Pamela Shelley
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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. On a cold January night in Cuero, Texas, Pamela's family was in turmoil.

Life wasn't working out, and she needed to escape, so she packed all of her belongings and was ready to move home. But minutes before her trailer departs, a single gunshot rung out. A gunshot that would leave her family without answers for years. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 129, The Mysterious Death of Pamela Shelley. ♪

Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.

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Now, let's jump right into this week's case. On January 6, 2001, in a small town of Cuero, Texas, at 5.15 p.m., a 911 call came into the police station. The caller said that a woman shot herself in the head just minutes earlier. The lady shot was a young mother. The news sent shockwaves through this small Texas town.

When Cuero, Texas paramedics arrived at the house, they found the victim lying on the bathroom floor with a headshot. It was 32-year-old Pamela Shelley. Within minutes, paramedics rushed Pamela out of the house and into an ambulance. Miraculously, although she was shot in the head, she was still alive. Riding inside the ambulance was also Pamela's live-in boyfriend, Ronnie Hendrick.

Paramedics took Pamela to Cuero Community Hospital, the only hospital in this small town. But shortly after arriving, doctors turned Pamela away. Their small hospital was not equipped to treat Pamela's grave injuries. Paramedics then rushed Pamela to the nearest trauma center in Austin, Texas. If Pamela was going to survive, her best chance was in Austin.

A few minutes after paramedics took Pamela out of the house, Cuero police officers arrived. The first person they spoke to on the scene was some of Pamela's boyfriend's family members. His family lived across the street from Pamela and Ronnie, so they came over as soon as they heard about the shooting. The police also encountered three children inside the house, Ronnie's daughter and Pamela's two children, Kayla and Dustin.

All three of the children were utterly hysterical. Neither of them could say much when the police tried to speak with them. They were incapable of providing any type of valuable information. Outside of the house, the police found a trailer parked in the driveway. Inside of that trailer, they found all of Pamela's stuff, including her clothes, her children's clothes, and some furniture.

To the police, it looked like someone was either moving in or moving out of the house. When the police officers spoke with Ronnie's mom and stepfather, who had gathered at the house, they said that Pamela shot herself. They told the officers that Pamela and Ronnie had a great and loving relationship. But in the last few months, Pamela became severely depressed.

Ronnie's family told the police that although Pamela and Ronnie had a great relationship, the same couldn't be said about Pamela's kids and Ronnie, particularly with Pamela's daughter, 12-year-old Kayla. They said Pamela had become depressed about her daughter and her boyfriend's relationship. They just weren't getting along.

Their relationship had gotten so bad in the last few months that Pamela had decided to move back home to Arkansas, where she had grown up and lived before moving to Quera with Ronnie. Kayla and Ronnie couldn't stay under the same roof. She thought that if she moved back to Arkansas, things between her kids and Ronnie would improve.

But according to Ronnie's family, Pamela's decision to move home wasn't easy. She didn't want to leave Ronnie. She tried to stay with him in Texas. But things between her daughter Kayla and him were too volatile for her to stay. Ronnie's family told the police why the trailer was filled with Pamela's stuff. According to them, Pamela and her two kids planned to move out later that night.

Ronnie's stepfather had even agreed to drive her and the kids back to Arkansas. The police now had a better idea about what happened. Pamela was depressed about having to leave Texas and her boyfriend Ronnie. Ronnie's stepfather told 911 that she shot herself. Ronnie's family said she shot herself. And when the paramedics arrived, they found Pamela lying on the bathroom floor with a single gunshot wound to her right temple.

All signs pointed to suicide. After speaking with Ronnie's family, officers went inside the home and into the couple's master bedroom. That's where they found blood on the bathroom floor and across the walls. The blood evidence appeared to be consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot. The police also found the gun sitting on the bathroom counter, a .32 caliber revolver.

