VICTIM - Mickey Shunick, 21, of Lafayette, LA (Theories)

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Michaela (Mickey) Shunick
Missing from Lafayette LA -- 19 May 2012


Lafayette Police and a local family need your help finding a missing woman. 21 year old Mickey Shunick (pictured) was last seen early Saturday morning riding a black and gold bike from a friends home in the Saint Streets area of Lafayette.... She was headed back home near Ambassador and Congress, but never made it home and hasn't been seen since. Anyone with information on where she maybe be is asked to call Lafayette Police.
http://www.katc.com/news/police-looking-for-missing-lafayette-woman/

F6CB1764B255F7B0328C51447BE482AA_292_292.jpg



The Advertiser July 5, 2012,

An arrest has been made by Lafayette police in connection to the Mickey Shunick case...

Brandon Scott Lavergne from the Lawtell area has been arrested. He is a registered sex offender, according the the Louisiana Sex Offender Registry...

The two warrants for Lavergne’s arrest allege he committed both first-degree murder and aggravated kidnapping on May 19, the same day Shunick disappeared...
http://www.theadvertiser.com/articl...S04/120705038/Arrest-made-Mickey-Shunick-case

As of August 4, 2012, Mickey Shunick's body has not been recovered. What happened to Mickey?
 
Bless these volunteers for their time and efforts to find MS. Prayers for their wisdom, stamina, and keen senses in their searches.
 
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deuKdsxdLM4"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deuKdsxdLM4[/ame]
 
Just thinking Mickey has earned her name on a bench, under an oak tree, at the "Horse Farm", along the bike path.
 
I was thinking perhaps the new bike path in Lafayette bearing her name would be a fitting tribute to her. Does anyone know if there is any name attached to it currently?
 
WARNING - disorganized brainstorming below - proceed at your own risk.

--------------------------

Now to consider the possible chain of events:

Mickey last seen about 2 a.m., May 19.
BSL in New Orleans on the evening of May 19
LE thinks bike was dropped at Whiskey Bay between the two above events.

If he's headed to NOLA, Whiskey Bay is right on the way. It would be convenient for him to drop the bike and go to NOLA in one shot. But then that begs the question - where was Mickey?

Heading up north of Mamou takes him in a whole different direction than NOLA. So what is the sequence of events? One thing I haven't seen discussed to my satisfaction is how long he may have kept Mickey. Most of what I have seen has assumed that he kidnapped her and killed her and disposed of her. But then for what purpose did he do it all? Reminds me of getting on a plane in California and flying to New York and then walking to the next gate and flying back to California. What's the point of all his work?

I have to believe that he planned to take some time with Mickey, to make it worth his while. Now did she blow his plan by attacking him, making him do away with her a lot earlier than planned? Very possible. If he suddenly has noticeable bloody wounds and a finger injured enough that he may fear he loses use of it, then he may have clicked into survival mode, and just done everything quickly to get out of the situation.

Either way, he likely didn't keep her alive too long, if he's in NOLA 18 hours after the abduction, because how can he be sure that Mickey somehow won't escape or manage to attract attention, or his girlfriend come over to his house?

Could he have hidden her under his trailer, and then buried her upon his return from New Orleans? Quite possibly. Risky, but possible.

But let's lay that aside for now and look at some specifics on how long it would have taken him to get rid of the bike and Mickey at night.

Let's consider the cemetery. It's very isolated. It also was a new moon - pitch black - he is going to have to have a light source, and also know the cemetery well to see where he's going. This speaks to his obviously already having known about the cemetery and having visited there. Possibly, a grave was pre-dug. But then again, that's a risk to leave an open grave even in the woods, on the chance someone finds it. Does anyone know about the soil up there - hard to dig? Easy? Would not be fun to dig with an injured hand but, as a poster noted upthread, his adrenaline and strength could have carried him. It's also possible that he pre-dug a grave and then filled it in for later use so that the soil would be loose and he could make a quick getaway. No sense hitting tree roots on your five attempts and spending all night out there.

All this rambling is a way of asking - when would he have TIME to put Mickey there? Did he really take her, get what he wanted or else be attacked by her, drive her out to that cemetery and bury her, and then be in Whiskey Bay before dawn to dump the bike - and then continue on to New Orleans, without having time to wash up?

All of this was doable, I suppose. The distances aren't that far from his house. I'm thinking more in terms of the number of steps he had to take. It would have been complicated, especially if Mickey surprised him.

