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Texas Monthly. Alright, shotgun or whatever you call it. Alright, can you give me direction? It's late June 2023, and along with my co-host Karen, I'm in San Angelo, Texas with Marshall Stewart, piling into his truck about to head out of town. Marshall is in his mid-70s with neatly combed gray hair and a thick mustache.
He's driving us out to see a place he knows probably better than anyone else on Earth. A place he wishes he didn't know so well. We were talking about that, how you were walking the land out there. Let me tell you what, that was a long, hot summer. On July 4th, 1988, Marshall's son Shane, who was a month shy of 17 years old, went out with his girlfriend, Sally McNally. She was 18. Neither of them came home that night.
Marshall spent the evening driving all over San Angelo, looking for Shane. The next morning, by a lake northwest of town, a park ranger found Shane's burnt orange Camaro, abandoned. Officers guessed that Shane and Sally had run off together, but Marshall didn't believe it. Marshall was convinced that something awful had happened to them, but Shane's car and where Shane left it were the only leads he had to go on.
So Marshall went back to the park, night after night, for weeks. You can just look around and imagine I walked this twice and the lake goes all the way around for six or seven miles on the north side looking for anything. Marshall discovered that at night it was a popular hangout for San Angelo teenagers. And this is what I would do at night. Just sit there? Just sit there. And what would they do?
They would get real nervous, it looked like, and they would look at me for a little bit, and then they would start up their cars, and then they would leave the park. I'd follow them out of the park. I'd come back in and look at something else. Back on the morning of July 5th, Marshall had noticed thick tire tracks in the dirt next to Shane's Camaro. So whenever he went back out there, Marshall keyed in on every big truck he saw.
And one night, he spotted a familiar Ford pickup. He says it was yellow or maybe brown. He'd seen it out here before. And he saw my mind. He recognized me, okay, because I had a big Ford pickup with a camper on the back. And he was backed in the brush. And so I did like I did the others. I just pulled up there and waited. And he took out again. He immediately left the lake.
That's when we started the chase. Marshall hauled after the yellow truck, training on its taillights as the truck led him out of the park and toward town. On the outskirts of San Angelo, Marshall looked down and saw they were each going almost 100 miles an hour. But he wasn't going to let the truck get away. Eventually, the chase took them to a different reservoir, further south. We come around the lake, just like we did right now, and he came in here. And this road's always been like this.
It's never been a smooth, flat, get in and out road. So if you want to come in here, you've got to want to come in here. Whoever came in here knew this road because you can break an axle, you can run off a cliff, you can have all kinds of mechanical problems, and you're going to have to walk out.
As Marshall raced after the truck, he thought about where they might be going and who he might be chasing. So, put together that this pickup is always at the lake, he's always backed in the brush, he leaves when I pull up. But you know, in my brain, putting it together, you get the kids there, you bring them all the way out here, you know where you're going and you know what you're gonna do. But why would he lead you here? We're at 12 o'clock at night.
He's probably got weapons. Don't know what's going on in his mind, but in my mind I said, this is a trap. He's fixing to go up here and turn around and confront me. And I stopped. I didn't have a phone to call my brother. I didn't have a weapon with me. And I said, this is as far as I go. For 35 years, Marshall Stewart has been searching for the truth about what happened to Shane and Sally on that sweltering night of July 4th, 1988.
He's collected evidence, interviewed witnesses, confronted suspects, and found that the closer he looks, the more baffling the case becomes. And that's how it's been for everyone who's tried to solve this mystery.
I first began looking into this case five years ago, interviewing investigators and reviewing their notes. At the time, I was working with the Texas Rangers to publicize cold cases and develop new leads. And right away, the murders of Shane Stewart and Sally McNally stuck out, not just because of the brutality, but because I felt like they might be solvable. And the Rangers seemed to agree.
You've heard the old saying, when three or more people know a secret, it's not a secret. And this is kind of the exception. I feel like there's a group and it's not been leaked out.
And that secret, we found that it involves more than just two brutal murders. There were satanic rituals and accusations that the police were involved. Key evidence that disappeared. Missing evidence that, out of nowhere, reappeared. There was a whole series of unsolved crimes, sexual assaults and violent robberies with a striking similarity to this case. And there was a trail of suspects that led halfway around the world.
