MISSING: Brittany Wallace Shank

On November 30, 2018, 23-year-old Brittany Wallace Shank showed up barefoot and bleeding at a stranger's door asking for help. She said the man she was with had crashed their car and ran away. Deputies were on the way. But before they arrived, Brittany disappeared into the darkness. She has never been seen again.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ashley Flowers?

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• 2:17Speaker 02

  St. Joseph County 911, where is the emergency?

• 2:20Speaker 03

  Um, off of Fawn River.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  Okay, you're on Fawn River Road near, uh, what cross street?

• 2:26Speaker 03

  July.

• 2:28Speaker 02

  What, what cross street or what address are you at on Fawn River?

• 2:33Speaker 03

  Where we at? I don't know what street.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  We're on Fawn River Road.

• 2:39Speaker 03

  I guess it's on Fawn River.

• 2:41Speaker 02

  Okay, do you have an address on Fawn River?

• 2:44Speaker 03

  Um, here's the guy.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Okay, sure.

• 2:47Ashley Flowers?

  That 911 call you just heard came into St. Joseph County Dispatch just before nine at night on November 30th, 2018, from a house off a rural road right outside Sturgis, Michigan.

• 3:01Speaker 02

  Okay, can you tell me what's going on there tonight? I don't know, the girl just came to the back door and she had no shoes on, no coat. She's bleeding, her feet, her arms. She said her boyfriend took off somewhere. He wrecked the car and just got off running, I guess.

• 3:21Ashley Flowers?

  If you didn't catch all that, the man, his name is John, said that the young woman that came to his back door was stranded after her boyfriend wrecked their car and then took off on foot without her. It was bitter cold with snow on the ground, so the fact that she showed up barefoot with no coat and a bit scratched up and bleeding was cause for concern.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Okay, so she, she said that her boyfriend, like, took off from the area? Do you know, was he abusing her or what, what happened? I, I don't know, I couldn't tell you that. Okay. All right, would you say that she's, I mean, does she need medical attention or you said it's not serious or what's going on?

• 4:03Ashley Flowers?

  Under the static and radio chatter, you can hear the young woman John is speaking to in the background of the call. She doesn't sound panicked, her tone is measured, and she tells them that she does want medical attention.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  Okay. She was trying to make you help. Okay, yeah, absolutely, we'll get somebody down that way for her. Do you have any, know what her name is? Is that what your name?

• 4:29Speaker 04

  She don't seem to want to talk to me.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:34Speaker 04

  Welcome back to here.

• 4:36Ashley Flowers?

  That's the moment when the woman takes off from John's. Still barefoot, but wearing a green John Deere sweatshirt that John had given her for warmth.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  If you can't tell her that help is coming down that way, I just need her to stay there if she wants assistance.

• 4:53Speaker 04

  Yeah, she went outside, ain't got no shoes on, and I give her a jacket.

• 4:58Ashley Flowers?

  Law enforcement would later learn that the woman who ran was 23-year-old Brittany Wallace-Shank. She was moments away from help, but something pulled her away from the safety of John's back porch. What, or who, or why has never been fully determined? Because since Brittany slipped into the darkness that November night back in 2018, she has never been seen again. And trying to understand what happened to her, what even brought Brittany out to that rural road to begin with, and who she was with, opens a Pandora's Box of conflicting stories, troubling allegations,

• 5:40Ashley Flowers?

  and a mystery that has taken on a life of its own. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  And I'm Brett.

• 5:48Ashley Flowers?

  And welcome back, crime junkies.

• 6:23Ashley Flowers?

  The entire scenario that kicked off this case. A woman comes to a stranger's door, a little worse for the wear, shoeless, coatless, in the cold, saying she was in a car wreck and her boyfriend took off and left her. Then she takes off just before deputies are about to come. That would be more than enough for a red flag to be thrown up for crime genies, right? Like, we would be like spiraling and like jumping into action. Actually, we've literally seen this play out before. This feels like a slightly different version of the start to our episode on Lisk, when Shannon Gilbert was like running to a house looking for help. Maybe that's why, to me, this should have been so alarming from the jump. But sadly, that's apparently not what's on the minds of first responders.

• 7:07Ashley Flowers?

  We were able to get what seems to be most of the case file. And when they look over the car that's been abandoned, they realize this was far from a serious crash. One of the few things almost everyone in this case can actually agree on is just how thick the fog was that night. And it looked like the car had basically just kind of like veered off the road into, they call it a ditch, but like, we're talking a very shallow ditch, and then maybe got stuck. The car was still drivable, though. And even the injuries that John saw, he described them as small cuts on her feet and her arms. But I don't know where those would have come from. Some suggest that maybe from the brush in the field, going from the car to John's,

• 7:49Ashley Flowers?

  if she cut through that way and didn't use the road. But like, this is like right where we grew up, these like Michigan, Indiana, northern Indiana, like fields.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  And this is in November?

• 7:59Ashley Flowers?

  Late November. Everything is like cut down by this point.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, there'd be like some sticks and stuff in like the farm fields, but not a lot.

• 8:07Ashley Flowers?

  I know, and some people have even said, oh, well, if they cut down the corn and the stalks were still up, like, but I was like, yeah, but I'm deep tracks, I know my fields, you have to switch between corn and soybeans. What was it that year? I don't know.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  And you sometimes like till it under at the end of the season, so like, yes, there'd be stalks, but they're like half buried.

• 8:23Ashley Flowers?

  Also, like, there is the paved road that goes right to his house, like from where the car was. So like, I don't even know that she would have had to have cut through a field. Listen, I don't know where the cuts come from, but I don't think it was from the crash, because there is really no crash. I have talked to enough cops to know that they do see a lot of this, right? Like if a driver doesn't want to encounter police for whatever reason, they will just leave a vehicle. Maybe there was a reason that Brittany seemed cagey with John. Maybe she didn't really want the police to come out there.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Okay, but then why go asking for medical help?

• 9:01Ashley Flowers?

  That is not a mystery that they attempt to solve right then. I mean, I don't think they know who the woman was when they first show up. They don't know that it was Brittany. They're kind of thinking like whoever that was, she's probably just gonna show back up. And the truth is, the people in Brittany's life were probably making some of the same assumptions. The 23-year-old mom was struggling with substance use. She had recently given up custody of her four kids while trying to get back on her feet, hoping to start a new job, maybe enroll in school. And she had a warrant out for her arrest at the time for larceny. So when she goes MIA, at least at first, they kind of wonder if that's because she wanted to. But don't get it twisted.

• 9:43Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, some of her family and friends had been looking for her, like asking around. Even her boyfriend had been out trying to find her.

• 9:51Speaker 01

  The boyfriend who took off on her?

• 9:53Ashley Flowers?