According to the lead paramedic, they told Ronnie to move the gun out of the way so that they could begin working on Pamela. So Ronnie picked up the gun and placed it on the bathroom counter. This particular detail of the story isn't unusual. When paramedics and first responders arrive on the scene, their first duty is to save the victim. In this case, a person who has reportedly shot themselves in the head.

They aren't worried about preserving the crime scene or preserving evidence in the case. Their priority will be the victim's health and doing everything they can to save them. A couple of officers left the house to go to the hospital in Austin to talk with Ronnie, who rode with Pamela in the ambulance. Since he was the only adult inside the house when Pamela shot herself, the police wanted to find out exactly what happened from him.

Ronnie told the police that around 5 o'clock p.m., Pamela went to the bathroom to put on makeup while he went outside. He told the officers that his family was telling the truth when they said that Pamela was supposed to move out later that day. And that's why there was a trailer parked with all of her stuff outside. He said that when he was sitting just outside the house, he heard a loud noise that sounded like a gunshot.

He said he immediately raced inside the house, and that's when he found Pamela lying on the bathroom floor with a gunshot wound to her head. Right next to Pamela, he saw a massive pool of blood and his gun on the ground. He told the police officers he started screaming, which alerted Pamela's children, 12-year-old Kayla and 9-year-old Dustin.

Both of Pamela's kids ran into the master bedroom to see what was happening, but Ronnie told them to get out. Ronnie provided the police with a very similar story that his family did. He said that Pamela was depressed about going back home to Arkansas. He even admitted to them that he and 12-year-old Kayla weren't getting along and that their relationship was a big reason why Pamela wanted to move out.

But Ronnie also told the police something else. He shared with the officers that Pamela came from a family with a long history of depression. According to him, Pam's sister had killed herself only a few years earlier and that that might explain why she decided to shoot herself. Shortly after Ronnie spoke with the police, he learned terrible news about Pamela's condition.

Doctors told Ronnie that the gunshot wound was too severe and that Pamela was left brain dead. But unfortunately, there wasn't anything else they could do. Pamela's family, 800 miles away in Arkansas, were also notified. If finding out that their daughter had shot herself wasn't hard enough, they were now faced with one of the most difficult decisions anyone would ever have to make.

Austin, Texas doctors told Pamela's family that there wasn't anything medically they could do for Pamela. The gunshot wound had left her brain dead and the only way she was still alive was through life support. So based on the doctor's recommendation, they decided to take Pamela off of life support. At 31 years old, Pamela Shelley was dead.

Pamela Shelley was born Pamela Jean Curly Shelley on July 25, 1969, in Houston, Texas. But she grew up in Little River County, Arkansas. For those who knew her, she was Pam. When Pam turned 15 years old, she got her parents' permission to marry Jesse Suggs. Although they were simply young kids, Pam thought he was the one.

But the relationship wasn't without its set of troubles. Shortly before the birth of their first child, a girl they named Kayla Suggs, Pam and Jesse divorced. Maybe it was their age, or perhaps it was the pressures of becoming new parents. But even their divorce didn't last long. They ended up getting back together and having another child. This time, it was a baby boy they named Dustin.

After Pam's death, Kayla and Dustin said they had the greatest mom in the world. Kayla, who was incredibly close with her mom, said that Pam wasn't only her mom, she was also her very best friend.

While the kids were little, Pam and Jesse stayed together for a few years. But even after rekindling their relationship, they found themselves separated once again. And then Pam met another guy, Ronnie Hendrick. Ronnie Hendrick was an old family friend of Pam. Ronnie's parents lived next door to Pam's in-laws, and that's how they met. When Pam and Jesse were having issues in their relationship...

Pam left Jesse and started dating Ronnie. The breakup between Pam and Jesse was sudden. Although they were having issues, Jesse had no idea that Pam was planning to leave him, especially for another man. So when Pam came home one day and said that she was leaving, this came as a complete shock to Jesse and the kids.

By August of 2000, Pam and her two kids had packed their bags and moved over 800 miles from her home and family in Arkansas. She and Ronnie moved into a house together in Cuero, Texas. They picked a home on a rural property just one mile away from Ronnie's mother and stepfather.