And I've spent the last year chasing every lead in those old notes, checking every alibi, covering hundreds of miles across West Texas to track down anyone who might have more to say. And together we're going to follow those threads down every dark road to wherever they lead. This is the devil's playground down here and you have to be very careful. It's just, there's something ominous about this whole case.
And after 35 years, there are some people who'd rather not be reminded of it. We weren't going to go harm nobody. None of us was. It brought back sleepless nights for me after you called me. For the first couple of nights, I had a hard time sleeping. I dreamt about it. There's a lot of fear. But I don't want to die. Like, I don't want to have to face these people again. And then, there's someone out there who's gotten away with these murders. ♪
She said, if you don't hear from us in a couple of months, then we're dead. Me and my brother told him, just leave that one alone. Just live your life, leave it the fuck alone. You don't want to find him. And I recall telling them, you guys better be careful, you're going to piss off the wrong people. There are so many maddening details in this case. It almost became an obsession for me to try and find out what really happened. The answers have always seemed just out of reach.
Now, we're hoping that by piecing together the evidence, we can finally get a clear picture of what happened to Shane and Sally. And if we tell their story, maybe someone out there will speak up. I want to do this. I want this case solved so this town can get past it. And finally bring some answers to the people who need them most.
Oh, we've never given up hope. You know, even after 30 years, people have said move on. You know, God will take care of it. And it's like, oh no, we're not moving on. So I almost backed out of this. I really did. But I can't do that. Not for myself. I'm not going to do that. And these other girls deserve it too. They deserve justice. These guys all need to go to jail. Every one of them. You haven't asked us this most screwed up case I've ever seen. Is it? Yeah.
From Texas Monthly, this is Shane and Sally. I'm Rob D'Amico. And I'm Karen Jacobs. This is Episode 1, A Long Hot Summer. Can you see me okay? Yes, ma'am. Can you hear me? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Yeah, straighten your tie a little bit. I first started working on this story in 2018 as part of a documentary series on cold cases in Texas. I'm a producer on TV and film.
And my team and I spent days interviewing Shane and Sally's parents and following investigators who'd worked this case. All right. Okay, so we're going to get started. So I guess go ahead and start and tell me what's your name. What do you do here in St. Angela? We never got to make the show. We'll say a little more about that later. And afterward, of all the cases I'd looked into, this one stayed with me.
I couldn't shake the thought of how long Shane and Sally's parents had been waiting for answers. And it really did feel like there were answers within reach. So I asked an old high school friend, Rob, if he wanted to look into this with me. Karen and I both grew up in the Dallas suburbs, but today I'm a reporter based in far west Texas. I write a lot about criminal justice and injustice in rural parts of Texas where there's not a lot of oversight.
On the 4th of July a couple years ago, Karen and I were at a barbecue. And it being the same holiday that Shane and Sally disappeared, she told me about the case. Then she said, "Well, you're the reporter. Can you take a look at it?" So I poked around. I found some intriguing leads, but they all seemed to go nowhere. And it wasn't clear why. Maybe I was being arrogant, but I thought, "I can figure some of this out." I told Karen I wanted to dive in, do a full investigation.
Looking over the case files and news stories, it seemed like there were promising leads that had never been explored. And I felt that someone needed to take another look to ensure everything possible had been done to solve these murders. In the case records, I saw hints of corruption and bizarre tips. It wasn't clear that anyone had followed up on them. I saw a community of young people who'd spent years trading rumors about what happened to their friends.
Behind the cold facts in the case files, I saw two teenagers robbed of their lives. Parents who'd been agonizing for more than three decades. And I agreed with Karen. Something had to be done. At the least, we figured that by bringing attention to the case, we might convince someone to speak up with new information. And we knew Shane and Sally's parents, and even some investigators, felt the same way.
So let's start with the basics, because for all the confusing twists and turns in this case, there are some things we know for sure about what happened to Shane Stewart and Sally McNelly on the night of July 4th, 1988. The teens had been dating since the fall of 1987, and then they broke up. Both of them left St. Angelo to work, Sally to Lubbock, and Shane to Kansas.
But by the summer of 1988, they'd returned home and they'd gotten back together. And this time, their relationship seemed stronger than ever. That's where things stood early in the evening of July 4th, 1988. Shane was staying with Marshall, who had divorced from Shane's mom a couple of years before. So that evening when he started to leave, he said, I'm going to go pick up my girlfriend and we're going to go out and watch the fireworks. And he said, I won't stay out late.