  That's the catch. It was her boyfriend, Sheldon Ashbrook. It was his car that she had been driving. But when police dropped by unannounced after the incident, likely sometime around 10:30 PM or later to tell him that his car had been impounded, Sheldon was home and informed them that he hadn't even been with Brittany. She borrowed his car that night, and he said he had no clue who she would have been with. So it sounds like even he just assumed that Brittany was either embarrassed, maybe by what she had done to his car, or maybe she was laying low due to the fact that there was a warrant out on her. But weirdly, it doesn't seem like he told her family about the car incident right away.

• 10:34Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, he told some friends, but the family didn't find out until later that she had taken off after the car went off the road. Though even then, they hear that the car was operable, so she must have just walked off, right? Even her being barefoot in the snow didn't stand out to them too much. Her mom told us that Brittany was known to run around in flip flops or even barefoot even when it was freezing in Michigan. And listen, those instincts might have been right. Because it turns out when Brittany went to John's that night looking for help, she did, she went to his house looking to use the phone, but she didn't necessarily call 911 right away. She had actually tried calling her grandma Vicky first.

• 11:19Ashley Flowers?

  But either that call didn't go through, or grandma just didn't answer. And I don't know for sure if it was her or John who actually ended up dialing 911. Like she ends up passing the phone off to him pretty quickly and then doesn't seem to want to give him any information. So I keep thinking, maybe he like dialed before she realized what was going on? Like since she didn't seem scared, my gut is that Britt probably wasn't looking for help for like first responders. She called grandma like for a ride or something. Exactly. And when she realized that deputies were going to be showing up, she took off. But that doesn't explain why she hadn't turned back up now.

• 11:59Ashley Flowers?

  And with every day that passed with no word from her, everyone who knew Brittany was growing more worried. Especially the longer she went without being active on social media. Cause apparently she is like a Facebook junkie. But the real final straw that set off alarm bells was learning that Brittany hadn't been in touch with her grandma Vicky at all after she tried to call her that night. Because the two of them were close and they talked constantly. So eight days after the night that she walked off into the cold, Brittany's dad, Greg Wallace, reports her missing to the St. Joseph County Sheriff's Office. And once they open an investigation, they decide to go to Grandma, since she likely had the most contact with Brittany.

• 12:43Ashley Flowers?

  They think she's going to be super helpful in trying to map out Britt's movements leading up to the night of November 30th. And it is a worthwhile stop. Grandma is a wealth of information because luckily, the last time Grandma had seen Britt just so happened to be the same night of this car crash, or the car going off the road. And Britt wasn't alone. Deputies learn that earlier on November 30th, sometime around 6:30 and 7:00 PM, Brittany had stopped by her Grandma's house to do laundry with a guy. Now, it doesn't sound like they were really interacting too much with anyone else at the house, but that could have been because they had been using drugs that night. Now, later, when her family finally heard that 911 call,

• 13:27Ashley Flowers?

  they told us that they suspect that she was high because of the way that she sounded. Now, at Grandma's, she and this guy also appeared to be arguing a bit, and he was rushing her like he had somewhere better to be. And they stayed long enough to wash the clothes, but not long enough to like fully dry them. Instead, Brittany stuffed damp laundry into a basket and then they left together. Let's call it like 8:30, 8:45 PM.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  So Sheldon lied.

• 13:52Ashley Flowers?

  Sheldon did not lie. Grandma knows Sheldon. He and Brittany had been friends for years before dating on and off. Grandma says this wasn't him.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Okay, then who was he?

• 14:06Ashley Flowers?

  Brit- nobody knows. But like I said, like Brittany and this guy barely interacted with anyone else. And in hindsight, Grandma says there was something off about this guy. Like he just, they couldn't put their finger on it. Nobody ever got his name, though, is the catch. They do have a pretty good description of him. He is this thin white guy in his like early to mid twenties, between five six, five eight ish with short blonde hair and thick mutton chopped sideburns. Like Elvis, as Grandma described. And he was wearing like a yellow sweat suit type outfit with like some black on it.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  So when Brittany said her boyfriend took off after the crash, is she talking about this guy, like whoever he is?

• 14:50Ashley Flowers?

  If, if there was a man in the car with her when it went off the road, I think it has to be this guy, just based on the timeline, right? Like so, based on what Grandma remembers, they left her house around eight thirty PM. The spot where the car went off the road is about a five minute drive away. And then getting to John's should take less than 10 minutes on foot. We know that the nine one one call is placed around eight fifty. So it seems like there wouldn't have been a lot of time for her to have like picked up anyone else. Like, I don't think anyone else could have been in that car with her. If someone was in the car with her, it has to be this guy that she left Grandma's with. Now, is there a chance that she dropped him somewhere and she was alone in the car? Maybe, but there isn't a whole lot in this area.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  I was gonna say, this is like a pretty rural area, right?

• 15:38Ashley Flowers?

  So personally, I think it's unlikely. Also, the direction that they were driving is kind of interesting to me. I don't know where Brittany was headed to, but like the direction she was going in was toward Bronson. Now, she used to live in Bronson, but Bronson is away from Sturgis, where she has been staying with Sheldon. Now, the thing I'll say is that we're told a lot of drug connections lived out that way in Bronson. So maybe she was going to somewhere she used to live or to a connection she knew, but like, I have no idea.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  Okay, so I'm buying that the mystery man is in the car with her. But like, why does she call him her boyfriend, though?

• 16:16Ashley Flowers?

  Nobody really knows. Now, I mean, I have to say, according to some family members that we spoke to, Sheldon actually did kind of fit at least some parts of the description. Like, he is blonde. I think he has like similar-ish facial hair, which I can show you. But the build, I think, was really different. And years later, some close to the case would question just how reliable everyone's memory really was that night, right? Like Grandma's saying, I know Sheldon's for sure not him, but they also say Grandma had a few beers. And nobody at the house seemed to be paying particularly close attention to this guy. And I'm not blaming them for that. They couldn't have known the importance that he would become

• 16:58Ashley Flowers?

  in this case, but Grandma says it is not Sheldon. So to your point, why is Brittany calling someone else her boyfriend? Maybe she used the term loosely. Maybe it was someone that she was seeing on the side? Or maybe she just didn't feel like explaining her love life to a complete stranger, right? Because let me tell you, her love life was pretty freaking complicated, as we will soon get into. But just a quick observation. I've seen what's believed to be the last selfie that Brittany took from Sheldon's car before leaving that night, and she looks pretty done up. Maybe that means absolutely nothing, but to me, it doesn't exactly scream like, I'm just going to Grandma's to do laundry.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  More likely, she may have been going out, going to meet up with somebody.

• 17:46Ashley Flowers?

  Yes. And if she was seeing another guy, then the question becomes, did Sheldon know about it? When investigators circle back to Sheldon, the short answer, according to him, is no. He admits the two weren't exactly in the best place the day that she vanished, mostly due to Brit's meth use. He insists this wasn't some blow-up fight they had or anything, more just bickering. But he does say that before leaving the house that night, Brittany told him something along the lines of, "You're not gonna like me much later," which he took to mean at the time that she was gonna go out and get high. He says he actually didn't want to lend his car to her that night.

