School of Humans. I had info on the Cass County three triple black child murder case out of Atlanta, Texas, which is Cass County. Three little black girls were murdered about a year ago to cold case right now. Had some documentation from the police and a judge in Texas also have points at him and I have some information with the family, the mother and some other witnesses to the murders of these three girls.

School of Humans. I had info on the Cass County three triple black child murder case out of Atlanta, Texas, which is Cass County. Three little black girls were murdered about a year ago to cold case right now. Had some documentation from the police and a judge in Texas also have points at him and I have some information with the family, the mother and some other witnesses to the murders of these three girls.

It was July twenty ninth, twenty twenty two, just another quiet summer night in Atlanta, Texas, a tiny town in East Texas. Atlanta is about a twenty five minute drive from Texarcana, which is right on the border with Arkansas. The sun had just gone down when twenty eight year old Shamanique Oliver got a panicked phone call. Schamanique is a single mom and a certified nurses aid. She works at a nursing home in Texarkana. She later told Nancy Grace that it had been a totally normal day. She was hanging out with her six children between the ages of one and ten years old at home. They watched TV, played and ate a meal together while Shamanique got ready for a shift. When Shamanique went to work that afternoon. She left her children in the care of their babysitter, a thirty one year old cousin of hers named Paris Props. She and the kids lived in a very rural area. The one story home is pretty secluded. There are neighbors around, but it's the kind of home where you can't really see the neighbors, and it's pretty wild out there. There are woods and fields behind the house, and the fields are blocked by barbour fences. Shamanique was helping change a patient later that evening. She was called to the nurses station a little after nine pm, and that's when her nightmare began, because that's when she found out that three of her children, her three middle daughters, nine year old Zayaril Robinson Oliver, eight year old of Maya Hughes, and little five year old to Mari Robinson Oliver, were all missing. Law enforcement found the little girls a few hours later. Unfortunately, though, this was not a happy ending. Divers dragged their lifeless little bodies out of the neighboring pond. Initially, this was described as a drowning in the local media, but months later law enforcement in Texas said these three little girls had been murdered. The cause of death was exphyxiation. All three of these little girls had been strangled. There seemed to be a lot of misconceptions about this case. Some of them involved local rumors. Some of them involved politics, charges of racism, and of police not doing their jobs. If you listen to this podcast, you'll know that these are a lot of the things that often come with investigations in small towns. But once you look past all that, at the heart of this case, you have three dead little girls whose lives were over before they even started, and you have a family and an entire town crying out for justice and answers. I said back at the beginning that shau Minick's nightmare began on July twenty ninth, twenty twenty two, but she never woke up. It's still going on, and in East Texas, there's a child killer still out there, and this person could strike again at any time. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone murder line. Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helling Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people from all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four, six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four, six, one four or five. So to find out what happened to Shamanique's daughters, we have to make sense of the timeline. We need to go back and find out exactly what was going on and who was around that day. In her interview with Nancy Grace, Shamnique said that while she was getting dressed and preparing for her shift, the kids were behaving totally normally. She made sure they had something to eat, and they were playing and watching TV, just generally messing around. Shamanique said that all of her children were close, but that her three middle daughters, Syaril, Amaya, and Tamari were the best of friends. They liked to do things that all little girls like to do. They like to play outside and ride bikes together. They also love to hang out in the house and make TikTok videos. In the interview with Nancy Grace, Shamanique clarified that the last time that she spoke to her children was when she called them, and that was sometime between five and six pm. She asked them what they were going to do. They said they were going to stay in the house and finish eating and take a bath. Shamnique was adamant about the fact that they would not go outside. She said, quote, they know not to go outside when it gets dark because there's no lights outside end quote. This is an important point because, at least in the beginning of the investigation, everything that came out about these little girl's disappearance made it sound like just a horrific accident, like the three little girls had gone outside, maybe for a summertime swim or something, and then somehow gotten into trouble. But Shamnique insists it would have been totally out of character for any of her children to go outside in the dark to a dark field. She's been saying that to anyone who would listen from the very beginning. Shamnique said her shift normally ended around ten PM, and her normal routine was after she got off work, she would drive from the nursing home from work back to Atlanta. And again, just to clarify here, we're talking about a small town in Texas, Atlanta, Texas, not Atlanta, Georgia. It was only about twenty five minutes away, so normally she would have gotten home at around ten thirty pm. But that night she got that call, and when the call came in, it was from her neighbor's home phone. When Shamanique picked up her cousin, Paris, who had been staying with her at her house and helping her out with babysitting while she worked, told her that her kids were missing. Shamanique didn't get many details at that point. She said Paris didn't specify which kids were missing or exactly what had happened. Once she heard that her kids were missing, she jumped in the car and said she started driving fast. Shamanique was panicking. She called nine to one one and at the same time she was trying to call her aunt, who she said live nearby. She was trying to see if her aunt could meet her at her house. Shamanique said at that point she was terrified. She was trying to hold it together, trying to get home as quickly as she could, and through it all, she really had no idea what was going on. She made it sound like the next events were kind of a blur. Now, as we know from listening to this podcast, sometimes when people go missing, police don't come right away. Sometimes even when small children go missing, there's a delay. But fortunately that was not the case here. By the time Schamanique made it home, law enforcement was already there on the scene. There were rangers from the Texas Wildlife Department, Emergency Services personnel, and detectives from the Cass County Sheriff's Department. All of these people in law enforcement were scouring those dark woods. They were looking everywhere for those little girls. When Shamanique got home, the first thing she did was check on her three other children, who were fine and safe. The Texas Game Wardens got the call at around ten pm. They knew there were three children missing from a residence, so when they got there, they brought the canine unit with them. The dog alerted and started walking through those backwoods toward a pond. It was a pond that was back through the woods about two hundred yards away near a neighboring property. Again, this is where it's so important to try and clarify a location. And this is why it's so important to understand both the dynamics of the small town and of the crime scene, because just hearing the details on the news, you might think this was a local swimming hole or something. But I took a look at the footage that was filmed from local news stations, and that footage tells a very different story. Shamannique said she had lived in that spot pretty much her whole life, and she never knew there was a pond back there. To get to it, you had to go through a barbed wire fence and through a pretty dense wooded area. Looking at the pictures, that looked more like a swamp. Schamnique said her kids would not have known about that pond. As it got later and later, shal Manique became more and more frantic. She was focused on one