October 19, 2023 • 30 mins
On August 3, 2009, police found Shannon Hercutt dead inside her car, which had plunged off a cliff just off of Walker Trail in Sevier County, Tennessee. At first, the Tennessee highway patrol said Shannon had died in a car accident. But a few days later, Shannon Hercutt’s manner of death was changed to homicide. Who killed Shanoon Hercutt?
If you have a case you’d like Catherine Townsend to look into, you can reach out to the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. On August third, two thousand and nine,
just before midnight, an on Star satellite service got a
notification of an emergency from inside a Cadillac Escalade that
had crashed. The vehicle had plunged off a cliff just
off Walker Trail in Severe County, Tennessee. The on Star
(00:29):
service called nine one one and police responded to the scene.
They found a bent guard rail. The car was in
the middle of the woods, so it was hard to
get down to the crash scene. Deputies had to repel
to the bottom of a one hundred and twenty five
foot drop off. When they got down there, they saw
the black two thousand and seven Cadillac Escalade. Inside the
(00:51):
twisted metal wreckage of that car, they found the body
of forty year old Shannon Hercut. At first, the Tennessee
Highway Patrol said Shannon had died in a car accident.
It seemed like a tragic fatality but nothing more than that.
But a few days later, Shannon her Cut's manner of
death was changed to homicide. Local authorities said someone had
(01:13):
beaten her to death, then put her inside the car
to stage the accident. Shannon was well known. She was
friendly and outgoing, a successful and well liked local businesswoman,
but according to her own family, she was also someone
who had a lot of secrets. There had been family
feuds and legal battles related to her business and possibly
(01:36):
some people suggested maybe even a secret lover. Now, over
the years, this case has been covered multiple times. It's
been covered by local media, national media, and even doctor
Phil And every time I hear about this story, the
same narrative has been put forward. But as you all know,
I want to go behind the scenes and see what
(01:56):
we can do to take this case forward. Who killed
Shannon her Cut? I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the last five
years making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned
there's no such thing as a small town where murder
never happens. I've received hundreds of messages from people all
around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder
(02:20):
that's affected them, their families, and their communities. And now
they have a new way to reach out. If you
have a case you'd like me and my team to
look into, you can reach out to us at our
Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four
four six ' one four five that's six seven eight, seven,
four four, six ' one four or five. This is
(02:43):
Helen Gone Murder line. I was contacted about the Shannon
(03:35):
her Cut case by listener a while back. As always,
we start with victimology. We want to know who Shannon
was and what was going on in her life in
the time period immediately before she died. Shannon her Cut
was born in Severeville, Tennessee, on May twenty second, nineteen
sixty nine. This is an area that gets a lot
(03:56):
of tourists. It's in the Great Smoky Mountains and it's
near Dollywood Dolly Parton's theme park. In Pigeon Forge, Shannon's mom, Patricia,
ran a general store she opened up in the early nineties.
It was called Anti Bellams. Eventually, Shannon went out on
her own. She opened up a real estate and rental business,
also using the family business name. Shannon's business was called
(04:18):
Anti Bellum's Realty and Rentals. It was in Pigeon Forge,
near where she grew up. Opening this business was a
very smart moved because over the years the demand for
rental properties skyrocketed in that area, and Shannon did very
well for herself. She was in charge of renting out
around one hundred and thirty cabins. She also oversaw other projects,
(04:39):
including the opening of a local playground called Mount Ton
of Fun. In media reports, Shannon is described as single
and happy. She never married and didn't have any children,
but she had a lot of friends and was active
in her town and in her church. One of her
relatives in an interview, made a comment about Shannon being
(04:59):
strong willed, which can sometimes mean if someone's very opinionated,
perhaps that could could point to them getting into conflict
with people. But a lot of people said that Shannon
was generally very well liked at work and that the
people who worked for her were very loyal to her,
but her life wasn't perfect. At the time of her
death in two thousand and nine, Shannon was dealing with
(05:21):
difficult relationships with several different people. As we often see,
big success sometimes brings business rivals or threats of lawsuits
and people wanting money. One of the people Shannon was
feuding with was her own father, Ted hercut again. Over
the years, everything that I've read about this case has
(05:43):
seemed to have the same narrative that a lot of
people suspect Ted and that he totally denies that he's
involved in his daughter's death. So now we fast forward
to August third, two thousand and nine. In the hours
immediately following that car crash. On that day, Ted Hircut
had an alibi. At the time of Shannon's murder, He
(06:04):
was almost four hundred miles away in Myrtle Beach, South
Carolina with his wife, Shannon's stepmother, Anita. His other daughter,
Shannon's sister, Penny Stevens, was also nearby vacationing with her
young daughter. Later on, when Ted and Penny appeared on
Doctor Phil in what was a very emotional and memorable episode,
(06:25):
Ted told Doctor Phil that he got a call from
his former son in law, a guy named Jerry Stevens,
who used to be married to Penny and who apparently
worked in law enforcement. Ted said Jerry called him to
break the news that Shannon's body had been found. Penny
got the news on the same day, and she later
told reporters that when she heard what happened to her sister,
(06:45):
she immediately thought that this could not have been an accident.
Ted said he also immediately suspected this had not been
a traffic accident. There were some details that just seemed off,
like the fact that Shannon was not wearing her seat
belt when the car crashed. Apparently she always made a
point of wearing her seat belt. Her family also wondered
why she would be driving in that area alone late
(07:08):
at night, which was definitely not a part of her
regular routine. But most crucially, when the car was found,
both the driver's side and passenger window were down. Both
Ted and Penny, his daughter, agreed Shannon would never have
those windows down because she was obsessive about keeping her
hair perfect, and obviously, in that high humidity, having both
(07:33):
windows down with the wind blowing in her hair was
just not something that they said Shannon would ever do.
