in town nicknamed the Devil House. At one point, police went into the so-called Devil House, and according to media reports, they actually apparently got a priest to bless the house before they investigated it. The Shane and Sally podcast reporter Rob D'Amico talked to Steve Schaefer. Steve said the rumors about him were completely untrue. He said that on the night that Shane and Sally disappeared, he had been staying with his grandmother. He said he had an alibi for the whole night. Steve said the rumors about him had been started by some of the cult, meaning the group of occult kids around town had started some rumors about him. But he told Rob something else. He said Shane had come to see him before he died. and that Shane told him, quote, I need a gun.
00:15:16
Speaker 2: I need money.
00:15:17
Speaker 3: Steve said Shane had seemed scared, so Steve claimed that he told Shane to come back in the morning, but he said that Shane never showed up. Steve said the murders had deeply affected him, so much so that he also did something else. He had Shane and Sally's names tattooed on his left arm. Over the years, there were some other random leads, like a man named James Caldwell. who police say drew a map and claimed to know where Sally and Shane were buried. But the map was apparently just a crude rectangle, and nothing much came of that lead.
00:15:49
Speaker 2: But the name is interesting for another reason.
00:15:51
Speaker 3: When I was looking for any evidence of a cult activity, I found an article from a local paper in 1994. The headline read, Apparent Satanic Ritual Ends in Suicide Pact in Oklahoma. It turned out that James Caldwell and his girlfriend were in an apparent suicide pact, where they took a rifle and positioned it so that when the bullet fired, it.
00:16:11
Speaker 2: Would go through both their heads at once.
00:16:13
Speaker 3: Both 22-year-old James and his 17-year-old girlfriend died at the same time, and there was a circle of candles around their body. So it seemed as though the satanic ritual references were because of the candles and because James' girlfriend had a pentagram tattoo and pentagram jewelry. There were also rumors about secret ceremonies, and in some of these cases, law enforcement started treating those rumors like actual evidence. Shane and Sally knew people in San Angelo's alternative teenage scene. But the stories about the Devil House seemed to be primarily because it was abandoned and it was just.
00:16:50
Speaker 2: A creepy house with some graffiti of occult symbols.
00:16:55
Speaker 3: There were also rumors that the kids who gathered and performed these crude occult rituals did it in that house. Now, Steve Schaefer said, These rumors were totally false, but Shane and Sally did seem to be afraid of something. According to people later interviewed about the case, Shane and Sally had gotten scared of some of the people around them. There was even an account that Sally told a friend that she and Shane were planning to leave Texas. According to Unsolved Mysteries, two weeks before her disappearance, Sally frantically called a friend named Helen, saying that she believed someone was trying to kill her. So right after Sally and Shane went missing, a natural question to ask was, did they fake their disappearances because they needed to get away from something or someone? Then, on November 12th, 1988, more than four months after Shane and Sally vanished, 17 miles from where Shane's Camaro was originally parked, a hunter was near Twin Buttes Reservoir when his dog ran ahead of him and found a human skull. There were more bones nearby and some clothes, including a purple blouse and blue jeans that investigators said were the ones worn by Sally on July 4th. Investigators went back to search the area again, and a few days later, they found a second group of skeletal remains about 75 feet away from where Sally's bones were found, with cowboy boots nearby and clothing that looked like Shane's.
00:18:22
Speaker 2: This included a jacket that he was.
00:18:23
Speaker 3: Wearing on July 4th, with three figures related to Dungeons & Dragons inside, according to police. Of course, even though Dungeons & Dragons is now thought of as a harmless game, which it was, the presence of D & D paraphernalia only increased the rumors that Shane and Sally may have had something to do with the occult. The remains were taken to the medical examiner in San Antonio, and it was later confirmed the remains were Shane and Sally's.
00:18:50
Speaker 2: And the medical.
00:18:51
Speaker 3: Examiner determined that both of them had been shot. So this was a homicide, no doubt about it. According to the case material, Both Sally and Shane had suffered shotgun wounds to the head. Because their bodies had been outside for months and because they had been exposed to heat and weather and animals, the forensic evidence had obviously been compromised. But there was one strange detail that made it into media reports. A Stetson hat pin had reportedly been placed on a tree limb above or near his remains. Was it deliberate or random? Could it have belonged to the killer or was it just something that was there before and put there by someone else?