thing and that was finding her daughters. She was out back in her yard while law enforcement continued their search, and then one of the canine dogs alerted and they saw something an overturned bike. In pictures in the news reports, you can see that it's a purple kid's bike with pink petals. Next to the bike was what looked like a blue scooter kind of tipped over, leaning in on the bike. After the dog alerted and the police found the bike, they saw something else. The dogs were pulling toward that pond, and police saw a pair of tennis shoes next to the waterline. Then they saw footprints in the mud leading down to the water, and the family confirmed a law enforcement that that pair of little tennis shoes belonged to sham Manique's five year old daughter Tomory. And there was something else that was very strange about those shoes. On Nancy Grace Shamanique said, Tomorri's shoes quote were found out there stacked on top of each other, Chris Crossway, like you would pack them in a suitcase end quote. She said emphatically. My kids never do that. Never. Divers went into the water and then in the early morning hours of July thirtieth, at around two am, they found Shamanique's eight year old daughter, Amaya. Amaya was the first, but unfortunately not the last. In the end, investigators found all three girls dead in that pond. They pulled their little bodies out of the water one by one and sent them for autopsis. After hearing that Amaya's body had been found. Shaman had to be taken to the hospital. She later learned that she was having a heart attack. She had already had one hard episode after her mother died from COVID, and now she had lost three daughters in one night. After Shamanique's three daughters were found dead in that pond, the story made local news. At first. The media reports indicated that these deaths were being investigated as a drowning, which, while horrific, is something that made it sound like it might have been an unavoidable accident. But that's not what happened here. Looking back in hindsight, I think that these reports might have come out because of some comments made early on by the Cass County Sheriff's office. Cass County Sheriff Larry Rowe told a local newspaper, The Gazette, quote, we have no idea what the girls were doing there end quote. And then a lieutenant game warden named Jason Jones told a local news station KTL that it was unknown whether the little girls were swimmers or not. There was another comment made by someone in law enforcement about none of the little girls having life jackets on. So all of those comments taken together definitely, in my opinion, led toward the story being reported as a drowning, at least initially. Very quickly, this case was turned over from the local police department to the Texas Rangers. The officer assigned to that case was named Josh Mason. Now, the Texas Rangers are unique organization. Officially, they're the Texas State law enforcement units. So like Arkansas has the Arkansas State Police, in Texas, they're a little bit unique because they have the Rangers. The Texas Rangers originally actually defended the frontier back in the eighteen hundreds, and they do have a complicated and sometimes brutal legacy. Author Doug Swanson wrote about the alleged war crimes that the Texas Rangers committed back in the day in his book, which is called Cult of Glory, and he told NPR that back in the day they did murder a lot of Mexicans and Mexican Americans and had a strange idea of frontier justice. But over the years, the Texas Rangers have modernized. They've actually become one of the country's most elite detective units. The Texas Rangers have solved a lot of cold cases it was actually a Texas Ranger who got the notorious serial killer Samuel Little to confess, But there have also been allegations over the years that in some cases they have coerce confessions. Samuel Little did confess to a lot of murders, but some of those murders were based on very little evidence, and a lot of people believe that the Rangers let him confess to crimes even when there was not necessarily evidence to back it up, because they wanted to close those cases. I'm not going to go too far into the weeds on the If you're interested in Texas Ranger history, you can see they've had a lot of successes and some controversies, just like many law enforcement organizations. I'm bringing this up to make the point that, unlike some of the cases I cover, this was not a case of just some small town police department with no resources doing everything themselves. They did do the right thing. They called for outside help, they brought in the Rangers. The Texas Rangers were there from day one. When those bodies were pulled out of the water. On August second, the Texas Rangers released a statement. They said, quote at the request of the cass County Sheriff's Office the Texas Rangers are investigating the drowning deaths of the three juveniles, ages five, eight, and nine. The drowning occurred July thirtieth, around two am at a private pond off State Highway seventy seven. The three siblings had been reported missing around ten pm the previous night. This is an ongoing investigation and additional information will be released when it's available. Police did not give out much information, which is totally normal in cases like this. And remember this was two days after the girl's bodies had been found. And that statement did two things. Number one, it reinforced the public perception that these had been drownings. And also, I'm noticing, in my opinion, the wordings seem strange. They said the drowning occurred rather than saying the bodies were recovered at two am, and whether it was on purpose or not. This later caused a lot of confusion. This statement seemed to assume a cause of death and also a time of death, which is not normally standard protocol in these investigations. For the next few months, there was basically nothing on the news about these deaths. It was not until eight months later that the Cass County District Attorney, Courtney Shelton, announced that they were investigating the deaths as a humide. On March twenty ninth, twenty twenty three, Courtney Shelton said in a statement, quote autopsy reports concluded the manner of death for all three girls with homicide, indicating evidence of strangulation. The girls also suffered lacerations to their faces. Multiple witness statements have been obtained, DNA testing is ongoing, and the investigation will continue end quote. So now everyone knew that three young girls had been strangled and put into that pond. The rangers were now investigating the case as a homicide, and there was a child killer on the loose in Atlanta, Texas. It had been eight months since the all of her sisters' bodies were found in a pond. The district attorney had announced that the girls had not drowned, as everyone initially thought that their deaths were being investigated as homicides, and after months of silence, Shawnique started speaking out. She told The Daily Beast that strangers on social media had put horribly abusive things. They were writing that she was a deadbeat mom, some of them writing that her kids were better off dead. I think at this point a lot of people were wondering why she had been silent all this time, But it turned out according to Shamanique, she told The Daily Beast she suspected foul play from the jump. She also said, quote fuck everyone else's feelings, I want answers end quote. She wondered, just like everyone else did, why investigators had waited so long to tell the public about these homicides. It's possible that they held information back in the beginning because they were focusing on a suspect, trying to make a case against someone, and then after several months, maybe they hit a dead end. Maybe they thought that they were going to get more DNA or other types of physical evidence from the pond, and because the little girl's bodies had been there for several hours, they weren't able to. This is all just speculation, but the bottom line is that there had been months with no arrest, months where a child killer was on the loose and the public was totally unaware. At the end of the press release, the District Attorney asked anyone with new information that would help lead to an arrest to contact the Texas Rangers So to me, the fact that the DA issued this press release and that the police made a point of asking the public for information means that somewhere there is a missing piece and they know someone knows something. So now that we know that those little girls did not walk out of that house into that pond by themselves, we know that the crime could have begun somewhere else, possibly inside the home. So what could have happened inside that one story house. Let's go back again to the night that the kids went missing, July twenty ninth. N is at work, she's