Moving Pamela out of Arkansas to Texas was great for Ronnie. The move meant that he and Pam would get to live together, and he could stay close to his family and friends. But the move wasn't as easy for Pam. This was the first time that she had ever moved away from her family and friends.

When she arrived in Texas with her kids in August of 2000, she didn't know anyone outside of Ronnie and his family. Other than them, she was completely alone. A forensic pathologist from the Bexar County Medical Examiner's Office performed Pam's autopsy. The initial assumption was that her death was an open and shut suicide case.

An autopsy, though, is usually performed any time that someone dies under suspicious circumstances, including possible suicides. The forensic pathologist found that the wound to Pam's right temple was consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot. One of the most critical indicators of suicide or homicide involving gunshot wounds is the direction and location of the bullet.

Once someone is shot, the bullet will either travel in an upward direction, stay horizontal, or travel downward.

In a study published in the National Library of Medicine for suicide, the path of the bullet is usually at an angle of elevation. In other words, the bullet goes in an upward direction. However, in homicides, the bullet usually travels through the body horizontally.

When the forensic pathologist studied the bullet's direction in Pam's case, he found that the bullet followed an upward direction. The gunshot was a contact wound to the right temple area traveling front to back, down to up, and right to left. According to him, this path was consistent with a classic suicide.

News about Pam's apparent suicide didn't sit right with her family back in Arkansas. According to Pam's family, she didn't commit suicide. She was murdered. Pam's family weren't the only ones suspicious. Officer Carl Bowen from the DeWitt County Sheriff's Office was one of the first responding officers to arrive at the house that day. He also had his own suspicions about her death.

For starters, Officer Carl Bowen found it suspiciously convenient that Ronnie was nowhere to be found when first responding officers showed up at the house. The house that Pam and Ronnie shared was in the middle of nowhere. The ambulance that responded to the 911 call came all the way from Yorktown.

When Ronnie's stepfather called 911, they needed help finding the shortest and quickest route to Cuero, which was about 20 minutes away. The ambulance also needed help finding the nearest hospital in town. Officer Bowen found it suspicious that Ronnie graciously volunteered to go with the ambulance to help with the directions instead of staying at the house to speak with them.

When the police arrived at the house, Ronnie was nowhere to be found. Therefore, officers couldn't talk to him right away or be able to perform a gunshot residue test on his hands to figure out whether he had fired a gun recently.

Second, there was the timing of Pam's suicide. When Ronnie's stepfather called 911, Pam was only 20 minutes away from leaving the house. Pam and her two children planned to hop in the trailer and start the 800-mile drive back to Arkansas in only 20 minutes. Officer Bowman wondered, why would Pam go through all the effort to move if she was planning on killing herself?

Why pack up the entire house? Why load the trailer with all of her belongings if she was just going to shoot herself? Third, and most troubling to Officer Bowen, why would Pam leave her two young kids behind, 12-year-old Kayla and 9-year-old Dustin? And why shoot and kill herself when her kids were only a few feet away?

Now, we know this isn't entirely uncommon. Parents of small, young children can commit suicide, and they do. They can even do it while their children are present. But Officer Carl Bowen had his own reasons to question whether Pam would have killed herself and left her children behind.

Early on, the police gathered information that suggested Pam and Ronnie's relationship wasn't as great as Ronnie and his parents claimed. Although their relationship blossomed quickly, the honeymoon period also ended abruptly.

According to Pam's family and friends, Ronnie was a drinker. He drank heavily. And when Ronnie drank, he turned into a completely different person. He became angry and could sometimes turn violent. At first, Ronnie only became violent and abusive towards Pam. He would get drunk and emotionally abuse her, or sometimes the fighting would even turn physical.

But then, according to Pam's family, Ronnie began abusing Pam's 12-year-old daughter Kayla. According to the family, in January of 2001, just days before Pam's death, Ronnie hit Kayla. He pushed her so hard that her head hit the side of a coffee table. If you asked Pam's family and her daughter Kayla, this was Pam's breaking point.

