Shana Jaros

All witnesses, suspects, and persons of interest are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Warning this episode contains graphic crime scene detail. Please listen with discretion. Welcome to Primetime Crime. I'm your host, Kylie. Let's talk right now and true crime, and then together we are going to work on warming up some cold cases. Let's go, Hi, guys, Welcome to this week's episode of Primetime Crime. It's Kylie. I am a little less heated up than I was last week, but we do have some things to catch up on. So Brooks how and Joseph Lawson, we're both found guilty for their role in the disappearance of Crystal Rogers. I've talked about her quite a bit on here. Crystal went missing ten years ago and they still have not found her body. And then we have poor Tommy Ballard, Crystal's dad, who went to the ends of the earth to try to figure out what happened to his daughter, who also lost his life in this journey of trying to get justice for Crystal. So ten years Crystal's family has been waiting for Brooks's day in court. So he and Joseph Lawson have both been found guilty for their role in Crystal's disappearance and murder. Just because we don't have a body doesn't mean that a murder didn't take. Place, and they prove that in this case. The jury spent all of five minutes deliberating their recommendation for a life sentence for Brooks and five years for tampering with evidence. He's going to serve those consecutively. And then for Joseph Lawson, they recommended twenty years for the conspiracy to commit murder and five years for tampering with evidence, So twenty five years for him. And when I say it is a sweet sweet day. In the true crime world, we finally are on our way to getting justice for Crystal. They're still more to go. We still have to make some arrests in Tommy Ballard's case, and there's a lot more to Crystal's case, in my opinion, a lot more key players that have yet to been brought forward and arrested. I'm sure there's some issues with. You know, of course, getting enough evidence to charge these people, so on and so forth to bring a case against them, but we have not heard the last of it, and I think it is a sweet day that Brooks Howck is never going to see the light a day again, because that's exactly what he deserves. Switching gears now, Donna Adelson's trial is set to begin next month in August, and the witness list came out today, and I was kind of surprised by some of the people on the witness list. Of course, we have Charlie Adelson. We have Wendy Adelson. We have Rob Adelson, who is the estranged Adelson sibling, the only one with any sense to get away from his Kookie Kookie family. We have Atherine meg Banawa, We have Luis Rivero, we have Sigfredo Garcia. We have a pretty stacked list. We have Jeff Lecas. There is going to be. Some really interesting things. I do feel like we're obviously going to hear a lot of what we heard in Charlie's trial, which I previously went over all of that in my summer series for twenty twenty four. It is a long, convoluted story, so I do think there's going to be a lot of the same, but it's very much going to be catered towards obviously Donna's involvement in everything. But the states list has about fifty eight people on it for witnesses, so it's definitely going to be interesting. So with all the news last week Brian. Coberger pleading guilty to killing Kaylee Maddie Ethan Inzana, he officially signed his confession, which is so chilling, and it's basically him saying, yes, I am pleading guilty to killing these four people. His signature at the bottom, and that is. That he's not required to ever speak about why he did what he did, what exactly happened when he was in that house because he's really truly the only one that is living that can tell us exactly what happened that night because everybody else that could tell a story is no longer here. So he's not required to do any of that with this plea deal. Now, my own personal opinion on the matter is I think the plea deal is a cop out. I think he is a coward and he was willing to inflict death on four young people, but he himself wasn't willing to have death inflicted on him via the death penalty. You guys know, I don't have a super. Strong feeling towards the death penalty as a whole. I have a lot of problems with that. There's a lot of logistics and outliers that I just don't necessarily agree with. But for him to so cowardly take a plea deal and cop out and not even say what happened, or be required to say what happened, that's the thing you would think. Somewhere along the line in. This plea deal they could say, the prosecution could say, if you want death taken off the table this bad you agree to this plea deal. However, you are required to divulge to us what happened that night. Now, granted, he could lie through his teeth and make a completely ridiculous story up similar to what Chris Watts did, because initially Chris Watts had all sorts of stories about what happened to the kids, why Sanan died, what happened she attacked the kids, and he got so upset that then he attacked her. He had so many stories, and then he finally gave a story about how he tried to kill the kids but they ended up not passing away, and then he killed Shanan and the kids were still alive. So he had no tes choice but to take Shanan and the kids and that's when he drove them to the little site and then did what he did. We're not going into it because I absolutely hate that man with every fiber of my being. And there's no telling. I don't believe for one second that Chris Watts is telling an ounce of truth in anything he says. I don't believe him. I really don't. I don't know what is true and what's not. But he did seemingly give a confession as to what happened. Whether it's true, whether it's not, we really don't know. But with this guy, he's not even required to ever come forward and say what happened. And if he did, would we believe him? I don't really