Found Deceased TX - Sharla Shaffer, 48, went on bike ride, bike found, Stephenville, 29 July 2022

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Was something written in the note that alrmed her family? I'm sure by now video footage would have captured some sign of her leaving the bicycle and arriving/leaving family's residence. Could video footage show her walking/running in the neighbourhood? Sometimes people veer off video and that's where the trail starts to get frustrating. I think that's what may have happened here. No updates so far. I also wonder if they did come across anything in the sheds and outbuildings LE did search?
 
Re-reading the LE press release from 8/2 and the [very limited] media and this stuck quote out to me:
“We have searched every bit of the home place, including inside the home, and now we are focused on an adjoining piece of property,” Coates said. [Source]
BBM- I wonder what the significance of the adjoining piece of property may be? Somewhere she was known to run/bike, maybe? Or someone who lives there who is familiar with Sharla?
 
Also re: the bike being found on the property, the wording varies greatly (in my opinion) between the above linked article and the official Sheriff's press release, and the difference in meanings matters quite a bit in terms of the significance of the bike being found on the property.
News article: Erath County Sheriff Matt Coates said Sharla’s mother called authorities after noticing the bike about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday. Investigators immediately went to the home, but there was no sign of Sharla. “Investigators have searched that location every day since Sharla disappeared and the bicycle was not there Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday,” Coates told Beneath the Surface News. [Source]
LE Release (8/2): The bicycle that was originally reported as missing was discovered at the residence today by members of the family. The Sheriff's Office investigators along with a Texas Department of Public Safety Ranger have been conducting interviews of all involved parties. [Source]

I think the part that sticks out to me is "The bicycle that was originally reported as missing was discovered..."
For some reason, to me it sounds like there is a possibility that the bike was not ever actually missing, just overlooked somehow. I realize the previous quote says they searched the location every day and the bicycle was not there, but the article was written on the same day the press release was issued, so the discrepancy is a bit strange... to me, at least. Not even sure of the significance of it, but it does seem like it could give some kind of hope that she returned it herself on Tuesday, OR indication of someone else being involved if it wasn't Sharla returning the bike... unless it was in fact there all along and not noticed. So I guess it could make a difference, but may mean nothing if it's just a case of using different words at different times.
 
I'd be interested in knowing if there are trails connecting the property where she was last seen to adjoining ones... or even to a more extensive network beyond the neighbors' land. Or if her parents' had lived in an area where the roads aren't paved (or at the end of a long shell/dirt driveway?). The people I know who ride mountain bikes don't care to have them on pavement (not even if it's a cross- bike).. Also - The bike in that picture is decent... but more "avid cyclist" than "serious cyclist" if that makes sense IMO. With the high temps as hot as they are - the difference in the level of fitness each label entails could factor heavily.
 
The note they found must have had something to do with the direction of the search, and the call to the daughter. Either self harm or the need to escape for a while and I pray it’s the need to escape. The self harm seems oddly planned… drop you child at your parents, then head out for a bike ride and self-harm? It’s 105 degrees, she’s been gone a week, we have lots of vultures in the area that usually point to death in a few days on rural land.
But equally the “get away for a while” or head to a new life…seems like she could have explained that or done it under less suspicious circumstances hmmm. Prayers for Sharla, wherever she may be.
 
kccorona said:
This is what I thought reading the LE press release. Asking people not to check their own outbuildings ("under no circumstances" is pretty strong wording) but to call LE to do so, saying she left a note with family, and giving specific locations/roads to identify an area where she may be is telling, just based on my own thoughts reading about other cases here.
Click to expand...
Is it just me, or are we seeing more cases of self harm lately?
 