Did he get what he wanted at his trailer, and then go directly to the cemetery? Did he go directly to the cemetery? We must remember that it took him time to get places. It would have taken him 45 minutes to an hour get home if he went straight there after the abduction. Now it's 3 a.m. Let's say he makes it home... does what he wants.... then Mickey gets an opening to fight back and he does her in. Now it's maybe 3:15 or even 4 a.m. or a little later if he takes time to dress his wounds and also to take a breath and set his plan in motion. Twilight begins at 5:45 a.m. and the sun is rising at 6:11 a.m. Now he has only two-three hours to get rid of both Mickey and the bike, before daylight raises his risk of being caught.

For him to do that, instead of burying Mickey later, he has to drive half an hour northwest to the back side of Mamou to bury her. That makes it 4 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. - assuming that he spent only 30-60 minutes doing whatever he did to Mickey. Remember my comment about why fly LAX-JFK-LAX for no reason. Unless she totally disrupted his plan, I would assume he wanted to spend longer than that with her.

Now he's at the cemetery at 4-4:30 a.m. With a pre-dug grave, he's still going to take 10-15 minutes - hiking back into the woods, checking for dropped evidence, etc. 30 minutes if he has to dig a grave. So now he's leaving the cemetery anywhere from 4:15a. to 5 a.m..

Now drive straight to Whiskey Bay. That's a 90-minute drive. So he arrives at Whiskey Bay between 5:45 a.m. - just as twilight begins - and 6:30 a.m. - with the sun fully up on a Saturday, and fishermen definitely at the boat ramp.

He risks a dawn/daytime drop at Whiskey Bay, and then heads to New Orleans.

Does he do it this way?

Or does he do it in reverse - he heads straight from the abduction to Whiskey Bay. I have problems with that. If Mickey was alive at this point, why take the risk of carrying a live kidnap victim with you to go dump the bike?! Or a deceased one?! Due to the fact that she was found north of Mamou, I have to think the bike was done without Mickey in the truck.

So then look at the first option. He takes her straight from Lafayette to the cemetery as a preplanned option. He intends to do whatever he's going to do there and then leave her there. Or, he plans to take her to his house and then to the cemetery. It's so dark outside, that maybe he wants some light to get whatever he wants from her. At some point a fight ensues. Either Mickey is loose in the truck while he drives and he has a gun on her, or she is bound but gets at least one arm free to attack him. Maybe he threatened her with a gun and told her that if she cooperated, he would let her go, and so he relied on fear to keep her in line, instead of binding her.

He has to use at least his running lights to get into the cemetery, because it is new-moon country-pitch-black. If Mickey is alive, and wasn't killed at his trailer, Mickey sees the graves and realizes that it's now or never and pulls out a hidden boxcutter (the wounds must have been made with a small blade, because otherwise she would have put it through his neck). I think it likely happens in the truck, because something made him burn it - a drastic measure which was sure to come back to him. I think that if he could have gotten away without burning it, he would have.

Of course, all of this is pure speculation - I'm just speculating on the TIMELINE of that night.

Assuming he didn't go home with her first, by the time he gets from Lafayette to the cemetery, about a 90-minute drive, it's now 3:30 a.m or so. The struggle and the burial plus possibly whatever he had wanted from her take anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour by the time he leaves the cemetery. So now it's maybe 4 a.m. - then he drives 90 minutes straight to Whiskey Bay - bleeding. Maybe he stops at his house to patch himself? Probably not, because he's in a rush and wants the crime over with - so that puts him at Whiskey Bay to dump the bike at around 5:30, maybe 6 if he stopped at his house. It's twilight. The sun is not up. But the sky is growing light. A fisherman just behind or ahead of him on the Whiskey-Bay offramp could possibly have seen his truck turn off Hwy. 975. A caveat - if he went home with her first, he's going to be even later.

Bike dumped, he instinctively heads home to take a breath and clean up and patch his wounds... arriving at 7-7:30a. and now he needs an alibi for the wounds because his family is sure to ask. He needs to head back home and regroup, because he hadn't planned on going to New Orleans. He showers, grabs some food, and heads for New Orleans, leaving maybe 30 minutes later. He arrives in New Orleans at 9:30 to 10 a.m. - maybe later if he stayed at home a bit to rest or plan what he was going to do.

So now both Mickey and the bike have been taken care of, and he's in New Orleans.

