warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Shantel was once a teacher, but her life took a dark turn. On a three-state road trip with Casey and Rachel, everything seemed planned—until Rachel vanished. What happened on their fateful journey?
The search for a missing woman took a disturbing turn when mountain rescuers made this discovery, now detectives had to go back and figure out the chain of events that got her there.
When Casey Childers and Shantel Edlund hit the road in the early November of 2021,they were on a mission,it was a drug dealeres version of a business trip
there was a time when 43 year old Chantel had more traditional career aspirations,she had previously worked as a high school language Arts teacher but her life took a detour into the dark underworld when she skitted into the grips of a methamphetamine addiction.
Casey and Shantel were from Sheridan Wyoming,the destination for their drug run was Denver Colorado,Denver is exactly 1 mile above sea level,it’s also known as the mile high city .
But it was a meth high that Casey and Shantel were shasing before heading towards Denver the couple drove about two hours Northeast to pick up their friend Rachel Holeman. in Shepard Montana.
The trio’s three -state road trip began with hopeful anticipation, they though they would secure an abundance of drugs from themselves.
But somewhere along the way …Rachel never made it home to Montana.
It took several weeks for her disappeareance to come to the attention of police .
After a missing person’s report was filed in mid December they pinged her phone and lerned that it had gone dead in Aurora, a suburb east of Denver in Douglas County.
The plot thickened when the investigators found out that her traveling companions had deactivated their phones in the same area.
So what happened to Rachel?
The Douglas County Sheriff’s office caught a break when they realized they had already enountered Chantel’s car around 1:00 a.m. on November the 7th right around the time 29 year old Rachel holeman had disappeared.
One of their cruisers dash cam’s had captured images of the Chevy Malibut on the roadside as they passed it on the way to respond to another incident.
A women had called 911 to report a possible home invasion,because her home alarm was going off,she was terrified and begged the dispatcher to send help quickly.
A burglary that is committed brazenly while the home is occupied is considered a serious incident that could result in injury or death, several officer were immediately dispatched to the scene.
Police officers arrived within a few minutes, two deputies made contact with the home owner while the others search the property for possible perpetrators.
It was a large house and officers searched it thoroughly, the dog were friendly but continued gaurding, each took a different role ,the brown feamale dog stationed herself protectively beside her person, while the withe male dog paced repeatedly back and forth between the officers.
Although the police did not find any intruders on that property that night a supervising patrol officer past Shantel’s car parked on the side of the road as he raced to the scene ,he was suspicious of the sedan and thought its occupants might possibly be involved in the potential burglary.
After responding to the home he returned to where Chantel had been parked but she wasn’t there anymore.
A pack of police cars racing to the other call had made Chantal nervous so she took off and left casey and Leo behind, she was high as a kite and running on zero sleep ,so it would be easy to dismiss her fear of being caught by the cops that night as drug adult paranoia.
But as it turns out there was a police officer on her tail ,the same cop who had spotted her earlier sped up to 90 mph to catch up to the Malibu so he could read its Wyoming license plate.he ran the digits through the moble data terminal but he didn’t get a hit .
So he asked the Douglas county regional dispatch to try running it too,he continued following Chantel until he received another call that demanded his attention as a supervisor,it was sheer luck that allowed Chantel to escape and enjoy another 2 months of freedom.
No evidence was ever found to indicate that Chantel’s crew had anything to do with the burglary call ,but the information the officers collected that night would end up serivng a valuable purpose .
In mid December when detectives started to investigate what had happened to Rachel,they were able to connect her disapperance to the silver 2016 Chevy Malibu and its location in the wee hours of the morning on November the 7th it would bring them closer to finding her.
On December 29th ,Chantel was driving the same car back in Sheridan Wyoming with 39 year old Casey and a 23 year old man named Leo Vanbuskirk, when police pulled them over for a traffic stop.
All three were arrested on drugcharges and warrants unrelated to Rachel’s disappearance, but investigators soon learned of their involvement from statements that Chantel made about Rachel while she was in custody.
The following day Aurora Colorado detectives traveled to Wyoming to interrogate the three suspects then they arrested them on first- degree kidnapping charges.
They learned that the Douglas county sheriff’s office had run Chantel’s plate around the same time Rachel went missing and contacted them to find out why…
That led officers to begin scouring a remote area in Douglas county for Rachel later that night.
Finding Rachel among the rocky Terrain in the pitch black of night proved impossible.
The next day was New year’s eve but the upcoming holiday did not slow the searchers down , early in the morning of December the 31st,the investigators reviewed the dash cam video, that had captured the footage of Chantel’s car back in November .
So they could pinpoint the location of Rachel’s body,they resumed their mission again and this time we’re able to use drones to conduct an aerial search.
Rachel was found south of Frank town in Douglas county on the east side of highway 83 and north of the East Rim Road near mile marker 48.
The search and rescue team was mystified as to how the perpetrators had managed to get Rachel down the hillside and over a barbed wire fence in the middle of the night .
One of the rescuers filmed their challenging route that the team had to take navigate to where Rachel had been lying for almost 2 months,her head was leaning against a small tree and her hands were resting in her lap,she had been shot in the top of the head,a boulder hung over part of her body.
