In this true crime documentary, we dive deep into a disturbing case that happened in Texas, USA. At a residence locally referred to as “The Haunted House”, a terrifying discovery was made, which lead to a manhunt.

This is Charlie  Radle and his girlfriend  Jackie Neal.

They are  currently standing at the front gate of an abandoned farmhouse in Lake Brownwood, Texas , commonly referred to;

as the haunted house.

Moments earlier, they placed a call  to 911.

Shantay Blankenship had gone missing two days earlier while out on one of her usual evening walks.

Her family quickly became concerned ,because chantay could not read or right more than a few words.

She could not drive,hold a job , or live independently.

After receiving this call, from charlie and jackie ,who were helping searching for Shantay , officers were immediately  dispatched to the haunted house,roughly  5 miles away where Chantay lived.

They told the officers that when they arrived at the house , they  quickly noticed fresh tire tracks in the dirt.

The couple also noticed what appeared to be human hear  stuck to the gate, so they decided to search the rest of the property.

The officers  went over to the storm cellar themsleves and inside they found Chantay  exactly how Charlie described her , she had cuts  bruises  all over her face and head.

They also  found a random lawn mower blade beside her body ,and more blood  on the  outside of the storm cellar.

It was clear that something  horrific had happened to Shantay.

The officer  immediately secured the scene and performed a search of the property , starting  right outside of  t he gate.

In addition  to the tire marks and  hear an the gate, there was also a trail of colorful  bracelets  scattered on the ground leading up to her body.

Chantay was known to wear these bracelets on her arm,  but it was not yet clear why or how they had come off.

Leading up to the storm cellar , more hair was found, the hair was later confirmed as shantay’s.

When the coroner  examined her , they determined that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.

Likely from the lawn mover blade found at the scene.

They noticed that in  addtion to the cuts and bruises on her head and face she also had bruises on her neck , arms and legs.

They also found male DNA on her body.

But t perhaps the most perlexing injuries were the jagged lines on chest no one had  any idea what could have caused this type of injury.

Since Shantay was missing on friday the 13th and her body was found at the haunted  house.

They wondered if whoever did this has a strange fixation with horror.

While the investigators continued processing the crime,officers  went to the North Lake Church to inform the search party that the investigation was now a homicide.

Several people at the church said that on the day Shantay went missing they had  seen Shantay’s boyfriend John Adams,pick her up at the Monte Carlo cafe before they returned home together.

John  then left for work at about 6:00  p.m.the same time that Shantay  went on her daily walk.

She  then met up with friend Caitlyn and the two walked together for a couple of hours.

It seemed that Caitlyn was the last person to have seemed Shantay alive, so the detectives were initially suspicious of her ,but by the end of the interview,it was clear that she played no part in the murder .

However , she was able to give them another lead.

Whoever  ” Colin ” was , it now seemed that he may have been the last person to see Shantay alive.

So,the detectives asked around to gather more information about him, they found out that Colin lived around the corner from Shantay.

He was in his early 20s and did odd jobs around the neighborhood which included mowing lawns.

Sometimes Colin and Shantay would go on joy rides together,the detectives decided to go to Colin’s house to get his side of the story.

they asked Colin when he last saw Shantay and he said that he saw her from afar as she passed through the neighborhood on her usual evening walk….

They then asked if the two had any sort of romantic relationship,according to Colin ,shantay had  unrequited love for him.

Having  answered all of their quiestions, Colin seemed cooperative, but they couldn’t take his word on antyhing just  yet .

They asked if he would come down to the station to take a polygraph test he reluctantly agreed .

Colin seemed confident in proving his innocence right up until they were about to  begin the polygraph.

When he suddenly he changed his story , he told the polygraph examiner that he actually did have a romantic relationship with Shantay.

With that  information off of his chest,they hooked him up to the polygraph,  although  these tests are unreliable,they often used as a tool to pressure the suspect into providing more information.

After the test,the examiner broke the awkward news to Colin.

Shortly after , the detective spoke with Colin’s brother, and he along with several other family members confirmed Colins alibi.

This wasn’t the strongest alibi since all of the witnesses vouching for him were part of his  family , but for now ,they hit a dead end with Colin and desided to move on with their investigation.