I know that was a WHOLE lot of "what-ifs." Just thought I'd throw some of that thinking out there, to see if any of it resonates with y'all. Feel free to ignore!! :)
 
chicken fried, I can't speculate too much on time frame other than to say I think they might be wrong about when the bike was dropped at Whiskey Bay. You are very right to point out that the timeline was tight. Whatever happened to Mickey, I don't think it happened in just a 30/40 minute time frame. I think you are very right to speculate it took much longer. I think she put up the fight that caused the bulk of his injuries and he overcame her and restrained her, and whatever he wanted to do to her he did after that. She of course would have been fighting to the best of her abilities during that time, but I just have this gut feeling that whatever damage she was able to do to him came before he did what real damage he wanted to do to her. Just a gut feeling though, and we know gut feelings don't really mean anything.

I think they might be wrong about when the bike was dropped because of the way he reacted with his truck. He kept his truck until he knew the media was looking for it, then ditched it. I think he kept the bike until her bike became of big emphasis in the media. That happened very early on, so I think the bike was probably dumped early (possibly on his way back from New Orleans, rather than to New Orleans), but I don't think it was necessarily dumped the night/morning she went missing.

Edited to correct: I had originally typed "bulk of her injuries" above whereas I meant "bulk of his injuries"
 
WARNING - disorganized brainstorming below - proceed at your own risk.

--------------------------

Now to consider the possible chain of events:

Mickey last seen about 2 a.m., May 19.
BSL in New Orleans on the evening of May 19
LE thinks bike was dropped at Whiskey Bay between the two above events.

If he's headed to NOLA, Whiskey Bay is right on the way. It would be convenient for him to drop the bike and go to NOLA in one shot. But then that begs the question - where was Mickey?

Heading up north of Mamou takes him in a whole different direction than NOLA. So what is the sequence of events? One thing I haven't seen discussed to my satisfaction is how long he may have kept Mickey. Most of what I have seen has assumed that he kidnapped her and killed her and disposed of her. But then for what purpose did he do it all? Reminds me of getting on a plane in California and flying to New York and then walking to the next gate and flying back to California. What's the point of all his work?

I have to believe that he planned to take some time with Mickey, to make it worth his while. Now did she blow his plan by attacking him, making him do away with her a lot earlier than planned? Very possible. If he suddenly has noticeable bloody wounds and a finger injured enough that he may fear he loses use of it, then he may have clicked into survival mode, and just done everything quickly to get out of the situation.

Either way, he likely didn't keep her alive too long, if he's in NOLA 18 hours after the abduction, because how can he be sure that Mickey somehow won't escape or manage to attract attention, or his girlfriend come over to his house?

Could he have hidden her under his trailer, and then buried her upon his return from New Orleans? Quite possibly. Risky, but possible.

But let's lay that aside for now and look at some specifics on how long it would have taken him to get rid of the bike and Mickey at night.

Let's consider the cemetery. It's very isolated. It also was a new moon - pitch black - he is going to have to have a light source, and also know the cemetery well to see where he's going. This speaks to his obviously already having known about the cemetery and having visited there. Possibly, a grave was pre-dug. But then again, that's a risk to leave an open grave even in the woods, on the chance someone finds it. Does anyone know about the soil up there - hard to dig? Easy? Would not be fun to dig with an injured hand but, as a poster noted upthread, his adrenaline and strength could have carried him. It's also possible that he pre-dug a grave and then filled it in for later use so that the soil would be loose and he could make a quick getaway. No sense hitting tree roots on your five attempts and spending all night out there.

All this rambling is a way of asking - when would he have TIME to put Mickey there? Did he really take her, get what he wanted or else be attacked by her, drive her out to that cemetery and bury her, and then be in Whiskey Bay before dawn to dump the bike - and then continue on to New Orleans, without having time to wash up?

All of this was doable, I suppose. The distances aren't that far from his house. I'm thinking more in terms of the number of steps he had to take. It would have been complicated, especially if Mickey surprised him.

Did he get what he wanted at his trailer, and then go directly to the cemetery? Did he go directly to the cemetery? We must remember that it took him time to get places. It would have taken him 45 minutes to an hour get home if he went straight there after the abduction. Now it's 3 a.m. Let's say he makes it home... does what he wants.... then Mickey gets an opening to fight back and he does her in. Now it's maybe 3:15 or even 4 a.m. or a little later if he takes time to dress his wounds and also to take a breath and set his plan in motion. Twilight begins at 5:45 a.m. and the sun is rising at 6:11 a.m. Now he has only two-three hours to get rid of both Mickey and the bike, before daylight raises his risk of being caught.

For him to do that, instead of burying Mickey later, he has to drive half an hour northwest to the back side of Mamou to bury her. That makes it 4 a.m. to 4:30 a.m. - assuming that he spent only 30-60 minutes doing whatever he did to Mickey. Remember my comment about why fly LAX-JFK-LAX for no reason. Unless she totally disrupted his plan, I would assume he wanted to spend longer than that with her.