know, but you would think if you're so desperate to have death taken off the table as a prosecutor, you can very much use that as leverage to maybe help him say, Okay, I will confess. I'm going to tell you exactly what happened, so that way the families know and have some ounce like you can even have an ounce of closure in a situation like this, but have some ouns of knowing what happened and being able to kind of accept what has been told to you and start to try to put the pieces of your life back together. Because these four people were brutally murdered inside of their own homes, in their beds. It is awful and tragic, and the plea deal is bullshit if you ask me my personal opinion, and I stand with Kayley's family on that, and they have every right to feel that way. The other families feel a different. Type of way about it. Everyone has a right to feel the way they feel. Nobody's feelings are less valid. They've all been through something super traumatic. I think the plea deal is dumb. I do not agree with it. But the plea deal is signed, sealed, and delivered, so he will spend the rest of his life in prison. His sentencing is set for I believe July twenty third, but the sentence is you're never going to see the light of day again. I personally, now this is just me speaking. Hope that Brian Coberger has a really, really difficult time in prison. I hope the other inmates are not kind to him. I hope they make his life not enjoyable, and I hope that every single day of his life is not fun and he has not one minute of peace. That is my hope and my wish for him. I do not like to wish bad on other people. I am generally a very nice person. But he took four lives, and he's destroyed so many others that surround them, and I just hope that he has nothing but bad things coming to him in the future. Okay, I think we are going to call that good for right now. In true crime, of course, there is so much going on in the true crime world. It's been a very overwhelming week. We've also had these awful, awful, devastating floods in Texas in the whole country. Entire homes swept away by these. Horrible flood waters. The campers from Camp Mystick, an entire cabin of girls being completely swept away. It is so devastating, how fast that water rose, how quick everything transpired. It was in the middle of the night, all of them were sleeping. Everything happened so fast. I can't even put into words how devastating all of this has been for that area. But Texas, like anytime something happens in Texas, Texas is like a loyal state. We stick together. Anytime something like this happens. We've been through it with floods and hurricanes, and Texas just very much sticks together and we have each other's backs of course, during any natural disaster like this that's happened, so I did want to mention it. There are still a lot of people who are missing and who are unaccounted for. There are more and more coming out every single day because people are realizing they haven't heard from their family member or they haven't heard from their friend, and it's just piling on to a list of people that are unaccounted for. And it's so horrible. Those poor kids, all all of it. The parents that sent their kids away to this really nice camp and it's a great camp, like it has such a great reputation. The guy that owns the camp was even killed trying to rescue some of his campers. Like if that's not a good person who left at a time of tragedy to go help his camp, I don't even have. Words for it. It's just all so sad and tragic. So continued thoughts and prayers sent their way. There are a lot of really reputable places that you can donate online too. I'm going to try to share some of those to my social media as well, because there is unfortunately a lot of scam artists out there who are creating things that look legit but aren't. But there are a lot of really good organizations that are accepting monetary donations as well as other donations because they need a lot of things to help with these search and rescues that they're trying to do. Is awful. It's almost been a whole week since this happened, and it's just unimaginable. But I did want to take a minute to mention it because it has been very much at the forefront of everyone's thoughts and prayers for about the last week. So continue prayers sent their way, for sure. So with all of that being said, we are now going to get into today's episode. Alrighty guys, we are jumping into a brand new unsolved case. So for this week's episode, I am going to be telling you about the unsolved November nineteen ninety five homicide of an eighteen year old named Shanna Jarros. Out of Illinois. Like so many of the other cases that I cover, this one is sad and unfortunate, not only because Shana lost her life, but because she was just starting her life out. She was only eighteen years old. She had so many dreams, so many ambitions, and unfortunately the person that took her life rob the world of all of the good that she was slated to do. As always, I share these episodes in hopes that it reaches the right set of ears and the person or persons who are responsible for Shanea's murder finally come forward with what they know. This November will officially mark thirty years since her life was viciously taken. Thirty years without answers is long enough, so we are going to go ahead and get into Shana's story. Shana Marie Jarros was born on July sixteenth of nineteen seventy seven to her dad, Dwayne and her mother, Debbie in Lichfield, Illinois. Shana was the old and she had three younger siblings. She had a younger sister named Janelle and two younger brothers named Stefan and Jeffrey. Dwayne and Debbie owned a local cafe called the Time Out Cafe, and Dwayne also worked at a bottle making factory in the evening, so he would work at the cafe during the day and then he would go into the bottle making factory in the evening. And work to the evening shift. Shana was described by. Her