So he got up to leave the house and as he did I stood up and I said, "Son, I love you." And he goes, "I love you too, Dad." And went out the front door. That was around 6:00 p.m. Shane promised his dad to be home by 11:00. From there, Shane drove about five miles to pick up Sally. Sally was 18 years old and living with her mother and her stepdad, Pat and Bill Wade.
Pat and Bill were recently married. Their baby was four months old that July. And Pat says Sally loved her new little brother. So she was crazy about him, so she wanted to move back. She wanted to live back at home. And she worked in a nursing home part-time.
And the day she left, the very last day that I saw her, she sat in the living room and we visited and she told me, she said, "I bet you thought I'd never get my life together." And I said, "Well, I was having doubts about you, Sally." And we just laughed and visited and that is so precious. On her way out the door, Sally said she'd be spending the night with a friend. That was just a teenage ruse since she actually got together with Shane.
Together, they drove just south of town to Lake Nasworthy. It was the most popular place in town to get a view of the fireworks over the water. After the show, they stopped at Whataburger. A receipt in the car showed that it was 11:40 p.m. Then they drove out to another lake, O.C. Fisher, which was another popular hangout. They were there around midnight, parked and sitting on the hood of Shane's Camaro. We know that because two fishermen on the lake happened to spot them.
Eventually, one of them called Pat. He told Pat that he and his buddy had been out on the water at O.C. Fisher that night, checking their trot lines for catfish. At one point, he happened to look up and see Shane and Sally sitting on Shane's car. And, he said, they had company.
And we heard your daughter and...
Could you make out what she was saying? Uh, yeah.
Late that night, when Shane still hadn't come home, Marshall got in the car with his son, Sean, Shane's older brother. Together, they went looking for Shane. Shane's orange Camaro with a black stripe down the hood was always easy to spot around town. And Marshall had an idea where to look. We drove around the streets over on our side to the west side of town. All the houses that I knew that his car had been to and where I had found him in the past, we drove for probably an hour or so.
around and around and didn't find the car, didn't know what was going on. They went home, hoping maybe Shane was already back or that he'd left a message. But there was nothing. And then it began to hit in your heart and in your gut, your stomach, that this is not right. Something's wrong. Something's wrong. Around 7 the next morning, a Lake Ranger found the Camaro near where it had been around midnight.
Police traced the license plate to Marshall and called to say they'd found the car by the lake. And I said, "Well, are the kids there?" And they said, "No, it looks like it's abandoned." "Can you meet us out there?" And I said, "Absolutely, I can meet you out there." At the park, Marshall drove past rows of concrete picnic tables. Next to one of them, he spotted his son's car. The driver's side door was open and the keys were sitting on the dash.
A Lake Ranger and a deputy with the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office were there waiting for him. There wasn't any evidence around on the outside of the ground, so I asked the detectives and the Lake Ranger, don't be walking around the car. Let's start looking for footprints. Let's look for some kind of evidence that there might have been a problem, a fight. I don't know what, but let's try and gather evidence if we can. They said, well, we think they just walked off.
And I said, "Well, no, here's another set of tire prints." I said, "This is off of a bigger vehicle. If I would, don't get on these tire prints because you might be able to make a casting, you know, and protect those, might be able to identify a vehicle." Marshall actually worked at the Goodyear Tire Testing Ground in San Angelo, so this was something he knew about.
I keep insisting that they didn't walk, Shane did not walk off and leave his car. You know, we need to start looking, search this area and see what we can find. Anything that will lead us to why did they leave this area or how did they leave this area? We didn't find anything in the way of shell casings or things like that that would have indicated that had happened. And they kept going, no, we think they just walked away.
They spent less than an hour at the park. Marshall doesn't remember the officers taking any photographs or measurements that morning. And we haven't seen any in the case files. When we finished looking at the car and they thought they had everything that they needed, with me there and my pickup and Sean there, they said, well, why don't you go ahead and take the car and take it back to your house, secure it, which is what we did. We brought it home.
Back at home, Marshall searched the car for clues. He found the Whataburger bag with the time stamp receipt. He also found Sally's work uniform folded neatly in the back seat. And it was a day or two later that they called and they said, "We need you to go ahead and bring the car down to the Sheriff's Office. We want to go through it and see if we can find any evidence." He brought in the car to let the deputies search it. Then he drove it home again later that day.