Now he's at the cemetery at 4-4:30 a.m. With a pre-dug grave, he's still going to take 10-15 minutes - hiking back into the woods, checking for dropped evidence, etc. 30 minutes if he has to dig a grave. So now he's leaving the cemetery anywhere from 4:15a. to 5 a.m..

Now drive straight to Whiskey Bay. That's a 90-minute drive. So he arrives at Whiskey Bay between 5:45 a.m. - just as twilight begins - and 6:30 a.m. - with the sun fully up on a Saturday, and fishermen definitely at the boat ramp.

He risks a dawn/daytime drop at Whiskey Bay, and then heads to New Orleans.

Does he do it this way?

Or does he do it in reverse - he heads straight from the abduction to Whiskey Bay. I have problems with that. If Mickey was alive at this point, why take the risk of carrying a live kidnap victim with you to go dump the bike?! Or a deceased one?! Due to the fact that she was found north of Mamou, I have to think the bike was done without Mickey in the truck.

So then look at the first option. He takes her straight from Lafayette to the cemetery as a preplanned option. He intends to do whatever he's going to do there and then leave her there. Or, he plans to take her to his house and then to the cemetery. It's so dark outside, that maybe he wants some light to get whatever he wants from her. At some point a fight ensues. Either Mickey is loose in the truck while he drives and he has a gun on her, or she is bound but gets at least one arm free to attack him. Maybe he threatened her with a gun and told her that if she cooperated, he would let her go, and so he relied on fear to keep her in line, instead of binding her.

He has to use at least his running lights to get into the cemetery, because it is new-moon country-pitch-black. If Mickey is alive, and wasn't killed at his trailer, Mickey sees the graves and realizes that it's now or never and pulls out a hidden boxcutter (the wounds must have been made with a small blade, because otherwise she would have put it through his neck). I think it likely happens in the truck, because something made him burn it - a drastic measure which was sure to come back to him. I think that if he could have gotten away without burning it, he would have.

Of course, all of this is pure speculation - I'm just speculating on the TIMELINE of that night.

Assuming he didn't go home with her first, by the time he gets from Lafayette to the cemetery, about a 90-minute drive, it's now 3:30 a.m or so. The struggle and the burial plus possibly whatever he had wanted from her take anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour by the time he leaves the cemetery. So now it's maybe 4 a.m. - then he drives 90 minutes straight to Whiskey Bay - bleeding. Maybe he stops at his house to patch himself? Probably not, because he's in a rush and wants the crime over with - so that puts him at Whiskey Bay to dump the bike at around 5:30, maybe 6 if he stopped at his house. It's twilight. The sun is not up. But the sky is growing light. A fisherman just behind or ahead of him on the Whiskey-Bay offramp could possibly have seen his truck turn off Hwy. 975. A caveat - if he went home with her first, he's going to be even later.

Bike dumped, he instinctively heads home to take a breath and clean up and patch his wounds... arriving at 7-7:30a. and now he needs an alibi for the wounds because his family is sure to ask. He needs to head back home and regroup, because he hadn't planned on going to New Orleans. He showers, grabs some food, and heads for New Orleans, leaving maybe 30 minutes later. He arrives in New Orleans at 9:30 to 10 a.m. - maybe later if he stayed at home a bit to rest or plan what he was going to do.

So now both Mickey and the bike have been taken care of, and he's in New Orleans.

I know that was a WHOLE lot of "what-ifs." Just thought I'd throw some of that thinking out there, to see if any of it resonates with y'all. Feel free to ignore!! :)
Thank you Chicken for taking the time and thought to make that timeline. I think you probably have most of what really happened right there. What I find most disturbing is the probability that he had planned to kill her and bury her all along. :(
 
chicken fried, I can't speculate too much on time frame other than to say I think they might be wrong about when the bike was dropped at Whiskey Bay. You are very right to point out that the timeline was tight. Whatever happened to Mickey, I don't think it happened in just a 30/40 minute time frame. I think you are very right to speculate it took much longer. I think she put up the fight that caused the bulk of her injuries and he overcame her and restrained her, and whatever he wanted to do to her he did after that. She of course would have been fighting to the best of her abilities during that time, but I just have this gut feeling that whatever damage she was able to do to him came before he did what real damage he wanted to do to her. Just a gut feeling though, and we know gut feelings don't really mean anything.

