Internal Affairs - Ep. 2: Busted
39:27 Share

There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, no's. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM rewards benefits or earning bonus bets. So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team. Hey!

The BetMGM app is the best place to bet on football. You only get that feeling at BetMGM. The sportsbook born in Vegas, now live across the DMV. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. See BetMGM.com for terms. 21 plus only, DC only, subject to eligibility requirements. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Affairs tend to begin with lies. Lies of motive. Lies of intent. Lies of intent.

Lies that live in the mind, unspoken, until they gestate into rationalization and then sometimes tumble out. Emily started talking about, you know, some issues. She was having some problems with her husband and obviously was having some problems with Heather. It's the emotional betrayal that comes first. Marital confidences shared with an outsider, an interloper. The deadliest tale of all comes when a spouse suspects something.

And the inevitable confrontation produces a response that by now is an antique. Pretty much I told her that Ig and I were just friends. Oh yes, just friends. Soon there are more lies. Lies about where the guilty parties have been, who's on the phone, and where did this trinket or piece of pocket litter come from. And suddenly lying becomes as natural as breathing.

In time, the affair takes on the trappings of marriage. Divided loyalties take their toll. Small intimacies become weapons. I'm in neck deep. She said she could walk into the credit union at any time and go sit down with Heather and say, I'm having an affair with Hague. This is the story of a cop who became trapped in a cage of lies.

He was having multiple affairs at the same time. And he was not the only officer on the force who was morally compromised in that same way. I don't deny that there were a lot of affairs going on. I was shocked at just the number, how many people were sleeping around. And here's the thing. It might all have remained a shameful open secret, if not for the killing of a police officer's wife and the investigation that followed.

In this episode, you'll hear from the cop at the center of our story. She said she was pregnant. And I was like, but that's not you're on the pill.

You'll hear from his mistress. There's a lot of people having affairs at Greeley Police. And finally, you'll hear from one of the detectives who rummaged through all that dirty laundry while looking for a killer. He was a detective, actually, but I'd never met his significant other until I would interview her late in 2007. Pulling a trigger takes less than a second. What got everyone to that point took a lot longer.

You know those time travel movies where someone alters history? Well, as you'll see, there were plenty of chances here for everyone to make choices, which would have changed the future. I'm Josh Mankiewicz, and this is episode two of Internal Affairs, a podcast from Dateline. Ig Gara says he was never confused about what he wanted from his lover, Shauna Nelson, and what he didn't want. And I told her, I was like,

You know, Shawna, I love Heather. I'm going to be married to Heather till I die, okay? And she would say? She would just question what was wrong with her that why I would not leave my relationship with Heather. And I said, you know, there's nothing really wrong with you. This is it. It is what it is. You know, we're having fun. Nothing beyond that, you know? Oh, we know. We all know. Thing is, it doesn't always work out that way. Shawna wanted more.

At times, Ig says it seemed Shauna was trying to intimidate him, showing up places when she knew he'd be there with Heather. I couldn't say anything to her because she'd show up there. We'd go to Red Lobster or something, and then all of a sudden she'd be there having dinner with her husband or whatever. Deliberate. Yeah. We're going to go see this movie. Oh, look who's seen the movie. So this was no accident? No.

Ig says incidents like that rattled him. He'd seen the 1987 movie Fatal Attraction, and visions of coming home to find a bunny, a cat, or a dog boiling on the stove haunted him. So Ig says he tried to break it off, walk away. He even changed his phone number. Didn't work. Shauna had the persistence of Ahab. But then with the police department ties and shared pagers and things, text messaging...

She had access still to that stuff. And so she started, what, texting you and calling you? Leaving me voicemails and stuff. Finally, she said she was pregnant. And I was like, I thought you were on the pill. She said, I am on the pill. It's easy to imagine the look of utter despair that must have flashed across Ig's face, like the headlights of an oncoming 18-wheeler. Shawna assured Ig there was literally no way her husband Ken was the father.