If she did have to go out after dark, she
would have those windows up and she would have the
ac blasting. Police ruled Shannon's death an accident, and they
didn't want to do an autopsy, but Ted insisted. He
(07:53):
refused to sign a form allowing Shannon to be buried.
He also called a friend of his, a guy named
Jerry Grubbs. Now. Jerry was a retired National Park Service
ranger who also worked in law enforcement and later became
a prime an investigator. Jerry said that he found physical
evidence at that crime scene. Physical evidence, he said, was
overlooked both by the Sheriff's office and the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
(08:17):
In a video that Jerry posted on YouTube, he films
the area where the car wrecked and says, based on
how that car was found, he thinks that it basically
did a straight drop. He said that if the car
had been traveling at any rate of speed, it would
have been airborne and it would have been found way
deeper in the forest. There was also no real damage
(08:38):
to the windshield and no skid marks from the tire
tracks of the scene, which presumably meant that no one
slammed on the brakes to try to avoid an accident. Later,
a team went in and they found out through looking
at the car's electrical system that Shannon had only been
traveling at seven miles per hour before the crash. She
wasn't even going fast enough for her air bags to deploy.
(09:01):
Ted told reporters that Shannon's injuries did not appear to
have come from the car craft gosh, he said at
the time. Quote the paramedic said her head had a
gash in it the size of a grapefruit, and there
was nothing inside the car that could have made that
gash end quote. At that point, the Sheriff's office investigators
finally agreed to an autopsy, and when that autopsy came back,
(09:25):
it became clear that Shannon's injuries had not happened in
the car accident. Police said someone beat her to death
at her home, put her inside that car, and pushed
her over that hill. Cause of death was blunt forced
trauma to Shannon's head, and the manner of death was
changed from accident to homicide. Three days after Shannon's body
(09:54):
was found, police finally went to her house to look around.
Shannon's sister, Penny went to her house too. She was
there to pick out an outfit for her sister to
be buried in. She later told Knox News that when
she arrived to that house, she saw that some things
in her sister's residence seemed to be out of place.
She saw a baseball bat in the back of Shannon's
(10:16):
work truck. She also saw what appeared to be blood
on the refrigerator that was in Shannon's garage, right by
the handle. She told the news station, quote, I did
notice two wine cooler type bottles on the floor busted,
and that was it end quote. There were also no
signs of forest entry. Police had a few theories at
(10:38):
this point, but no real leads. They considered the possibility
that it could have been an angry client of Shannon's,
someone that she had a business to spete with, but
Penny made it clear that she had another prime suspect
in mind for Shannon's murder, their father, Ted Harcut. So
let's go back and look at the family relationships. Penny
(10:59):
and Ted appeared on The Doctor Phil's show in twenty fifteen,
and on that show, it's immediately clear that there is
a lot of animosity between Ted and Penny. She told
Doctor Phil that since she was very young, her father
had been behaving in extremely disturbing ways. She said he'd
been emotionally abusive and that he was greedy and a
(11:23):
pathological liar. And when Ted Hurcut came out and tried
to hug his daughter on stage, she refused to touch
him or have anything to do with him. Reading between
the lines, it seems like the bad blood between Ted
and Shannon got worse after Penny and Shannon's mother, Patricia
passed away. That happened in two thousand and eight. Patricia
(11:46):
died after a long battle with cancer. She had been
divorced from Ted for several years by then. After Patricia's death,
Shannon inherited a piece of land from her, a piece
of land that was apparently worth about a million dollars.
Shannon and Ted got into a llegal battle for that land.
(12:06):
They started fighting after Patricia's death, so about a year
before Shannon was murdered. By the time of Shannon's death,
Ted admitted that he and his daughter were estranged. They
were not talking at all, They were only communicating through lawyers.
So what was really going on when Shannon her cuts will?
In two thousand and three, Shannon made a will and
(12:27):
she left twenty nine percent of her state to her
father Ted. But in two thousand and six, Shannon made
another will, and in that will, she specifically mentioned that
it was her wish that neither Ted nor his wife
would inherit anything from her. Now, Penny claimed Ted was
furious about that, about the fact that Shannon had cut
him out of the will, but Ted has always totally
(12:49):
denied that. Penny has always said that her father's motive
in killing Shannon was money. But who really gained from
Shannon's death? Because we know that Ted didn't inherit anything.
Now explain this. Penny said that Ted didn't realize Shannon
had changed her will, so he would have thought that
he might inherit something from her. Ted said he never
(13:12):
expected anything from his daughter's will and that he never
needed any money from her. On Doctor Phil, Ted looked
genuinely shocked when Penny stated bluntly she believed he had
hired a hip man to kill her sister. I believe
that Penny is sincere. I think she is convinced that
her dad had something to do with Shannon's death and
that she was afraid of him. And if you watch
(13:35):
their interactions, it's clear, in my opinion, that there's something
about Ted that seems off. At certain moments, he appears
to be unhinged. I also think it's possible that he's
lying about a few things, like the weird vandalism of
Shannon's business that happened back in November of two thousand
and nine, just a few months after Shannon's murder. On
(13:55):
November twentieth, Pigeon Force police responded to shots fired at
Shannon's business, Annie Bellham's Realty in Nightly Rentals. Someone had
shown up there and started firing shots into the front door.
They fired off eight rounds in all. Penny said her
father had confessed to her that he was the one
who shot up the business, and when Doctor Phil asked
(14:19):
Ted about this, he kind of sidesteps the question. It
does seem like he could be lying about vandalizing that business.
The Doctor Phil's show had a lot more family drama on.
They also had Ted's third wife, Jan, who he married
in the summer of twenty fourteen. After just three weeks
(14:39):
of marriage, Ted got in annulment and the marriage fell apart.
Jan told Doctor Phil that Ted had what she called
a dark side. Now, I've been on Doctor Phil before
talking about the Ebbie Stepec case, and so I actually
know a lot about how this process works. I spent
several weeks with the producers doing in depth research and
(15:00):
giving them information about what was going on with the case.