• 18:29Ashley Flowers?

  People we spoke to told us that that car was his baby. But that night, Brittany asked to borrow it so she could go to her Grandma's. And according to Sheldon, he actually even offered to drive her himself. Like, it was only like a 15-minute cruise away. But he says that Brittany got irritated about this and was adamant about taking the car alone.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Which makes sense if she's meeting up with another guy.

• 18:50Ashley Flowers?

  Which is what I think happens. Because Sheldon helps fill in more of the timeline for November 30th. He says that she left his place likely sometime between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m. And not long after, Brittany called him up, like, half joking, half complaining. I think that there wasn't enough gas in the car and she was gonna have to stop and fill up. And after, that's when we have a gap where we think she picks someone up before going to Grandma's. Now, once hours pass by, Sheldon tries contacting Brittany to see where she's at. Like, she's supposed to be back with his car. But she won't answer, which probably frustrates him. Not because he is thinking she's with some other guy. He is thinking that she's out using, and like I said, not back with his car after he already seemed like

• 19:34Ashley Flowers?

  on the fence about her taking it. And look, after talking to people close to this case, Sheldon doesn't really seem like the jealous type. He is more so the guy that Britt felt she could always fall back on if she needed something. So, at 9:42 p.m., he actually called a friend and his cousin and asked them to pick him up so they could go out and look for Brittany. And deputies end up confirming this with those two people. The first place they said they checked are the Village Manor Apartments in Sturgis.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  But why not Grandma's if that's where she said she was going?

• 20:07Ashley Flowers?

  Well, because, according to Sheldon, Brittany would go to these apartments to visit friends and to do drugs. Like, or get drugs. And remember, like, that is what he thought was going on here, why she isn't back. But he goes there, doesn't spot her car, so then they did go by Grandma's. No car there either. They said they drove back to the Village Manor Apartments one more time. But when they still couldn't find her, they just went back to Sheldon's house. And it is very soon after he gets back home that there is a knock on his door. Not Brittany, obviously, but police. And so now we're back to the point in the timeline that I've already told you about. When officers showed up to tell him that his car was found abandoned after this, quote-unquote, "crash." And Sheldon said that he had no clue who Britt had been with.

• 20:53Ashley Flowers?

  And so, this is one of the great mysteries of this case because there is some evidence to suggest that Brittany might not have been running from a car accident that night. She may have been running from this man. And there are signs that Mystery Man may have found her.

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• 23:06Ashley Flowers?

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• 23:29Ashley Flowers?

  This case started with Sheldon's car going off the road. Supposedly, that is why Brittany went to John's and asked to use the phone. But there is something about that that doesn't really ring all the way true. I mean, yes, the car went off the road, but like I said, I think it was still totally drivable. Now, police did have it towed, probably just because it had been abandoned. Someone had fled the scene. But most people our reporter Madison talked to said that this ditch was super shallow. Like arguably, they wouldn't even call it a real ditch. I wouldn't either. I was like on Google Maps. I've seen videos that they sent us of out, like you grew up in this area.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  I can like close my eyes and imagine it's like a slight divot on the shoulder and then back into the field.

• 24:12Ashley Flowers?

  Barely. And if a car went off, and I know there's a little snow on the ground, like say it was really low to the ground. I think even just with a little bit of effort, you would have been able to get it out of there. Now, to be fair, if you're on your own, or like if you were high, maybe you are really stuck. But for argument's sake, say the car could have been driven out of there. Why wouldn't she? Maybe she was trying to get away from someone in the car. Remember, she had those small cuts and injuries that can't fully be explained by her just going off the road. Maybe tapping a little small tree that was there. Grandma said that Brittany and the mystery man seemed to be arguing a bit, remember?

• 24:56Ashley Flowers?

  And Brittany's mom, Jessica Rolfe, told us something interesting about her. Believe it or not, she said that Brittany actually had this habit of impulsively jumping out of cars when she was pissed off. Like it's something- Her mom had witnessed her doing before in an argument. And to further hint at this idea that something happened in the car. When Sheldon got the car back from impound, he says the inside was trashed. Like, the glove box was open, Brittany's purse had supposedly been dumped out. Her belongings were scattered everywhere. And apparently, that was exactly how it was when first responders found it on the side of the road in the first place. So, say something happened in that car before or after it went off the road.

• 25:41Ashley Flowers?

  Was Brittany trying to get away from the person she was in the car with? If so, there is a good chance that he caught up to her. Now, John isn't around anymore for us to get this story directly from him. But Brittany's dad Greg relayed to us that John had told someone that when he went out to his detached garage the next morning after Brittany had been at his house, it looked like someone had gone through his stuff. The insinuation being that this had supposedly happened when Brittany herself was inside with John, talking to dispatch.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Meaning Mystery Man is in the garage.

• 26:20Ashley Flowers?

  Right.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  But that doesn't mean she didn't know.

• 26:24Ashley Flowers?

  What do you mean?

• 26:25Speaker 01

  I mean, like, I'd venture to guess people are more willing to open their door to a young woman in trouble than a woman and a man. Like, maybe she went up to use the phone, told him to wait outside.

• 26:37Ashley Flowers?

  Actually, that would make a lot of sense, especially when combined with the tidbit of info that we get, like, when deputies canvass the neighborhood. So, okay, there isn't, like, much of a neighborhood canvas. Again, you know this area, like, it's

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Super spread out.

• 26:52Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, it's pretty rural, but there was another house not too far from John's on the same road. And someone in that house saw Britt that night, too. According to the case file, there was this young teen who was home alone, and they reported seeing Brittany outside this house wearing a big green coat, just like the one that John had given her. So, I mean, we can almost be sure that this is her. And we can be sure that this happened after she left John.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:19Ashley Flowers?

  But it's what happened next that's really unsettling. So according to the report, while he watched this woman like circle from the backyard to the front, like peering through the windows, he heard someone else knocking on his front door at the same time. And this teenager was obviously like super freaked out. He's not gonna answer the door for whoever is knocking. So he didn't see what that person looked like or anything. The question is, was to like to your point. So like I was originally thinking like, was this person like stalking her and looking for her, thinking maybe, you know, she was at John's, maybe she's here. Or now thinking what you're saying.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Were they together?

• 27:55Ashley Flowers?

  Did they travel to that second house together?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  So did they ever do searches in like the fields? Cause again, like looking at a map of this, like you said, this is an area like where I grew up. These houses are kind of like square miles apart sometimes.

• 28:11Ashley Flowers?

  They're hu- huge. Yeah, huge fields in between.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  If she's barefoot and it's freezing, there's some snow on the ground and this next house didn't open their door, like maybe she didn't make it any further.

• 28:23Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, people have wondered that, thinking that like she like either became disoriented in like the freezing dark, especially if she was using drugs. She succumbed to the elements somewhere near the road that they're on. It's called Fawn River Road. Or they're even thinking like, did she possibly overdose? But to answer your question, yes, they have searched and they haven't found anything. So like that makes me think that that's super unlikely. Especially when you think about, this is like late November, early December, when they're searching. This is flat, flat farmland for like as far as the eye can see.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  The joke is like you can watch your dog run away for a week. Like it's just, there's nothing there.