Two days passed with no sign of Shane or Sally. Then finally, the sheriff's office put out a notice that they were missing. But Marshall said he seemed to be the only one bringing up possible forensic leads. What about the tire tracks? Maybe fingerprints on the car? Or traces of blood? Or hair? Didn't you think it was weird that you were having to suggest what to do to the police? Well, I did, but...
You're a concerned parent, your anxiety level is over the roof. You know, your kids are gone. You're almost in a panic mode. You know, so everything is like, this could be important, this could be important. And they've seen it so often and so routine. And you can't offend them. You know, you've got to have them doing what they need to do as a professional. So you just keep making suggestions to
And because you're pushed back, excluded from being part of this, you're just kind of a bystander. Still, as far as Marshall could tell, nobody else was doing much investigating. And so that morning, he began an investigation of his own.
He started a new routine. He'd go to work at the tire yard, maybe work a half shift so he could get started early. And then he'd hit the road, searching St. Angelo for clues. Marshall made his nighttime rounds at the lake, past rows of picnic tables, searching alone in the dark. During the day, he went out with a camcorder to film evidence of whatever shady business had been happening out there, like some graffiti he found on the picnic tables.
It's about a quarter mile from where the car was found. There's a little graffiti on the ground. I'm not quite sure what it means, but we'll look at it and try to figure it out. In the video, Marshall pans across concrete tables that have been spray painted with slogans and symbols. There are pentagrams and swastikas. One table says "Cops for Fertilizer." It's always nice for the police to know. Another says "Metallica."
Marshall was gathering all this material and passing it along to the sheriff's office. And it's hard to know just how helpful they found it. But then one day, he found something that was harder for the police to ignore. He found a body right out at the lake. So Shane and them were one, two, three. Marshall showed us where he found it, not far from the picnic table where Shane's Camaro had been parked that night. I think it was right here.
Because they were, this is the channel that had water in it right here. And they were parked parallel to it. A little bit of brush has grown up. We're going to bail out? It was dusty and hot. We were standing in a field of dirt, scattered with grass and prickly pear cactus. The lake is so low, the only water you can see is in the far distance.
That night, Marshall came out here alone. He couldn't see a thing, but he smelled something. And with his flashlight, he walked out to see what it was. Right, and it would have been the dead of night, no one out here, and so they could have heard. Marshall pointed out where the water line used to be. The channel is down a steep embankment and beyond a stand of tall, dry grass. And so I walked out in the brush and it was just past that entry.
Alone in the dark that night, while he was out looking for signs of his missing son, this is where Marshall found another man's body. I'm just shivering because it was that close to this scene and the aroma was like, there's a problem. And does the story of that tie it off? They said it was a drug deal that went wrong. Whether he owed some people for drugs or he overdosed, they don't know.
Investigators later told us it was a drug overdose, with no links they could find to Shane and Sally. Meanwhile that summer, people came to Marshall with their own theories about what had happened to Shane and Sally. Marshall grew up in San Angelo, so plenty of people knew him, and wanted to share anything that might help. Marshall took notes on all of it, and he shared these notes with us. Mostly, they just looked like a lot of rumors.
One of them said Marshall's cousin's wife's friend's daughter heard a particular guy was there when somebody else named Spider shot Shane and Sally. The tip said, quote, "Spider has lots of tattoos." Some of the tips ran to some pretty dark places. One said there were girls being hypnotized and held hostage by a group of local teenagers.
Another told Marshall to check out a ranch south of St. Angelo where there were, quote, "child porn" and rituals being done. Marshall talked with some of these people face to face. He talked with two men who were worried that their kids were involved with the same dangerous people. The men believed these suspects had also been dealing drugs in St. Angelo schools. They got together and tried to figure out what was going on.
What I'm saying right now, that within the hierarchy of Lee Junior High is where your second and third line echelon of the drug problem is. Right there. Satanism. Not Satanism. Well, it may be Satanism, but it's right in that root. Right in the hierarchy. Now, we know that heroin, cocaine, poppy growing, and all the rest of this goes back in the biblical times.
It is something that has never ever been a lid put on. We do what we can. And it's devil worship. It's been ever since the biblical time. But the key to the whole thing is we do something. We don't do nothing.