changing a patient. She goes to the nursing station. She gets a call from her cousin Paris. And now I'm just going to point out something else that she told Nancy Grace, because it seemed like even at this point, she wonders why he's just now letting her know about this. She also wondered why he was calling her from the neighbor's house, why he hadn't first called nine to one to one. On July twenty ninth, according to the historical data I found on the internet, on that date in Texarcana, sunset was at eight eighteen pm. Remember this is the middle of the summer, so it didn't get fully dark until about thirty minutes after that. Still, it raises red flags for me that a babysitter in a small house didn't notice three kids were missing until after dark. Later, a local news station interviewed a neighbor, a woman named Josephine Webster. She told this local news station KTLA, that the guy presents ammably, meaning Paris, who was staying in Shamanique's house, came over and asked her for her house phone. So I'm wondering the same thing that it sounds like sham Minique was, why did he get the neighbor to call nine one one? Did he not have a cell phone? Because the first thing that I would have done if I was babysitting and someone's children were missing was call their mom right that second. By the way, Josephine said she was driving home at around nine point thirty when she saw Paris. Now, remember, Shamanique said she got the call a little after nine pm, just a few minutes time difference. But as we know, in cases like this, those few minutes, those tiny details can be crucial. There are some indications that very early on in the investigation, police were asking some of the same questions that Shamanique was, and that rather than focusing on sex offenders who were passing through the area, they might be focusing on someone much closer to home. Shamanique gave Nancy Gray some more details that I believe could be crucial to this case. She said that right after the authorities told her they found her little eight year old Amaya's body, she saw something else. She said that the divers pulled some tangled clothes out of the pond. Later, investigators showed her photos of what they found. She recognized that clothing as jackets that belonged to her children. But the strange thing was, according to Shamanique, these jackets were ones that her kids had outgrown. She said they had thrown them into the trash at home. This again raises a huge red flag because that suggests that someone else, probably the killer, had been inside the house because someone had to fish those jackets out of the trash. I don't think that's something the little girls would have done on their own. Shamanique said something else that was chilling to me. She said the jackets were quote tied together like a rope end quote. This is getting really dark, but this is, unfortunately where my mind has to go to try and figure out what happened those little girls. What were those jackets for? Were they put there to tie the girls up, or to tie them together so their bodies would sink? Or did whatever bad thing happen to them happen first in the house and then somehow the killer dragged the bodies out to the pond using those jackets. The cass County DA's press release referred to the fact that the little girl's injuries were much more extensive than had been initially reported. Local news stations had reported that the little girl's spaces were bruised and that they had lacerations on their faces, deep cuts and bruises. Shamanique gave Nancy Grace more disturbing details. She said that investigators had showed her photos of her daughter's bodies. Shamanique said that Tamari had what she described as a busted lip, but that her nine year old had extensive injuries and were not just talking about a few cuts. She said that they, presumably meaning the people who prepared her daughter for burial, had to quote reconstruct one side of her face. It looked like she took a beating on one side of her face and it pulled her skin off end quote. When the investigators talked to Shamanique, they also broke the devastating news to her that they believed that all three of her girls had been molested. Now, at this point, a lot of people wondered why it took so long to release autopsy results. There was some confusion here, and I think it's really important to differentiate between what was being told to the family and what was being made public. Revolt Black News Weekly has been doing a lot of reporting on this case. Urbienne said they contacted the cass County DA office. They said that they were told the autopsy had been delayed, but then when the press release came out, it made it clear that authorities had known from the beginning that homicide was the cause of death, that they never thought this was some kind of accidental drowning. Rolling Stone reached out to the District Attorney's office and the DA. Courtney Shelton clarified a few things for Rolling Stone, including the timeline. Courtney Shelton said that at least since early August of twenty twenty two, just a few days after the little girl's bodies were pulled out of that pond. The DA's office had the autopsy results, and they knew this had been a homicide. She said that investigators had told Shamanique that it was a homicide from the beginning too. Courtney Shelton said that on August fourth, Josh Mason, the Texas ranger in charge of the investigation quote, met with Shamanique Oliver, the mother of the children, and her father and notified them that the deaths of all all three children were not accidents. Anne provided both of them with details from the preliminary autopsy report stating that the cause of death was homicide end quote. Police got a lot of criticism after that press release because a lot of people wondered why it took them so long to make their manner of death public and failed to warn the community that there was a dangerous sexual predator and a child killer at large, and a lot of people, including Shamanique and the local Black Panther chapter, wondered if the investigation would have unfolded differently if police were investigating the death of three little white girls. Let's go back again. Let's look at the victim's pattern of life and start with the last people to see these little girls. We cannot overlook the fact that these children were being looked after by Paris Props. Paris was Shamanique's cousin. Her mother and Paris's mother are sisters. Is a male cousin in his early thirties. Shamanique said he had been staying with her at her house and regularly babysite the children. Now, Shamanique told urbn she had never had a problem with Paris before when he was babysitting kids. But she also shared something else that I found shocking, something she later repeated to Nancy Grace. She said that her four year old daughter told her and told police that her three sisters walked into the woods with Paris Props. Yet, Shamanique said police talk to Paris the day after the girls went missing and never questioned him again. Now, I'm just being logical here. I'm not trying to imply anything. I'm literally just following the investigation's logical threat. We know that investigators told Shamanique that they believed her daughters had been molested, and we know that children are much more likely to be molested by someone they know or by relative than a stranger. So any mail, whether they were relative or not. Any male who was staying in that home with those children would need to be closely looked at by law enforcement. So let's take a closer look at Paris Props. Because there's been very little said about him. Most news reports don't mention his name. There weren't any other males there that night. We don't know a lot about the children's fathers, but Shaminique has said that she was a single mom and that the children's fathers had no contact with her or with their children. I don't know if Schamanique was ever suspicious of her cousin Paris, but it definitely seems like by what she said publicly. Once the Texas Rangers talked to her and her father, once they laid out the case for her in early August, it seems clear that something changed her mind. We don't know exactly what the rangers told her, but we do know that after they told Shamanique what they believed was going on, she tried to run out the door. She said she remembers thinking she was going to go out and hurt her cousin, meaning Paris. Shamanique also had said something else that's crucial. She said Paris has not been cooperative with the investigation. She said Paris has not talked to her about it, and that he moved out of her house and went to live with his mom, Lemisha. She said he won't talk to her and he won't talk to the police. Neither Paris nor his mother have spoken publicly about this, but if you look through his mother's social media, it's obvious