• 28:59Ashley Flowers?

  If she had just like, like, you know, fallen and died there or like whatever's to come.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  You would see her body.

• 29:06Ashley Flowers?

  She would have been discovered by now. And even since those early days, there have been even more searches beyond the open fields, like in surrounding woods, water, but still, Brittany has never been found. And outside of people having their own varying opinions on who he might be, Mystery Man has never been identified.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Which I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around because this is, this is like 2018, right?

• 29:32Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, this is like fairly recently and like-

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Right, did we not pull phone records? How do we not know who she was meeting up with that night? And like, what about the car? Like, because Prince should have been all over it if he was in it, right?

• 29:45Ashley Flowers?

  It's so frustrating. So, we know she has her phone with her when she leaves Sheldon. Remember, she took that selfie.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:51Ashley Flowers?

  But I don't know what happened to her phone. Because actually, one of the things I keep wondering is why she wouldn't use that to call for help. Like, why did she even need to go to John's farmhouse at all? And according to Sheldon, it hadn't been left behind in his car when he went to pick it up. So the only thing that I can come up with as far as her phone goes is like, A, maybe Mystery Man took it and like that's why she needed to go to John's. Or B, like, I'm trying to think back to 2018, was this a world where like, there was bad service? Like-

• 30:22Speaker 01

  I mean, it could definitely be spotty, for sure.

• 30:24Ashley Flowers?

  And listen, I know according to the case file, authorities attempted to ping it, even though you can't find it. In my mind, I'm like, you know, it's, it is 2018, let's pull the records. But it's noted in the case file that whatever ping they tried to do just didn't work. Like, the phone was either off, or it was roaming, or there was like no service.

• 30:41Speaker 01

  Okay, but can't they see where it was like, before it went offline?

• 30:45Ashley Flowers?

  I would think, but there is no detail in the records about this. And law enforcement wouldn't talk to us, so I don't know exactly what they did or didn't pull. And I believe it may have been like a prepaid or like pay-as-you-go kind of thing, so like, I don't know if that factor's in. But even still, I don't know what they tried to track location-wise or like communication-wise, like, related to that phone. But if anything, I assume it didn't lead them to Mystery Man, or we wouldn't be here talking about it.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Right, and what about the car?

• 31:16Ashley Flowers?

  So, oh, that is the thing that's kind of frustrating. It was just never processed. I guess because they just assumed initially that this was like a girl who didn't want to be found, like they're not thinking foul play, especially not at first. So like, they just give it back to Sheldon. He just goes to pick it up from impound, no problem. And then I don't know if like by the time they like realize what's going on, they're like, oh, well, too late. To me, it's never too late, but like, never gets processed. But at least in giving evidence back to Sheldon, they did get a statement from him. And he starts telling police about the people that Brittany was known to go see, starting with a woman named Ashley Houli. And Ashley's interesting because she lives at the same Village Manor Apartments

• 32:01Ashley Flowers?

  in Sturgis where Sheldon first went looking for Brittany, the night that she vanished. It wasn't Grandma's house he went to, it was there.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:09Ashley Flowers?

  And Sheldon told investigators that he did that because Brittany regularly went there to buy and use meth. But Ashley wasn't just some random drug dealer. When she comes in to speak with investigators, she tells them just how deeply she was tied to Brittany. They're sisters. And she's desperate to find her and she is already trying to do whatever she can to help. Except, that's a lie. I mean, she did seem to be inserting herself into the investigation, but she is not Brittany's blood sister. Brittany's dad is like, I don't even know who this woman is.

• 32:45Speaker 01

  What?

• 32:46Ashley Flowers?

  Now, Ashley does eventually clarify that she and Brittany are not biologically related, they're just like really close. And in a later interview, she'd eventually say that Brittany was her best friend, but she didn't know if she was Brittany's. And some of Brittany's family says Ashley may not have been nearly as close to Brittany as she was presenting herself to be. And over time, they start wondering whether Ashley is genuinely trying to help solve Brittany's disappearance. Because like I said, she just keeps like putting herself in the middle. Or whether she may be trying to steer attention away from something else entirely. But what? According to Ashley, she and Britt had recently been in touch.

• 33:31Ashley Flowers?

  But pinning down exactly when they last spoke or saw each other gets a bit tricky. Because in one part of her interview, Ashley tells investigators that the last time she physically saw Brittany was November 23rd.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:45Ashley Flowers?

  Then later, she changes that to November 28th. But she says the last contact of any kind she had with Brittany was through Facebook Messenger on November 30th, the very day she vanished. And listen, from what we know, that communication was friendly enough, like Britt was just checking in on her.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  And what did their other interactions say, like further back?

• 34:05Ashley Flowers?

  Well, I'd love to tell you, but, and this is jumping ahead just a little bit, something weird ends up happening with Brittany's social media. People we spoke to told us that Facebook Messenger was like one of the main ways that Brittany communicated. But everything on her social media had gone completely dark since she disappeared. Except, months after she had been missing, a friend notices that one of her Facebook accounts suddenly appears active again. So she tells Britt's mom, Jessica Rolfe, who then notifies law enforcement. And it's not like she is talking to anyone or like posting anything normally. The account just starts doing these strange things, like they think stuff was possibly being like hidden, deleted, altered in some way.

• 34:48Ashley Flowers?

  Then apparently some of Britt's conversations with Ashley start disappearing. Now, I know investigators took the activity seriously enough that in July of 2019, they requested emergency Facebook records tied to Brittany's account, and they obtained IP address information connected to the logins. But of freaking course, their findings aren't documented in the files that we got access to.

• 35:11Speaker 01

  Why would they be?

• 35:12Ashley Flowers?

  But I do believe at least some of that activity that happened on her account can be tied to Ashley, because our reporter Madison got in touch with Ashley, and she did agree to answer some questions via Facebook Messenger, of course. But they did end up hopping on a quick call later for some like follow-ups at the last minute, too. Now, Ashley acknowledges that she did in fact access some of Britt's online accounts after she disappeared. But she says that it's not in the way that's like being portrayed, like it wasn't malicious. She says that Sheldon sent her a picture of like notebooks that Brittany kept with passwords

• 35:54Ashley Flowers?

  and account recovery information and that they were like hoping those accounts might reveal who Brittany had been talking to before she went missing. And according to Ashley, most of the passwords no longer work. And she says she was only able to get into that one Facebook account and later she told detectives that she had access to it. They asked her to stop going in, she says she did. But then months later, she says that a private investigator approached her for help accessing the additional accounts. Now Ashley says she believed that this P I. was like working with law enforcement and like, again, she was trying to help. Ashley's explanation is that she wasn't trying to alter evidence or hide information, she was simply looking for clues that might help locate Brittany. And here's the thing she says isn't correct about any of these allegations.