Ken was incapable of having a child. Why was he not capable? She'd shot him until he had a vasectomy two or three years before, so it was obvious. Ig and Shauna talked it over, chewed on it long past the point of persuasion. Shauna wanted the baby, but Ig was dug in. I go, well, this is a situation where I'm going back to my wife, and we're not doing any of this stuff, and we need to talk about having an abortion. And...

We went back and forth and it was agreed between us that she would have the abortion. And I went with her and I paid for it. - One might be forgiven for thinking the serious consequences of an unplanned pregnancy would finally be the wake up call Ig Garris needed to end the affair. Well, one would be wrong. Ig was like a drunk on the subway. He missed a lot of places where he could have gotten off the train.

In fact, he not only continued his affair with Shawna, Ig admitted to one-night stands with other women as well. How many times would you see your girlfriend, be intimate with your girlfriend, have sex with her, and then go home and there's your wife saying, hi, honey? Oh, probably once a week at least, the sex. And how'd that make you feel? Oh, terrible, but I still did it.

At home, Heather seemed none the wiser. Introducing Victoria Shea Garris in her first debut, The Tap Dancing Queen. Once she arrived from work in the evening, she'd spend time with their daughter, Victoria. Ig was out the door. Bye, guys. Bye. Say bye to Daddy. He's off to work. Go to work. Love you. I love you, too. Ironically, while Heather seemed to trust Ig when he was out of sight, Shawna did not.

Shauna saw me, I think, more as a possession, as to a mate, while Heather saw me as a mate for life. You understand how crazy that is. Your wife does trust you. She shouldn't. Yes, that's correct. The woman you're having an affair with doesn't trust you, but she should. You're cheating with her. Absolutely. She kept tabs on if any other women were showing interest in me.

It was around Christmas 2004, when Shauna carelessly left her journal lying on the kitchen stove. According to Shauna, she'd been rushing out of the house to do some shopping and she forgot to hide it away. While she was out, her husband Ken came home, found it, and settled in for a depressing read. What he saw in Shauna's careful schoolgirl hand was a floridly detailed account of her affair with Ig Garris.

It was never meant to be left there intentionally for Ken to read, but he did read it, and he called me and confronted me about it. That's the voice of Shauna Nelson. When I got home that day, he said that I needed to make a choice, that I needed to choose between him or Iggy.

And at that time, I told him that I wanted our relationship to work. These Nelsons were pretty clearly not the 1950s ideal of TV's Ozzie and Harriet. Not close. But maybe this was a moment for them to reset their relationship. Make a fresh start, if only for the sake of the children. That sounds great. Did not happen. Shawna didn't even hit pause on her affair with Ig. What she did do, according to Ig...

is ratchet up the pressure on him by threatening to tell Heather about their affair if he dared to break it off. She had said she had talked to a friend named Amy, and she said, well, go tell his wife. And then she threw that at me, and I saw it initially as a veiled threat. Maybe not so veiled. No, you know, but then I'm in neck deep.

Eventually, Shawna and the children moved out of the Nelson family home and into a rented condo. Ken Nelson filed for divorce for Shawna, who'd been married almost all of her adult life. Her separation from Ken must have seemed like an excellent chance for a do-over, a chance to relive her twenties. She now had her own place, a place where she could canoodle with egg. And when she wasn't with him, she hit the bars of Greeley.

I got very intoxicated that night. Shawna's drinking buddy and guide on these nights out was a 24-year-old Weld County Sheriff's deputy named Michelle Moore. We were very close friends. I would describe it as a best friendship. That's the voice of Michelle Moore. We didn't always talk every day, but we saw each other a few times a week most times, and we talked often.

To get a sense of Michelle Moore, it might help to imagine a Lindsay Lohan type, petite and pretty, with pale gray-blue eyes and long brown highlighted hair, a small beauty mark just over her right upper lip. According to Shauna, Michelle was a man magnet. Michelle and I had gone out for drinks and met another guy, and this guy wanted me to hook him up with Michelle.