that she and her son have had issues before with law enforcement. Back in twenty twenty one, Lemisha Paris's mom was posting comments on Facebook that are public comments, and she was talking about an incident in which she referred to Paris having an altercation with the police and getting his teeth knocked out. His mom said they meaning the police hid Paris in another county, and she talks about wanting to follow a lawsuity against police. My source, the person who called into this podcast to tell me about the case, said that he believed that Paris had filed a lawsuit against police. But I've been looking through court records and I haven't found any record of that, so I don't know if the suit was ever filed, or if it's something they thought about doing. His mom's comments just seemed to indicate they were looking for a lawyer, but they hadn't found one yet. Shamanique said that since Paris me back with his mother, that his mother and he are both actively trying to keep a police away and they are not talking. Paris does have a criminal record. I found some gun charges and drug charges. They were mainly for small amounts of marijuana, meaning less than two ounces, And of course I must point out none of these things indicate that he's a murderer. Obviously, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. I'm just trying to understand Paris and the family dynamics since there's been so little reporting out there about it. Paris did have a brother named Kevin Shepherd, and Kevin Shepherd is a convicted killer. Again, I'm not going to go too far into the details on Kevin's case, because, of course, anyone's family members crimes are not a reflection of them. It's a completely separate issue. But I think it's important because it might explain a why Paris might not want to talk to the police and beat some of his mother Laitia's comments on social media and her general attitude towards law enforcement in twenty twenty two, Paris's brother, Kevin Shepherd, got life in prison for killing Donny Coombs and Cynthia Arnold, a couple who went missing in September of twenty eighteen. Cynthia was a mother who, at the age of forty, had a run of bad luck. She lost her job, she got a divorce, and she started getting into methamphetamines. That's when she met her boyfriend Donnie Coombs, he was also into drugs. In September of twenty eighteen, a sheriff's office investigator in a neighboring county, Marion County, said that she responded to a call and found a burning red truck on a remote county road. By the time the flames had been extinguished, that fire had burned so hot the truck rims had melted to the road. That truck belonged to Kevin Shepherd. Inside the truck, police found the bodies of Donnie and Cynthia. When this first happened, it seemed like the police had suspicions that Kevin might have been involved, but they didn't have enough evidence until an eyewitness came forward in twenty nineteen. This witness said she was hanging out with Kevin in late September of twenty eighteen. She said Kevin took her to an area with no running water or electricity. Donnie and Cynthia were there too, and this person said that all of them were doing drugs. Then she said she was horrified when Kevin basically said watch this. According to this witness, Kevin shot both victims in the head and then dragged their bodies to a fire pit and burned them. The FBI and local law enforcement went to that location. They checked the fire pit and they found traces of human bone. Kevin got life without the possibility of parole. He's currently behind bars serving out a sentence, and prosecutors said the motive in that case was the fact that Donnie, one of the victims, was supposedly going to testify against Kevin's uncle, a man named Gary Shepherd, in a felony theft case. Gary is also facing charges, but his trial has not started yet. According to KSLA, when Lemisha Parris's mother was asked about the jury's decision, she said, quote, I kind of figured it was going to go this way because we live in Cass County and that's how they operate. End quote. Lemisia said that the family planned to appeal the jury's verdict. I've not spoken to Lemesha or to Paris, and obviously anyone has the right to not speak to police without an attorney. In fact, that's what I would advise most people to do. But I can say that it's a red flag to me that Lemisha seems to put all the blame on law enforcement. I was looking through criminal records and I found something else that I thought was interesting in Paris's criminal record. In another case, he pleaded guilty to possession of a dangerous drug called Gaba pinton. It's an anti epilepsy drug, but it's a drug that has been used in some cases as a date rape drug. So obviously my mind goes back to that dark place, back to that house, into the dark things that could have happened there. If the house was the real crime scene and the bike was put by the pond to stage something, then we have to ask ourselves. Could the killer have tried to put the girls to sleep? Was one of them more badly injured than the others because she tried to wake up and intervene. Remember Josephine, the neighbor who the local news station talked to the reporter who interviewed her, Rading Edwards really seemed to care deeply about this case. Radin said, quote, I would like to see it come to an end. Somebody needs to go to jail for this end quote. We see this story over and over. The news organization contacts law enforcement, they ask for a comment. Law enforcement says, we're not giving out any details, and often the news reports stopped there. But in this case, the reporters did a good thing. They went that extra step. They drove out to that area, and they obviously started canvassing and knocking on doors. That's when Raydin interviewed Josephine, the neighbor. Josephine confirmed what had already been reported on the news. She talked about Paris coming to her house using her phone and calling Shamanique. She added another crucial detail, one that threw a lot more shade on Paris props. Josephine told the news channel quote, he was wet, and I noticed that it looked like all the way down, not sweat, it looked like water end quote. So this, I have to say, blows my mind. The sores who have been talking to about the case the one who called the podcast says that Shamanique is wondering the same thing that a lot of people are. Why hasn't Paris been questioned more thoroughly and why hasn't there been an arrest. Paris's mother has posted something else that's interesting on social media. She put a photo of a warrant the police had compelling Paris to give his DNA to law enforcement and allowing them to use force to get the DNA if necessary. I would love to know what happened without warrant, because my source says they believe that the search warrant was never executed. But Paris's mother claimed in her post that Paris has voluntarily given his DNA. So if the authorities were able to do testing, and if they have Paris's DNA, why haven't they ruled anyone in or out? Obviously I don't have access to the case file, but there could be a few reasons why. One thought, again, is that because the girl's bodies were in the water for several hours, the DNA may have degraded. Maybe police didn't have quite enough for an arrest and they needed to push for a confession. But Paris and the people around him, are not talking. The Daily Beast asked Da Shelton about Paris. She said that he had been questioned and that quote, he was the last person known to be with the children prior to their deaths. However, all possible leads are being followed. End quote. The New Black Panthers leader Kwan Alex told Rolling Stone, quote, we do believe that the root is racism. If these were three beautiful, little, blond haired, blue eyed, white children from a suburban community in Cass County, they would have handled this entire investigation completely different. End quote. Whatever has happened up to now, in my opinion, the focus should be on what happens next, because Shamanique's neighbors and everyone else in Cass County is rightfully terrified there could be a sexual predator and child serial killer hiding in plain sight. Someone out there knows something. The Texas Rangers, the Cast County Sheriff's Office, and the Cass County District Attorney's office are asking for any new information that would lead to an interest in this case. If you know something, if you have any detail, no matter how small, that could help this mother learn what happened to her three children, please call Texas Ranger Josh Mason at nine O three two five five five seven two seven. Shamanique told The Daily Beast quote, all on one want is justice for my babies end quote. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Music contributed by Ben Sale and this episode was scored and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six ' one four five. Please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcast, School of Humans