Wltrn said:
It's not just you, and seems to be no respector of age, orientation or socioeconomic group... imo and ime having lost coping abilities. Causes? Change? Any thoughts? Hope Sharla can pull it together and return home
Click to expand...
I thought it was mentioned upthread that Sandra is a counselor of sorts? If I’m wrong I apologize… but if this is the case, speaking as someone also in a helping profession (direct patient care as an RN and NP), obviously we all have had an incredibly long and difficult last two years, but in regards to coping abilities, I’d say there are many in healthcare, social and human services, etc, who have expended just about all of the coping abilities or mechanisms within and available to us. At least, that is my own experience, having walked through many many breakdowns and helpless times with close friends and colleagues who were previously quite satisfied, fulfilled, and able to cope appropriately with episodic hardships.
 
Wltrn said:
It's not just you, and seems to be no respector of age, orientation or socioeconomic group... imo and ime having lost coping abilities. Causes? Change? Any thoughts? Hope Sharla can pull it together and return home
Click to expand...
Exhaustion, illness, and isolation from Covid, a lot of folks lost loved ones too. Absolute economic mess means a lot of folks are struggling. Fear and helpless misery over the planet actually being on fire, and WWIII constantly threatening to break out. A lot of decent outlets for coping have been shut down, drastically changed, or have been priced out of reach. There simply has been a notable struggle to heal and stay strong. It's understandable, really.
 
“We have nowhere else to look and we haven’t received any new tips in the past couple of days,” Coates told Beneath the Surface News.

www.beneaththesurfacenews.com

Sheriff says search for missing Stephenville woman on hold; investigation continues.

By SARA VANDEN BERGE It’s been eight days since Stephenville resident Sharla Shaffer went missing, and with no new information to go on, Erath County Sheriff Matt Coates said the search for her has been put on hold. “We have nowhere else to look and we haven’t received any new tips in the past...
www.beneaththesurfacenews.com www.beneaththesurfacenews.com
 
I wonder where and when Sharla spoke to her daughter and another relative? Was it after she left her parents' house? Where and when was her note found?

If the bike had been at her parents' house the entire time, then it's likely that she left on foot (or was picked up). LE mentioned specific local country roads as their area of interest.

Why do LE want to search outbuildings on private property by themselves? Why not let the owners check them out? Are some abandoned/unsafe? Although it doesn't look like it, if this was foul play and she was held somewhere, perhaps locals could be involved?

Did Sharla work at the time of her disappearance? I found her listed as university staff (Career Development Coordinator) earlier in the year.
 
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kccorona said:
The fact that they are asking the public not to check any outbuildings or dwellings on their properties- and rather to call LE to search them- is out of the ordinary (in my experience reading here)… and feels ominous. :(
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And as far as I can tell, they only said it a couple days into the whole mess. These are farm families; odds are any outbuilding they don't go into daily is locked, or at least has an old screwdriver through the hasp to hold the door shut, which obviously wouldn't be possible to put back from inside. The rest, they would already have been in before the message went out.
 
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pinkflamingo68 said:
I’m local to this and it’s really, really strange. By all accounts she is a lovely woman and great mother. The weather here is insanely hot down right now-being outside for long just isn’t an option. (It’s been over 100 degrees all week)
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The heat is brutal, but she seems to be part lizard. She just never seemed to see anything wrong or weird about going for a hike, run or ride in the heat.

A few years ago I did an overnighter to DVSP on 205 by bike from Stephenville in summer. It's definitely a trip to carry lots of water on, since the only place to refill is the spigot outside Paluxy Baptist Church, (yeah, nobody out here would say anything if they saw a cyclist getting some water from their hose unless it was to offer ice, but that's just something most of us would only do as a last resort) but I could see Sharla wondering why I wouldn't do that 30 miles each way every weekend.

Her mom said she had a hydration pack, but no real indication of whether it was a small 1L running pack or a 2-3L day pack. For a 90 minute ride right now, I personally would want at least 2L just because of the potential to have bike trouble and have to walk back for a lot longer than planned.
 
LauraAnne said:
I suspect her bike was actually there the whole time, it was just overlooked.
Click to expand...

In one of the Facebook threads, a woman a little east on 205 said she saw Sharla ride by Friday evening, heading east.