00:19:34
Speaker 2: But this became.
00:19:35
Speaker 3: Just another strange piece of a case that was already drowning in theories. And one of the biggest theories was Satanism. While a lot of people were talking about Satanic rituals, a lot of the local reporting neglected to mention a very real and traceable piece of physical.
00:19:51
Speaker 2: Evidence, a gun.
00:19:55
Speaker 3: Months before Shane and Sally were killed, Sally apparently gave a gun to law enforcement. Former Deputy Larry Counts later said that he met with Shane and Sally when they were still living together. He claimed that they handed him a firearm. They told him there was a group they were trying to get away from. And according to Deputy Counts, they told him that that gun had supposedly been used in a murder in San Angelo.
00:20:21
Speaker 2: But then the gun seemed to disappear.
00:20:25
Speaker 3: Larry Count said he turned the gun over to the San Angelo police, and he said he gave them Shane and Sally's names.
00:20:32
Speaker 2: But that gun was never bought.
00:20:34
Speaker 3: Tested, and at some point, it reportedly disappeared from an evidence locker. Obviously, we have no idea if the gun had anything to do with Shane and Sally's deaths, but it's bizarre that the weapon disappeared from the evidence room and that both Shane and Sally were killed just a few months later. Over time, another theory emerged. that Shane and Sally may have been involved in some drug dealing gone wrong. Years after the murders, people started telling investigators there may have been a narcotics angle. In 1995, an inmate named Heath Big Heath Davis reportedly gave information about the San Angelo drug world in the late 1980s. According to accounts of that tip, Heath Davis claimed that a local drug dealer kept a ledger of debts. And according to the allegation, Sally McNally's name was on that list The claim was that Sally owed thousands of dollars involving cocaine and marijuana. Again, we don't have access to the case file, so we don't know how thoroughly this tip was ever investigated, but it does seem to fit with a conversation that Marshall remembered Shane having. Marshall said he overheard an intense phone argument shortly before the murders, something involving money. I did some more digging because honestly, I was wondering something else. Why did Shane and Sally both leave town at the same time? Sally went to live with her grandmother while Shane stayed with relatives in Kansas. Did they just need a break from each other or were they scared of something? Sally's mother told.
00:22:05
Speaker 2: Local newspapers a few more details.
00:22:08
Speaker 3: She said that Sally had dropped out of high school suddenly in the fall of 1987. At the time of her death, she was taking steps to get her diploma and enlist in the Navy. So were she and Shane just being rebellious teenagers in love? Or was there something more sinister going on, something her parents didn't know about? Sally's mother told the Standard Times that she believed that Sally would have confided in her if her daughter believed something was seriously wrong. Yet at the same time, in the same interview, she said Shane seemed concerned when he got back to town and found Sally there, which seems contradictory. Did Shane or Sally owe money to the wrong people? Or could someone else believe that they did? Further complicating things was the fact that because of the missing gun, some people in town believed that someone in law enforcement may have had something to do with the killings. Over the years, there have been allegations that other evidence from this investigation disappeared. Interview tapes, notes, and physical evidence. But I think it's important to make a distinction between the handling of the evidence in this case... and the allegations that a police officer could have had something to do with Shane and Sally's deaths, because those are two different things. Then, almost 30 years after Shane and Sally were murdered, something happened that suddenly put.
00:23:25
Speaker 2: This case back in the news.
00:23:27
Speaker 3: And it started with a traffic stop and spiraled into a search warrant, decades-old writings about the murders, locks of hair, a fingernail, possible blood, and a man investigators had known since the days when Shane and Sally were alive.
00:23:43
Speaker 4: On June 20, 2017, police in San Angelo stopped a 47-year-old man named John Cyrus Gilbreth.
00:24:04
Speaker 3: The traffic stop was connected to suspected marijuana possession, but according to reports, police found other things in the vehicle, including drugs, weapons, and.
00:24:13
Speaker 2: Tactical body armor.
