Intro:
"Shannah Marie Boiteau was a 22 year old from Chippewa Falls, WI. She had a daughter and loved playing basketball. On June 22, 2016, she was allegedly on a trip to California with her boyfriend, Kyle. Not long into their journey, near St. Cloud, MN, Shannah unexpectedly jumped out of the car and ran off into the woods beside the highway. She was never seen again."
My notes on this episode of UnFound:
Shannah was
seemingly on the run due to a mistake she made. She thought she would be in jail for a many years, but her family later found out her penalty would have been fairly small.
Shannah loved playing basketball and watching out for her two sisters growing up but she had problems beginning in 8th grade when she was caught with marijuana. She soon started doing other drugs. Although she did graduate from HS, on her high school graduation day she was in jail.
Her life changed, however, when she found out she was pregnant. She managed to stop doing drugs, got a job and moved back in with her father. Eventually she met a new guy, Kyle, and they got their own place together.
On Sunday June 19, 2016 the police stopped by Shannah's address in Chippewa Falls to give her a surprise breathalyzer test. As part of the conditions of her probation, she was not supposed to consume any alcohol. She failed the breathalyzer test. Police did not take her into custody, but Shannah was allegedly afraid of going back to jail for a long time because of failing the test. So Shannah and Kyle decided to go on a road trip instead. She supposedly wanted to see the pacific ocean before going to jail.
Wed June 22 Kyle called Shannah's father to tell him she freaked out on the hwy, jumped out of the car and ran into the woods near St Cloud, MN. Despite multiple searches of that area, Shannah was not found.
Several facts bring the story of how Shannah disappeared into question:
1. Shannah had brought domestic abuse charges against Kyle and court proceedings were to begin in July.
2. Shannah had written down an ex boyfriend's name on a paycheck stub-- he lived in California at the time she disappeared, but Shannah never contacted him to say she was coming to CA.
3. Shannah supposedly ran due to failing the breathalyzer but her family found out that the penalty would have only put her in jail for a couple days.
Shannah's family is not sure what to think at this point. Some of her relatives do believe the story as told by Kyle. Guest for the episode is Shannah's mom, Angela.
Shannah's mom: Shannah was the oldest of 3 daughters. They got along like normal sisters. Shannah was always watching out for her sisters and helped her mom with the younger girls, and they all walked to school together, ect. She was always protective of her sisters. Shannah was a really good student and got good grades. She was in the science club and math club. She also played basketball and softball and ran track (but basketball was her favorite). She played JV basketball her freshmen year. She had played basketball since 4th grade and went to summer basketball camps too.
Her mom doesn't really know how Shannah got into doing drugs but she noticed changes. They noticed her friends changed starting in the 8th grade and she started to lose interest in sports and isolate herself. She was also used to love cooking but stopped wanting to cook meals. They were a close family and always visited with extended family members but Shannah stopped wanting to go to her relatives homes for dinner after she got into drugs. She was irritable around her sisters and started to dress different. Her mom and other family tried to talk to her but she denied anything was wrong.
When she was in 9th grade she had a little dog and the dog found her pot stash in her bedroom while she was staying at her dad's house for a weekend. Her mom says she got pregnant with Shannah while she was a senior in HS herself and got married to Shannah's dad but they separated after 17 years. They had a very civil divorce and they both agreed on how to raise the girls even though they didn't want to be married anymore. Her mom and dad got together and confronted Shannah with the pot but she denied it was hers.
Things got worse in her 10-12th grade years. Her mom moved to a bigger town with more opportunities in school, hoping things would improve but it didn't help-- Shannah got into doing meth. They then moved again and her mom moved in with her 2nd husband. Shannah wasn't coming home and was staying out past her curfew at night. Shannah and some friends broke into a barn (or bar? I didn't hear the word) and got into lots of trouble.
Shannah would get violent went she was using drugs and her little sisters learned to stay away from her. Her junior year of HS Shannah was working at McDonalds on weekends. She came home after being out late with her friends and didn't wake up when her mom knew she had to go to work. Her mom shook her to remind her to get up for work, then turned to go downstairs and as she turned her back Shannah got up and pushed her mom down the stairs. They both went tumbling down together. Then she got up and tried to harm her little sisters and was chasing them around the house. Her mom and one of the neighbors held Shannah down and called the cops on her for being on drugs.
Almost her whole senior year she was in jail-- including on her graduation day. The principle of the school brought Shannah her homework while she was in jail and picked it up again when it was completed weekly. The principle said she was going to have a long road ahead of her fighting addiction and he didn't want her life to be harder without a HS diploma, so he made it possible for her to graduate by letting her do homework in jail.
When she turned 18 she went to live with her dad and step mom for a while. They helped her get a job and a car. But one morning she didn't come out of her bedroom. They found her overdosed with a heroin needle still in her arm. They rushed her to the ER and saved her life. She later went to rehab-- to a 21 day program when she was 18. She finished that program and went right back to drugs. She completed the rehab program 4 times total and relapsed every single time.