The more Marshall looked into the case, the more he began to believe that a shadow had descended on San Angelo. A bad crowd of kids and young adults who messed with pentagrams and drugs. And rituals where they really were abusing young women and girls. And that Shane and Sally were somehow involved with them. And I'm telling you, within that group,
is a force that does not mind killing children. These kids weren't killed just because Shane came in for July 4th weekend. They were killed as a statement to the rest of the kids that you don't get out.
This was right in the middle of what people today call the Satanic Panic, when people all over the U.S. were becoming worried about a coming wave of violent devil worship. It was stirred up in the media and fueled by parents' anxiety over their children's interests in things like Dungeons & Dragons or heavy metal music. Marshall picked up books like Cults That Kill, The Necronomicon,
and even the Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. He even got a handbook for deciphering Satanic symbols. Marshall was also pretty sure he knew where to find this crowd of teenagers that Shane and Sally were mixed up with. The houses where he'd often gone looking for Shane late at night to tell him to come home. Those same houses where he'd searched for Shane's car on the night of the 4th of July. This time, he went up to the doors and knocked.
One of the doors I knocked on, a guy that come to the door, he had a big rash on the side of his face and almost a black eye. It looked like he'd been hit in the face. This was just a few days after Shane disappeared. The guy at the door was Steve Schaefer, a 17-year-old classmate of Shane's who also hung around a bit with Sally.
Marshall says that just before Shane went missing that summer, Shane said he and Steve really didn't like one another. And if they saw each other, they'd probably get in a fight. And then there's this. Steve also drove a truck with four KC lights on top of a roll bar over the cab. Similar to the truck that the fishermen saw driving up to Shane and Sally on July 4th.
Now, here he was in front of Marshall, covered in bruises. Marshall pressed him for what he knew and where he'd been on the fourth. But Steve said he'd been home all night playing cards with his grandmother. And so he said, "No, haven't seen him at all." And I said, "Well, you know, I know through Sean that you and Shane are enemies." And I said, "Now that the kids are missing, it's pretty obvious to me that you've been in a fight. So I'd like to know who you've been in a fight with."
"Oh no, this is just a rash I have and it's a reaction on my face." And I said, "No, you've been in a fight with somebody." And he said, "No, no, I haven't been in a fight." I said, "Okay, you know, you can't just shove your way into somebody's house and start grilling people." So as we were leaving, my brother-in-law goes, "They need to come talk to this guy. He's been in a fight."
According to a report we've got, a sheriff deputy finally visited Steve Schaefer on July 16th. The case records we've seen don't include any details of the interview, so we don't know what they discussed. But there didn't seem to be any follow-up after that. To Marshall, it was hard to see just what the sheriff's office was doing to solve the case that summer.
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In 2018, while I was filming my series on cold cases, I went back to that same house where Marshall found Steve Schaefer with the bruised face. A little home built from fitted stone, what they call a rock house. It occupied a corner lot in a neighborhood of small bungalows just south of downtown. I was riding along with a Texas Ranger named Nick Hanna.
Nick was part of a unit assigned to cold cases across Texas, and he'd been retracing the initial investigation into what happened to Shane and Sally. He told us about the first time he'd come to search the place. Well, we were just doing a neighborhood canvas, and we knocked on a neighbor's door. I think it was this house right here. And they answered the door, and they said, are you here about the devil house?
Nick is in his mid-50s. He's tall enough that, even without his big white hat on, his short, cropped, salt-and-pepper hair almost grazes the ceiling of the pickup. He comes across as a pretty tough, no-nonsense kind of guy. But he said this place, this little rock house, it left him shaken.
It was just overgrown when the limbs and stuff, it just gave it a kind of a, like you couldn't, you can look at the limbs now, you just almost can't create how creepy it is, just naturally creepy. It looked like a Hansel and Gretel house, you know? Yeah. By the time we got there, Schaefer was long gone. But Nick had learned that during the 80s this was a gathering place for a circle of friends that Shane and Sally were mixed up in.
In 2015, Nick had searched the house along with an investigator for the Tom Green County Sheriff's Office, Terry Lowe, just in case they might find something earlier investigators had missed. During separate interviews at each of their offices, they told me how it went. Here's Terry.
We went in, Nick and I did, a couple of years ago and it was pretty make your hair stand up on the back of your neck type of deal, satanic wise. There was a lot of satanic items that were in the house and pentagrams. We actually took a police chaplain with us when we went in and had him bless the house before we went in. Not because
We were so intimidated by the satanic vibe in the house, but I just wanted a person educated in scripture to interpret some things that he might see. And it was beneficial. When you entered the home, there was a large mirror on the living room floor surrounded by candles in a circle as if in some sort of seance had occurred there.
