Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.

This  mail truck belongs to 33 year old Jason Schaeffer.

And he was just executed in broad daylight while delivering the neighborhood’s mail .

As he sttod  at these community boxes ,

He had no idea his entire route …

…Was being tracked by someone  …

..hiding in plain sight.

What looked liked a random act of violence,

 Would soon reveal a cold calculated ambush.

And a web of  betrayal involving the very people he once called family.

October 13, 2021

October 13th ,2021, Longmont ,Colorado.

At 12 :30 p.m.,911 dispatchers received a call from the Somerset Meadows Neighborhood reporting that their mailman , 33 year old  Jason Schaefer , had been shot.

The people nearby were too shaken to start CPR, and Jason was losing blood fast , the closest  patrol cars rushed over ,hoping they could reach him before it was to late.

Jason had been shot four times in the head  and back  in broad daylight, and he weas still fighting for his life on the pavement,Officers kept CPR going for several more minutes as they waited for  paramedics to arrive.

For a shooting in  broad daylight,  you’d think finding the killer would be simple…

It wasn’t.

Even with multiple witnesses hearing the shots and  seeing the shooter , they were  still gone before got there.

These men were one of the few who were able to get a look at the shooter.

And at the time,  description was the only lead the official had to find him.

White male, dark jacket , dark pants, average build.

It was a cand of outfit meant to blend in and reveal nothing.

Wven with a wide  perimeter locked down ,the shooter was nowhere to be found.

Jason worked this route all the time.

And when he was shot , he was in the middle of delivering mail to the community boxes with everything unlocked and  accesssible.

At first , officers had to consider that the real target might have been the mail , and Jason had simply gotten in in the way.

But that  theory fell apart fast,not a single piece of mail was missing.

Before they could get much further , one of Jason’s co -workers, Jessica, arrived at the scene, and she  already had someone in mind who might have wanted to hurt him.

Devan and Jason met through the post  office in 2015.

But after having their son Chase , the releationship fell apart.

And the two  endend up working out  of different facilities.things were  already messy ,and the custody battle only made them worse,

Devon kept  showing up at Jason’s workplace and it was getting harder and harder for get any space from her.

That’s when Jessica revealed a crucial piece of information.

Jason’s  current girlfriend was Rosa , Devon’s sister .

their dynamic was complicated enough, but this took it somewhere else entirely.

Still,  no  matter how  complicated  Jason’s personal life was , police had a killer to find first.

That’s when a neighbor came forward and told the officers that they saw they whole thing unfold.

She has seen the shooting happen, but even she couldn’t give a clear enough look at the suspect.

So, officers started going door-to -door asking neighbors to check their CCTV and  doorbell cameras.

In cases like this, home surveillance can be the difference between a dead end and a breakthrough.

But most of the cameras nearby weren’t pointed in the right  direction.

Then,  just when it seemed like a bust, one house turned out to have  a direct view of everything.

The footage made one thing obvious , the shooter had been waiting for Jason , the moment he turned toward the mailboxes, the shots fired  one after the other.

Just as they  were going through the footage , officers got the news Jason  had died on the way to the hospital.

At that point , this was no longer a shooting investigation,

it was a murder hunt.

As  detectives worked through the neighborhood footage , they tracked where the shooter went after feeing the scene.

That was when the case took a turn, the shooter wasn’t a man at all…

It was Jason’s  ex, Devan,

and  she had fled in her own car, a black Nissan Rogue.

One of Jason’s supervisors was also there and she explained how Devon may have known exactly where to find him.

Because Devan had worked out of the same office as Jason before she knew how things worked and how to get information.

Investigators believed that gave her the chance to  see where Jason would be and  set this up so he never saw her coming.

What made this even worse was that Jason and Devan’s son,Chase was in her care that day.

So before the detective could bring her in ,they  had to make sure  Chase was  safe.

But by the time officers got to his daycare, Devan had  already started asking questions.

The officer secured Chase and brought him to the station and instead  of chasing Devan down, detectives let her walk right into them.

They played it carefully , making  her she was just  coming to pick  Chase up from the station .

Devan didn’t know it yet, but she wasn’t walking out of that station.

And to strengthen the case before confronting her , detectives also brought in her sister Rosa.

To understand the motive ,they first had to unpack  how Rosa and Jason ending up dating the father of her sister’s child.

Rosa had gotten involved with men Devan had been with before, but Jason was the first one that turned into a serious relationship.