At 18 she was on Meth. At 19 she was a dealer-- running drugs back and forth between St Cloud and The Twin Cities. Then she got into injecting heroin. Her mom didn't find out about all this until after Shannah finally got clean. She called her mom May 18, 2014 to tell her she was pregnant. She was excited to have the baby. She quit using but relapsed when she was 5-6 months and used heroin. She got caught selling heroin to a minor. The minor OD'd but survived. Shannah was charged with two counts of endangering a child for that incident-- one count for the minor and one count for endangering her unborn child. Her mom believes that charge and going to jail saved her life and the life of her baby. The father of the baby (Stephen sp?) has been in an out of jail. Shannah's mom is raising the baby who is now 4 years old.
Shannah was allowed to do a program called Drug Corps where she did community service and checked in with a supervisor regularly. Shannah got to take care of her baby daughter with this program. Rather than go to jail Shannah had an ankle bracelet monitor and was only allowed to leave home to go to her scheduled meetings for Drug Corps. Shannah finally was able to turn her life around with this program. She volunteered and she worked in a group home mentoring others after she was off the ankle bracelet.
After Shannah turned her life around she told her mom more of what she had been into. She had been a stripper for a while, a drug dealer and even admitted she was involved human trafficking-- selling others. The people she had gotten caught up with were not good people. Shannah claimed most of the time she did spend in jail was mainly because she was too afraid to rat any of her associates out. She was scared they would come after her or her family if she told any names.
Her mom only met Kyle twice and doesn't know a lot about him. She thinks they met at an AA meeting. While she was on the ankle bracelet program Kyle moved in with Shannah at her dad and stepmom's house. Then once she was off the program Kyle and Shannah moved out on their own together. Kyle seemed like a good guy and followed the rules when they lived at Shannah's dad's house. Shannah sometimes would exaggerate stories when she was using drugs. So her family sometimes didn't know if they could believe her stories. In hindsight, it breaks her mom's heart that she didn't believe her daughter about what was going on. About three months before her disappearance Shannah started telling her mom she and Kyle were fighting a lot. The baby's father Stephen was coming around to see the baby a lot and Kyle didn't like that. So they argued about that. Kyle showed up to Shannah's work at the group home trying to get her to talk to him. Her mom later found out that several times Shannah took out restraining orders against Kyle but then she would make up with him and let Kyle back into her life. She would kick him out but then let him move back in with her again.
About 3 months before her disappearance a really good friend of Shannah's named Angel talked to Shannah's mom about what was going on. Angel said that Kyle had choked Shannah and had broken Shannah's bones before. Angel even went over to Shannah's house one day and found Kyle on top of Shannah, beating her up. That was June 10, 2016-- Ten days before Shannah disappeared. There were future court dates in July about the domestic abuse.
Her mom believes Shannah was clean from hard drugs (meth, coke, heroin, etc) in 2016 but she knew her daughter still drank beer after work and she probably smoked MJ still. Shannah wasn't allowed to drink alcohol under her probation deal. Her mom told her that if she had to drink a couple beers to unwind after work she would rather that than see her shooting up heroin. Her mom believed she was otherwise "clean" and had turned her life around from the really dangerous drugs.
On Sunday June 19 2016 Shannah had to work a nightshift the night prior. She had been up all night and then drank a few beers when she got home to help her go to sleep. She didn't like taking sleeping pills because of her opiate addiction. It was Father's day and she wanted to sleep for a few hours before she went to see her dad and have dinner with him. The police stopped by and did a random breathalyzer on her. She failed the test. Normally they would take you right in to jail but for some reason they didn't arrest her. Instead the police decide to simply contact her probation officer and let him handle it. She was on a 3 strike program and this was strike number 9. Shannah thought she was going to go to prison. She did still go to have dinner with her dad that night. Her dad said she seemed really depressed. She did not have the baby with her-- the baby was with Stephen for Father's Day. She told her dad she was just tired from working and "some stuff went down at work" but she didn't tell any details of what was going on. Kyle was on a restraining order at this time. Kyle was not at the father's day dinner with Shannah.
June 20th 2016 Shannah went to work. No one at work knew what happened but her mom figures that all day she thought the police were going to come pick her up at any time and take her to jail. Other than that it was a normal work day.
June 21st 2016 her mom texted her that morning since she hadn't heard from her for a while. Shannah texted that she was "feeling sad" and said she would call her later that night. Later that day Stephen called Shannah's dad and said he still had the baby. Shannah had never come to get the baby. Shannah's dad lived in another town so he asked a cousin who lived in her same town to go knock on her door-- they figured maybe she had overslept and just needed waking up. The cousin went over there, got into the apartment and saw a piece of paper and Shannah's cell phone on the table. The cousin called her dad and said there was a note and he needed to drive to Shannah's house right away.