• 36:39Ashley Flowers?

  She says that lots of stuff was already gone before she got access to it. And according to her, it wasn't even just messages between her and Britt that got deleted either. She says there were lots more, but both of Britt's parents dispute that.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Who else's got deleted?

• 36:57Ashley Flowers?

  Her parents say that there is at least one other person whose messages seem to have been messed with. It was actually the one other person whose name kept coming up over and over again with Ashley's as they like police and her family were talking to people. And that is Eric Schenk, Brittany's husband.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Uh, one, her what, but two, these names are also giving me a hard time.

• 37:22Ashley Flowers?

  Britt, Ash, Eric, I know, I know. Listen, I told you that her love life is complicated and buckle up because this is where the case really takes a turn.

• 37:39Speaker 01

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• 38:22Speaker 01

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• 38:43Ashley Flowers?

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• 39:27Ashley Flowers?

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• 39:50Ashley Flowers?

  Eric Schenk is Brittany's ex. But still, he was technically her husband in November of 2018. They're separated, but still legally married and sharing two children. Brittany had reportedly started filling out divorce papers shortly before she disappeared to try and make things official. Now, whatever arrangement they had going on meant that Brittany was free to date Sheldon or whoever else she wanted. But emotionally, things were messier than that. Because according to Brittany's mom, Jessica, even though the relationship had become incredibly toxic due to drugs, Brittany and Eric still had this intense pull toward one another.

• 40:31Ashley Flowers?

  Like, they could split up and somehow still always end up right back in each other's orbit. And by the time Brittany goes missing, she may be back with Sheldon, but Eric is still deeply woven into her everyday life. And into their little friend group. Because Eric knows Ashley well, too. He goes to her apartment to buy and use drugs, too. And when he's later asked where he was when Brittany went missing, Eric remembered staying over at Ashley's apartment that entire night.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 41:04Ashley Flowers?

  That is part of why some of Brittany's family starts paying such close attention to Ashley moving forward. She is basically Eric's alibi.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:14Ashley Flowers?

  And Eric, hers. And when we asked her about that night, Ashley, I mean, she said Eric came over at like 8:40 PM and then was there, like, most of the time.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  So, perfect alibi for the kind of exact time that Brittany goes missing.

• 41:31Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, but around 1 AM, she says that he left, took her car to put air in the tires, and then it sounds like he, like, comes back and then he eventually, like, leaves her place again to go back home to his parents at around, like, 2 AM.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  Quick question, were they, like, together together? Like, I love him, he's great. My husband's not running out to fill up my tires at 1:00 in the morning.

• 41:53Ashley Flowers?

  They say no. Like, Ashley was actually dating someone else at the time, this guy named Curtis Polly, who everyone called Pocket. Get it?

• 41:59Speaker 01

  I got it.

• 42:00Ashley Flowers?

  But Ashley being tied up with someone else or not, I think the thing that's important here is that Brittany's mom, Jessica, told us she believes there is no way that Brittany would have been cool with how close they seemingly were. And Ashley herself tells detectives that she thought Brittany wanted to work things out with Eric, even though she was seeing Sheldon. But what Ashley is saying doesn't exactly pass the sniff test. And I'll give you an example.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, him staying over at her house late night isn't the example?

• 42:32Ashley Flowers?

  Well, that could have been anything, Britt, you know.

• 42:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 42:34Ashley Flowers?

  But honestly, truly, it maybe was about like the drugs. Maybe he crashed there. Also, it sounds like he's up and out and about at like 1:00 in the morning. Like, maybe no one's crashing and they're just like hanging out. It's hard to prove anything with that. But this next thing, especially the timing, is a little bit harder to argue with. It's body cam footage from a traffic stop in Three Rivers, Michigan, involving Eric from December 23rd, 2018. So we're talking like three weeks after Brittany went missing.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  Is it your car, Eric?

• 43:06Speaker 06

  No, it is not. No, we just borrowed it for the night, for the Friday's.

• 43:10Speaker 05

  You what?

• 43:10Speaker 06

  I borrowed it from my girlfriend. Been out in the damn woods all day.

• 43:17Speaker 05

  What are you guys doing out in the woods?

• 43:18Speaker 06

  Looking for my wife.

• 43:20Speaker 05

  Is she missing?

• 43:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, she's been in Wallace. She's been missing since November 30th.

• 43:26Ashley Flowers?

  Britt, do you want to guess who he says his girlfriend is?

• 43:32Speaker 05

  All right, so I'm following this black Ford SUV with a plate of a stir just registered to Ashley Houle, showing no insurance. And it's cutting through the first ward neighborhood using side streets. So I make a traffic stop on it because it's not insured. It's Eric Shank driving. He's on a restricted license. And John Fox Jr. is in the passenger seat.

• 43:55Ashley Flowers?

  Now Ashley's relationship with Eric is one of the things that we asked her about. And she did admit to us that after Brittany Vanas, she and Eric spent a lot of time together because they were both caught up in the search. They were using drugs, they were dealing with intense emotions. And Ashley acknowledges that their relationship did eventually become intimate, but she maintains that happened only after Brittany's disappearance. She says it was not during the time of this traffic stop, when he is calling her his girlfriend, or even before. So anyways, back to this stop, because there is more here. The officers are searching the car as part of this, and it sounds like they're concerned about drugs.

• 44:37Ashley Flowers?

  But when they ask John Fox Jr., or JJ, as he's known, if he's got anything on him, he explains that he's got a notepad in his pocket full of names because he's trying to figure out what he described as some sex trafficking thing that's been going on. And I can't be 100% sure, but I think he's insinuating that this sex trafficking thing has something to do with their search for Brittany, maybe even like why they've been out in the woods all day. But weirdly, these officers don't press. I mean, you can definitely sense that they're skeptical about why they're really out there. But remember, Brit's missing person case isn't theirs. Like, this is Three Rivers. She went missing in St. Joseph County.

• 45:19Speaker 01

  So they have no reason to connect these dots.

• 45:22Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly. Now, when Ashley shows up to the scene, because she'd been called, it's her vehicle that they're in. And when she's asked by an officer, she does, in that moment, deny that she is Eric's girlfriend, saying that he's just a friend. But she's clearly upset that her car is going to get impounded. She says she can't afford it, that she has already been through a lot, and then the situation just kind of escalates from there, fast. They say she's not cooperating, and she ends up in handcuffs. And then she claims officers hit her head on the car while arresting her. JJ and Eric, on the other hand, appear to be staying cool as cucumbers. And even though officers find needles, needle caps, and a billy club-type impact weapon...

• 46:04Speaker 01

  A what?

• 46:05Ashley Flowers?

  Like, you know, one of those like, um, it's like a heavy, like, duty nightstick kind of thing. Like a police, like a police baton. They find all of this in there. Still, they decide to give these guys a break because it's the day before Christmas Eve.

• 46:19Speaker 01

  Happy holidays, folks.