It was one thing to physically and emotionally abuse her, but it was an entirely different story to turn that abuse towards her own children. After Ronnie hit Kayla, Pam decided to leave Texas and move back home, at least according to her family's account.

The plan was for Ronnie's stepfather to drive her over to Arkansas, except that plan never happened because she died 20 minutes before her and her kids were scheduled to leave. Her bags were packed and the trailer was loaded the day she died.

The actual state of Pam and Ronnie's relationship and the timing of Pam's apparent suicide caused Officer Carl Bowen and Pam's family to question what really happened to her. Was this truly a suicide or could this be murder? Ronnie agreed to go down to the police station to take a polygraph examination.

Although polygraphs aren't admitted in court as evidence in criminal trials, they're still used as investigative tools. And in this case, police officers wanted to find out if Ronnie was telling the truth about what really happened that day.

Although Ronnie had initially agreed to take the polygraph, he never actually made it to the appointment. In fact, Ronnie made three separate appointments with the police department to come and take the test. But on three separate occasions, he never made it. He either asked to reschedule or he simply didn't show up. Soon, within weeks of Pam's death, Ronnie was nowhere to be found.

Months then turned to years, and the investigation into Pam's apparent suicide was closed. Officer Carl Bowen and the other officers assigned to the investigation were eventually taken off the case and reassigned. By 2007, Pam Shelley had been dead for over six years. Her death was ruled a suicide. And Officer Bowen had been promoted to detective within the police department.

But even after six years, he continued to believe that there was more to Pam's story, that her death wasn't a clear case of suicide. For the past six years, Bowen was troubled that Ronnie simply disappeared after Pam's death. He never came in to take that polygraph test. And the only side of the story they heard about what happened that day came from Ronnie and his family.

In late 2007, Officer Bowen approached the newly appointed DeWitt County Sheriff, Jody Zavesky, about Pam's case. Pam's case had been on his mind for years, but until now, there wasn't anything he could do. Now a detective himself, he thought that this was finally his chance. He approached Sheriff Jody Zavesky, the county's new sheriff, about reopening Pam's case.

He told Sheriff Zavesky all about his concerns from when he first investigated the case. He said that things just didn't feel right. Even though the county already had a long list of cold cases, Sheriff Zavesky agreed to reopen Pam's case.

The case didn't look promising, but he trusted Bowen. If Carl Bowen thought that something wasn't right about the case, even after all of these years, then at the very least, it's worth looking into.

The opportunity to finally reopen Pam's case came in 2008. In January 2008, Detective Bowen approached the county's new district attorney, Michael Shepard, and told him that he was looking into Pam's case. He told Michael Shepard that he had the sheriff's permission to investigate it.

Still, he wanted to find out if he stood a chance at the department pursuing charges in the case if he found any new evidence. Like the new sheriff, the new district attorney agreed to let him reopen Pam's case. He assured Bowen that there was no statute of limitation on murder in Texas. As long as they had the evidence, they could charge him.

But Shepard was blunt. He told Bowen that his office to pursue any charges in the case, if there was a chance at that, then they needed some pretty strong evidence against Ronnie. Or any type of evidence that could suggest that Pam's death was a homicide and not a suicide. Detective Bowen knew that finding new evidence in the case would be tough, next to impossible.

It had been seven years since Pam's death. The blood evidence at the scene was consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The forensic pathologist ruled the case a suicide, and Bowen knew that Ronnie's fingerprints would be on the gun because paramedics had instructed him to pick it up and move it when they got there.

So finding new evidence that implicated Ronnie in Pam's death was going to be difficult. By the summer of 2008, Bowen started seeing progress in the case. By 2008, Ronnie Hendrick was booked into the DeWitt County Jail, but not for anything related to Pam's case. Instead, he had been arrested and charged with domestic abuse after allegedly beating up the woman he was living with at the time.

