GUILTY TX - Ronald Shumway, 57, found buried at his Dallas home, 23 April 2015

[Mrs.Snodgrass]

definitely sounds like a suspect!!!

to be frank I believe the deceased is RS.

I as well...

 

[cbpearson]

I hate to say this Mrs. Snodgrass, but I think your old neighbor the "drifter" is a killer.

 

[cbpearson]

A couple of things stodd out to me aobut what you wrote Mrs. Snodgrass:

1. You said that the primary resident who lived downstairs from you announced that he was moving out around February, and that "Drifter" was on his own, and had until the end of the month before he had to move out. And that then, at the end of the month, he moved into the house on Winnetka. If Drifter was having to get out by the end of the month in February, then he must have moved into Ronald's place in early March?

Look at Ronald's Facebook page everyone, Ronald made NO Facebook comments at all for the entire month of March 2015. Either that or someone erased them.

2. You said that "about a month later" Drifter held a garage sale at the house on Winnetka and sold stuff you believed to have been Ronald's. This would have been in April? Do you remember if it was before or after April 23rd, which was the last day Ronald was seen alive?

 

[roadrunnermt]

Unless you are friends on Ronald's facebook there is no way to be positive, he or someone on his account didn't post only to friends. Good thinking on timeline though.

 

[cbpearson]

Roadrunner, I'm not following you. Ron Shumway's Facebook page is open and the public can read it, except for the entries made after April 24th -- which the police are investigating.

The entire month of March 2015 is either deleted, or Ron never posted for that month. I don't think it's possible on Facebook to set privacy on only one month of posts and have the rest of your posts public.

Also, FWIW, I noticed something else while looking through Ron Shumway's photo albums for clues -- the changed photo profile for Ron Shumway, the last post he made before he disappeared, is actually a cropped photo from Ron's album, that was taken December 2013. The person impersonating Ron then seems to have just used an old photo of Ron and cropped it to make it the Facebook profile picture.

 

[AliceInPain]

Id be happy to answer your questions!

Thank you for coming back, and you already answered all my questions and more!
Thank you so much for sharing the info.

I guess we all know now who was buried in the cement and who most likely is responsible.
MrsSnodgrass I don't blame you one bit for trying to be his friend, I have been in that situation myself...

WHY have Dallas PD not issued a warning about this guy??
He most likely (imo) moved into someone's house, murdered them, forged their ID's, stole their belongings, mementos and their house, sold it all and then impersonated him on social media.

I can not understand why there is no warning wanted do not approach kind of thing re. this guy.
I'd be very scared if I had gay kids, relatives or friends in the area and beyond.

Reg. Facebook posts, Shumway has several March postings but they are in his photo albums.

 

[Tulessa]

Roadrunner, I'm not following you. Ron Shumway's Facebook page is open and the public can read it, except for the entries made after April 24th -- which the police are investigating.

The entire month of March 2015 is either deleted, or Ron never posted for that month. I don't think it's possible on Facebook to set privacy on only one month of posts and have the rest of your posts public.

Also, FWIW, I noticed something else while looking through Ron Shumway's photo albums for clues -- the changed photo profile for Ron Shumway, the last post he made before he disappeared, is actually a cropped photo from Ron's album, that was taken December 2013. The person impersonating Ron then seems to have just used an old photo of Ron and cropped it to make it the Facebook profile picture.

I can't find it. Have they taken it down?

 

[annemc2]

I can't find it. Have they taken it down?

I looked last night and couldn't find it, either. There were articles about RS in news feeds but no actual page for him that I could see. I'm terrible at searching fb, though.

 

[Mrs.Snodgrass]

A couple of things stodd out to me aobut what you wrote Mrs. Snodgrass:

1. You said that the primary resident who lived downstairs from you announced that he was moving out around February, and that "Drifter" was on his own, and had until the end of the month before he had to move out. And that then, at the end of the month, he moved into the house on Winnetka. If Drifter was having to get out by the end of the month in February, then he must have moved into Ronald's place in early March?

Look at Ronald's Facebook page everyone, Ronald made NO Facebook comments at all for the entire month of March 2015. Either that or someone erased them.

2. You said that "about a month later" Drifter held a garage sale at the house on Winnetka and sold stuff you believed to have been Ronald's. This would have been in April? Do you remember if it was before or after April 23rd, which was the last day Ronald was seen alive?