And I knew this in advance of the information that
I gave them. They only aired a tiny portion of it.
They do that for a lot of reasons. First of all,
there's very limited time to present the case, so you
can't go too deep into the woods. But also, and
this is not an insult to TV, producers, but their
primary purpose is presenting the story and making good TV.
(15:24):
It's not really solving a case. So instead of going
deeper into suspects, what we got on Doctor Phil was
more family drama. Because then Ted came on again and
he said Jan had a criminal history and that she
had stolen four hundred dollars from him and stolen his
credit cards. There's a lot more family drama that plays
out on the show that I'm not going to get into.
(15:47):
But at the end of the episode, my takeaway was
that Doctor Phil seemed to come to basically the same
conclusion that I did. He said Ted may be an asshole,
but that doesn't mean he's a killer or that he
hired a hitman. He kept saying the same question I
was asking, which is what's the actual evidence that at
that moment in two thousand and nine, Ted would have
(16:09):
had a motive to kill his daughter. With all of
these cases, when you have so many crazy rumors flying around,
and especially when there are complicated family dynamics and accusations,
I always talk about how important it is to filter
out what I call the noise of the case. And
while we want to keep an open mind and not
(16:30):
ignore any possibilities. I think that the Shannon Hercut case
is a great example of this. We need to filter
out all of the family drama and focus on the
facts of the case. As we've said several times over
the years, being a creep is not illegal, and it
doesn't make you a killer. Ted has never been charged
in connection with Shannon's murder. He's always denied having anything
(16:53):
to do with it. I honestly think that at this
point the evidence points away from him, and there are
a few reasons why. First of all, Ted was one
of the first people to demand that Shannon's body taken
in for an autopsy. He got that expert Jerry Grubbs
to go to the scene. He told anyone who would
listen over the years that his daughter's death was not
(17:13):
an accident, which does not seem like the actions of
a person who killed his daughter. If Ted had been
involved in Shannon's death, it seems like the last thing
he would have done, especially after the death had already
been ruled an accident and she was getting ready to
be buried, is to go public and demand that police
investigate the possibility of murder. Ted died in twenty seventeen,
(17:37):
so if Ted was involved, whatever secrets he had would
have died with him. Even now, police say they've never
found any connection between Ted and Shannon's murder. If that's
the case, that means that Shannon's killer is still out there.
And though police have been pretty tight lipped about the
investigation so far, one investigator has said they believe the
(18:01):
evidence points to someone outside the family, but someone who
knew Shannon. He also said they believe they know the
killer's motive. He made this kind of cryptic comment. He said,
if I told you what it was, it'd be obvious
who I was talking about. So to sum up, I
don't think that the evidence points to Ted, and at
(18:23):
least one of the investigators on the case agrees. Let's
move away from the family drama between Ted and his
daughter Penny and back to what we know, Back to
the crime scene. With the evidence. We know where the
car crashed. We know that this was a staged crime scene.
The real crime scene took place at Shannon's house, probably
(18:46):
in her garage. Then the killer or killers tried to
make it look like a car accident. The real crime
scene took place at Shannon's house, probably in her garage.
We know this because Shannon's sister Penny saw smears of
blood on the outside refrigerator that's in the garage. That's
(19:06):
also where she found the two broken wine cooler bottles.
Shannon was beaten to death, then the killer or killers
put her in her own car and tried to make
it look like a car accident. Like the investigator said
to me, the crime scene and manner of death point
to someone who knew Shannon. Well, there are a couple
of possibilities. It could have been a crime of passion.
(19:28):
But from my other podcast, Red Caller, I know that
sometimes fraud detection homicides, murders where the motive was money
can also look like crimes of passion. So let's explore
the hit man theory. A lot of people have made
the comment that if this was a planned hit, it
was a very sloppy job. Apparently that's not that uncommon, though.
(19:50):
Former FBI criminal profiler Frank Perry, who wrote the book
Red Caller and White Collar Crime, which was about red
collar criminals and had a whole chapter about committing murder
for hire, wrote that often killers who commit white collar
crime and then who kill to cover up their fraud
often When they hire killers, they kind of go cheap.
(20:12):
They don't have much money, so they'll go with really
amateur killers instead of hiring professionals like the mob does.
They hire people who basically are unemployed grifters, people who
are floating around doing illegal or semi illegal kind of stuff.
And often when they do hire these amateurs, the amateurs
will tell a lot of people what they've done, and
(20:33):
that's how they get caught. If this had been a
professional hit, the killer would not have left behind so
many obvious signs of staging. They would have cleaned up
Shannon's garage. But most crucially, the thing that makes me
move away from the hit man theory is the fact
that I went back through the literature when red collar
(20:54):
criminals hire hitmen, every single example I could find involves
the killer bringing their own weapon. It's not impossible for
a hit man to come to someone's house and not
bring a weapon and then stop to drink a wine
cooler with a victim, but it seems very unlikely. The
only exception to this would be, of course, if the
(21:15):
hip man was someone Shannon knew. The hip man theory
isn't impossible. We have to keep an open mind. But
in my opinion, with everything that we know, it seems
more and more unlikely whether a killer is financially motivated
or whether they're motivated by something else like jealousy or rage.
The reason why they kill is to solve a problem
(21:37):
because they're losing control over a situation. So if the
motive for Shannon's murder was financial, we need to look
at who could have benefited financially from Shannon's death. After
Shannon died, Penny Stevens, her sister, and a first cousin
of theirs named John Madwell inherited Shannon's real estate business,
(21:58):
Annie Bellams. They started running the company together and according
to the last information that I found, the company is
still around as of a few years ago. At lease
the cousin, John Madwell was running the business with his wife.
I just want to be clear, I don't think for
a second that Penny was involved in her sister's murder.
I think she comes across as genuinely distraught, someone who
(22:19):
loved her sister and wants to get justice for her.