And immediately adjacent to that was probably 120 violent movies, just violent themed movies and satanic themed movies. Immediately to the left was a bedroom. And when you entered the room, the floor was black, the ceiling was black, the walls were black.
The windows were black. They had some things, eyelets, where maybe chains or some sort of restraining device could be affixed. I know what you're thinking, satanic panic. But there really was evidence that Shane and Sally were hanging out with some dangerous people and that occult rituals were part of the group's identity. And it's possible this house held some answers.
You know, in 1988, in the late 80s, there was a surge in
the satanic cult activity in the region and whether it's bad or there was a little passing interest among young people but there was definitely a presence of that type behavior within the community of San Angelo now San Angelo is probably as Bible Belt as you're going to get as far as you know number of churches per capita and and really good people but it just seems that um
In any element of society, there's always those that want to step out on the fringe and be a little different and explore. While Marshall was making his rounds back in the summer of 1988, he heard that Steve Schaefer was a kind of leader in a group that held satanic rituals. Some people said those rituals were just lighting candles and playing with a Ouija board, but other people said they'd seen these kids sacrificing animals in a fire pit. I asked Marshall about this when he and I first spoke.
Had you heard about the cult stuff at this point? Yes, I realized through their friends that there was a cult and they had been involved in it, were trying to get away from it. They had talked about satanic rituals and things like that. Had never observed or seen any evidence here in town, but several times at the lake when I would get out and walk, I would actually find their sites where they had done some of their rituals.
If this was what Shane and Sally got mixed up in, Marshall couldn't understand why law enforcement wasn't taking this more seriously. He described one conversation he had with a late Granger. And I said, so do you ever notice anything unusual going on out here? And he goes, well, occasionally there's a group of kids. They're all just, they got a fire going. They're doing different things. I said, well, have you ever taken a look at the campfires? He goes, no, we just drive by, make sure there's not a big problem.
I said, "Well, what about here?" And he says, "What do you mean here?" I said, "Well, what about there?" And just over the fence inside there is where they had drawn their satanic circle and they'd had their fire and they had their glass and their other things that they use in some of the rituals. He says, "Oh my gosh, that looks like a ritual site." I said, "That's exactly what that is."
For so much of that summer, it was just Marshall, on his own, looking for answers, trying to make sure that nobody else out there met the same fate as Shane and Sally, whatever fate that was. A lot of nights out there, I was like, probably shouldn't be out here by myself, but... Were you scared? Not really. You know, it's unusual to say that.
But I felt like I was in control, so I pretty much stayed with the mind frame that I'll be okay out here and I'll get back home. I'll be all right. The night that Marshall chased the yellow truck out of the park and down the dark road into the wilderness, it was that voice in his head that told him to turn back home. But later, in the daylight, he returned, and he expanded his search out to the wilderness where that truck had been leading him.
Twin Buttes Reservoir is another man-made lake outside San Angelo, formed by a dam along the Concho River. It's not far from the lake where Shane and Sally went to watch the fireworks, and it's about a 15-mile drive south of O.C. Fisher Lake, where they'd gone after the fireworks. Twin Buttes is more secluded, surrounded by tall brush, and it's a popular hunting spot.
And it was on actually Friday afternoon, was at work and I heard over a police scanner which I had bought just trying to catch conversation or anything and a hunter was out at the south, far south pool and had found something that he needed the detectives to come look at. This was November 12th. Investigators told us the hunter saw his dog bound off into the brush, chasing a scent.
The hunter followed along and saw what the dog had found: a human skull. Next to it was a pile of brush, and beneath the brush were tattered, faded blue jeans, a light purple blouse, and bones. Authorities arrived and, based on the clothes, they believed these were indeed Sally's remains, but they didn't find any sign of Shane. They delivered these remains to a medical examiner in San Antonio. The medical examiner concluded that Sally had been shot.
According to investigators, the medical examiner also told detectives that there were actually some teeth missing from Sally's skull and suggested they go back and search the site again, which they did the following Monday. And it was that day, while he was sitting at work, that Marshall turned on his police scanner to listen in. And I hear a call that they need the justice of the peace to come to the lake. And so I said,
They found, they found Shane. They've got two bodies out there and they found the kids. So, I'm going. At last, Marshall knew his search was over. Of course, there was detectives and DPS officers and justice of the peace is out there and they stopped me a block or so away from the site and they said, "You need to turn around and leave." And I said, "No sir, I'm not turning around and I'm not gonna leave."