While Ronnie sat in jail, Detective Carl Bowen finally learned where Ronnie had run off to following Pam's death. He discovered that he had left Texas and had moved to South Dakota. But even more interesting was that Bowen also learned that while living in South Dakota, Ronnie had a couple of run-ins with the law.

Only a couple years after Pam's death, Ronnie had been arrested and charged with a felony DUI, or felony driving under the influence. In that particular case, Ronnie pled guilty to felony DUI, and he was sentenced to time in state prison. Not only did Bowen find out where Ronnie ran off to after Pam's death, but he also noticed a pattern in Ronnie's behavior.

One, Bowen realized that Ronnie was a serial abuser of alcohol, just like Pam's family had said. And number two, Ronnie had a history of abusing women. Bowen started looking deeper into Ronnie's history to see if there was anything to suggest that he was capable of murder.

He knew he was a drunk. He knew he abused women, but was he capable of murder? The police learned that Ronnie had given her a black eye the day before Pam died. And not just any ordinary black eye. The injury was so bad that she had to be taken to the emergency room.

When emergency room doctors asked her what happened, she lied. She told the doctors that she got the black eye from hitting her face on the edge of a table. She lied to protect Ronnie. Detective Bowen visited Ronnie in jail on May 27, 2008, to talk to him about Pam's death. Even after all of these years, his story stayed the same. Pam shot and killed herself.

He was outside when it happened, and Pam must have killed herself because she was depressed about moving. He was so confident about his story, he finally agreed to take that polygraph test that he promised to do so seven years earlier. When it came time for Ronnie to sit down and take the polygraph, he made one significant change to his original story.

In his initial statement to the police, he said he was outside on the front porch with the kids when he heard the gunshot. Then they all ran inside and found Pam lying on the bathroom floor. However, when it was time for Ronnie to sit down and take the polygraph, he changed his story.

This time, he said he was actually inside the master bedroom when it happened and that he had lied about being outside on the porch. He said he lied because he was afraid the police would think that he had something to do with Pam's murder. Although his story changed, the polygraph didn't agree with either version. When the results came back, they showed deception. Ronnie was lying.

When Bowen and the other police officers approached Ronnie about the polygraph test results, he turned around and said that he didn't want to speak with them. He wanted an attorney. This immediately raised red flags among the officers. But it didn't necessarily mean that Ronnie murdered Pam. Polygraph tests aren't even admissible as evidence. To arrest Ronnie, they were going to need a lot more.

May 29th, 2008, the day after Ronnie took the polygraph, he called his aunt from jail. He admitted to his aunt that he had originally lied to the police officers about what happened that day. Although he maintained he never killed Pam, he did admit to lying.

At the same time Ronnie was sitting in jail on domestic violence charges, Bowen and a few other Texas police officers traveled to Arkansas to speak with some of Pam's family, including her daughter Kayla. At the time of Pam's death, she was only 12 years old and did not speak to the police about her mother's death.

But by 2008, she was now 19 years old. She was legally an adult. And she was finally allowed to tell the police her version of what happened that day. Kayla told the officers that Ronnie not only was abusive towards her mom, but he also abused her. She said her mom and Ronnie's relationship was terrible and that Ronnie drank all the time. When he drank, he turned violent.

According to Kayla, she was on the couch the day of her mom's death. She said she heard a scream and then a gunshot. She said she went to the bathroom and saw her mom lying on the bathroom floor. Ronnie was already standing in the doorway when she got there and told her to get out. Kayla told Bowen that at first she thought Ronnie hit her and knocked her to the floor.

Ronnie was no stranger to physical violence, so Kayla knew that her mom wouldn't have shot herself. Her mom would have never left her and her brother with Ronnie. Bowen went back to question Ronnie in jail for a second time. This time, he started putting pressure on Ronnie about his possible involvement in Pam's death. During their conversation, Bowen outlined the three possible scenarios behind Pam's death.