It was July twenty ninth, twenty twenty two, just another quiet summer night in Atlanta, Texas, a tiny town in East Texas. Atlanta is about a twenty five minute drive from Texarcana, which is right on the border with Arkansas. The sun had just gone down when twenty eight year old Shamanique Oliver got a panicked phone call. Schamanique is a single mom and a certified nurses aid. She works at a nursing home in Texarkana. She later told Nancy Grace that it had been a totally normal day. She was hanging out with her six children between the ages of one and ten years old at home. They watched TV, played and ate a meal together while Shamanique got ready for a shift. When Shamanique went to work that afternoon. She left her children in the care of their babysitter, a thirty one year old cousin of hers named Paris Props. She and the kids lived in a very rural area. The one story home is pretty secluded. There are neighbors around, but it's the kind of home where you can't really see the neighbors, and it's pretty wild out there. There are woods and fields behind the house, and the fields are blocked by barbour fences. Shamanique was helping change a patient later that evening. She was called to the nurses station a little after nine pm, and that's when her nightmare began, because that's when she found out that three of her children, her three middle daughters, nine year old Zayaril Robinson Oliver, eight year old of Maya Hughes, and little five year old to Mari Robinson Oliver, were all missing. Law enforcement found the little girls a few hours later. Unfortunately, though, this was not a happy ending. Divers dragged their lifeless little bodies out of the neighboring pond. Initially, this was described as a drowning in the local media, but months later law enforcement in Texas said these three little girls had been murdered. The cause of death was exphyxiation. All three of these little girls had been strangled. There seemed to be a lot of misconceptions about this case. Some of them involved local rumors. Some of them involved politics, charges of racism, and of police not doing their jobs. If you listen to this podcast, you'll know that these are a lot of the things that often come with investigations in small towns. But once you look past all that, at the heart of this case, you have three dead little girls whose lives were over before they even started, and you have a family and an entire town crying out for justice and answers. I said back at the beginning that shau Minick's nightmare began on July twenty ninth, twenty twenty two, but she never woke up. It's still going on, and in East Texas, there's a child killer still out there, and this person could strike again at any time. I'm Catherine Townsend. This is Helen Gone murder line. Over the past five years of making my true crime podcast, Helling Gone, I've learned that there's no such thing as a small town where murder never happens. I have received hundreds of messages from people from all around the country asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, their families, and their communities. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone Murder line at six seven eight seven four four, six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four, six, one four or five. So to find out what happened to Shamanique's daughters, we have to make sense of the timeline. We need to go back and find out exactly what was going on and who was around that day. In her interview with Nancy Grace, Shamnique said that while she was getting dressed and preparing for her shift, the kids were behaving totally normally. She made sure they had something to eat, and they were playing and watching TV, just generally messing around. Shamanique said that all of her children were close, but that her three middle daughters, Syaril, Amaya, and Tamari were the best of friends. They liked to do things that all little girls like to do. They like to play outside and ride bikes together. They also love to hang out in the house and make TikTok videos. In the interview with Nancy Grace, Shamanique clarified that the last time that she spoke to her children was when she called them, and that was sometime between five and six pm. She asked them what they were going to do. They said they were going to stay in the house and finish eating and take a bath. Shamnique was adamant about the fact that they would not go outside. She said, quote, they know not to go outside when it gets dark because there's no lights outside end quote. This is an important point because, at least in the beginning of the investigation, everything that came out about these little girl's disappearance made it sound like just a horrific accident, like the three little girls had gone outside, maybe for a summertime swim or something, and then somehow gotten into trouble. But Shamnique insists it would have been totally out of character for any of her children to go outside in the dark to a dark field. She's been saying that to anyone who would listen from the very beginning. Shamnique said her shift normally ended around ten PM, and her normal routine was after she got off work, she would drive from the nursing home from work back to Atlanta. And again, just to clarify here, we're talking about a small town in Texas, Atlanta, Texas, not Atlanta, Georgia. It was only about twenty five minutes away, so normally she would have gotten home at around ten thirty pm. But that night she got that call, and when the call came in, it was from her neighbor's home phone. When Shamanique picked up her cousin, Paris, who had been staying with her at her house and helping her out with babysitting while she worked, told her that her kids were missing. Shamanique didn't get many details at that point. She said Paris didn't specify which kids were missing or exactly what had happened. Once she heard that her kids were missing, she jumped in the car and said she started driving fast. Shamanique was panicking. She called nine to one one and at the same time she was trying to call her aunt, who she said live nearby. She was trying to see if her aunt could meet her at her house. Shamanique said at that point she was terrified. She was trying to hold it together, trying to get home as quickly as she could, and through it all, she really had no idea what was going on. She made it sound like the next events were kind of a blur. Now, as we know from listening to this podcast, sometimes when people go missing, police don't come right away. Sometimes even when small children go missing, there's a delay. But fortunately that was not the case here. By the time Schamanique made it home, law enforcement was already there on the scene. There were rangers from the Texas Wildlife Department, Emergency Services personnel, and detectives from the Cass County Sheriff's Department. All of these people in law enforcement were scouring those dark woods. They were looking everywhere for those little girls. When Shamanique got home, the first thing she did was check on her three other children, who were fine and safe. The Texas Game Wardens got the call at around ten pm. They knew there were three children missing from a residence, so when they got there, they brought the canine unit with them. The dog alerted and started walking through those backwoods toward a pond. It was a pond that was back through the woods about two hundred yards away near a neighboring property. Again, this is where it's so important to try and clarify a location. And this is why it's so important to understand both the dynamics of the small town and of the crime scene, because just hearing the details on the news, you might think this was a local swimming hole or something. But I took a look at the footage that was filmed from local news stations, and that footage tells a very different story. Shamannique said she had lived in that spot pretty much her whole life, and she never knew there was a pond back there. To get to it, you had to go through a barbed wire fence and through a pretty dense wooded area. Looking at the pictures, that looked more like a swamp. Schamnique said her kids would not have known about that pond. As it got later and later, shal Manique became more and more frantic. She was focused on one thing and that was finding her daughters. She was out back in her yard while law enforcement continued their search, and then one of the canine dogs alerted and they saw something an overturned bike. In pictures in the news reports, you can see that it's a purple kid's bike with pink petals. Next to the bike was what looked like a blue scooter kind of tipped over, leaning in on the bike. After the dog alerted and the police found the bike, they saw something else. The dogs