Fueled by alcohol, the team of Shauna and Michelle seemed bolder. Sometimes they'd titillate college boys by making out in front of them. Other times it all took a more aggressive tone, more like Mean Girls, which happened to be a popular movie at the time.

Heather must have told you once or twice that she'd run into Shauna and Shauna had been explicitly, deliberately nasty to her. Oh, absolutely. Her and Michelle Moore, her little accomplice. Shauna's accomplice. Yeah. They would do cackle. They would do anything to make Heather feel uncomfortable. Did you talk to Shauna? Yeah, I sat there and go, well, what the hell are you doing? What is Heather doing to you?

Nothing. Leave her alone. And then she got very angry. She goes, oh, I'm sorry. I'm not allowed to talk about Snow White. Snow White? As referring to Heather. Because what? Heather's a pretty darn pure gal. The early spring of 2005 seems to be one of those times when this on-again, off-again affair was off. Ig changed his phone numbers. And for three months, he ignored the voice messages Shauna left on his work phone.

Then, one day in late May or early June 2005, Ig finally picked up. He just answered, and we started talking again, and he gave me his new cell phone number. According to Shauna, it was later that same day that Ig sent her a text saying he wanted to talk. Pretty much my text was, okay, do you want me to call you? And he texted back something like, no, come pick me up.

There was no need to elaborate. They both knew the drill. Sometime after dark, after Heather and Victoria were fast asleep, Ig would text Shawna that the coast was clear and sneak out of his house. He had a couple different ways of getting out of his house, and then he would walk to the corner where I was parked and get in my car. According to Shawna, she took Ig back to her condo that night, where they had a few drinks and some makeup sex.

Ig's version of that story makes their romantic reconciliation sound more like an abduction. She would demand intimacy from me, which is, I know this sounds off the wall, but if I would not be intimate with her, she'd get furious. I guess it's hard for me to believe that you could have sex with someone if you didn't want to, because sex kind of requires the enthusiastic participation of the male. If I...

didn't perform, we'd stay there until I performed. The quicker I performed, the faster, the sooner I could get home because she'd always drive. You understand how crazy that sounds. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Believable? You decide. And whatever the truth is, one thing's crystal clear. The very next month, on the 4th of July, Shauna lit up the night with a text and a call to Ig Garris. She was pregnant again.

Forgive me, but by now, why were you not using some kind of contraception? I wasn't allowed to use a condom to have sex with her. I said, well, then I'm not going to have sex with you. And then I was like, well, it would just be a giant argument. So she was not only extorting sex out of you, she was extorting unprotected sex out of you. Yes. And you went along with this? I'm over a barrel. Let me tell you, I had to do what she said. And then it came clear to me, she's not on the pill.

just get pregnant on purpose. Remember, he was a trained investigator, and this was a deduction, no doubt, that would have made Sherlock Holmes' heart swell with pride. It just came a little late because there was a baby on the way, and Shauna was adamant this child would be carried to term, no matter what Ig said or did.

There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, no's. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM rewards benefits or earning bonus bets. So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team. Hey!

The BetMGM app is the best place to bet on football. You only get that feeling at BetMGM. The sportsbook born in Vegas, now live across the DMV. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. See BetMGM.com for terms. 21 plus only, DC only, subject to eligibility requirements. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

As Democrats unite around Vice President Harris, they'll gather in Chicago to endorse their presidential ticket. The new era is here. It is go time. Stay with MSNBC for insights and analysis. The race is going to be close. Everybody should prepare themselves for that. Plus reporting on the ground from the convention hall. Extraordinary levels of enthusiasm from Democrats for the fight ahead. The Democratic National Convention. Special coverage this week on MSNBC.

There is nothing neat and geometric about a love triangle because there's simply too many angles. Too many other people become involved. It's a messy equation, one that people sometimes solve with a brutal bit of subtraction. Someone has to go. After telling Ig she was pregnant again, Shauna's next call was to her estranged husband, Ken Nelson. I actually called him crying and told him,

that I was pregnant, and I just wanted him to know. I didn't expect anything of Ken, but I wanted to give him a heads up because it was a little embarrassing. Surprisingly, Ken Nelson did not hang up or say, serves you right, or any of the other things a humiliated husband might blurt out to his soon-to-be ex.