• 46:20Ashley Flowers?

  So, all things considered, Eric and JJ seemingly like make it out of this traffic stop pretty much unscathed. But here is like another reason why I think this stop is so important. And it has to do with JJ, the passenger in the car. So, remember in our timeline of November 30th? After Britt leaves the house in Sheldon's car, Sheldon said that she had called him up complaining that there wasn't enough gas. She was gonna have to like stop, fill it up, whatever. So, if Britt did end up stopping for gas that night, that would make sense. Well, what if I told you? There is reason to believe Ashley had the receipt from the transaction that Britt made in her possession at some point.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Ashley who's saying she didn't see Brittany at all that particular day?

• 47:08Ashley Flowers?

  That's the one.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 47:09Ashley Flowers?

  So, this receipt is for 20 bucks worth of gas at the Marathon Station on Fawn River Road.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  Which is the road that like everything is happening on?

• 47:18Ashley Flowers?

  Yes. It is time stamped for 6:11 PM on November 30th. And it appears to have Britt's account information on it. But investigators don't end up with the physical copy of the receipt. They end up with photos of the receipt that Ashley had.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  That's somehow almost weirder?

• 47:38Ashley Flowers?

  I know. Weirder to me is that she's not even the one who originally brought it to their attention either.

• 47:44Speaker 01

  Okay, but why does she have them?

• 47:47Ashley Flowers?

  Okay, so, and this is all according to a later interview that she does with detectives.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:53Ashley Flowers?

  Basically, she tells them that her Ford Explorer had been stolen sometime near the end of January, beginning of February 2019. So, this is like, to put in context, like, two months after Britt went missing. Two months after her car is taken, it's finally recovered.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 48:11Ashley Flowers?

  She says that when she got her car back, there was this gar- garbage bag full of just like random items and trash inside the vehicle. And Ashley said she started like digging through the bag, trying to get proof of who took her car to see what they've been up to or whatever. And she claims that is where the gas receipt turned up. So she said she snapped a picture of it. And to be fair, she said she took photos of a lot of things that she found in that bag. And she said she didn't realize the significance of the receipt until it had already been thrown away.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  But if you didn't think it was important, then why take a photo of it then?

• 48:45Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, it's literally what Mads asked her to. And Ashley said something that I think kind of contradicts what I just told you from her official statement to investigators. Because she tells Mads now that she actually did notice the November 30th date, the time, like the specific gas station. And she says she had this gut feeling that it might be connected to Brit. Even though at that point in time, she said that no one was thinking foul play yet.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Like, it's important if there was foul play that no one's thinking about yet.

• 49:12Ashley Flowers?

  There, yeah, like.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  What?

• 49:14Ashley Flowers?

  Because she's like, at that point, they're just like trying to, when she finds it, like, track down her friend. I don't know. But I do know that back when she was telling police this, she did believe she knew who took her vehicle, like, and who had it for like two months. And here we're coming back. John Fox Jr.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  JJ.

• 49:33Ashley Flowers?

  JJ. She told Madison she's confident it was JJ because she claims he literally took off with her keys, left her a note saying he was borrowing it, and then just like never bothered bringing it back.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 49:45Ashley Flowers?

  The thing is, she's not necessarily saying that like he's the one who had the receipt initially. She's kind of just like, you know, it could have easily been like any one of the many people in the circle that he associated with that he could have like picked up or been in the vehicle or borrowed the vehicle in like the time period that she is saying she did not have it.

• 50:07Speaker 01

  And he.

• 50:08Ashley Flowers?

  Supposedly did.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Did.

• 50:10Ashley Flowers?

  But here's the thing. The gas receipt isn't the only thing connected to Brittany that somehow resurfaces after she disappears. Because remember, Brittany's phone never recovered from Sheldon's car or anywhere else. That's still not totally found after the crash. And this did always strike her family as odd because according to Jessica, Brittany would have like fought somebody over that phone. So for it to be completely like gone that night with her, like seemingly untraceable. That's always been like a big mystery, like they're thinking that it has to be with her, right? Who, who is missing? That's the only thing that makes sense. But then this happens. So Eric Schenk showed up to one of the early searches for Brittany, dropped off by Ashley, by the way.

• 50:55Ashley Flowers?

  Even though Brit's family told us that like at this point in time, like they did not even know who she was. But it is like in this one of like early day searches that he claims to have found part of Brit's phone. Part.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Of it?

• 51:09Ashley Flowers?

  Part. So according to people close to the case, what Eric allegedly said he found was the backplate from a Samsung phone that resembled the one that Brittany had been using before she disappeared. This Samsung J337P. And we know that that's reportedly the same model tied to the selfie that Brittany took before leaving Sheldon's that night. It all seems to match up. But some of Brit's family tell us that they're suspicious of this whole like finding. Because according to them, Eric was off searching by himself in a field near the crash site when he made this alleged discovery. No one else from the search party was there to witness it.

• 51:51Ashley Flowers?

  And what's even weirder, Brit's mom Jessica said that he didn't even like run over to the rest of the group and tell them like, I found this clue.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:59Ashley Flowers?

  Jessica said that he just like left and she learned about it later. Now, in the case file, there is mention of a ZTE cellphone missing backplate listed under the evidence. But there's like no other details. I don't know if this is the one that we're talking about. I also don't know why you would call it a missing backplate. Like, and they don't give any like notes in the file about like who ended up turning it in, when that happened, or if investigators were ever even able to confirm that it was in fact Brittany's. Still, the family can't help but wonder, did Eric genuinely stumble across part of Brittany's phone while searching for her? Or did he somehow already have it?

• 52:42Speaker 01

  Did anyone ever just ask him?

• 52:45Ashley Flowers?

  Not really. Even though Eric is her husband, even though he is allegedly finding evidence, even though he is tied up in some weird way to Ashley, who seems to keep finding herself at the center of this thing, St. Joseph County investigators don't seem to question Eric at all, until more than six months after Brittany went missing. And even that appears to have been this like super short interaction, from what I can tell. During that little chat, Eric even admitted he hadn't spoken directly with any law enforcement about Brit's case before. And he had only passed information through, guess who? Ashley.

• 53:27Ashley Flowers?

  And it wouldn't be until nearly five freaking years later, that they would actually sit him down for a 45-minute formal, recorded interview.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  How is this even remotely acceptable for an investigation?

• 53:43Ashley Flowers?

  You tell me. As someone from the Michiana area, it is embarrassing.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:48Ashley Flowers?

  Now, while the St. Joseph County Sheriff's Office did provide us with the records, they never got back to us regarding our request for an interview. But you know what is so bizarre about all of this Eric and Ashley stuff?

• 54:02Speaker 01

  I mean, I could go on, but you're going to tell me something new.

• 54:04Ashley Flowers?