were pulling toward that pond, and police saw a pair of tennis shoes next to the waterline. Then they saw footprints in the mud leading down to the water, and the family confirmed a law enforcement that that pair of little tennis shoes belonged to sham Manique's five year old daughter Tomory. And there was something else that was very strange about those shoes. On Nancy Grace Shamanique said, Tomorri's shoes quote were found out there stacked on top of each other, Chris Crossway, like you would pack them in a suitcase end quote. She said emphatically. My kids never do that. Never. Divers went into the water and then in the early morning hours of July thirtieth, at around two am, they found Shamanique's eight year old daughter, Amaya. Amaya was the first, but unfortunately not the last. In the end, investigators found all three girls dead in that pond. They pulled their little bodies out of the water one by one and sent them for autopsis. After hearing that Amaya's body had been found. Shaman had to be taken to the hospital. She later learned that she was having a heart attack. She had already had one hard episode after her mother died from COVID, and now she had lost three daughters in one night. After Shamanique's three daughters were found dead in that pond, the story made local news. At first. The media reports indicated that these deaths were being investigated as a drowning, which, while horrific, is something that made it sound like it might have been an unavoidable accident. But that's not what happened here. Looking back in hindsight, I think that these reports might have come out because of some comments made early on by the Cass County Sheriff's office. Cass County Sheriff Larry Rowe told a local newspaper, The Gazette, quote, we have no idea what the girls were doing there end quote. And then a lieutenant game warden named Jason Jones told a local news station KTL that it was unknown whether the little girls were swimmers or not. There was another comment made by someone in law enforcement about none of the little girls having life jackets on. So all of those comments taken together definitely, in my opinion, led toward the story being reported as a drowning, at least initially. Very quickly, this case was turned over from the local police department to the Texas Rangers. The officer assigned to that case was named Josh Mason. Now, the Texas Rangers are unique organization. Officially, they're the Texas State law enforcement units. So like Arkansas has the Arkansas State Police, in Texas, they're a little bit unique because they have the Rangers. The Texas Rangers originally actually defended the frontier back in the eighteen hundreds, and they do have a complicated and sometimes brutal legacy. Author Doug Swanson wrote about the alleged war crimes that the Texas Rangers committed back in the day in his book, which is called Cult of Glory, and he told NPR that back in the day they did murder a lot of Mexicans and Mexican Americans and had a strange idea of frontier justice. But over the years, the Texas Rangers have modernized. They've actually become one of the country's most elite detective units. The Texas Rangers have solved a lot of cold cases it was actually a Texas Ranger who got the notorious serial killer Samuel Little to confess, But there have also been allegations over the years that in some cases they have coerce confessions. Samuel Little did confess to a lot of murders, but some of those murders were based on very little evidence, and a lot of people believe that the Rangers let him confess to crimes even when there was not necessarily evidence to back it up, because they wanted to close those cases. I'm not going to go too far into the weeds on the If you're interested in Texas Ranger history, you can see they've had a lot of successes and some controversies, just like many law enforcement organizations. I'm bringing this up to make the point that, unlike some of the cases I cover, this was not a case of just some small town police department with no resources doing everything themselves. They did do the right thing. They called for outside help, they brought in the Rangers. The Texas Rangers were there from day one. When those bodies were pulled out of the water. On August second, the Texas Rangers released a statement. They said, quote at the request of the cass County Sheriff's Office the Texas Rangers are investigating the drowning deaths of the three juveniles, ages five, eight, and nine. The drowning occurred July thirtieth, around two am at a private pond off State Highway seventy seven. The three siblings had been reported missing around ten pm the previous night. This is an ongoing investigation and additional information will be released when it's available. Police did not give out much information, which is totally normal in cases like this. And remember this was two days after the girl's bodies had been found. And that statement did two things. Number one, it reinforced the public perception that these had been drownings. And also, I'm noticing, in my opinion, the wordings seem strange. They said the drowning occurred rather than saying the bodies were recovered at two am, and whether it was on purpose or not. This later caused a lot of confusion. This statement seemed to assume a cause of death and also a time of death, which is not normally standard protocol in these investigations. For the next few months, there was basically nothing on the news about these deaths. It was not until eight months later that the Cass County District Attorney, Courtney Shelton, announced that they were investigating the deaths as a humide. On March twenty ninth, twenty twenty three, Courtney Shelton said in a statement, quote autopsy reports concluded the manner of death for all three girls with homicide, indicating evidence of strangulation. The girls also suffered lacerations to their faces. Multiple witness statements have been obtained, DNA testing is ongoing, and the investigation will continue end quote. So now everyone knew that three young girls had been strangled and put into that pond. The rangers were now investigating the case as a homicide, and there was a child killer on the loose in Atlanta, Texas. It had been eight months since the all of her sisters' bodies were found in a pond. The district attorney had announced that the girls had not drowned, as everyone initially thought that their deaths were being investigated as homicides, and after months of silence, Shawnique started speaking out. She told The Daily Beast that strangers on social media had put horribly abusive things. They were writing that she was a deadbeat mom, some of them writing that her kids were better off dead. I think at this point a lot of people were wondering why she had been silent all this time, But it turned out according to Shamanique, she told The Daily Beast she suspected foul play from the jump. She also said, quote fuck everyone else's feelings, I want answers end quote. She wondered, just like everyone else did, why investigators had waited so long to tell the public about these homicides. It's possible that they held information back in the beginning because they were focusing on a suspect, trying to make a case against someone, and then after several months, maybe they hit a dead end. Maybe they thought that they were going to get more DNA or other types of physical evidence from the pond, and because the little girl's bodies had been there for several hours, they weren't able to. This is all just speculation, but the bottom line is that there had been months with no arrest, months where a child killer was on the loose and the public was totally unaware. At the end of the press release, the District Attorney asked anyone with new information that would help lead to an arrest to contact the Texas Rangers So to me, the fact that the DA issued this press release and that the police made a point of asking the public for information means that somewhere there is a missing piece and they know someone knows something. So now that we know that those little girls did not walk out of that house into that pond by themselves, we know that the crime could have begun somewhere else, possibly inside the home. So what could have happened inside that one story house. Let's go back again to the night that the kids went missing, July twenty ninth. N is at work, she's changing a patient. She goes to the nursing station. She gets a call from her cousin Paris. And now I'm just going to point out something else that she told Nancy Grace, because it seemed like even at this point, she wonders why he's just now letting her know about this. She also wondered why he was calling her from the neighbor's house, why he hadn't first called nine to one to one. On July twenty ninth, according to the historical data I found on the internet, on that