Unfortunately I cannot recall the dates too well. I wish I had made more of a mental note at the time but this guy did not seem like he would ever seriously hurt someone. He did get physical with his roommate but it was just domestic stuff (pushing, shoving, a few punches) but then all was well! It could have been in early April that he held the garage sale, I just cannot pinpoint when. I did remember something else last night tho while backtracking with my husband. The drifter also had RS's credit cards when he showed up to pick up his things. I asked him what he was doing with those and he said that RS had sent him out to get a few things. It still bewilders me how someone can let a person they just met borrow their car and also their credit cards.....

 

[AliceInPain]

I wonder WHEN someone took over Shumway's facebook. His post underneath the last political thingy doesn't sound like him either, imo.
(His lady radio friend said a few days ago the last posts from April did not appear to be from him)

 

[AliceInPain]

https://www.facebook.com/ron.shumway?ref=br_rs

He also has several other social media accounts including twitters: please do not go look unless you like penises.

eta: in response to whoever couldn't find his FB

 

[carbuff]

(snipped)
The entire month of March 2015 is either deleted, or Ron never posted for that month. I don't think it's possible on Facebook to set privacy on only one month of posts and have the rest of your posts public.

No matter what your default setting for your Facebook is, you can set individual posts to a more restricted visibility, either all friends, or a list of specific friends.

I find that if I do that, Facebook resets the default to whatever you just specified. So it's not uncommon that somebody will put up a post with a restricted audience and not notice that the setting has been changed until several posts later. Unless you go back and re-set the protection on the posts you already made, they won't show up on the wider visibility.

So he might have done that and not noticed for a few weeks, or he might have chosen to make a series of posts private. Or, as has been said, they might have been deleted, or were never there.

 

[carbuff]

FWIW I took the "teaching him to ride a horse" as tongue in cheek.

I asked a friend of mine who's gay about this and he said it's most likely a sexual innuendo. References to saddles/bareback are to condom usage, usually, and cowboys can refer to a certain kind of sexual activity or to men who like that activity as their primary form of intercourse.

My friend was more explicit than this but I don't think the details would add anything to our discussion here.

 

[cbpearson]

AliceInPain,

I agree with you about everything, but I think the police are not warning us because until they get the DNA test results back they don't even know for sure that Ronald was murdered. When they confirm what we all 99.9% believe to be true, that the body is Ronald, I'm sure they will warn us and put out a BOLO.

As for the Facebook posts, photos maybe from March but not comments? That tells me that Ronald's impersonator deleted his comments from March. Gee, I wonder why? If Mrs. Sondgrass' "drifter" neighbor moved in around that time, and that's the period that the drifter was getting to know Ronald and all, then it would stand to reason that Ronald would make some mention of the person on Facebook. I think it's entirely plausible that the impersonator deleted all referenced to him from Ronald's Facebook, which wiped out March, faked Ronald's final "I'm running off with a cowboy" posts in April, then left.

Thank you for coming back, and you already answered all my questions and more!
Thank you so much for sharing the info.

I guess we all know now who was buried in the cement and who most likely is responsible.
MrsSnodgrass I don't blame you one bit for trying to be his friend, I have been in that situation myself...

WHY have Dallas PD not issued a warning about this guy??
He most likely (imo) moved into someone's house, murdered them, forged their ID's, stole their belongings, mementos and their house, sold it all and then impersonated him on social media.

I can not understand why there is no warning wanted do not approach kind of thing re. this guy.
I'd be very scared if I had gay kids, relatives or friends in the area and beyond.

Reg. Facebook posts, Shumway has several March postings but they are in his photo albums.

 

[cbpearson]

On Facebook, he's Ron Shumway who went to Sunset High School.

 

[cbpearson]

I'm gay and I know these references. Cowboy is a sexual position, but not exclusive to gay men. And barebacking refers to sex without a condom. It's possible that was a sexual reference but I doubt it. I think it was red herring stuff.

 

[ClaireNC]

Very strange story. I read the thread the other night and now I keep checking for updates. Thanks Mrs.Snodgrass for sharing your story of the drifter. My desire to "fix" people has gotten me in some tough situations in the past, but never anything like this. Also thanks to all the great sleuthers here for digging up the info that you have.