But Ronnie refused to engage with him. He turned around and invoked his right to an attorney. Without enough evidence to proceed with an arrest, the case was once again stalled for another few years, until 2012.

In 2012, Bowen and a handful of other Texas police officers hoped that advances in forensic DNA testing could help in the investigation. They decided to send the gun that killed Pam out to be tested for touch DNA.

Touch DNA is DNA abstained from shed skin cells or other biological materials transferred from a donor to an object or even another person. This type of DNA testing can tell investigators who handled a particular object, in this case, the gun.

When the gun was tested in 2012, no DNA was found on it. Not Ronnie's DNA and not Pam's. If Pam had used the gun to shoot herself, why wasn't at least her DNA found on it? Since investigators didn't find any DNA on it, this suggested someone had likely wiped down the gun.

If this theory proved true, that meant only one person could have wiped the gun clean because the other person is dead. With this new DNA evidence, Bowen returned to the forensic pathologist who performed Pam's autopsy. Originally, the pathologist ruled the death a suicide.

But when Bowen presented him with evidence suggesting that Pam's own DNA was not found on the gun that she supposedly used to shoot herself, the pathologist reconsidered his initial findings. The evidence was persuasive enough for the pathologist to change Pam's cause of death from suicide to undetermined. After that, Detective Bowen went back to Arkansas in August of 2012.

This time around, he went there to speak with Pam's former mother-in-law. During their conversation, she dropped a bombshell. She told Bowen that her son, Jesse Suggs, Pam's first husband and father of her two kids, had secretly been communicating with a burner phone while Pam was in Texas living with Ronnie.

She said her son and Pam started talking again, but Ronnie had no idea. And if he did, he would have been furious about Pam talking to her ex-husband. According to Pam's mother-in-law, Pam and her son had plans to get back together, and that that is why Pam was planning to move back home.

On one particular phone call between Pam and Jesse, Ronnie overheard part of their conversation. Ronnie immediately yanked the phone out of Pam's hands and told Jesse that, quote, the only way Pam was coming back to Arkansas was in a pine box, end quote. Now armed with what he believed to be the motive for Pam's death, Bowen did something a little bit out of the box.

He approached the television show Cold Justice. Cold Justice is a true crime documentary series that highlights cold cases to bring renewed attention and awareness to the case. The show is known for doing its own investigative work on the case in hopes of getting justice for some of the victims and families involved.

In 2012, the show's premise was that former Harris County District Attorney Kelly Siegler and a former crime scene investigator from Las Vegas could come in and help understaffed and underbudgeted law enforcement agencies work cold cases. When Bowen saw an episode of Cold Justice for himself, he thought that this could be a great opportunity to get some help with Pam's case.

In late 2012, Bowen approached the show's producers, hoping that they would agree to look into Pam's case. After hearing a little bit more about the case, the producers knew that they wanted in and they immediately got to work on it. Bowen and the team from Cold Justice quickly got to work.

But early on, they already knew that the forensic evidence would be their biggest obstacle to figuring out what happened to Pam. There was no touch DNA on the gun. And the only DNA blood evidence found on Pam's clothes was Pam's own DNA.

Because Cuero, Texas was such a small town, first responders didn't have a kit to perform a gunshot residue test on Ronnie's hands. This test would have told them if Ronnie had fired a gun or not. And there was no blood or marks found on Ronnie's clothes.

At the scene, first responders didn't find any physical or forensic evidence to suggest that Ronnie was present when Pam allegedly shot herself. So Bowen and Cole Justice decided to go back to square one. Bowen and the show producers traveled back to Cuero, Texas to visit Ronnie and Pam's house that now sat empty.

They went inside the master bedroom where Pam died and began recreating the crime scene. They hoped that their reconstruction could determine whether Ronnie could have shot Pam and have the bullet travel in the way that it did.