date in Texarcana, sunset was at eight eighteen pm. Remember this is the middle of the summer, so it didn't get fully dark until about thirty minutes after that. Still, it raises red flags for me that a babysitter in a small house didn't notice three kids were missing until after dark. Later, a local news station interviewed a neighbor, a woman named Josephine Webster. She told this local news station KTLA, that the guy presents ammably, meaning Paris, who was staying in Shamanique's house, came over and asked her for her house phone. So I'm wondering the same thing that it sounds like sham Minique was, why did he get the neighbor to call nine one one? Did he not have a cell phone? Because the first thing that I would have done if I was babysitting and someone's children were missing was call their mom right that second. By the way, Josephine said she was driving home at around nine point thirty when she saw Paris. Now, remember, Shamanique said she got the call a little after nine pm, just a few minutes time difference. But as we know, in cases like this, those few minutes, those tiny details can be crucial. There are some indications that very early on in the investigation, police were asking some of the same questions that Shamanique was, and that rather than focusing on sex offenders who were passing through the area, they might be focusing on someone much closer to home. Shamanique gave Nancy Gray some more details that I believe could be crucial to this case. She said that right after the authorities told her they found her little eight year old Amaya's body, she saw something else. She said that the divers pulled some tangled clothes out of the pond. Later, investigators showed her photos of what they found. She recognized that clothing as jackets that belonged to her children. But the strange thing was, according to Shamanique, these jackets were ones that her kids had outgrown. She said they had thrown them into the trash at home. This again raises a huge red flag because that suggests that someone else, probably the killer, had been inside the house because someone had to fish those jackets out of the trash. I don't think that's something the little girls would have done on their own. Shamanique said something else that was chilling to me. She said the jackets were quote tied together like a rope end quote. This is getting really dark, but this is, unfortunately where my mind has to go to try and figure out what happened those little girls. What were those jackets for? Were they put there to tie the girls up, or to tie them together so their bodies would sink? Or did whatever bad thing happen to them happen first in the house and then somehow the killer dragged the bodies out to the pond using those jackets. The cass County DA's press release referred to the fact that the little girl's injuries were much more extensive than had been initially reported. Local news stations had reported that the little girl's spaces were bruised and that they had lacerations on their faces, deep cuts and bruises. Shamanique gave Nancy Grace more disturbing details. She said that investigators had showed her photos of her daughter's bodies. Shamanique said that Tamari had what she described as a busted lip, but that her nine year old had extensive injuries and were not just talking about a few cuts. She said that they, presumably meaning the people who prepared her daughter for burial, had to quote reconstruct one side of her face. It looked like she took a beating on one side of her face and it pulled her skin off end quote. When the investigators talked to Shamanique, they also broke the devastating news to her that they believed that all three of her girls had been molested. Now, at this point, a lot of people wondered why it took so long to release autopsy results. There was some confusion here, and I think it's really important to differentiate between what was being told to the family and what was being made public. Revolt Black News Weekly has been doing a lot of reporting on this case. Urbienne said they contacted the cass County DA office. They said that they were told the autopsy had been delayed, but then when the press release came out, it made it clear that authorities had known from the beginning that homicide was the cause of death, that they never thought this was some kind of accidental drowning. Rolling Stone reached out to the District Attorney's office and the DA. Courtney Shelton clarified a few things for Rolling Stone, including the timeline. Courtney Shelton said that at least since early August of twenty twenty two, just a few days after the little girl's bodies were pulled out of that pond. The DA's office had the autopsy results, and they knew this had been a homicide. She said that investigators had told Shamanique that it was a homicide from the beginning too. Courtney Shelton said that on August fourth, Josh Mason, the Texas ranger in charge of the investigation quote, met with Shamanique Oliver, the mother of the children, and her father and notified them that the deaths of all all three children were not accidents. Anne provided both of them with details from the preliminary autopsy report stating that the cause of death was homicide end quote. Police got a lot of criticism after that press release because a lot of people wondered why it took them so long to make their manner of death public and failed to warn the community that there was a dangerous sexual predator and a child killer at large, and a lot of people, including Shamanique and the local Black Panther chapter, wondered if the investigation would have unfolded differently if police were investigating the death of three little white girls. Let's go back again. Let's look at the victim's pattern of life and start with the last people to see these little girls. We cannot overlook the fact that these children were being looked after by Paris Props. Paris was Shamanique's cousin. Her mother and Paris's mother are sisters. Is a male cousin in his early thirties. Shamanique said he had been staying with her at her house and regularly babysite the children. Now, Shamanique told urbn she had never had a problem with Paris before when he was babysitting kids. But she also shared something else that I found shocking, something she later repeated to Nancy Grace. She said that her four year old daughter told her and told police that her three sisters walked into the woods with Paris Props. Yet, Shamanique said police talk to Paris the day after the girls went missing and never questioned him again. Now, I'm just being logical here. I'm not trying to imply anything. I'm literally just following the investigation's logical threat. We know that investigators told Shamanique that they believed her daughters had been molested, and we know that children are much more likely to be molested by someone they know or by relative than a stranger. So any mail, whether they were relative or not. Any male who was staying in that home with those children would need to be closely looked at by law enforcement. So let's take a closer look at Paris Props. Because there's been very little said about him. Most news reports don't mention his name. There weren't any other males there that night. We don't know a lot about the children's fathers, but Shaminique has said that she was a single mom and that the children's fathers had no contact with her or with their children. I don't know if Schamanique was ever suspicious of her cousin Paris, but it definitely seems like by what she said publicly. Once the Texas Rangers talked to her and her father, once they laid out the case for her in early August, it seems clear that something changed her mind. We don't know exactly what the rangers told her, but we do know that after they told Shamanique what they believed was going on, she tried to run out the door. She said she remembers thinking she was going to go out and hurt her cousin, meaning Paris. Shamanique also had said something else that's crucial. She said Paris has not been cooperative with the investigation. She said Paris has not talked to her about it, and that he moved out of her house and went to live with his mom, Lemisha. She said he won't talk to her and he won't talk to the police. Neither Paris nor his mother have spoken publicly about this, but if you look through his mother's social media, it's obvious that she and her son have had issues before with law enforcement. Back in twenty twenty one, Lemisha Paris's mom was posting comments on Facebook that are public comments, and she was talking about an incident in which she referred to Paris having an altercation with the police and getting his teeth knocked out. His mom said they meaning the police hid Paris in another county, and she talks about wanting to follow a lawsuity against police. My source, the person who called into