No. Instead, Ken told Shawna he would stop the divorce proceedings. He said that we would get back together and try our marriage again. And that instead of two kids, we would just have three. Ken and I actually got back together that night. There are a few things you should know about Ken Nelson. First, he looks like no one's idea of a pushover.

Ken is a stocky, thick-necked man with a salt and pepper buzz cut and a tightly trimmed goatee. His eyes have a Clint Eastwood kind of flinty, no-nonsense squint. The second thing you should know, particularly if you're thinking of sleeping with his wife, is that Ken Nelson is a firearms instructor. He owns a lot of guns. That said, Ken Nelson has a tender side. After all, he did take back his philandering wife.

and volunteered to raise her lover's child as his own. In March 2006, Shauna gave birth to a baby boy she named Christian. We had agreed from the beginning that Ig would pay for medical expenses and that Ken and I would actually physically raise Christian and that Ken would be known as Christian's father, but that Ig would always have a significant part of

of Christian's life, just being a family friend. Naturally, given those ground rules, Shauna found a time to call Ig from her hospital bed to let him know the happy news. He had a son. And he did ask if he could come see the baby. And so I actually was up front with Ken and I told him that Ig wanted to come see the baby. And so Ken respectfully left the hospital so Ig could come.

Well, that's nice, right? Two men and a baby. Christian's fat little arms grabbing the air like taffy. Adults letting bygones be bygones. Everyone pulling together for the good of the child. Well, here's the thing. Heather Garris knew none of this. Had no idea that part of her household budget was going to be siphoned to pay for her husband's love child. And Ken Nelson? Well, in spite of his big-hearted generosity...

he had no clue that his wife was still carrying on her affair with Ig. In fact, the two cheating spouses seemed to be becoming even more brazen in public. Become more frequent with the two of them coming in together. Tammy Orton was 26 and a full-time bartender at a sports bar in Greeley called Jackson's. That was one of Shauna's favorite hangouts. At times I saw...

Hugging or flirtatious hands on the legs and sometimes kissing. According to Tammy, Shawna had no problem sharing the messy details of her personal life with her bartender. Shawna told Tammy... That they had a child together, Christian, and...

that they loved each other and were going to get married eventually someday. A juicy piece of gossip, that. So, no wonder word got around. Ig was the father of Shauna's baby. There were plenty of rumors about you. There's other officers that knew I had a relationship with Shauna. You weren't worried that anybody was going to tell your wife?

Those other officers, their hands weren't clean either. Okay. So they burned me down. I mean, I can burn them down. That department, I guess, what, had a kind of a culture of cheating? I'll answer it this way. Hypocrisy runs deep in that department. Of course, just as surely as the sun sets over the Rockies, rumors of Ig's new baby with Shauna reached Heather. Someone actually came up to Heather and said to her,

when she was out in public somewhere that baby that shauna has that's egg's baby yes from what i've been told yes and i'm sure heather came home to you and said what about that and i lied what'd you say the baby's not mine and she bought that she wanted to believe that i was being faithful so i lied according to ig his by then 18-month long affair with shauna

resembled the relationship of a mouse to a boa constrictor. Not only was she squeezing him for sex and doing everything short of taking out a full-page ad to publicize their affair, she'd also had Ig's ancestral name, Inaki, tattooed on her right ankle. She's at Starbucks, and she goes, Ig, come here. And I'm like, what? She goes, I did something. And she shows me one of her calf, side of her leg or a calf, and, um,

And it has my family name tattooed to her leg. I'm like, you have a husband that you go home to. I have a wife that I go home to. Yet you put my name on your leg? The Paul Simon song says, there must be 50 ways to leave your lover. But Iggy Garris couldn't seem to find any that worked. At least, that's the tune he was singing.