Detectives looked into several more persons of interest as well , including Charlie Radle and Jacky Neal,the ones who found Shantay’s body.

They wanted to know what inclined this couple to go out into the middle of nowhere, five miles  away from where everybody else was searching, when they happened to find this obscured abandoned house.

So, they  invited them both to the station and interview Charlie first.

Apparently , Charlie had seen Shantay  around noon  on the day she disappeared.

He told the detectives that when he and Jackie heard that Shantay was missing , they immediately hit the country roads to look for her.

He then said that he had once heard about this haunted house from his kids and thought  that perhaps Shantay had gone to  explore it and something  bad had happened.

After searching in and around the house, he noticed  the storm cellar where he found her.

In an attempt to prove his innocence , Charlie volunteer to take a polygraph test,no ,  deception  was detected in any of Charlie’s answers  and detectives had  no solid evidence pointing to him as a suspect.

They came to the same  conclusion during Jackie’s  interview as well.

There DNA was collected and they were put on the back burner while the detectives waited  for the results from the crime lab.

In the meantime,investigators moved on to their next  person of interest, Shantay’s boyfriend,John, they wonder if John had found out about Shantay’s alleged  love affair with Colin and killed her to get revenge.

Two days after Shantay’s body was found, John allowed the detectives to inspect his and Shantay’s shared bedroom.

After an uneventful search ,they went back outside and told John the main reason they were there, to investigate him as person of interest.

John seemed completely understanding and his level of cooperation was unaffected, he proceeded to take the detectives on a tour of the property to  looke for more clues.

During this search,the detectives stubled what appeared to be a lawmmower graveyard.

Considering Shantay had been killed with a lawnmower blade, this greately increased their suspicions of John.

Following the search, he was asked  to come to the station for an interview , once he arrived,the detectives asked him,if they could analyze his cell phone data to which he happily  agreed .

John told the detectives that the last time he spoke to Shantay wasn’t on the phone , it was in person,he gave them the same story that the other witnesses gave.

He picked her up from Monte Carlo Cafe and drove her home,they both showered before he left for work at 6:00.pm.

This was later confirmed by security cameras at John’s work along with the time sheets that indicated when he clocked in and out.

After his overnight shift ,he returned home at about 5:00 a.m,but Shantay was nowhere to be found.

John’s timeline checked out,but it didn’t mean that he was ruled out just yet,they still hadn’t questioned John about Shantay’s alleged love affair with Colin.

The detectives revealed everything Colin had told them ; John claimed this affair was news  to him, it seemed emotionally  effected by it.

Following  this interview,John was free to go,there was no reason to label him as a suspect … until ,the investigators looked through his cellphone data.

It turns out that there several messages John had deleted directly before heading to the police station.

So ,the  detectives asked john come back to the station the next day and they immediately confronted him about the messages.

Eventually  , John gave another explanation for the deleted  messages,apparently , John deleted some incriminating messages between him and his dealer.

The detectives weren’t bying it,so ,they applied more pressure trying to get John to confess,however,just like last time, they had no choice to let him go and after looking further into the deleted text messages,it turns out John was telling the truth.

But the detectives weren’t doen with him just yet, they  reached out to John and Shantay’s inner circle to see what dirt thay could dig up.

Apparently ,John’s jealousy had affected the relationship on more than one occasion.

One of Shantay’s friends,Bitsy Hobbs,was able to recall overhearing a fight between the couple.

Those  who were close to John, also said that around the time of shantay’s murder ,he seemed to believe that the relationship was a lost cause  and expected to end sometimes soon .

But this  new information still wasn’t  enough to obtain a confession,so they interviewed John two more times, and each time he maintained that while his  relationship wasn’t perfect ,he would never lay a hand on her.

Once again, this lead fizzled out and was put on the back burner while they awaited DNA results.

During their initial interviews with members of the church ,some people said that a red and white Ford Bronco,driving around the area Shantay disappeared.

After searching the database and asking around ,they found a young man that drove this vehicle,the only one in town with a red and white bronco, his name was Bobby  Soza, a so -called party  animal.

While stopping by his residence,Bobby let the detectives search his house, shed ,and trailer for evidence,but they  didn’t find anything .

He also agreed to come down to the station for an interview.