Could it have been a different cyclist? Possibly, but there aren't many who would be riding that far out of town in that heat. I don't know how well she knows Sharla, but given it was the right time and place, I'd give that statement a pretty solid chance of being accurate.

So the real question is when the bike got back; if she brought it back Friday evening and then disappeared, what was the point of going on the ride? Checking to make sure someone who was picking her up was where they were supposed to be? With no rack and only a small backpack, she wouldn't have been caching supplies in a hiding place.

If it came back sometime after the initial search, when and why? The house is at the end of a private road with a couple of neighbors, off a low-traffic county road with a couple more neighbors. You'd have to get past 4-5 houses to return the bike, and in the place where everybody is on maximum alert wanting to know what happened. If it was her, presumably it was so people would know she wasn't wrecked somewhere in a ditch, or maybe she just likes the bike and wanted it where it would be safe when she comes back. If it was anybody else, they took an insane risk for nothing: they could have ditched it literally anywhere other than the place everybody's looking for, and people want answers bad enough that they'd have to hope if they got caught, it would be by the sheriff, because he's the only one who would have any concern at all for their rights.
 
kccorona said:
Also re: the bike being found on the property, the wording varies greatly (in my opinion) between the above linked article and the official Sheriff's press release, and the difference in meanings matters quite a bit in terms of the significance of the bike being found on the property.
News article: Erath County Sheriff Matt Coates said Sharla’s mother called authorities after noticing the bike about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday. Investigators immediately went to the home, but there was no sign of Sharla. “Investigators have searched that location every day since Sharla disappeared and the bicycle was not there Friday, Saturday, Sunday or Monday,” Coates told Beneath the Surface News. [Source]
LE Release (8/2): The bicycle that was originally reported as missing was discovered at the residence today by members of the family. The Sheriff's Office investigators along with a Texas Department of Public Safety Ranger have been conducting interviews of all involved parties. [Source]

I think the part that sticks out to me is "The bicycle that was originally reported as missing was discovered..."
For some reason, to me it sounds like there is a possibility that the bike was not ever actually missing, just overlooked somehow. I realize the previous quote says they searched the location every day and the bicycle was not there, but the article was written on the same day the press release was issued, so the discrepancy is a bit strange... to me, at least. Not even sure of the significance of it, but it does seem like it could give some kind of hope that she returned it herself on Tuesday, OR indication of someone else being involved if it wasn't Sharla returning the bike... unless it was in fact there all along and not noticed. So I guess it could make a difference, but may mean nothing if it's just a case of using different words at different times.
Click to expand...

I can't find it now, but I remember distinctly Coates's wording in the first interview Tuesday was "we don't even know for sure that it ever left," which shortly afterward became "it definitely left before the first search and came back sometime after." I guess his PR/campaign person pointed out how bad it looks to admit you didn't really check the open sided carport close enough to say for sure that the missing person's bicycle wasn't sitting there in plain view. It's frustrating, because it means there's really no way of knowing when it came back: I have no idea how often her mom looks in that carport, and we can't really trust the reports because of the pretty significant backtrack of going from "don't know" to "absolutely sure."

yurintroubl said:
I'd be interested in knowing if there are trails connecting the property where she was last seen to adjoining ones... or even to a more extensive network beyond the neighbors' land. Or if her parents' had lived in an area where the roads aren't paved (or at the end of a long shell/dirt driveway?). The people I know who ride mountain bikes don't care to have them on pavement (not even if it's a cross- bike).. Also - The bike in that picture is decent... but more "avid cyclist" than "serious cyclist" if that makes sense IMO. With the high temps as hot as they are - the difference in the level of fitness each label entails could factor heavily.
Click to expand...

She's been a long distance runner since high school at least. Maybe junior high, though I don't remember that much as I never made it past being a decent sprinter, and a couple of years behind her in school. She's got the legs and the endurance to get that bike wherever she wants to take it.