  Whether it was only with like the pure intentions like that Ashley describes, there is no doubting that Ashley puts herself at the heart of this case. She is definitely cooperating with investigators, providing them with theories and leads to chase down people she thinks should be looked at as a suspect. But for some reason... At least in the files we have, in all of the talking and finger pointing she's doing, she never seems to suggest that they look at Eric. Instead, she really focuses her attention on someone else close to Brittany. Not Eric, not JJ, the one who supposedly had this like freaking receipt

• 54:48Ashley Flowers?

  or like some kind of connection to someone who had the receipt or whatever. No, she turns the tables on Brittany's own mom, Jessica Rolfe. Now, to be fair, we know that Jessica is suspicious of Ashley too. So they're both pointing the finger at each other. And the accusations against Jessica kind of stick for at least a brief moment in time. And that's because of some disturbing voice memos between mother and daughter that end up getting leaked.

• 55:25Speaker 01

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• 56:09Speaker 01

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• 56:30Ashley Flowers?

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• 57:14Ashley Flowers?

  Visit sofi.com/crimejunkie to see how much you can save. That's sofi.com/crimejunkie, and start making smarter money moves with SoFi. SoFi's student loans are originated by SoFi Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Additional terms and conditions apply. NMLS 696891.

• 57:37Ashley Flowers?

  Ashley Houli believes Brittany's mom, Jessica Rolfe, at the very least, knows more than she's saying about what happened to Brittany. Because according to the case file, there was speculation that Brit's disappearance was somehow linked to retaliation of some sort. Like, maybe Jessica owed some dangerous people money, or there were, like, stolen drugs, or something of the sort there. Now, to be very clear, investigators never publicly substantiated any of those claims against Jessica. But this is where the case really starts spiraling. Because even by Jessica's own account, she and Brittany did have a complicated relationship. They fought about drug use.

• 58:21Ashley Flowers?

  They fought about the custody of Brittany's children. And Jessica admits that she and Brittany had even fought over men. They had been involved with two of the same guys over the years, although apparently, like, at different times. You can imagine this left a lot of room for rumors to... run rampant, especially considering Jessica herself was wrapped up in the local drug scene and struggling with substance use back then. So none of it looked good. But after several years of what seems like back and forth finger pointing, this video gets blasted online that plays horribly for Jessica.

• 59:01Ashley Flowers?

  It's a recording of one of their mother-daughter arguments from not too long before Britt went missing. And honestly, it is hard to hear. But because it's already out there and has become part of the narrative surrounding this case, I felt like it was important to acknowledge and to play for you, to play for everyone listening. But it has been edited down slightly for time's sake. Now, this is from about a month before Britt went missing, and these voice memos seem to center around a man named Daniel, who Brittany had dated and then Jessica had had a thing with. Now, Daniel seemed to be stoking the fire around, like, Brittany's custody of her children. She had recently given up custody, and her mom was furious.

• 59:46Speaker 07

  First off, you destroyed yourself. You are a toxic waste to everything and everybody you touch. Secondly, no, I'm not gonna threaten you about jail. I'm not gonna threaten you about Daniel. I am kinda threatening you about Daniel, but, um, you need to shut your big ass mouth. Don't be making phone calls, don't be sending people to send them messages. Like, you are full of [BLEEP] and everybody knows it. You're sick in the head, there's something wrong with you. Seek help, that's what you need to do. Immediately. You [BLEEP] with people's lives, you [BLEEP] tormenting mine, you torment your dads, you

• 1:00:31Speaker 07

  torment everybody's, you torment Daniel, you torment your children, you [BLEEP] suck, dude. You suck, you suck the life right out of people. Nobody likes you. We do not want to talk to you, we do not want to hear from you.

• 1:00:47Speaker 03

  Yep, and you're blocked again. And no, actually, I'm doing great, thank you. But you have a good one. And don't contact me anymore. You're not my mom. You mean nothing to me. And as far as Daniel, that was my closure. I don't really give a [BLEEP]. Um...

• 1:01:10Speaker 07

  Other than that, I don't have anything to say. So, have a nice life. Stop contacting. And no, I could just see my kids on a regular basis. All of them. Thank you all.

• 1:01:24Speaker 07

  So, stop texting him, stop calling him, stop emailing him, stop everything, stop having people contact him. Or, I am going to let everybody know where little Miss Brittany is at. And I'm gonna ruin your life. Stay the [__] away from everybody.

• 1:01:45Speaker 07

  I was just granted a visitation with my boys. So, it doesn't really matter. You do you and I'll do me. And you can live your dope style of life with Daniel. And let him keep ruining your life too. He's piece of shit. I don't give a [__] about him.

• 1:02:04Speaker 07

  And I moved back out of state, so it doesn't really matter. And yep, that's why my dad talks to me on a regular basis now too, huh? And as far as Daniel goes, I'm with somebody, so I don't really give a shit. Like I said, that was just my closure. I couldn't care less about him.

• 1:02:21Ashley Flowers?

  Those are tough. Tough to listen to. And what I'll say is this, Jessica told us that she is not proud of what she said. She seemed to own it though. These voice memos haunt her. They are played over and over again, sometimes when she least is expecting it. One of her lowest moments on repeat. But she says it's taught her to be more careful about what she says out of anger, because you never know what your last words to someone might be. And those being hers to Britt is something that she has to live with now. But she is adamant that no matter how ugly those recordings sound, Brittany did not deserve what happened to her. She never wanted any harm to come to her daughter.

• 1:03:04Ashley Flowers?

  And she firmly believes that Ashley put those out just to make her look bad and to divert suspicion away from her and Eric. And Ashley admitted to us, yes, she was the one who originally got access to that video. But she says the story is a bit more complicated than that. Because she claims at one point she was helping Jessica get into an old Facebook account while they were still on good terms. But like, long story short, that changes. They're no longer cool. And then she finds these voice memos between Britt and Jessica on Jessica's account. So while she says she's the one who discovered them,

• 1:03:45Ashley Flowers?

  she also is saying she's not the one responsible for actually circulating them online. She said that she only shared it with some of Britt's other family members, like people she thought needed to know. And like, that's how it got blasted out. Now, when all of this is said and done, there is nothing that I've come across that seems to put Jessica with her daughter the night that she went missing or anywhere near Fawn River Road.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  You mean like a gas receipt?

• 1:04:11Ashley Flowers?

  Like that.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  I get that where there's smoke, there's usually fire. But what I am really struggling to find here is the why. Like, let's say Ashley and Eric at least at a minimum, know a little bit more than what they're saying. What do they know? Why did she go missing? Because I've been out there. I've been in Sturgis.

• 1:04:29Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  I've really struggled to believe that this is a random person who could have picked her up. Like, where does this mystery man come in in all of this?

• 1:04:38Ashley Flowers?

  Well, it is possible that mystery man isn't that much of a mystery at all.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Wait, did anyone look at Daniel?

• 1:04:46Ashley Flowers?

  Oh, they definitely looked at Daniel, like, obviously due to all the drama and stuff. Um, not Daniel. He like apparently was living in the Florida at the time. Though I there was like some back and forth questions, like was he, wasn't he? I don't know. I don't think it matters because he is like ultra tatted, like even on his face. So like

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  Identifiable.