And she's also been the one who has been very
vocal about keeping her sister's case in the public eye
over the years. But I think there's someone we might
be overlooking. Was there someone who was involved in a
business deal with Shannon? Again, this is pure speculation because
(22:40):
no one has ever suggested this, But could Shannon have
found herself caught up in some kind of fraudulent behavior
or was someone defrauding her and she was threatening to
go to law enforcement or to sue that person. I'm
making this point because right now, when you look at
the evidence, there's no obvious windfall. We need to follow
the money on this case. We need to see if
(23:01):
there were any lawsuits pending exactly what was going on
in Shannon's business at the time of her death. In
addition to the money trail, we need to go back
again to the stage crime scene, which in my opinion,
is our biggest clue so far. In a publication called
Collision or Collusion Homicides Staged as Car Accidents by Claire Ferguson,
(23:23):
which was published in the National Library of Health, the
author describes sixteen homicides that were staged as car accidents.
The descriptive analysis examined common staging behaviors and victim, offender
and offense characteristics. Her findings indicate that staged car accidents
present differently than real accidents, and in a nutshell, every
(23:46):
single thing that she mentioned sounded like it could have
been taken straight out of Shannon's case. The article read quote.
They often involve single vehicle, slow speed downhill scenes with
middle aged female victims. Physical damage to vehicles is usually minimal,
except for fire damage. Common offender behaviors include transporting the
(24:07):
body to a vehicle, mutilation of the body, arson, and cleanup.
The results suggest these efforts are often unsophisticated and potentially
identifiable to investigators and physicians. I think we need to
focus more on Shannon's private life. We've heard from her sister,
and her sister said that Shannon did not tell her
(24:29):
and her mother a lot about certain aspects of her life,
that Shannon had been a private person. While investigators were
focusing on the car crash scene, the real crime scene,
in my opinion, was back at Shannon's house. Of course,
it wasn't properly processed in the beginning as a crime scene. Remember,
Penny arrived at the house when the police started their investigation.
(24:51):
Both Ted and Penny said there were two broken wine
cooler bottles on the floor of the garage. Which were
totally out of place because Shannon was a neat freak.
Her family members said, Shannon never would have left her
house looking like that. I wonder if Shannon was seeing someone,
maybe a current or ex boyfriend, someone who hasn't been
mentioned as a person of interest at all, and with
(25:13):
all this family drama, someone who's been flying under the
radar all this time. Shannon was officially single, but again,
her sister Penny told reporters that Shannon was secretive about
certain aspects of her personal life, that she didn't tell
certain things to her or to their mom. So what
do we know about crime scene staging? Again, we have
(25:34):
no access to the police case file, So we have
to go back to my bookshelf. We need to go
back to what we know about crime scene staging. According
to the excellent book Crime Scene Staging, Dynamics and Homicidal
Cases by doctor Laura Petler, the most commonly staged crime
scenes are done in cases of domestic violence or intimate
partner homicides. Crime Scene staging happens basically to serve the
(25:59):
killer's needs, not the victims. It happens because the victim
and the offender had a relationship with each other. We
can also surmise the killer knew the area, at least
they knew it well enough to know where there was
a cliff a place where they could push that escalade off.
The area where she was found walk or trail is
over five miles away from Shannon's house, so that means
(26:22):
whoever did this presumably put Shannon in the car and
then drove her vehicle to the spot where they pushed
it off. This is a huge risk. The killer would
have to feel reasonably confident that they weren't going to
pass anybody on the road, or if they did that
they wouldn't look out of place in that car. Doctor Pettler,
in her book points out that while there are words
(26:45):
for crimes like matricide and patricide, there's no real term
that covers a person who was intimately involved with the
victim but not married to them. She says she refers
to these murders as intimacides someone who was intimately involved
with the victim, and this can include close friends who
are crashing on a couch, or potentially people who are
(27:07):
dating the victim were sexually involved with them, also ex partners.
Another study of homicides staged as car accidents. Investigated one
hundred and fifteen cases. Now, admittedly this is not a
huge group and definitely a lot more research is needed
in this area. But again, they found in over eighty
percent of the cases the killer was the domestic partner
(27:30):
or former domestic partner the victim. In a lot of
these cases, the killer used blunt force and basically beat
the victim to death. In Shannon's case, police were very
quick to classify her death as an accident based on
the crime scene, and this is a common mistake that
(27:50):
law enforcement make a lot. They focus on crime scene
analysis very early on. They need to go back to victimology.
They need to get more knowledge about what's actually going
on with the victim at the time of death. And
so when we're trying to figure out what happened to
Shannon her cut, we need to keep an open mind
and always be curious. We need to ask ourselves why
(28:14):
would someone stage the scene that way? Because they did
it for a reason. Maybe it was because they didn't
want to be the person who would have to report
her missing or to find her body. Maybe it was
because they didn't want to have their nine to one
one call analyzed. So we need to know more about
who was in Shannon's close circle, maybe an ex boyfriend
(28:35):
or former lover, maybe someone who, if they were the
person who found her body, would have aroused suspicion with
the police. We need to talk to the people closest
to her, who was Shannon's best friend, who was in
her circle, who knew about her personal relationships. If that
person is out there, we haven't heard from them yet.
(28:55):
Severe County investigators have said this case is still open
and still actively being investigated. There is still a forty
five thousand dollars reward in place, still available for any
information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of
whoever killed Shannon Hercut. Anyone who has information, I ask
that you please reach out to the Severe County Sheriff's
(29:16):
Office Criminal Investigation Division at eight sixty five four two
eight one eight nine nine or TBI at one eight
hundred TBI fined. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone
Murder Line. If you have a case you'd like me
(29:45):
and my team to look into, you can reach out
to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at
six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
Helen Gone is a production of School of Humans and
iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend
and produced by Gabby Watts. Music is by Ben Solee
(30:05):
and this episode was scored by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers
are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you
have a case you'd like me and my team to
look into, you can reach out to us at our
Hell and Gone murder line at six seven eight seven
four four six one four five. School of Humans
School of Humans. On August third, two thousand and nine,
just before midnight, an on Star satellite service got a
notification of an emergency from inside a Cadillac Escalade that
had crashed. The vehicle had plunged off a cliff just
off Walker Trail in Severe County, Tennessee. The on Star
(00:29):
service called nine one one and police responded to the scene.