I've also never wandered their fields that I can recall, but most of us do have some cattle trails as well as at least cleared strips big enough to get a pickup through. Sometimes there are gates to adjoining properties, sometimes not. Sometimes the bottom strand is high enough to slide a bike under, sometimes not. It would be hard to say how easily she could travel very far off road around there without actually walking their fences in person. With the tires on that bike, I'd be concerned about mesquite and cactus, but otherwise it would handle the sandy soil and some moderate rocks just fine. Can't see how aggressive the tread is, but having worked in a bike shop here, I've found a lot of 2"+ wide tires that were fine for road riding, just not as fast or efficient as 28mm or smaller.

Since getting a bike to 205 from her parents house would either require having something you're able to ride on a sandy dirt road and some gravel, or pushing it for the first 15 minutes of your ride, most people would just go for tires that handle dirt and gravel well, but with a tread that doesn't rattle your teeth any more than the bad chipseal job on several of the side roads already will. (Though last time I rode 205 it was buttery smooth, while I ended up turning back from trying two different side roads because they were just too rough to ride on 28s.)
 
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Can we all take a moment to appreciate the utter uselessness of a story about a missing person with no picture? The sheriff and NBC really aren't building confidence that they want Sharla found.
www.nbcdfw.com

Search Continues For Missing Woman in Erath County

A 48-year-old Stephenville woman has been missing since June 29, no foul play is suspected.
www.nbcdfw.com www.nbcdfw.com

It's about an hour to Fort Worth, we all have friends who have moved there for work, many of us have lived in DFW for a while and moved back, and I can think of a few who commute there daily or weekly, so it would be fairly easy for her to find a ride and possibly someone she could hide out with. Certainly easier to hide there than here where she'd be recognized in every store in town.
 
KD5NRH said:
Can we all take a moment to appreciate the utter uselessness of a story about a missing person with no picture? The sheriff and NBC really aren't building confidence that they want Sharla found.
www.nbcdfw.com

Search Continues For Missing Woman in Erath County

A 48-year-old Stephenville woman has been missing since June 29, no foul play is suspected.
www.nbcdfw.com www.nbcdfw.com
Click to expand...

[respectfully snipped]

I think you're being too harsh on NBC. An article by "Staff" is typically just a reprint of the press release. LE hasn't distributed a photo - the article itself says "a photo of Shaffer has not been provided by law enforcement". I'm not sure how rights and photos work, but I would consider the sheriff more at fault than NBC.

If anything, I find it really weird that Erath County Sheriff printed out the press release, took a photo, and released that rather than a direct photo of the press release or copying-and-pasting the entire thing in text form, as it cannot be searched for.
 
KD5NRH said:
In one of the Facebook threads, a woman a little east on 205 said she saw Sharla ride by Friday evening, heading east.

Could it have been a different cyclist? Possibly, but there aren't many who would be riding that far out of town in that heat. I don't know how well she knows Sharla, but given it was the right time and place, I'd give that statement a pretty solid chance of being accurate.

So the real question is when the bike got back; if she brought it back Friday evening and then disappeared, what was the point of going on the ride? Checking to make sure someone who was picking her up was where they were supposed to be? With no rack and only a small backpack, she wouldn't have been caching supplies in a hiding place.

If it came back sometime after the initial search, when and why? The house is at the end of a private road with a couple of neighbors, off a low-traffic county road with a couple more neighbors. You'd have to get past 4-5 houses to return the bike, and in the place where everybody is on maximum alert wanting to know what happened. If it was her, presumably it was so people would know she wasn't wrecked somewhere in a ditch, or maybe she just likes the bike and wanted it where it would be safe when she comes back. If it was anybody else, they took an insane risk for nothing: they could have ditched it literally anywhere other than the place everybody's looking for, and people want answers bad enough that they'd have to hope if they got caught, it would be by the sheriff, because he's the only one who would have any concern at all for their rights.
Click to expand...
 
I really hope that the "note" is being thoroughly evaluated by a non-local expert with plenty of experience. The phrase " We have no reason to believe there has been foul play" is bandied about by law enforcement in almost every case we read about here. A hefty percentage of the time, it's flat out wrong. MOO
 
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