father as a loving, giving person who was very passionate about helping children and the elderly alike. She graduated from. Nacomas High School in nineteen ninety five and had dreams of becoming an RN and had even gotten a job at a local nursing home called the Golden Manor Nursing Home. She worked there since she was about sixteen years old and worked as a CNA. She went very much back and forth between wanting to either work with children or work with the geriatric population and help elderly individuals with Alzheimer's, but she was only eighteen years old, so she had time to figure out exactly what she wanted to do in the realm of nursing. She also very much enjoyed babysitting. She was well known in the area for being a great babysitter and a lot of people would rely on her for that. Shana did have a really good relationship with her family, but when she turned eighteen, she very much wanted to get out on her own and kind of. Pave her own way. And I think at eighteen, we all we can all say we've probably been there where we think that we are old enough to live. Out on her own and we want to just kind of have our own space. So she decided that she wanted to move out of her parents' home and get an apartment with the roommate. But her parents were pretty taken aback by this decision, and they did attempt several times to try and get Shana to change her mind and not move out, but she was bound to determine to do her own thing. She even went as far as to sign a lease on her new apartment without telling her parents that she was going and doing that, and her parents very much thought that she was too young to live on our own, which is super understandable. But despite that, the decision had been made, and after all, Shanna was eighteen years old. And like I said, I can very much put myself back into being eighteen and thinking like a typical teenager, you want your freedom, you want your own space. So I very much understand Shana's mindset around this period of time in her life. I understand it. I get it, And hindsight is twenty twenty. You never think as a kid, as a teenager, that anything bad is going to happen to you, it's. Just not in your realm of thinking. And the apartment that she rented was going to be in pretty close proximity to where her parents lived, and it was in the town that she lived in and grew up in. So she ended up moving into this apartment with the roommate. And the apartment was located at five twenty seven South Maple Street in Nacomis, Illinois. So this isn't your type of apartment building where you think there's several floors on all of that. This was one big building that was one story and it had essentially been divided into six units, so they're all pretty small spaces and in very close proximity to each other, all of the apartments. So it was also around the same time that Shana's sister Janelle said that she started hanging out with a not so great crowd. These weren't the typical people that Shana would hang out with, and they were just generally not great influences. Shana also had a boyfriend at the time, although they hadn't been dating long at the time of her death. But like I said, Shana is bound and determined to figure life out for herself. She moved into this apartment only one week prior to her murder. Now, the town that she lived in, Nacomis, Illinois, it was very safe. The last murder that had occurred there was in nineteen sixty nine, and I'm sure although Shana's family wasn't happy about her leaving, they did feel safe knowing that she was at least going to be living close by and in a town they knew was relatively safe. So we are now going to get into the night that Shana lost her life. It was Halloween night, October thirty first of nineteen ninety five. She had taken out one of her friends and neighbor's daughter out trigg or treating. Shana worked with her mom at the nursing home and this woman had to work the night shift and she didn't want her daughter to miss the Halloween festivities, so Shana graciously volunteered to take her out. Which is just the kind of girl Shana was. She was young, but she was very sweet and very thoughtful and wanted to help people. So she took this girl out and then brought her home before returning to her own apartment. Shana then decided to host her very first get together at her apartment with some friends around eight thirty PM. And this event was mostly just a. Few of her friends, but she also very much wanted her younger brother to stop by for trigger treating, so her dad, Dwayne, took Shana's younger brother, Stefan, over to her. Apartment around nine thirty. Now, Stefan was only nine years old at the time, so I'm sure in his mind he was excited to go visit with his big sister and get some Halloween candy. So Dwayne arrived, pulled in the driveway and saw about four people inside Shana, Shana's roommate Tanya Gilmour, her boyfriend Jason Carver, and a man named Billy Molloy who was the girl's neighbor. They were all sitting at a table playing a card game, and Jason and Billy were having a beer. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing wild and crazy. Stefan went inside for a little while while Dwayne waited in the driveway in the car. He got his candy, visited with his sister briefly, and then went back out to his dad's car. Dwayne said in an NBC News article interview that she had on a blue house coat and looked out to the car. He then said that he would usually always turn on the light and wave, but for whatever reason, he didn't do it that night, and he said it haunts him to this day. Unfortunately, this would be the last time that Dwyane or Stefan would see Shana alive. What transpired in the next few hours is unknown. The Halloween party ended around midnight, and it's assumed Shana went to sleep. However, the next morning, at six point fifty on November one of nineteen ninety five, Shana's landlady, who was also a next door neighbor, had noticed that her door