They found a bent guard rail. The car was in
the middle of the woods, so it was hard to
get down to the crash scene. Deputies had to repel
to the bottom of a one hundred and twenty five
foot drop off. When they got down there, they saw
the black two thousand and seven Cadillac Escalade. Inside the
(00:51):
twisted metal wreckage of that car, they found the body
of forty year old Shannon Hercut. At first, the Tennessee
Highway Patrol said Shannon had died in a car accident.
It seemed like a tragic fatality but nothing more than that.
But a few days later, Shannon her Cut's manner of
death was changed to homicide. Local authorities said someone had
(01:13):
beaten her to death, then put her inside the car
to stage the accident. Shannon was well known. She was
friendly and outgoing, a successful and well liked local businesswoman,
but according to her own family, she was also someone
who had a lot of secrets. There had been family
feuds and legal battles related to her business and possibly
(01:36):
some people suggested maybe even a secret lover. Now, over
the years, this case has been covered multiple times. It's
been covered by local media, national media, and even doctor
Phil And every time I hear about this story, the
same narrative has been put forward. But as you all know,
I want to go behind the scenes and see what
(01:56):
we can do to take this case forward. Who killed
Shannon her Cut? I'm Catherine Townsend. Over the last five
years making my true crime podcast, Helen Gone, I've learned
there's no such thing as a small town where murder
never happens. I've received hundreds of messages from people all
around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder
(02:20):
that's affected them, their families, and their communities. And now
they have a new way to reach out. If you
have a case you'd like me and my team to
look into, you can reach out to us at our
Helen Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four
four six ' one four five that's six seven eight, seven,
four four, six ' one four or five. This is
(02:43):
Helen Gone Murder line. I was contacted about the Shannon
(03:35):
her Cut case by listener a while back. As always,
we start with victimology. We want to know who Shannon
was and what was going on in her life in
the time period immediately before she died. Shannon her Cut
was born in Severeville, Tennessee, on May twenty second, nineteen
sixty nine. This is an area that gets a lot
(03:56):
of tourists. It's in the Great Smoky Mountains and it's
near Dollywood Dolly Parton's theme park. In Pigeon Forge, Shannon's mom, Patricia,
ran a general store she opened up in the early nineties.
It was called Anti Bellams. Eventually, Shannon went out on
her own. She opened up a real estate and rental business,
also using the family business name. Shannon's business was called
(04:18):
Anti Bellum's Realty and Rentals. It was in Pigeon Forge,
near where she grew up. Opening this business was a
very smart moved because over the years the demand for
rental properties skyrocketed in that area, and Shannon did very
well for herself. She was in charge of renting out
around one hundred and thirty cabins. She also oversaw other projects,
(04:39):
including the opening of a local playground called Mount Ton
of Fun. In media reports, Shannon is described as single
and happy. She never married and didn't have any children,
but she had a lot of friends and was active
in her town and in her church. One of her
relatives in an interview, made a comment about Shannon being
(04:59):
strong willed, which can sometimes mean if someone's very opinionated,
perhaps that could could point to them getting into conflict
with people. But a lot of people said that Shannon
was generally very well liked at work and that the
people who worked for her were very loyal to her,
but her life wasn't perfect. At the time of her
death in two thousand and nine, Shannon was dealing with
(05:21):
difficult relationships with several different people. As we often see,
big success sometimes brings business rivals or threats of lawsuits
and people wanting money. One of the people Shannon was
feuding with was her own father, Ted hercut again. Over
the years, everything that I've read about this case has
(05:43):
seemed to have the same narrative that a lot of
people suspect Ted and that he totally denies that he's
involved in his daughter's death. So now we fast forward
to August third, two thousand and nine. In the hours
immediately following that car crash. On that day, Ted Hircut
had an alibi. At the time of Shannon's murder, He
(06:04):
was almost four hundred miles away in Myrtle Beach, South
Carolina with his wife, Shannon's stepmother, Anita. His other daughter,
Shannon's sister, Penny Stevens, was also nearby vacationing with her
young daughter. Later on, when Ted and Penny appeared on
Doctor Phil in what was a very emotional and memorable episode,
(06:25):
Ted told Doctor Phil that he got a call from
his former son in law, a guy named Jerry Stevens,
who used to be married to Penny and who apparently
worked in law enforcement. Ted said Jerry called him to
break the news that Shannon's body had been found. Penny
got the news on the same day, and she later
told reporters that when she heard what happened to her sister,
(06:45):
she immediately thought that this could not have been an accident.
Ted said he also immediately suspected this had not been
a traffic accident. There were some details that just seemed off,
like the fact that Shannon was not wearing her seat
belt when the car crashed. Apparently she always made a
point of wearing her seat belt. Her family also wondered
why she would be driving in that area alone late
(07:08):
at night, which was definitely not a part of her
regular routine. But most crucially, when the car was found,
both the driver's side and passenger window were down. Both
Ted and Penny, his daughter, agreed Shannon would never have
those windows down because she was obsessive about keeping her
hair perfect, and obviously, in that high humidity, having both
(07:33):
windows down with the wind blowing in her hair was
just not something that they said Shannon would ever do.
If she did have to go out after dark, she
would have those windows up and she would have the
ac blasting. Police ruled Shannon's death an accident, and they
didn't want to do an autopsy, but Ted insisted. He
(07:53):
refused to sign a form allowing Shannon to be buried.