I think they might be wrong about when the bike was dropped because of the way he reacted with his truck. He kept his truck until he knew the media was looking for it, then ditched it. I think he kept the bike until her bike became of big emphasis in the media. That happened very early on, so I think the bike was probably dumped early (possibly on his way back from New Orleans, rather than to New Orleans), but I don't think it was necessarily dumped the night/morning she went missing.

Excellent point. Seeing the media may have flushed him out. I don't think he intended the bike to be found at Whiskey Bay - I think that was a mistake. A big one, because they found the bent rim and so concluded that a vehicle had hit the bike. Things unraveled from there because then the hunt for the truck intensified.
 
Thank you Chicken for taking the time and thought to make that timeline. I think you probably have most of what really happened right there. What I find most disturbing is the probability that he had planned to kill her and bury her all along. :(

Yeah, it sucks. And it probably was his plan. He had already identified the cemetery as a dumping ground - had thought about it.

He also had to have pre-dug the grave, or brought a shovel. The shovel may have already been in the DWT in the Circle-K photo :-(
 
I must say, I'm very surprised she was found with jewelry and such.

When I heard that they found things that clearly pointed to him murdering her, and being connected to her, i thought it was jewelry or even clothing.

I find it weird that he'd keep things of many different women, yet bury Mickey fully clothed and with her belongings.

He may have been in a big hurry and got sloppy. Sun was going to rise on him if he didn't get a move on.
 
I must say, I'm very surprised she was found with jewelry and such.

When I heard that they found things that clearly pointed to him murdering her, and being connected to her, i thought it was jewelry or even clothing.

I find it weird that he'd keep things of many different women, yet bury Mickey fully clothed and with her belongings.

This is partly why I think she was left there that night.

Also I still think he left the bike right away; he would know they would be looking for that; he didn't know they knew about his truck before the images were released.
 
Excellent point. Seeing the media may have flushed him out. I don't think he intended the bike to be found at Whiskey Bay - I think that was a mistake. A big one, because they found the bent rim and so concluded that a vehicle had hit the bike. Things unraveled from there because then the hunt for the truck intensified.

BSL may have already had the grave dug and waiting for his next kill!
 
He may have been in a big hurry and got sloppy. Sun was going to rise on him if he didn't get a move on.

Yes, he was in a hurry and he was bleeding badly. He needed to get medical care for himself, Big Wuss!
 
I was just discussing it, trying to piece the actions that we had debated for months, now that we (likely) know where he put her.

Sorry.

I noticed that the location of the bike and remains are almost equal in distance and opposite in direction from where Mickey disappeared. Seems like simple thinking on his part.
 
I must say, I'm very surprised she was found with jewelry and such.

When I heard that they found things that clearly pointed to him murdering her, and being connected to her, i thought it was jewelry or even clothing.

I find it weird that he'd keep things of many different women, yet bury Mickey fully clothed and with her belongings.

Jmo and not something I'd like to dwell on personally, we don't know how much of her clothes and belongings were with Mickey, or exactly what belongings LE found in his home from other women, or how they were obtained. Jmo
 
Thank you Chicken for taking the time and thought to make that timeline. I think you probably have most of what really happened right there. What I find most disturbing is the probability that he had planned to kill her and bury her all along. :(

SNIP Now drive straight to Whiskey Bay. That's a 90-minute drive. So he arrives at Whiskey Bay between 5:45 a.m. - just as twilight begins - and 6:30 a.m. - with the sun fully up on a Saturday, and fishermen definitely at the boat ramp.

He risks a dawn/daytime drop at Whiskey Bay, and then heads to New Orleans.

Does he do it this way?

Or does he do it in reverse - he heads straight from the abduction to Whiskey Bay. I have problems with that. If Mickey was alive at this point, why take the risk of carrying a live kidnap victim with you to go dump the bike?! Or a deceased one?! Due to the fact that she was found north of Mamou, I have to think the bike was done without Mickey in the truck. SNIP

It is entirely possible that BSL placed the BIKE underneath his house and disposed of it at a later time/date. And I totally agree about the possibility of a pre-dug grave, it's Louisiana and LOTS of roots in the soil in wooded areas.
 
It also makes sense to me that dumping the bike at Whiskey Bay is quite possibly an attempt to throw the investigation in that direction, i.e., the Basin, in the search for her body. He was obviously in panic mode when he lost control of the situation with Mickey and was wounded. I wonder if the JPSO in their contact with him in NOLA ever peeked inside his vehicle, if it was cleaned up at all. Or did she wound him outside of the truck, back at his house or at the cemetery?
 

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