I agree with others, the body will turn out to be Ron and the drifter is the one that did it. Mrs.Snodgrass have you searched criminal records not only in Texas, but other states as well? Have you been in touch with the guy that the drifter used to live with to see if he knows anything else about the guy? With the stuff you describe, he must have a pretty extensive criminal record somewhere. Might even be tied to some other unsolved murders.

Question: Where did the last seen date of April 23 come from? Was it an actual confirmed sighting or was it somebody pretending to be him? From looking at his FB page and MrsS's story of the drifter, I think he was gone before April 23.

 

[carbuff]

I'm gay and I know these references. Cowboy is a sexual position, but not exclusive to gay men. And barebacking refers to sex without a condom. It's possible that was a sexual reference but I doubt it. I think it was red herring stuff.

No, I don't think any of those terms are exclusive to gay men. I put it in that context because the information indicates that's probably the orientation of the men involved here. That it has sexual innuendo/implications doesn't preclude it being a red herring.

 

[cbpearson]

I accept that it's possible the "riding a horse named Snuffy" comment was a tongue-in-cheek sexual reference, but whether it was meant to be interpreted that way or literally, I think it's a red herring. I agree that there is no horse named Snuffy, but I Googled for references to Lake Austin and Snuffy anyway because I wondered why the name "Snuffy" was even in the impersonator's mind. I know it's totally a longshot, and probably means nothing, but I found it curious that there is a Snuffy's Bar and Grill only 20 miles north of the town of Lake Austin. Again, probably a coincidence, I get that, but nevertheless it's there.

The timeline on Facebook -- I accept that it may not mean anything that Ron Shumway has no March 2015 comments, but I just don't think so. If Mrs. Snodgrass' timeline is more or less accurate and "drifter" moved in with Ronald sometime in March, and by April Ronald was killed, then I think it is entirely within the realm of possibility -- and even probability -- that "drifter" (who I believe was the impersonator) deleted Ronald's March 2015 comments to remove any references to himself. I really do think that if Ronald was moving someone into his house he would have commented on it to people on Facebook -- especially if he considered the new roommate boyfriend material.

The comments about Ronald seemingly giving a new boyfriend (?) use of his car and credit cards so early in the relationship, alas, is fairly common in the gay community. I've seen it before, especially among the newly out (usually among guys in their early 20s). The strong desire to be loved and in a relationship tends to cloud judgment for some.

On the other hand, we don't know for sure that Ronald was authorizing the use of his car and credit cards either. Based on what Mrs. Snodgrass has reported, it's completely possible that "drifter" was sneaking around behind Ron's back and doing this stuff. Could Ron's discovery of these activities been what led them to fight and led to Ron being killed?

(It would be interesting to know if Ronald's car is missing. I notice that the police never said one way or the other.)

Lastly, I too wondered where the determination that Ron went missing on April 23rd came from. The Facebook posts look as though the comments BEFORE April 22nd -- including the reference to the flower bed being made by "Terry" -- look like they could be fake too. I'm thinking the police determined April 23rd as the last day Ron was alive based on his arrival for work. Not sure though.

I'm patiently (OK impatiently) waiting for the DNA results to come back on the body, so we can confirm that Ron was murdered. I absolutely believe that when this happens, Mrs. Snodgrass' former neighbor the "drifter" will be suspect number 1.

 

[Mrs.Snodgrass]

Very strange story. I read the thread the other night and now I keep checking for updates. Thanks Mrs.Snodgrass for sharing your story of the drifter. My desire to "fix" people has gotten me in some tough situations in the past, but never anything like this. Also thanks to all the great sleuthers here for digging up the info that you have.

I agree with others, the body will turn out to be Ron and the drifter is the one that did it. Mrs.Snodgrass have you searched criminal records not only in Texas, but other states as well? Have you been in touch with the guy that the drifter used to live with to see if he knows anything else about the guy? With the stuff you describe, he must have a pretty extensive criminal record somewhere. Might even be tied to some other unsolved murders.

Question: Where did the last seen date of April 23 come from? Was it an actual confirmed sighting or was it somebody pretending to be him? From looking at his FB page and MrsS's story of the drifter, I think he was gone before April 23.

I did not check other states yet, but thats an idea. We did try to contact the guy he lived with and no answer. The phone just rings and then goes to voicemail. As far as I know he was only in jail for little things like traffic tickets and fare evasion on the DART train. But I will look into it.