He also called a friend of his, a guy named
Jerry Grubbs. Now. Jerry was a retired National Park Service
ranger who also worked in law enforcement and later became
a prime an investigator. Jerry said that he found physical
evidence at that crime scene. Physical evidence, he said, was
overlooked both by the Sheriff's office and the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
(08:17):
In a video that Jerry posted on YouTube, he films
the area where the car wrecked and says, based on
how that car was found, he thinks that it basically
did a straight drop. He said that if the car
had been traveling at any rate of speed, it would
have been airborne and it would have been found way
deeper in the forest. There was also no real damage
(08:38):
to the windshield and no skid marks from the tire
tracks of the scene, which presumably meant that no one
slammed on the brakes to try to avoid an accident. Later,
a team went in and they found out through looking
at the car's electrical system that Shannon had only been
traveling at seven miles per hour before the crash. She
wasn't even going fast enough for her air bags to deploy.
(09:01):
Ted told reporters that Shannon's injuries did not appear to
have come from the car craft gosh, he said at
the time. Quote the paramedic said her head had a
gash in it the size of a grapefruit, and there
was nothing inside the car that could have made that
gash end quote. At that point, the Sheriff's office investigators
finally agreed to an autopsy, and when that autopsy came back,
(09:25):
it became clear that Shannon's injuries had not happened in
the car accident. Police said someone beat her to death
at her home, put her inside that car, and pushed
her over that hill. Cause of death was blunt forced
trauma to Shannon's head, and the manner of death was
changed from accident to homicide. Three days after Shannon's body
(09:54):
was found, police finally went to her house to look around.
Shannon's sister, Penny went to her house too. She was
there to pick out an outfit for her sister to
be buried in. She later told Knox News that when
she arrived to that house, she saw that some things
in her sister's residence seemed to be out of place.
She saw a baseball bat in the back of Shannon's
(10:16):
work truck. She also saw what appeared to be blood
on the refrigerator that was in Shannon's garage, right by
the handle. She told the news station, quote, I did
notice two wine cooler type bottles on the floor busted,
and that was it end quote. There were also no
signs of forest entry. Police had a few theories at
(10:38):
this point, but no real leads. They considered the possibility
that it could have been an angry client of Shannon's,
someone that she had a business to spete with, but
Penny made it clear that she had another prime suspect
in mind for Shannon's murder, their father, Ted Harcut. So
let's go back and look at the family relationships. Penny
(10:59):
and Ted appeared on The Doctor Phil's show in twenty fifteen,
and on that show, it's immediately clear that there is
a lot of animosity between Ted and Penny. She told
Doctor Phil that since she was very young, her father
had been behaving in extremely disturbing ways. She said he'd
been emotionally abusive and that he was greedy and a
(11:23):
pathological liar. And when Ted Hurcut came out and tried
to hug his daughter on stage, she refused to touch
him or have anything to do with him. Reading between
the lines, it seems like the bad blood between Ted
and Shannon got worse after Penny and Shannon's mother, Patricia
passed away. That happened in two thousand and eight. Patricia
(11:46):
died after a long battle with cancer. She had been
divorced from Ted for several years by then. After Patricia's death,
Shannon inherited a piece of land from her, a piece
of land that was apparently worth about a million dollars.
Shannon and Ted got into a llegal battle for that land.
(12:06):
They started fighting after Patricia's death, so about a year
before Shannon was murdered. By the time of Shannon's death,
Ted admitted that he and his daughter were estranged. They
were not talking at all, They were only communicating through lawyers.
So what was really going on when Shannon her cuts will?
In two thousand and three, Shannon made a will and
(12:27):
she left twenty nine percent of her state to her
father Ted. But in two thousand and six, Shannon made
another will, and in that will, she specifically mentioned that
it was her wish that neither Ted nor his wife
would inherit anything from her. Now, Penny claimed Ted was
furious about that, about the fact that Shannon had cut
him out of the will, but Ted has always totally
(12:49):
denied that. Penny has always said that her father's motive
in killing Shannon was money. But who really gained from
Shannon's death? Because we know that Ted didn't inherit anything.
Now explain this. Penny said that Ted didn't realize Shannon
had changed her will, so he would have thought that
he might inherit something from her. Ted said he never
(13:12):
expected anything from his daughter's will and that he never
needed any money from her. On Doctor Phil, Ted looked
genuinely shocked when Penny stated bluntly she believed he had
hired a hip man to kill her sister. I believe
that Penny is sincere. I think she is convinced that
her dad had something to do with Shannon's death and
that she was afraid of him. And if you watch
(13:35):
their interactions, it's clear, in my opinion, that there's something
about Ted that seems off. At certain moments, he appears
to be unhinged. I also think it's possible that he's
lying about a few things, like the weird vandalism of
Shannon's business that happened back in November of two thousand
and nine, just a few months after Shannon's murder. On
(13:55):
November twentieth, Pigeon Force police responded to shots fired at
Shannon's business, Annie Bellham's Realty in Nightly Rentals. Someone had
shown up there and started firing shots into the front door.
They fired off eight rounds in all. Penny said her
father had confessed to her that he was the one
who shot up the business, and when Doctor Phil asked
(14:19):
Ted about this, he kind of sidesteps the question. It
does seem like he could be lying about vandalizing that business.
The Doctor Phil's show had a lot more family drama on.
They also had Ted's third wife, Jan, who he married
in the summer of twenty fourteen. After just three weeks
(14:39):
of marriage, Ted got in annulment and the marriage fell apart.
Jan told Doctor Phil that Ted had what she called
a dark side. Now, I've been on Doctor Phil before
talking about the Ebbie Stepec case, and so I actually
know a lot about how this process works. I spent
several weeks with the producers doing in depth research and
(15:00):
giving them information about what was going on with the case.
And I knew this in advance of the information that
I gave them. They only aired a tiny portion of it.
They do that for a lot of reasons. First of all,
there's very limited time to present the case, so you
can't go too deep into the woods. But also, and
this is not an insult to TV, producers, but their
primary purpose is presenting the story and making good TV.