this podcast to tell me about the case, said that he believed that Paris had filed a lawsuit against police. But I've been looking through court records and I haven't found any record of that, so I don't know if the suit was ever filed, or if it's something they thought about doing. His mom's comments just seemed to indicate they were looking for a lawyer, but they hadn't found one yet. Shamanique said that since Paris me back with his mother, that his mother and he are both actively trying to keep a police away and they are not talking. Paris does have a criminal record. I found some gun charges and drug charges. They were mainly for small amounts of marijuana, meaning less than two ounces, And of course I must point out none of these things indicate that he's a murderer. Obviously, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. I'm just trying to understand Paris and the family dynamics since there's been so little reporting out there about it. Paris did have a brother named Kevin Shepherd, and Kevin Shepherd is a convicted killer. Again, I'm not going to go too far into the details on Kevin's case, because, of course, anyone's family members crimes are not a reflection of them. It's a completely separate issue. But I think it's important because it might explain a why Paris might not want to talk to the police and beat some of his mother Laitia's comments on social media and her general attitude towards law enforcement in twenty twenty two, Paris's brother, Kevin Shepherd, got life in prison for killing Donny Coombs and Cynthia Arnold, a couple who went missing in September of twenty eighteen. Cynthia was a mother who, at the age of forty, had a run of bad luck. She lost her job, she got a divorce, and she started getting into methamphetamines. That's when she met her boyfriend Donnie Coombs, he was also into drugs. In September of twenty eighteen, a sheriff's office investigator in a neighboring county, Marion County, said that she responded to a call and found a burning red truck on a remote county road. By the time the flames had been extinguished, that fire had burned so hot the truck rims had melted to the road. That truck belonged to Kevin Shepherd. Inside the truck, police found the bodies of Donnie and Cynthia. When this first happened, it seemed like the police had suspicions that Kevin might have been involved, but they didn't have enough evidence until an eyewitness came forward in twenty nineteen. This witness said she was hanging out with Kevin in late September of twenty eighteen. She said Kevin took her to an area with no running water or electricity. Donnie and Cynthia were there too, and this person said that all of them were doing drugs. Then she said she was horrified when Kevin basically said watch this. According to this witness, Kevin shot both victims in the head and then dragged their bodies to a fire pit and burned them. The FBI and local law enforcement went to that location. They checked the fire pit and they found traces of human bone. Kevin got life without the possibility of parole. He's currently behind bars serving out a sentence, and prosecutors said the motive in that case was the fact that Donnie, one of the victims, was supposedly going to testify against Kevin's uncle, a man named Gary Shepherd, in a felony theft case. Gary is also facing charges, but his trial has not started yet. According to KSLA, when Lemisha Parris's mother was asked about the jury's decision, she said, quote, I kind of figured it was going to go this way because we live in Cass County and that's how they operate. End quote. Lemisia said that the family planned to appeal the jury's verdict. I've not spoken to Lemesha or to Paris, and obviously anyone has the right to not speak to police without an attorney. In fact, that's what I would advise most people to do. But I can say that it's a red flag to me that Lemisha seems to put all the blame on law enforcement. I was looking through criminal records and I found something else that I thought was interesting in Paris's criminal record. In another case, he pleaded guilty to possession of a dangerous drug called Gaba pinton. It's an anti epilepsy drug, but it's a drug that has been used in some cases as a date rape drug. So obviously my mind goes back to that dark place, back to that house, into the dark things that could have happened there. If the house was the real crime scene and the bike was put by the pond to stage something, then we have to ask ourselves. Could the killer have tried to put the girls to sleep? Was one of them more badly injured than the others because she tried to wake up and intervene. Remember Josephine, the neighbor who the local news station talked to the reporter who interviewed her, Rading Edwards really seemed to care deeply about this case. Radin said, quote, I would like to see it come to an end. Somebody needs to go to jail for this end quote. We see this story over and over. The news organization contacts law enforcement, they ask for a comment. Law enforcement says, we're not giving out any details, and often the news reports stopped there. But in this case, the reporters did a good thing. They went that extra step. They drove out to that area, and they obviously started canvassing and knocking on doors. That's when Raydin interviewed Josephine, the neighbor. Josephine confirmed what had already been reported on the news. She talked about Paris coming to her house using her phone and calling Shamanique. She added another crucial detail, one that threw a lot more shade on Paris props. Josephine told the news channel quote, he was wet, and I noticed that it looked like all the way down, not sweat, it looked like water end quote. So this, I have to say, blows my mind. The sores who have been talking to about the case the one who called the podcast says that Shamanique is wondering the same thing that a lot of people are. Why hasn't Paris been questioned more thoroughly and why hasn't there been an arrest. Paris's mother has posted something else that's interesting on social media. She put a photo of a warrant the police had compelling Paris to give his DNA to law enforcement and allowing them to use force to get the DNA if necessary. I would love to know what happened without warrant, because my source says they believe that the search warrant was never executed. But Paris's mother claimed in her post that Paris has voluntarily given his DNA. So if the authorities were able to do testing, and if they have Paris's DNA, why haven't they ruled anyone in or out? Obviously I don't have access to the case file, but there could be a few reasons why. One thought, again, is that because the girl's bodies were in the water for several hours, the DNA may have degraded. Maybe police didn't have quite enough for an arrest and they needed to push for a confession. But Paris and the people around him, are not talking. The Daily Beast asked Da Shelton about Paris. She said that he had been questioned and that quote, he was the last person known to be with the children prior to their deaths. However, all possible leads are being followed. End quote. The New Black Panthers leader Kwan Alex told Rolling Stone, quote, we do believe that the root is racism. If these were three beautiful, little, blond haired, blue eyed, white children from a suburban community in Cass County, they would have handled this entire investigation completely different. End quote. Whatever has happened up to now, in my opinion, the focus should be on what happens next, because Shamanique's neighbors and everyone else in Cass County is rightfully terrified there could be a sexual predator and child serial killer hiding in plain sight. Someone out there knows something. The Texas Rangers, the Cast County Sheriff's Office, and the Cass County District Attorney's office are asking for any new information that would lead to an interest in this case. If you know something, if you have any detail, no matter how small, that could help this mother learn what happened to her three children, please call Texas Ranger Josh Mason at nine O three two five five five seven two seven. Shamanique told The Daily Beast quote, all on one want is justice for my babies end quote. Helen Gone Murder Line is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and narrated by me Catherine Townsend and produced by Gabby Watts. Music contributed by Ben Sale and this episode was scored and mixed by Miranda Hawkins. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Brandon Barr, and L. C. Crowley. If you have a case you'd like me and my team to look into, you can reach out to us at our Helen Gone Murder Line at six seven eight seven four four six one four five. That's six seven eight seven four four six ' one four five. Please subscribe and leave us a review wherever you listen to your podcast, School of Humans