Long after thiscrime was committed proffer sessions were conducted with Chantal edlund and Leo Vanbuskirk that included their public defenders, along with the prosecutor and detectives.
Proffers are used to obtain information from defendants in exchange for better plea deals such as reduced charges and more favorable sentencing recommendations,it was during these sessions that the nitty- gritty details of Rachel’s demise came to light.
Chantel Edlund was the first to offer in a proffer , the meeting took place on April ,20th ,2022, about 6 months after Rachel Holeman was murded.
Chantel began telling her story when rolled into Denver in November they stayed in various hotels and partied with other friends who was also in the area,the trip was going as planned…
Until one of their friends dropped a bomb on Casey .
Rachel had attempted to go over his head to buy drugs , not only that but she tried to leap frog over Casey’s supplier Sean to directly access Sean’s plug a man who went by the name of Flame.in the drug world a plug descrubes a person who can connect buyers with drugs
Casey was now furious that Rachel was trying to cut him out as the middleman and he wasn’t about to let this stinging betrayal go unaddressed .
He was going to teach her a lesson,Chantel maintains that she assumed Casey intended to get revenge by dropping Rachel off in the middle of nowhere to walk back alone.
She admitted that she was the one who sent sean a message requesting that he bring Rachel back to them.
A few horus later between 10 and 11: p.m . On November the 6th Rachel showed up with sean and flame considering the purpose of the meeting location they chose was odd.
The parking garage at the children’s hospital in Aurora,that’s because one of their friends ,23 year old man named Leo Vanbuskirk had a sick child who had been admitted there.
For his part , Leo tried to minimize his involvement with the group, he claimed he didn’t really know Rachel or Sean and had never met “Flame” before.
He said he knew Casey and Chantel and was aware that they owned guns but said that he didn’t know where the guns were that night.
Chantel and Casey wer so fond of their firearms that they even gave them names Pistol Pete and Gat Marie , respecively .
After Rachel got in the car she was trapped , pinned between Casey and Chantel,but that’s not how Chantel viewed Rachel’s predictement.
In her mind Rachel could have fought her way out if she really wanted to but that wouldn’t have been easy to accomplish.she had a person on either side who was angry and armed blocking her exit.
We’ll never know how Rachel was feeling at this point but what Chantel described give us some cues.
Three common defense reactions to fear ans stress are…
flight,fight or freeze.
When the brain conclude that it isn’t possible to fight or flee from the dangerous situations the freeze response can kick in .
Paralyzing fear might have caused Rachel to disassociate and shot down,it alowed her not to feel the full weight of what was about to happen to her.
According to Chantel,Rachel never did try to get out of the car ,she said if Rachel had fought for her freedom,they probably would have stopped the car and let her out ,but she took measures to make sure Rachel couldn’t get away.
Before they arrived at the location where she was eventually killed they stopped at a gas station to fuel and food.
When Chantel went inside she instructed Leo to take her place in the back seat so Rachel could not escape,after their pit stop,they drove for a while until Casey found a spot suitable to exact his revenge.
He instructed Chantel to pull over and got out with Leo and Rachel but then the police cars appeared that were heading to the burglary call.
And Chantel panicked when she realized one of the Cruisers was following her she also admitted to the prosecutor and detectives that she had lied in the initial interview that she had with police when she pretended she didn’t know Rachel had been murdered that night.
Caey and Leo were relieved to gte back in the car when Chantel finally found them but that feeling of solace was short-lived,it wasn’t long before Casey believed the ghost of Rachel had showed up to taunt him.
December of 2023, more than a year and a half after Chantel had hers , many of the details they supplied were the same.
But there was one significant inconsistent in their stories.
Leo tried to distance himself from Rachel’s murder , he said he knew nothing about it and didn’t find out that she had been killed until police spoke with him about it in December.
Detectives pushed him to admit that he had played a bigger role than he was willing to admit.
Leo continued to deny having any involvement in Rachel’s death but investigators remained skeptical, they wondered aloud if he maybe he was trying to protect Casey or was he trying to protect himself.
While Leo was tight lipped about what had happened to Rachel , Chantel was more forthcoming with the details of Rachel’s last moments.
After hearing Chantel’s statements there was one final task to complete in the profer session, the detective asked her to identify the victim and each suspect out of a six pack of photo lineups.
The exercise revealed that Casey’s brutal killing of Rachel had not diminished her adoration of him one bit, she was still clearly smitten when his photo was presented.
In august 2022 Shantel Edlund pled guilty to conspircay to commit second degree murder and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
Leo Vanbuskirk plead guoly to charges of conspiracy to commit second degree murder and a second degree kidnapping, he was sentenced in August of 2024 to 25 years for each charge,those sentences will run concurrently.upon release he will face 3 years of mandatory parole.
Casey Childers opted to have his case go to trial rather than accept a plea deal, in July of 2024 a jury found him guilty of first -degree murder,he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole,he was also convicted of second degree kidnapping and sentenced to 32 years plus another 16 years for conspiracy to commit second degree kidnapping .
Those two sentences will run concurrently with his life sentence.