And they said, well, you need to leave. This is a crime scene. And I said, I totally understand that. I said, they found my son down there, and I'm going to see my son. So anyway, a couple of them, detectives and DPS, they recognized me. And so one of them walked up to them and they said, you let him come on down here. So they told me, they said, well, it's not going to be pretty. And I said, it hadn't been pretty since they disappeared. But I told my son I'd find him.
And so once I got up there, I knelt down and it was Shane, exactly like he left the house, dressed exactly like he left the house, just laid out. Two kids murdered for no reason, for no reason at all, laid out like animals. After four months out in the West Texas sun, the remains didn't offer many clues as to what happened to Shane and Sally, except that they had been shot.
Sally's mom, Pat, says there are long stretches of the following months that her mind blocked out. Days and weeks that she can't even remember. When this happened, I don't really know what happened after that. She had her four-month-old son and a job as a home health nurse. She worked 60 hours a week taking care of other people, which meant driving all over the county.
I would see vultures coming down on roadkill and have to pull off on the side of the road and scream for 30 minutes because this is what happened to my child. You know, she was literally devoured by animals, okay? So just surviving from one day to the next and trying to care for a baby was all I could muster. That was it.
The investigation continues into circumstances leading to the brutal murders of two San Angelo teenagers last summer. Marshall and Pat turned to the local news to broadcast their pleas for help and to offer a cash reward for information on the killer. Whoever took the lives of our kids left us with nothing but memories, and I pray that no one...
out there ever had to experience this. Our case isn't a TV show which only has 60 minutes to find the murderer and bring him to justice. It's real life. Therefore, today we're asking for your assistance to help in the case. The Tom Green County Sheriff's officials said today they will neither confirm nor deny any suspicions that the murders may be cult-related.
The TV show Unsolved Mysteries even came to San Angelo to film a segment on Shane and Sally. Next, the murder of two teenage sweethearts. Some say they were the victims of a bizarre cult. Of course, Marshall taped all this too.
behind the scenes. The episode included some reenactments of an occult ritual around a Ouija board, Shane leaving home on the 4th of July, and their encounter with the pickup truck at the lake.
And in these reenactments, on national television, Pat and Marshall actually play themselves. Sally began sneaking out late at night, and on one occasion, Pat stayed up to confront her. Sally. Pat. Where have you been? You scared me. It had to be gut-wrenching, reliving the events around their children's deaths.
I think it's a testament to how desperately they wanted answers. They hoped all that attention might convince someone to call the tip line, take their reward money, and finally say who killed their children. The coverage generated hundreds of tips to authorities and to Shane and Sally's parents.
And I would get threatening letters in the mail and letters from other people that knew about the case and they could solve the case if I would just bail them out of jail. And the detectives told me, don't waste your time. These people are just trying to look for a plea bargain or something to get out and they don't need to be out. But then, one day, Marshall got a message from a teenage guy who'd known Shane. Marshall, this is John Gelbeth. We met at the funeral.
I was wondering if you'd be okay if I talked to you for a little bit. He didn't just have a tip. He wanted to team up to solve the case. I figured maybe most of us, if we put our heads together, could come up with something. I've been working on it on my own for a good deal and got a lot of stuff that you might be interested in. Marshall was desperate for answers, but something just didn't seem right. He got the sense that Gilberth was just fishing for information. Marshall never called him back.
Gilbreth also reached out to Sally's mom, Pat. John called me and told me that he had information and he knew who did it. Could he come to my house and tell me? And I said yes. And I told my husband about it and he says, no, he says, we can't do that. He has to go to law enforcement.
Here's Sally's stepdad, Bill Wade. That was a really weird situation and my response at the time was, "It won't do him any good to talk to us. We can't do anything with it. The only people that can do anything with it is the Sheriff's Department because they've got the case." But Gilbreth was already on his way over.
So when he got to the door, we sent him away and told him to talk to law enforcement. And obviously he didn't do that. Or if he did, they didn't listen to him. They didn't hear from Gilbreth again. And they didn't hear much more from the investigators around that time either. Pat and Bill said it was never clear to them just what the authorities were doing back then. But over the years, they've heard from a series of new sheriffs and investigators who each said they wanted to solve the murders.