On the surface ,Devan seemed willing to coexist with  them,but underneath that ,the tension was building fast,eventually , it built  into murder.

But according to Rosa, Jason had already started to fear that  something like this could happen.

Jason  knew Devan well enough to sense she was building towards something.

But instead of focusing on  protecting himself,

he focused on protecting Chase by trying to get more custody time through the courts.

But Devan made sure he never got that chance.

Back in the interview room , Devan was starting to  get impatient and began lashing out at the officers.

Devan knew exactly where  Jason had been,but at this stage ,she still thought she was selling the  concerned mother act.

But,how well could she act,

 if they brought her face to face with what she done?

Her reaction was the first red flag, and it only got worse from there…

With  those questions , Devon wasn’t grieving, she was fishing , trying to figure out how much police knew and whether she was still in the clear.

Once  it was made clear she was a suspect , the nerves kicked in . 

And what stood out most was that  she seemed less upset about Jason being dead  than she was about officers picking her son up from daycare.

When trying to rattle the detective didn’t work, Devan switched tactics and started trying to make Jason look like  the problem.

Just when Devan started to think she had control of the room,the detective took it right back and started laying out the evidence against her.

Devan’s original alibi was simple.

She said she was in Loveland delivering mail around 30 miles away from the murder scene in Longmont.

But the scanner she should have have  been using  on her route sat still for 3 hours that afternoon,right in the same window Jason was shot and killed.

She then claimed she had been with her boyfriend AJ  for lunch , but he  was seen at hooters in Loveland having lunch with his friends.

Leaving Devan without an  alibi.

Even with all of that stacked against her,Devan seemed to think she could talk her way out of it.

But lying to a local detective was one thing ,lying to this man was going to be much harder.

A US postal  inspector s a federal law enforcement agent who investigates crimes connected to the postal service.

And unlike a regular detective, he knew exactly how postal routes worked, how the scanners worked, and what Devan’s story should have looked like if she were telling the truth.

The questions  may have sounded repetitive, but by answering them, Devan had locked herself into a story.

She said she had been at work all day,that  the only break she took was lunch at AJ’s house with AJ there,

and that  nobody else had access to her car,now she had to face what that story really meant.

By this point , Devan  couldn’t hold it together anymore , her anger toward Rosa came spilling out , and she  tried to push suspicion in  her sister’s direction instead.

That  misdirection went nowhere.

Detectives came back in  and collected samples from Devan  to check for gunshot residue and blood evidence.

And that was only  the start.

Detectives  search  Devan’s vehicle,too . 

Then pulled her phone records , and that’s where the case really begin closing in on her.

Not only, did her  phone show that she was on Loveland at the time of the shooting, but she’d also  been in several calls with AJ up to and after  the attack.

When detectives cross – checked AJ’s  records, they found something even worse….

For much of the morning, October 13th, AJ had been tracking Jason’s route.

Only minutes before the shooting, he  broke away and headed to hooters, AJ had been feeding her the setup the whple to,e. tracking Jason  until Devan had the perfect moment to strike.

The second he realized  Devan  wasn’t getting out of this, he started  putting distance between himself and her.

He claimed he went over to warn  Jason, but the only person who could have backed that up  was dead .

A  search of AJs phone turned up one of the damaging pieces of evidence in the entire case, a snapchat photo.

Devan had sent it before the murder, showing her self in the same outfit the killer would later be seen wearing.

Investigators said it was taken in the same bathroom where she had sent AJ  plenty of normal selfies before, making it even harder to brush off as meaningless.

By then, prosecutors believed the two were already deep into planning the ambush.

with AJ tracking Jason’s rout , and Devan preparing to carry it out.

By the time the case reached trial , the  motive was hard to miss.

Devan was jealous, angry , and terrified of Jason and Rosa becoming the new family in Chase’s life.

And with the custody fight closing in, and Jason pushing for more time with his son, she made sure it would never get that far.

On March 7, 2023,

Devan Shriner found guilty of first degree – murder and sentenced to life in prison  without parole.

AJ Ritchie, the man prosecutors said helped plan the ambush and guide her straight to Jason , was later convicted as well ,and on September 27th,2o23  he was sentenced to life without parole.

In  the end, what started as jealousy, control, and fear of losing her  place in her son’s life…

Ended  with  Jason dead , Chase without his father.

And both of them spending the rest of their lives in prison.