00:24:15
Speaker 3: That information led Texas Ranger Nick Hanna and Tom Green County investigators to obtain a search warrant to search John Gilbrest's property. They were reportedly looking for evidence connected to drug trafficking, but during that search, they found something else, something that brought investigators straight back to 1988. John Gilbreth had been 17 years old when Shane and Sally were murdered. He knew Shane and Sally, and he had moved in some of the same social circles. During the 2017 search, investigators found old writings in journals that discussed the murders of Shane Stewart and Sally McNally. They also found cassette tapes. Some were reportedly marked with the initials SS. And investigators found biological material, including hair, a fingernail, and material believed to possibly be blood. There has been some confusion in the reporting over the years over exactly how that possible blood material was stored or what form it was in. So I don't want to make any assumptions here, but investigators clearly thought that biological material was worth testing. And because this was now 2017, they had the technology in place that police in 1988 barely had access to.
00:25:27
Speaker 2: So they tested the material. During that testing, the story broke and went national.
00:25:32
Speaker 3: And this time, it wasn't just West Texas newspapers covering the story. John Gilbreth's arrest and mugshot made it into the Daily Mail and onto Fox News. Everybody was talking about the small Texas town and what they called the satanic panic killings. But then things went quiet. And when the test results came back, they didn't fit the story that everybody was expecting to hear because it turned out the samples did not match Shane and Sally. John Gilbreth acknowledged that the journals and tapes did belong to him but he completely denied murdering Shane and Sally. His explanation was essentially that he was a true crime fan. He was fascinated by the case. He said back in the day when he knew Shane and Sally, he was a teenager interested in dark subjects and that the writings police found were connected to his own interest in trying to understand or solve the murders. John said the biological material came from other people and had nothing to do with Shane and Sally. And again, there was no official report of what these tests found. But John Gilbreth was never charged with murdering Sally and Shane. He did eventually go to federal prison on a firearms charge and served around two years. He was released in June of 2019. But to me, the strangest question from the 2017 search isn't necessarily did John Gilbreth kill Shane and Sally because the biological evidence wasn't connected to them. But I do wonder, who did that biological material belong to? Why did he have a human hair and a fingernail? Was the blood fake or was it someone else's blood that he had for other reasons?
00:27:08
Speaker 2: We just don't know.
00:27:10
Speaker 3: I'm also curious as to what exactly that DNA was and whether investigators ever compared any of it to other unsolved cases. Because it turns out Shane and Sally were not the only people who reportedly had frightening experiences around those reservoirs. There were accounts from that era of people being attacked or threatened around isolated lake areas. An article from the Standard Times on July 8, 1990, said that a man and a woman at a boat ramp at the O.C. Reservoir said they were threatened by a man in a pickup truck on the same night that Shane and Sally went missing, and that the pickup truck, possibly one with four-wheel drive, had a roll bar and mounts above the cab. The fishermen told police... he had picked up a big rock and that after that, the man in the truck backed out and drove away. And according to materials surrounding this case, there were also reports of couples being approached by an armed man. In some accounts, victims described someone appearing from the darkness with a shotgun. There were reports of people being restrained and assaulted. And if those accounts are accurate, that opens up another completely different possibility. Maybe Shane and Sally were not killed because of Satanism or a drug debt or because they knew information they couldn't know.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: Maybe they were a.
00:28:26
Speaker 3: Young couple parked near an isolated reservoir at night and encountered the wrong person. The Son of Sam-style killer explanation is much less elaborate than some of these other theories. But if these murders were random, what do we make of the pickup truck and the fishermen saying that Shane and Sally were arguing with other people that night and Sally allegedly saying no, she would not do it again? I wonder about the accuracy of the statement because memory does change over time. And newspaper articles in 1990 have police saying that a fisherman heard loud noises after noticing the pickup truck, but wasn't able to make out what was said due to the fact that his motor was so loud and rumbling. Could police have been mistaken back then or could a witness's memory have changed over time? If it's true that Sally was arguing with a group of people, it does seem to point to someone targeting Shane and Sally, someone who had a history with them. That's part of what makes this case so frustrating. We talk a lot on this podcast about the noise around a case and how it can make it hard to see the facts.
00:29:33
Speaker 2: The noise in this.