Bobby said that he drove by Shantay while driving around that night but had nothing to do with her disappearance.

He explained that he was at a party  at the time that Shantay disappeared and that his fellow partygoers could vouch for him.

Following this interview ,the detectives were easily able to conform Bobby’s claims, crossing a potential suspect off there  list.

This list was actaully much bigger than the six names you see here,throughout the entirety of this case, there wer  dozens of leads and the detectives looked into every  single one of them.

They even investigated  the pastor of the community church at one point none, of these leads panned out .

To make it matter ,worse , the DNA resulst came back  and non of the suspects were a match and nothing in the  National DNA database matched either.

Days  turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, Shantay’s pink decorated funural  came and went,all the while killer roamed free.

Hopes to bring this monster to justice slowly  faded and trust  in the neighborhood faded with it.

Somebody knew what happened to Shantay,yet nobody came forth.

2017

One day in 2017, a retired Brown county investigator was watching a true crime show and learned about a new DNA technic.

The technologi is called snapshot, it is created by a company  based out of Virginia called Parabon and uses DNA to figure the physical attributes of a person, but the best part .

The technology doesn’t need much to do the test, as a little as 13 eenth other saliva from  a sip of a bottle of water is  enough  to make a profile.

He told  Brown County sergeant Scott Bird about this new technology and after convincing some colleagues,fundling was approved.

The authorities submitted  the DN to  the parabon Nano Labs in Virginia and five months later  they came back with this profile.

A caucasian man of Northen European descent with blue eyes and brown hair.

Law enforcement immediately posted the image online, hoping that somebody could point out who it resembled.

As the image was  shared between Shantay’s family, her half- brother, cutter immediately thought of someone,his high shool bully , Ryan Riggs.

The resemblance was uncanny.

Ryan had just started workin in lawn care, around the time of Shantay’s disappearance, he was also a member of  her church and not only he helped search for her .

But he even came to her funural, allthough he didn’t enter the building ,he waited in line, got to the front door , flipped through the service program and  then left.

Looking  through his criminal record, he was also a suspect in an  illegal dumping case, someone had been dumping trash bags  on a county road  in the same area as the haunted house.

The detectives went to Ryan’s residence ,but it was already too late.

Ryan was gone.

They immediately launched a manhunt,but before it could get off the ground, something shocking happened…

November 17,2017

Moments before church began.

Right before a regular Wednesday night church service , Ryan showed up with his parents, he asked  pastor ron keener if he could confess to the congregation during the service, and the pastor agreed.

The service commenced with Ryan standing at the pulpit, in his brokeness.

Everybody as  devastated , some dropped  to their knees in sorrow while other were consumed by anger.

Pastor keener  invited these people to the pulpit and one by one they embrassed Ryan and told him ,they forgive him and that he was loved.

Once the service ended,pastor Keener drove Ryan to the sheriff’s office to be turned inwhen he arrived ,he was brought  into the interogation room for questioning.

After the assault, he was worried that Shantay would tell someone what happened if he let her live, so he decided to kill her.

The  odd mark on Shantay’s chest finally had an explanation,it was from the bottom of Ryan’s shoe .

Ryan  then told the detectives something brand new, he described the  internal battle he was  fighting  throughout this entire ordeal.

Ryan is essentially saying that he was possessed by a an evil entity and that entity killed Shantay,he was just the vessel,but this is complete nonsense,what about the 18 months following Shantay’s murder?

Why didn’t he turned himself into the police when he wasn’t possessed?

It was more likely that this was a tactical to garner sympathy while offloading any responsibility.

Ryan went on to describe how he would torment his family dog ,but would stop once he realized what he was doing.

The interview was rapped up, and  Ryan was charged with capital murder.

In the responses to these charges, Shantay’s mother Michelle and stepfather Steve,released a video on social media expressing their gratitude,however , Shantay’s family ultimately didn’t want to pursue the death penalty as they believed being in prison for the rest of his life would be a harsher  punishment.

So the state offered Ryan a plea deal,(life sentence withoout parole). which he accepted.

Ryan Riggs is now 28 years old and serving his sentence at All Red unit in Iowa Park ,Texas.

Property linked to Chantay Blankinship’s murder demolished to restore peace to community