Shauna's sister Deb Smith, however, told me that she knows Egg was just as much the pursuer in that relationship as the pursued. When Ken and Shauna got back together, and they lived just two doors down from us, Shauna had told Egg, Nasio, not to come over anymore. And yet we would continually see him stop by.

and bring her coffee or stop by, I just stopped to say hi. And it got to the point where I would go out and watch. There was an affair. It did go back and forth. I think that there were times that she probably pursued Ignacio after they had ended it. There were times that he pursued her. I think it went both ways. Our own reporting seems to support that assessment. Ig not only continued seeing Shawna,

He admitted later that he'd arranged romantic getaways. There were out-of-town nights at a resort where Ig was attending a victim's advocacy conference. There was an overnight fishing trip for Shauna's birthday. Of course, I could, you know, look back and I wish I could change a lot of different things. But I didn't know that her interest in me would become an obsession. The end did not come because Ig mustered the strength to walk away. No.

The end came the way it did for a lot of affairs, because he got caught. December 16th, 2006 was another frigid winter night in Greeley, a Saturday night, and Ig was at home with Heather and Victoria. Heather had been taking a medication that made her drowsy. Ig, who'd had seven or eight beers that evening, took an Ambien and settled into a comfortable buzz in his usual spot,

The couch in the basement. It was about 10 o'clock, and Ig says he was trying to drift off when a new text message lit up his phone. It was Shauna. She was with Michelle, and they wanted him to come out and play. And she's like, I don't want to go out. And then I don't know how to explain it, but it would be like, imagine a text tirade, a tantrum coming inbound. So I said, fine, fine, I'll go out.

According to Ig, his head said no, but his lips said yes. With Heather fast asleep, Ig got dressed and climbed out through a basement window. He says he went through the window because he didn't want to wake the dog. So was this professional courtesy? One dog to another? You decide. Down the block from his house, Ig met up with Shauna and Michelle, who then drove him to a local bar called the Cactus Canyon.

Here's Shauna's version of what happened next. We were there for probably a good hour. I would assume we had been drinking and Ig had been standing behind me. And when I turned around to talk to him, he was gone. According to Ig, it had been close to midnight when he left the building. His phone was blowing up with calls from Heather. And once he answered, Heather demanded to know where he was. I knew that I had been caught. There was just no way I could explain this one.

In order to get home as fast as possible and avoid a scene with Shawna, Ig says he simply slipped out. Through biting cold, he walked to a nearby Chuck E. Cheese's and called an on-duty patrolman that he knew. He had a big favor to ask. Said, man, get me home. Get me home quick. Ig doesn't say what was going through his mind as the police cruiser finally rolled to a stop in front of his house.

but it probably felt like a teenager being brought home by the cops after breaking curfew. Through the windshield, he would have seen the house lights were on. No doubt, he knew Heather would be waiting when he walked through the door. So it was probably then, right then, just before he stepped inside and saw Heather's anguished, tear-stained face, that Ignacio Garris decided to finally come clean and tell her everything. What'd you say? That I had a three-year relationship with Shawna.

I produced a child, and I know it's wrong. I'm sorry, but I'm glad you know. I know you always said, and I threw these words right at you. I said, you always said you were going to divorce me, honey. I did. I screwed up, but I'm sorry. The words tumbled out like stones and seemed to cover the floor between them. Hard, immutable, and irretrievable facts.

But even his tears, heavy as oil, streamed down both their faces. Egg says he could feel a burden being lifted. But then with her, me telling that, it's almost like it was euphoric as having a weight lifted off of me. Because telling the truth made me feel so much better that I felt I was free. But then I also broke Heather's heart.

Somewhere in the pre-dawn hours, Ig, tired of the emotional churn, returned to his basement couch and drifted off to sleep. When he woke up later that Sunday morning, Ig felt as if a long ordeal had ended. Then, as he walked to the kitchen, a note on the table caught his eye. It was from his nine-year-old daughter, Victoria. The note said she and mommy had gone to Aunt Wendy's.