was left open, and even though Shana had only lived there for about a week, this was unusual for her door to be open, so the landlady would call out for her and got no response, and with that she ended up pushing the door open and finding a horrific site. She saw Shana laying on the floor, partially cut with a quilt and covered in blood. She immediately called police. Shana had been stabbed over fifty times in her upper neck and chest area, and her throat had been slit. The suspected time of Shana's death was around four a m. They found no signs of force entry into the apartment or any sign of sexual assault, but who could have possibly done this? So following this discovery, Duane received a phone call from a detective about his daughter's murder. Now, initially, he didn't really think anything of this phone call coming in other than maybe somebody was contacting him about Shana's Camaro that had been wrecked a few weeks earlier. Now, he had just gotten off from working the night shift, so he heard the phone ring and didn't answer it. However, shortly thereafter he knew something was wrong when law enforcement showed up at the Jari's home and they told him Shana had been murdered. Duane immediately yelled for Janelle, who was homesick that day. Janelle is quoted as saying, I was upstairs sleeping. My dad yelled at me from the bottom of the stairs. Janelle, Janelle, they killed her. They killed your sister. End quote. And then Dwayne called Debbie, of course, who was working at the diner, to tell her the horrific news. And when she did come home, she just completely collapsed. Now, law enforcement, of course begins their investigation, and initially they said they didn't believe that this was a random act of violence. They also stated that nothing was taken from the apartment, so they knew that they could rule out robbery as a motive. Things in the apartment when Shane's body was found looked pretty similarly to how they looked the night prior, so there was nothing really out of place. It didn't look like anything had. Been gone through. Law enforcement received over one hundred tips, however, none of them amounted to anything. They of course wanted to speak with the people that Shana was last wit that evening, and they were all very quickly ruled out as suspects, and honestly, there is much available in regards to this as to why they were ruled out, but they were ruled out. They also wanted to speak with the neighbor, since they all lived in pretty close proximity. They thought if this horrific attack happened, somebody had to have heard something or saw something. Now, there was one neighbor. Who was out of town, so that person, of course could not be spoken to, and another neighbor who was the landlady, did report hearing shuffling or scuffling noises from Shana's apartment around four fifty six a m. But didn't see anybody entering or exiting the apartment. After the fact, nothing really looked suspicious. Nobody else close reported seeing anything suspicious or anybody coming and going that. Looked like they were up to no good. Authorities definitely thought this was a crime of passion and personal But who would want to do this to Shana? She was very well known in town, didn't have any known enemies, and was very well liked. Was she attacked as she was answering the door or was this somebody she knew and trusted and willingly led into her apartment? Now this next part take it for what it's worth. This is all that I could find. And I don't know the validity of this or exactly who they're talking about, but it is reported that people that Shana interacted with leading up to her murder left the state shortly after her murder. Now, like I said. It's not really reported what this means, or if it was everyone she interacted with that day or the people that were at the party, But it's an interesting thing to talk about, to say the least. Now, if they are talking about Tanya Jason, and Billy. We can break this down a little bit, right. I will say, if my roommate was brutally murdered in the apartment that I shared with her, I would probably want to leave town to and I'm sure Jason, being her boyfriend, would have gone with her since I'm sure this was a very very traumatic event for her and Billy was her neighbor. So again, if something like this happened to somebody that I lived in very close proximity to, I would also probably want to leave the state. I would personally be worried that the killer would come back and that I could be next. So while this could look suspicious from one angle, I could also rationalize it making sense that they left if that was the case, If this is even who is being talked about when it's reported that some of the individuals she interacted with. That day left the state. Also, if we are talking about her roommate, the roommate's boyfriend, and the neighbor, these are all very young people, and actions following a traumatic event can't really be judged because we don't know what we would do if we were in a situation like that. Trauma does really wild things to a person and their actions. Not that I think leaving the state after my roommate is murdered is a crazy action. Like I said, I understand that and can rationalize it. I just wanted to kind of flip the other side of the coin because I very much think in a situation like this, the last three people that were seen with Shana are automatically going to be under a microscope and they've never ever been publicly named as anything other than they were at a party at her apartment that night, and according to what I've seen, they were cleared, like I said, very early on as suspects. So while there are a lot of questions with this case, that is kind of where this investigation leaves off. Shana's Stanley said that they have on and off heard from law enforcement over the years, but nothing really has changed with the process or the progress of the investigation. As with all tragic murder cases, this