(15:24):
It's not really solving a case. So instead of going
deeper into suspects, what we got on Doctor Phil was
more family drama. Because then Ted came on again and
he said Jan had a criminal history and that she
had stolen four hundred dollars from him and stolen his
credit cards. There's a lot more family drama that plays
out on the show that I'm not going to get into.
(15:47):
But at the end of the episode, my takeaway was
that Doctor Phil seemed to come to basically the same
conclusion that I did. He said Ted may be an asshole,
but that doesn't mean he's a killer or that he
hired a hitman. He kept saying the same question I
was asking, which is what's the actual evidence that at
that moment in two thousand and nine, Ted would have
(16:09):
had a motive to kill his daughter. With all of
these cases, when you have so many crazy rumors flying around,
and especially when there are complicated family dynamics and accusations,
I always talk about how important it is to filter
out what I call the noise of the case. And
while we want to keep an open mind and not
(16:30):
ignore any possibilities. I think that the Shannon Hercut case
is a great example of this. We need to filter
out all of the family drama and focus on the
facts of the case. As we've said several times over
the years, being a creep is not illegal, and it
doesn't make you a killer. Ted has never been charged
in connection with Shannon's murder. He's always denied having anything
(16:53):
to do with it. I honestly think that at this
point the evidence points away from him, and there are
a few reasons why. First of all, Ted was one
of the first people to demand that Shannon's body taken
in for an autopsy. He got that expert Jerry Grubbs
to go to the scene. He told anyone who would
listen over the years that his daughter's death was not
(17:13):
an accident, which does not seem like the actions of
a person who killed his daughter. If Ted had been
involved in Shannon's death, it seems like the last thing
he would have done, especially after the death had already
been ruled an accident and she was getting ready to
be buried, is to go public and demand that police
investigate the possibility of murder. Ted died in twenty seventeen,
(17:37):
so if Ted was involved, whatever secrets he had would
have died with him. Even now, police say they've never
found any connection between Ted and Shannon's murder. If that's
the case, that means that Shannon's killer is still out there.
And though police have been pretty tight lipped about the
investigation so far, one investigator has said they believe the
(18:01):
evidence points to someone outside the family, but someone who
knew Shannon. He also said they believe they know the
killer's motive. He made this kind of cryptic comment. He said,
if I told you what it was, it'd be obvious
who I was talking about. So to sum up, I
don't think that the evidence points to Ted, and at
(18:23):
least one of the investigators on the case agrees. Let's
move away from the family drama between Ted and his
daughter Penny and back to what we know, Back to
the crime scene. With the evidence. We know where the
car crashed. We know that this was a staged crime scene.
The real crime scene took place at Shannon's house, probably
(18:46):
in her garage. Then the killer or killers tried to
make it look like a car accident. The real crime
scene took place at Shannon's house, probably in her garage.
We know this because Shannon's sister Penny saw smears of
blood on the outside refrigerator that's in the garage. That's
(19:06):
also where she found the two broken wine cooler bottles.
Shannon was beaten to death, then the killer or killers
put her in her own car and tried to make
it look like a car accident. Like the investigator said
to me, the crime scene and manner of death point
to someone who knew Shannon. Well, there are a couple
of possibilities. It could have been a crime of passion.
(19:28):
But from my other podcast, Red Caller, I know that
sometimes fraud detection homicides, murders where the motive was money
can also look like crimes of passion. So let's explore
the hit man theory. A lot of people have made
the comment that if this was a planned hit, it
was a very sloppy job. Apparently that's not that uncommon, though.
(19:50):
Former FBI criminal profiler Frank Perry, who wrote the book
Red Caller and White Collar Crime, which was about red
collar criminals and had a whole chapter about committing murder
for hire, wrote that often killers who commit white collar
crime and then who kill to cover up their fraud
often When they hire killers, they kind of go cheap.
(20:12):
They don't have much money, so they'll go with really
amateur killers instead of hiring professionals like the mob does.
They hire people who basically are unemployed grifters, people who
are floating around doing illegal or semi illegal kind of stuff.
And often when they do hire these amateurs, the amateurs
will tell a lot of people what they've done, and
(20:33):
that's how they get caught. If this had been a
professional hit, the killer would not have left behind so
many obvious signs of staging. They would have cleaned up
Shannon's garage. But most crucially, the thing that makes me
move away from the hit man theory is the fact
that I went back through the literature when red collar
(20:54):
criminals hire hitmen, every single example I could find involves
the killer bringing their own weapon. It's not impossible for
a hit man to come to someone's house and not
bring a weapon and then stop to drink a wine
cooler with a victim, but it seems very unlikely. The
only exception to this would be, of course, if the
(21:15):
hip man was someone Shannon knew. The hip man theory
isn't impossible. We have to keep an open mind. But
in my opinion, with everything that we know, it seems
more and more unlikely whether a killer is financially motivated
or whether they're motivated by something else like jealousy or rage.
The reason why they kill is to solve a problem
(21:37):
because they're losing control over a situation. So if the
motive for Shannon's murder was financial, we need to look
at who could have benefited financially from Shannon's death. After
Shannon died, Penny Stevens, her sister, and a first cousin
of theirs named John Madwell inherited Shannon's real estate business,
(21:58):
Annie Bellams. They started running the company together and according
to the last information that I found, the company is
still around as of a few years ago. At lease
the cousin, John Madwell was running the business with his wife.
I just want to be clear, I don't think for
a second that Penny was involved in her sister's murder.
I think she comes across as genuinely distraught, someone who
(22:19):
loved her sister and wants to get justice for her.