The note did not say when or if they'd ever be coming back. There are some football feelings you can only get with BetMGM Sportsbook. That's right. Not just the highs, the ohs, or the no, no, no's. It's the feeling that comes with being taken care of every down of the football season. The feeling that comes with getting MGM rewards benefits or earning bonus bets. So, whether you're drawing up a same-game parlay in your playbook or betting the over on your favorite team. Hey!

The BetMGM app is the best place to bet on football. You only get that feeling at BetMGM, the sportsbook born in Vegas, now live across the DMV. BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly. See BetMGM.com for terms. 21 plus only, DC only, subject to eligibility requirements. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER.

As Democrats unite around Vice President Harris, they'll gather in Chicago to endorse their presidential ticket. A new era is here. It is go time. Stay with MSNBC for insights and analysis. The race is going to be close. Everybody should prepare themselves for that. Plus reporting on the ground from the convention halls. Extraordinary levels of enthusiasm from Democrats for the fight ahead. The Democratic National Convention. Special coverage this week on MSNBC.

The bullpen area at the Weld County Joint Drug Task Force is the place where investigators have desks and file cabinets and mugs caked with the tar of a thousand coffees. On the night Heather Garris was killed, the room was full. There was a drug bust planned for later that evening, and the 6 p.m. briefing had been, well, brief. Officers had their assignments and were milling around when a police radio squawked.

Shots fired at the credit union on 11th Avenue. One person down. I called it out to my guys that it sounded like we had had another robbery and this time somebody had been shot. That's the voice of Sergeant Kel Hulsey. He was the task force supervisor in charge that night. Hulsey says a moment later, the police radio crackled again with a description of the suspect and the getaway vehicle. Then a familiar name split the air. Shauna Nelson.

All units should be on the lookout for Shauna Nelson, believed to be driving a dark-colored Ford Model F-150 or F-250 pickup. Those words seemed to hang in the air as a creepy silence settled over the room. Many in that room knew Shauna personally. Some, no doubt, knew of her indiscretions and her penchant for drama. But murder? That didn't seem possible. Then all eyes turned to look at one of their own.

Ken Nelson. Signals from dispatch. Yes, sir. We all have portable radios. Did Ken Nelson, did you come into contact with Ken Nelson after you heard his wife's name aired out? I did. Okay.

And what did you do? I walked into the squad room or bullpen area where the detective's desks are. Everybody was kind of looking at everybody. We couldn't really believe that we had heard Sean and Nelson's name. Ken was kind of looking at the floor and he looked up at me and he said, let's go. And he started out the door towards his car.

By the time Sergeant Hulsey retrieved his phone and made it outside of the parking lot, Ken Nelson was already in the task force jeep, motor running. He had actually been on the phone as I was getting in the car, and just as I was getting in, he was shutting the phone saying she's not home or she's not answering, something like that. Hulsey says the first thing Ken Nelson did was hand him his gun, implying perhaps that he didn't want to have a weapon in his hand if he found his wife. As they peeled out of the parking lot, tires yelping.

Ken told Halsey he wanted to check on his kids who were likely alone and quite possibly in danger if his wife really had gone off the deep end. Halsey says he and Ken were just blocks from the Nelson home when suddenly Ken started shouting. As we were driving southbound on 65th Avenue, Ken Nelson yelled at me, give me my gun. Halsey didn't know what was happening, but he says he stuffed the gun under the seat

Just then, Halsey says, Ken suddenly screeched to a stop and jumped out of the Jeep. Pulling to a stop in front of Ken now was a black pickup truck. Square headlights. Five small running lights above the windshield. Ken knew that truck well. Because it was his. And behind the wheel? His wife. Shawna.

Ken was yelling, what did you do? Where's my kids? Where's my kids? Where's my kids? And she was saying, what are you so mad about? I haven't done anything. What are you so upset about? According to Sergeant Halsey, Shawna scooted over to the passenger side door and got out of the truck, fearing the situation could get out of hand. Halsey says he stepped between Ken and Shawna. She said she had gone to the liquor store to get a beer.