changed the trajectory of the Jarros family's life. Duyne told ABC News during an interview, quote, I had four pieces of my heart and they just took one piece away from it. End quote. Duyne and Debbie would eventually divorce, and Dwayne said of Debbie that she just wasn't the same person after Shane's murder. Understandably so, the. Trauma and after effects of something like this impacts a family every single. Day for the rest of their lives. Janelle, Shana's sister, is quoted as saying, whoever did this to Shana actually did it to our entire family. They killed a piece of all of us. End quote. Now Shana's siblings have all grown up. They have gone on to live very productive lives and be very productive, great members of society, despite this horrific thing happening to them while they were younger. To their sister, Janelle's daughter has even expressed interest in becoming an investigator so she can solve her aunt's case. And if that just doesn't simultaneously break your heart and also make it swell about four times the size, then I don't know what will. Because that is such a sweet sentiment for somebody that never got a chance to meet her aunt to want to go into that field to solve her aunt's case. This whole story is just really sad and tragic all around, and honestly, I don't really know where this one goes from here, because it doesn't really seem at least as far as we know, as far as what's been reported to the public, that law enforcement has any physical evidence. Do they have DNA, do they have fingerprints, do they have anything? We really don't know now. I did see in an ABC News article that some of the people involved with Shana leading up to the murder, the people that were present at the party, had passed away. I was only able to find an obituary for Billy Molloy, who was her neighbor and at the party that night. He died in twenty twenty three. Now, everything with these partygoers really does make me very intrigued and very curious. I truly hope that if the roommate, the roommate's boyfriend, and Billy were truly not involved, that they didn't have to live under a cloud of suspicion. Although law enforcement did roll them out and they were never publicly named as suspects. Sometimes these kind of things can kind of follow you and stay with you, and you become thrust into the situation. I really don't know where they stand, what exactly the timeline of events was that night, and really the only people that know what happened in the hours leading up to Shana's murder. Are those three people If they did leave at midnight. That leaves a whole four to five hours before Shana's murder occurred, So there is a lot of open time there for somebody else to have come to the apartment. My question is did the roommate stay there that night or was she sleeping maybe at her boyfriend's house. I don't know. I'm just kind of throwing out scenario. Was Shana alone in the apartment? Did anybody else come over after? These are all questions, of course. I hope law enforcement has looked into and investigated over the years. Unfortunately, unless they do have evidence that we do not know about, this case is only going to be solved as someone decides it's time to come forward, if somebody remembers something from late Halloween night in nineteen ninety five, or someone has been holding in a secret for far too long and decided that thirty years is too long to hold on to that secret for I really hope and pray for the Jarros family. I hope that they get some resolution in Shana's case and that twenty twenty five is the year for it, because it is about to be thirty years since this horrific homicide occurred. I know her family is still very active in trying to keep her case out there and celebrate her life, because she was a truly wonderful human. I can just tell from reading about her, researching her, and seeing pictures of her, I can tell she had a super bright future ahead of her, and it's so unfortunate that unfortunately her life was taken by a horrible person. Whoever did this was a horrible, horrible person, and I truly hope that their time is running out and that justice is going to be coming in twenty twenty five. Anyone with any information is urged to contact the Illinois State Police Zone six Investigations at six point eight three four six three nine nine zero or crime Stoppers at A one eight hundred three five two zero one three six. As always, I. Thank you guys so much for listening to this week's episode of Primetime Crime. I'm going to link all of my sources below. I did listen to a couple of YouTube videos on Shana's case to kind of familiarize myself a little bit, and I will be sure to link those below as well. I'll ask some news articles as well, and At the end of the day, it's all about getting Shanea's name out there and hopefully the right person will happen upon her case so that way her family can finally get some resolution and finally get some answers. So please share this episode. I'm going to be posting pictures of Shana on my social media. If you aren't following me over there, please do. It's Primetime Crime Crime with a K on Facebook and Primetime Crime Pod on Instagram, So follow me over there. Support the show, support the podcast. I very much appreciate every single one of you who listens and tunes in and helps me share these cases that people really aren't talking about. These are the cases that. Really need to be at the forefront of what we do, because that is what's going to help get them to the right set of eyes. The right set of ears. Maybe reinvigorate investigators to take a second look or look at it with a fresh set of eyes. That is what really matters here, and that is why I do what I do, and I know a lot of other podcasters in the true crime space do what they do for this very reason. I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend. Ahead and I will see you next week for a brand new unsolved case. Have a good one bye,