And she's also been the one who has been very
vocal about keeping her sister's case in the public eye
over the years. But I think there's someone we might
be overlooking. Was there someone who was involved in a
business deal with Shannon? Again, this is pure speculation because
(22:40):
no one has ever suggested this, But could Shannon have
found herself caught up in some kind of fraudulent behavior
or was someone defrauding her and she was threatening to
go to law enforcement or to sue that person. I'm
making this point because right now, when you look at
the evidence, there's no obvious windfall. We need to follow
the money on this case. We need to see if
(23:01):
there were any lawsuits pending exactly what was going on
in Shannon's business at the time of her death. In
addition to the money trail, we need to go back
again to the stage crime scene, which in my opinion,
is our biggest clue so far. In a publication called
Collision or Collusion Homicides Staged as Car Accidents by Claire Ferguson,
(23:23):
which was published in the National Library of Health, the
author describes sixteen homicides that were staged as car accidents.
The descriptive analysis examined common staging behaviors and victim, offender
and offense characteristics. Her findings indicate that staged car accidents
present differently than real accidents, and in a nutshell, every
(23:46):
single thing that she mentioned sounded like it could have
been taken straight out of Shannon's case. The article read quote.
They often involve single vehicle, slow speed downhill scenes with
middle aged female victims. Physical damage to vehicles is usually minimal,
except for fire damage. Common offender behaviors include transporting the
(24:07):
body to a vehicle, mutilation of the body, arson, and cleanup.
The results suggest these efforts are often unsophisticated and potentially
identifiable to investigators and physicians. I think we need to
focus more on Shannon's private life. We've heard from her sister,
and her sister said that Shannon did not tell her
(24:29):
and her mother a lot about certain aspects of her life,
that Shannon had been a private person. While investigators were
focusing on the car crash scene, the real crime scene,
in my opinion, was back at Shannon's house. Of course,
it wasn't properly processed in the beginning as a crime scene. Remember,
Penny arrived at the house when the police started their investigation.
(24:51):
Both Ted and Penny said there were two broken wine
cooler bottles on the floor of the garage. Which were
totally out of place because Shannon was a neat freak.
Her family members said, Shannon never would have left her
house looking like that. I wonder if Shannon was seeing someone,
maybe a current or ex boyfriend, someone who hasn't been
mentioned as a person of interest at all, and with
(25:13):
all this family drama, someone who's been flying under the
radar all this time. Shannon was officially single, but again,
her sister Penny told reporters that Shannon was secretive about
certain aspects of her personal life, that she didn't tell
certain things to her or to their mom. So what
do we know about crime scene staging? Again, we have
(25:34):
no access to the police case file, So we have
to go back to my bookshelf. We need to go
back to what we know about crime scene staging. According
to the excellent book Crime Scene Staging, Dynamics and Homicidal
Cases by doctor Laura Petler, the most commonly staged crime
scenes are done in cases of domestic violence or intimate
partner homicides. Crime Scene staging happens basically to serve the
(25:59):
killer's needs, not the victims. It happens because the victim
and the offender had a relationship with each other. We
can also surmise the killer knew the area, at least
they knew it well enough to know where there was
a cliff a place where they could push that escalade off.
The area where she was found walk or trail is
over five miles away from Shannon's house, so that means
(26:22):
whoever did this presumably put Shannon in the car and
then drove her vehicle to the spot where they pushed
it off. This is a huge risk. The killer would
have to feel reasonably confident that they weren't going to
pass anybody on the road, or if they did that
they wouldn't look out of place in that car. Doctor Pettler,
in her book points out that while there are words
(26:45):
for crimes like matricide and patricide, there's no real term
that covers a person who was intimately involved with the
victim but not married to them. She says she refers
to these murders as intimacides someone who was intimately involved
with the victim, and this can include close friends who
are crashing on a couch, or potentially people who are
(27:07):
dating the victim were sexually involved with them, also ex partners.
Another study of homicides staged as car accidents. Investigated one
hundred and fifteen cases. Now, admittedly this is not a
huge group and definitely a lot more research is needed
in this area. But again, they found in over eighty
percent of the cases the killer was the domestic partner
(27:30):
or former domestic partner the victim. In a lot of
these cases, the killer used blunt force and basically beat
the victim to death. In Shannon's case, police were very
quick to classify her death as an accident based on
the crime scene, and this is a common mistake that
(27:50):
law enforcement make a lot. They focus on crime scene
analysis very early on. They need to go back to victimology.
They need to get more knowledge about what's actually going
on with the victim at the time of death. And
so when we're trying to figure out what happened to
Shannon her cut, we need to keep an open mind
and always be curious. We need to ask ourselves why
(28:14):
would someone stage the scene that way? Because they did
it for a reason. Maybe it was because they didn't
want to be the person who would have to report
her missing or to find her body. Maybe it was
because they didn't want to have their nine to one
one call analyzed. So we need to know more about
who was in Shannon's close circle, maybe an ex boyfriend
(28:35):
or former lover, maybe someone who, if they were the
person who found her body, would have aroused suspicion with
the police. We need to talk to the people closest
to her, who was Shannon's best friend, who was in
her circle, who knew about her personal relationships. If that
person is out there, we haven't heard from them yet.
(28:55):
Severe County investigators have said this case is still open
and still actively being investigated. There is still a forty
five thousand dollars reward in place, still available for any
information that will lead to the arrest and conviction of
whoever killed Shannon Hercut. Anyone who has information, I ask
that you please reach out to the Severe County Sheriff's
(29:16):
Office Criminal Investigation Division at eight sixty five four two
eight one eight nine nine or TBI at one eight
hundred TBI fined. I'm Katherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone
Murder Line. If you have a case you'd like me
(29:45):
and my team to look into, you can reach out
to us at our Hell and Gone Murder Line at
six seven eight seven four four six one four five.
Helen Gone is a production of School of Humans and
iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend
and produced by Gabby Watts. Music is by Ben Solee
(30:05):
and this episode was scored by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers
are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and Elsie Crowley. If you
have a case you'd like me and my team to
look into, you can reach out to us at our
Hell and Gone murder line at six seven eight seven
four four six one four five. School of Humans
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