The note said Shannah had gotten into trouble and was going to prison, but there was something she needed to do first. She asked her family to take care of her baby and said she knew she was going to be loved. Shannah said she loved all of her family and that she would be back. She wasn't specific at that point about what happened. The family said it looked like Shannah's normal writing. Police analyzed the handwriting. The note didn't seem to have been written under any stress.
All of Shannah's personal items were gone. Her clothing drawers were stripped out. Her hygiene products, hairspray, etc. Everything you would take if you went on vacation were gone with her. Her furniture was left behind. So it looked like she had taken off.
Her family tried to get a hold of Kyle-- he didn't answer his phone. They called every name in her phone and no one had seen her or heard from her. Then they called her probation officer and told what was going on. They also called the police but there was nothing the police would do at that time.
24 hours later they filed a missing person report on June 22. Later Kyle called her dad and said Shannah was using again, freaked out on their road trip, jumped out of the car and ran off into the woods. Shannah's father called her mom about quarter to 4 PM that day to tell her this story. Kyle was supposedly off of HWY 94 in St Augustine when this happened-- a town 2 hours and 52 minutes from Chippewa Falls. Shannah's dad called 911 and also told Kyle to call 911. Searches were done in the area where Kyle said Shannah jumped out and ran into the woods. But Kyle actually said two different places that Shannah got out of the car. A bloodhound tracked Shannah for 300 yards from the car in one spot and then the dog became overheated. They called for a second dog but it started to rain so they canceled that dog.
When Kyle came back to the police department in the lobby waiting to be interviewed he told her parents about the breathalyzer and that she was scared she was going to go to prison. Kyle says she wanted to see the ocean. Kyle says he decided to go with her but they had to wait for her paycheck so they had the cash to go. Kyle said on Tuesday they asked a coworker, Amy, who was also a heroin addict, if she could bring Shannah's paycheck. Amy met up with them with the check and they took Amy to Eau Claire to buy drugs, but they could not get the drugs they needed there. So they dropped Amy off at a friends and went on their way. Amy supposedly knew Kyle and Shannah were going to California. From there they went to Menomomie, WI and stayed in a hotel. Her mom doesn't know why they stayed there as it was only 30 miles away from Chippewa Falls but her mom knows Shannah used to go to Menomomie to do drugs in the past. From there, instead of going west toward California, they drove north to St Cloud. They were seen on surveillance video at a convenience store at a little town in Minnesota called Rogers. They got gas and Shannah used the ATM and she bought cigarettes. Kyle was also seen on video there.
Kyle's story somewhat checked out-- he told about the convenience store stop and hotel stay. But he said two different places she jumped out. He claims she jumped out twice-- she jumped out and came back, then jumped out again, all while he was driving Shannah's car. Shannah had taken about $500 out at the ATM plus she had cash from her paycheck that she had cashed. It normally would take 45 minutes to get from the convenience store to the point where she allegedly jumped out of the car. But for some reason it took them 4.5 hours to travel from one point to the other. Kyle has never explained why it took that long. He just said Shannah was flipping out and they cruised some back roads for a while.
Shannah's paycheck was for a little over $600. Supposedly Shannah and Kyle picked Amy up and then left on their journey and also cashed the check sometime that day. However, on a paystub found at Shannah's house Amy's name and phone number were written and also the name of an old boyfriend named Sage. Sage lived in California at that time. The paystub was in the house, not in Shannah's car. Her mom thinks maybe the numbers were written down to take with them because Shannah really was going to CA and was leaving her cell phone behind so she couldn't be tracked. Her mom thinks Shannah left the paystub with names and phone numbers on it behind by mistake.
Shannah never contacted Sage. Her mom thinks if she had called Sage he would have told her parents that. Her mom believes Sage was truthful in not knowing anything about Shannah's intentions to go to California.
Her mom says according to the state of Minnesota Shannah was not considered a missing person. They classified her as an adult run away and no more official searches were done. Wisconsin has different guidelines and considers Shannah missing person. Her family had to arrange volunteer searches of the wooded area where she supposedly ran from the car. The area is a swamp owned by about 12 different people. It is a popular hunting area but that year there was a lot of rain. It was flooded, densely wooded with sinkholes. They had to get permission from each of the land owners. over 200 people did the first volunteer search. They found nothing of Shannah. No clothing. No purse, nothing. 3 sets of bones were found that were not Shannah.
Then in Spring of 2017 they did another private search. Her mom walked through the exact area where the dogs had tracked Shannah. Her mom said the thorns and prickers and briars were so thick in that area that she had to throw her clothes away. Shannah was supposedly barefoot and wearing thin leggings and a tank top when she ran through there (according to Kyle). The police told her mom that perhaps she had run through the woods, come out the other side, jumped a fence and hitched a ride with a trucker. But the dogs never picked up a scent near the fence and they never found any blood or anything. The later had 5 different sets of cadaver dogs search that area and they found nothing.
*** That's my summary up to about 1 hour and 28 minutes in. I'm out of time for now. There are about 30 more minutes left***