The biggest reason why the forensic pathologist ruled Pam's death a suicide was because, number one, of the location of the gunshot wound, and number two, the direction that the bullet traveled through Pam's body. The bullet's direction was highly consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

But was it possible for Ronnie to have shot Pam in a similar way, making it look like a self-inflicted wound? After recreating the scene, they were shocked at what they found.

Based on the reconstruction, they believed that if Ronnie came in with a gun on Pam's side while she was facing the bathroom mirror, she would naturally lean to her left side trying to save herself from Ronnie. That would naturally create the exact angle and the bullet's direction found in her wound, the wound that the forensic pathologist thought resembled a suicide.

Based on their reconstruction, they believed that Ronnie could inflict the same type of wound found on the side of Pam's head. Bowen and the producers of Cold Justice also went back and questioned all the people involved in the case. But after questioning everyone, they had two distinct versions of the story.

Pam's family and her childhood best friend all said that Pam would have never committed suicide. According to Pam's best friend, the two of them had just had a conversation a few weeks before her death where they talked about how a mutual friend of theirs had committed suicide. During this conversation, Pam told her best friend that she could never do that. She could never leave her kids behind.

But Ronnie's brother and mother painted a much different story. According to them, Pam had frequently spoken about suicide and that Pam had even attempted suicide on a previous occasion. The most prominent aspect of the case was Ronnie's own statements to the police.

Bowen and Cole Justice studied Ronnie's original statement that he made to the police, where he said he was outside when he heard the gunshot. But in 2008, when he took the polygraph test, he changed his statement and said that he was inside the house, not outside. According to them, the inconsistencies in Ronnie's story meant that he was lying.

After digging deeper into Pam's case for months, Bowen and the show believed that they had enough evidence to decide on the case. They believed that Ronnie's flip-flopping statement meant that he was hiding something. It should be left up to a jury to decide if it also makes him a murderer.

In the fall of 2012, Detective Bowen and the district attorney assembled a grand jury to determine if there was enough evidence to indict Ronnie for Pam's murder. After several weeks of testimony, the grand jury returned its decision. They indicted Ronnie for murder in November of 2012.

Over 10 years after Pam's death, her boyfriend, Ronnie Hendrick, was indicted for her murder. The grand jury believed Ronnie had the motive and the opportunity to kill her. The motive was that Pam planned on leaving him and getting back together with her ex-husband.

The grand jury also believed that Cole Justice's reconstruction of the scene proved that Ronnie could have shot her and made it look like a suicide. The path that the bullet took was consistent with the reconstruction. They also believed that Ronnie had wiped down the gun after shooting her, which is why there's no DNA on it.

After being indicted, Ronnie pled not guilty and his trial was set for September 2013. The cold justice episode on the case was scheduled to air almost one week before the trial. But a mistrial was declared due to a small pool of potential jurors. The court didn't have enough available jurors to ensure a fair trial.

So the judge in the case had no choice but to declare a mistrial. Instead of rescheduling a new trial date, something unexpected happened. In September 2013, Ronnie Hendrick pleaded guilty to Pam's murder. He finally came clean that Pam's death was not a suicide. He killed her.

Ronnie Hendrick was sentenced to 22 years in prison in exchange for his guilty plea. It took the combined effort of a persistent detective, a television show, and a crime scene reconstruction to finally bring justice to Pamela Shelley. Twelve long years after Pam's death, her family and children finally got the answers they spent years searching for.

For over a decade, they never believed that Pam was capable of killing herself. She was a loving mother who would have never left her two children behind with an abuser. To share your thoughts on Pamela Shelley's case, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook. To find out what I think about the case, sign up to become a patron at patreon.com slash forensic tales.

After each episode, I release a bonus episode where I share my personal thoughts and opinions about the case. To check out photos from the case, be sure to head to our website, ForensicTales.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday. If you love the show, consider leaving us a positive review or tell friends and family about us.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please join me next week. We'll have a brand new case and a brand new story to talk about. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.

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For a complete list of sources used in this episode, please visit ForensicTales.com. Thank you so much for listening. Your support means the world to me. I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, not all stories have happy endings.