00:29:34
Speaker 3: Case is, in my opinion, Satanism, because there is zero evidence that Shane and Sally were targeted in any kind of cult killings. The law enforcement theory has the missing gun and serious questions about evidence handling. But there's no proof that a police officer murdered Shane and Sally. The random predator theory may fit the isolated location and reports of other attacks around the reservoirs.
00:29:56
Speaker 2: But then you have the fisherman's.
00:29:58
Speaker 3: Account, which suggests Shane and Sally may have been interacting with people they already knew. And then there's John Gilbreth, who seemed like a promising lead, but the biological material investigators tested did not belong to Shane or Sally. So where does that leave us? There is one more piece of the forensic story. In July of 2014, Shane and Sally's remains were exhumed for additional DNA work, and there was also a human hair found on one of Shane's boots. According to the materials surrounding the case, the results of that testing have not been publicly released, but we do know the hair was eventually sent in for DNA testing. But that testing happened in 2016, and the lab was reportedly unable to obtain a usable DNA profile from it. I do want to go back to clear something up. Remember that one of Shane's relatives said that Shane had bleached.
00:30:50
Speaker 2: His hair and started wearing a lot of black.
00:30:53
Speaker 3: Once this satanic panic narrative took hold, you can see how people could have turned that into something ominous. But the relative told the Texas Monthly Podcast there was a much simpler explanation. Shane loved the movie The Lost Boys.
00:31:07
Speaker 2: Of course, I remember that movie because I absolutely loved it too. I was just a few.
00:31:12
Speaker 3: Years old at the time when it came out in 1987. It was about teenagers living in the fictional town of Santa Carla, California, and how they interacted with and eventually battled a group of vampires led by Kiefer Sutherland. The leader of the vampire cult had a distinctive look.
00:31:27
Speaker 2: He had bleach blonde hair and an earring. That's what Shane wanted to emulate.
00:31:32
Speaker 3: The movie was so popular, in fact, there was even a local Lost Boys group formed in Texas.
00:31:38
Speaker 2: But instead of causing mayhem, this.
00:31:40
Speaker 3: Group reportedly did volunteer work, and Shane was associated with it. Who killed Shane Stewart and Sally McNally? If I were starting this investigation today, if I were law enforcement, I would go back and look at the actual pieces of evidence, the car, the receipt, the witnesses who supposedly saw an altercation between Sally and some.
00:32:02
Speaker 2: Men on the night they were murdered. Because underneath all.
00:32:05
Speaker 3: The satanic panic and all the rumors and competing theories are two real teenagers who were taken from their families. And on July 4th, 1988, somewhere between the late night Whataburger run and the next.
00:32:17
Speaker 2: Morning, they were brutally murdered.
00:32:20
Speaker 3: If you lived in San Angelo, Texas in 1988, or if you spent time around Lake Nasworthy, O.C. Fisher Reservoir, or Twin Buttes, knew Shane or Sally, remember the Devil House or know anything about the gun that Shane and Sally reportedly gave to Deputy Larry Counts. Or if you remember the mysterious pickup truck or know anything about who was driving it or who owned it, or if there's anything else about this case that you've never told law enforcement, we want to hear from you. Because once you get past the 40 years of rumors and the satanic panic headlines, there's a much simpler truth here.
00:32:55
Speaker 2: Two teenagers were executed. And someone out there knows who did it and why. I'm Katherine Townsend.
00:33:03
Speaker 3: This is Hell and Gone Murder Line. Hell and Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast. It's written and narrated by me, Katherine Townsend, and produced by Edelise Perez. Special thanks to Amy Tubbs for her research assistance and James Wheaton for legal review. Noah Kammerer mixed and scored this episode. Our theme song is by Ben Salit.
00:33:25
Speaker 2: Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L.C. Crowley.
00:33:30
Speaker 3: Listen to Helen Gone Ad-Free by subscribing to the iHeart True Crime Plus channel on Apple Podcasts. If you are interested in seeing documents and materials from the case, you can follow the show on Instagram at HelenGonePod or Katherine Townsend Investigates on Patreon. 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 678-744-6145.
00:33:51
Speaker 4: That's 678-744-6145.
00:33:51
Speaker 2: School of Humans.