Almost immediately, he says, Ken Nelson walked back to his Jeep and drove off in the direction of his home, leaving Kel Halsey alone with Shawna. I held her kind of in the doorway of the truck. We stayed right in the passenger side doorway of the truck. She asked me, what's going on? I told her that there had been a shooting and we were trying to figure that out and that she needed to just stand there with me and not say anything. It was about that time that detectives Mike Prill and Greg Tharp rolled up.

That's Detective Mike Prill.

So the westbound lane had no traffic on it. And I noticed Kel Halsey standing in the passenger door that's wide open. And he's got Shauna standing next to him. And they're just in that crook that the door makes from the passenger compartment. So they're both standing on the roadway. Mike Prill describes himself as a strictly business type of cop. He doesn't do a lot of socializing and doesn't engage in office gossip. Because of that...

He was perhaps one of the few on the force who was unaware of Shawna Nelson's salacious affair with Ig Garris. In fact, Prill didn't know Shawna at all. He says the first time he laid eyes on her, she was standing by the passenger door of that pickup truck, wearing a long, knee-length knitted shawl and a pair of black sweatpants.

I can see exhaust fumes coming out of the truck. Like I said, it was cold. And I noticed the driver door was open, standing open. And as I got out of the passenger side of my car and looked to Kel...

He gave me a hand sign to handcuff her. You know, he did something like he crossed his wrists from behind her back. And I think he made the sign of a gun. So what I understood was, she's the shooter, let's arrest her. Prill says it was then, as he was cuffing Shauna, that he noticed a curious thing. She wasn't wearing shoes.

The only thing on her feet was a pair of black socks. It was bunk. She's in her socks. It's freezing cold out. Who's going to do that? Who's going to walk outside, get in a truck, drive to a liquor store in their socks? Prill says the moment Shauna saw Detective Tharp, she started speaking to them both as if they were her closest friends.

And she's instantly saying things like, you guys know me, you know I wouldn't do anything, and making references specifically to Tharp, calling him Greg, saying things like, Greg, you know I wouldn't do this. But I was kind of taken aback that she's saying, you guys know me, and I don't know who the hell this person is. And that would become, you know, that's just how Shawna is. When she's around law enforcement, she just, oh my God, she just,

Now, if Shawna was hoping her friends on the force would cut her a break, she was wrong. Shawna was cuffed and put in the back of a squad car for transport back to the station. It was then the detective says he turned his attention to the black pickup she'd been driving. And as I walked back to the truck, I can see Kel walking.

you know, looking into the truck through the open door. He's not moving things around or whatnot. So I walked to the driver's side and the door is open. And I begin to talk to him straight through the compartment. I'm like, Kel, let's get out of the truck. Don't try to search it. He asked for a flashlight. I'm like, we're not doing this. We'll get a search warrant. Just back away from the truck. And that's when I realized the crew cab is the jar. So that back crew cab door had been popped.

The driver's side door and the crew cab door behind it were both open? That was odd. The way Sergeant Hulsey remembered it, neither he nor Ken Nelson ever went anywhere near the truck's driver's side doors. So who opened the doors to the truck and why? The answers would produce an investigation that was open to additional suspects. Next time on Internal Affairs.

You know, quite honestly, when something like that happens, every achievement every officer ever had at the Greeley Police Department is tarnished or it's even depleted. I'm like, get the hell, you know, get your hand off me. I go, what's going on? You know, I'm getting an attorney tomorrow and I will get a DNA test and you will pay me monthly. You think that you guys have no money now? You're really going to have no money later.

Internal Affairs is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Tim Beecham is the producer. David Varga and Jonathan Moser are audio editors. Matt Sullivan is assistant audio editor. Susan Nall is senior producer. Adam Gorfain is co-executive producer. Liz Cole is executive producer. And David Corvo is senior executive producer.

From NBC News Audio, Bryson Barnes is technical director. Sound mixing by Bob Mallory. Nina Bisbono is associate producer.