When Nick Hanna and Terry Lowe started looking into the case years later, new people came forward and it gave them hope. Yeah, I mean it's surprising how many people are coming out of the woodwork with information about, "Yeah, I saw this or I heard that." And it's like, "Where were you people 30 years ago? Come on." But, you know, it's the hope that will elicit that kind of information that keeps us
you know, willing to appear in front of a camera because otherwise, you know, we have no interest in being in the public eye. But it's also been six years since Karen sat down with Bill for that interview. And he told me recently, it seems to him like the new leads have dried up. Today, they just want answers. They're not angry at the current investigators or blaming them for past mistakes, but they are tired of sitting around without hearing of any new work on the case.
And after 35 years of wondering what happened to his son, Marshall thinks a lot about the people out there who do have answers, but haven't come forward. Who've kept somebody else's secret for all these years. And they are just as guilty as the ones that pulled the trigger. Just as guilty as the ones that may have enticed them or abducted them and carried them to that site. And they're going to have to get their life right. For me, that's what I want to see done out of this.
They're going to have to get right with the Lord. You need to act like an adult and just say, let's get this off my chest. Let's get it on the table and deal with the consequences and let these families have the closure that they're really looking for. I think Marshall is right. And that's why we set out to talk to everyone we can find who might be involved.
The hope is that someone out there who may have been afraid to come forward for all these years is finally ready to help bring closure for Shane and Sally and their families. Investigators have interviewed dozens of people connected to this case, some of them many, many times, but not everyone. And we thought maybe someone would tell us something they wouldn't tell a police officer.
We were lucky to have case reports that Karen got during her initial work. And I started making calls to pretty much everyone mentioned in those reports. Oh hi, it's Rob D'Amico. Hey Lee, it's Rob D'Amico just bugging you again. Sally and Shane murders from long ago. I thought about them a week ago. I drive by there where we found their bodies. Funny that you're calling about them.
Yeah, I mean, you know, we get these emails from the public daily about the same kind of thing. You know, can you help us? God, I wish we could, like, help every single one of them. San Angelo, it's been described as it lost its innocence. We spent a lot of time talking about it and trying to figure a way to get someone to flip or to talk or whatever. He said, that trail you're going down, I've been down that trail three times, and I'm not going down it with you again.
There could be other evidence that they didn't look at. Exactly. But Mike's not. Okay, thanks, Carol. I appreciate it. Be blessed. God bless. You too. Bye-bye. You'll be hearing from them in the coming episodes. And we'll also walk you through the investigation so far. Is it solvable? I think it's solvable. Like I said before, I think we're one phone call, one tip away from solving it. You'll also hear about how new DNA technology might play a role in solving the case.
I've told them if they just want to review the evidence, the DNA evidence, I don't care what they test, they can test anything. This case has nothing to lose. After 35 years, San Angelo has moved on. Shane and Sally's classmates have grown up, gone on to start families, maybe moved out of town. For many of them, the memory of what happened that summer has faded away.
But for a few, the questions about what happened have just simmered beneath the surface, always in the background of the rest of their lives. And then a few years ago, something happened that brought it all back. In a cold case from the 1980s, it also led to some shocking discoveries. Thanks for joining us, I'm Adam. When John Gilbreth, the tipster who offered to help Marshall investigate the case, was arrested.
In this home on Rainey Street, where Gilbert lives, court documents show that investigators found three audio tapes with SS written on them, handwritten documents and ledgers mentioning Shane and Sally, and possibly the most disturbing discovery, a lock of hair and a fingernail. That's all coming up on Shane and Sally.
One more note before we go. If you'd like to share any thoughts about the show or the murders of Shane Stewart and Sally McNally, we want to hear from you. You can contact us at TexasMonthly.com slash ShaneAndSally.
Shane and Sally is a Texas monthly production. The show is reported and written by me, Rob D'Amico, and Karen Jacobs. It was produced and co-written by Patrick Michaels and produced and engineered by Brian Standifer, who also wrote the music. Assistant producer is Aisling Ayers. Story editing by Rafe Bartholomew. Doyen Oyeniyi is our fact checker. Our executive producer is Megan Kreit.
Studio musician was John Sanchez. Artwork is by Emily Kimbrough and Victoria Milner. See y'all next week.