• 1:05:05Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. But anyways, not Daniel, but still might be someone she already knows. Like, don't get me wrong, mystery man has still never conclusively been identified. But here is the thing about the sketches that were done of mystery guy. So the first one, the one that I showed you already, that one was done by like Grandma's description in 2019, a couple of months after like the incident. That's the guy with like the long skinny face, the sideburns. That one didn't really get circulated publicly. Like for some reason investigators only seem to show it to some people they talked to, asking who it like looked like to them. Brittany's dad Greg, who is Grandma Vicky's son, told us that he was told detectives

• 1:05:50Ashley Flowers?

  never really completely trusted that sketch. Which like, and he's like, look, I kind of get it, like, right? Remember, their interaction was super brief, like people were in and out of that house all the time. Perhaps that one was wrong. But for some unknown reason detectives thought that they could get something better, even if it was like way down the line. So in 2023, they get like a whole news sketch from Brittany's cousin, who was apparently around when Britt and this mystery guy were there.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  How was something done five years later more accurate than Grandma a couple of months out?

• 1:06:24Ashley Flowers?

  The only thing that like I can make make sense for myself is like the person, this cousin who gives this, they were a teenager. So like, total shot in the dark, maybe they hadn't been like drinking like other people in the house, or like weren't intoxicated in some way, like more like clear minded. Either way, 2023, they give a description and somehow police feel confident in this second one. Now I'm gonna still post both just in case, like they're not wildly different in my opinion. And all of that to say, between the two, first, second, whatever, some people thought that the general description of this mystery man maybe kind of sort of fit Sheldon, we know that, right?

• 1:07:09Ashley Flowers?

  Despite the family knowing him. But some people have also wondered whether Eric could have been the mystery man at Grandma's house.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  How would they know Sheldon but not Eric, though?

• 1:07:20Ashley Flowers?

  On paper, I know that sounds like ridiculous, but according to people close to the family, most of the family hadn't seen Eric in a long time. Like, him and Britt are separated, they're not living together, and in that time... I guess his appearance had apparently changed drastically, likely due to his drug use. So Britt, that body cam footage of the traffic stop that we got earlier, that actually may be one of the most accurate views we have of Eric circa the time Brittany vanished. Because that's from December 2018, remember? And like, there's something, like, I noticed about-

• 1:07:55Speaker 01

  Oh, there's sideburns.

• 1:07:56Ashley Flowers?

  Uh huh. But, the other problem I have though is like, he's got a big beard. And glasses. And we heard that he strictly was like a glasses guy.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I honestly don't see how it could be him.

• 1:08:10Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, you would think that that would have like, stood out. Plus, remember, based on the timeline Ashley gave us, it probably wouldn't have worked for Eric to be Mystery Man. But if we believe that, we have to believe that the timeline Ashley is giving us is accurate.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  Okay, let's just say Mystery Man isn't Eric. It still feels like he knows something. So, again, I ask, why? Like, who actually has motive to want Brittany gone?

• 1:08:36Ashley Flowers?

  So, of all of the things that have come up over the years, all of the rumors, all of the finger pointing, I'm telling you, this case is like a, you can get lost in it. I don't have like a firm, this is it, reason to point to. But, there is something that I can point to and say, I think the answer might be here-ish. So we got word that Brittany had been talking to this guy named Sacre Bowman, seemingly romantically. And the very evening that she went missing, they talked on the phone several times. Like, it even sounds like one of these calls took place on her way to Grandma's.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Is he Mystery Man?

• 1:09:17Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, well, this I know is not possible because he is in prison at the time. That is the only reason that we even solidly know about these calls.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Okay, I was gonna ask that again.

• 1:09:26Ashley Flowers?

  They're recorded on a prison line. And Britt, it sounds like we are the first ones to obtain these recordings. So, I was praying that there was gonna be some new tidbit of information from them. Like, maybe Britt would drop a name or a location, a hint, we would hear some- Like something strange in the background, anything, because I definitely believe that she picked up mystery man on the way to grandma's. And although she doesn't end up revealing who it was, who was gonna be with her that night, I do think there is something in one of these calls that we got that could be telling. But I need to give you some quick background context first.

• 1:10:07Ashley Flowers?

  So at the time that Brittany goes missing, we know that Ashley says that she's dating a guy that I mentioned earlier, Pocket. Real name, Curtis Polly. So part of her alibi, outside of Eric being over at her place for most of the night, is that she stayed home upset because Pocket had apparently just been picked up by police. Apparently, he'd previously been on probation for something drug-related and decided to ditch his monitoring device. So, in one of the calls with Zach, it sounds like Brittany is maybe just about to leave Sheldon's house for the evening. So that's the context you need to know going into this call. And the one that I'm gonna play you some clips from is at a time when I think Brittany

• 1:10:49Ashley Flowers?

  is maybe just about to leave Sheldon's house for the evening. So take a listen and then we'll talk about it.

• 1:10:55Speaker 07

  Oh my god, I have to tell you something. What's that? Polly went to jail. Polly? Yeah, he got picked up yesterday. At seven in the night. Huh? I ain't gonna lose no sleep over it. (laughing) Thank you. That means either way, he's just absconding or he catching more charges? I have no idea. Ashley hasn't said anything to me. Well, I asked her about it, but she hasn't responded. That means if he's in jail, I can get word to him now. Yep. I mean, I could've been a first. Well, you know, no, you better, no. Don't do that right now. You need to wait a little bit.

• 1:11:40Speaker 07

  Only because when I was picked up, I don't, I don't need anything to come back on me. I don't need him to get a hair in his ass because of what he said to me got repeated back to you. You hear me? What's that? I said, I don't, I don't need him wanting to do some revengeful shit because something that he said to me got back to you while he's in there sitting on whatever he's sitting.

• 1:12:05Speaker 03

  It don't matter what was said, period. It all comes out anyway. It don't matter. I always find out anything. It doesn't matter what it is. This is how it's been. It was like that with all my baby mamas. I'm not talking like that.

• 1:12:19Speaker 03

  You know I'm talking about. Bye. What's up? I was telling, uh, she was gonna say bye. But no, I can't, I can't say what I want to say over the phone. But there's a reason why I don't want you to say anything right now. But listen, man. I was hanging around Eric, um, has, uh, pockets old lady and pocket. Okay? Ha, so I don't, I don't need anything said right now.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  It feels like they're, like, talking in a code.

• 1:12:47Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, probably. They know they're being recorded, right? And I don't know about you, but I feel like there's, like, some tension there, like, code or no code. Like, the vibe I get is that Brittany has been hanging out with Eric, Ashley, and Ashley's boyfriend Pocket, who is now in jail, where Zach is already at. And it sounds like Britt has something, like, maybe some dirt on at least one of them. And she doesn't want what she has, like, getting back to that person or to someone? And, like, I don't know. Maybe this means nothing.

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  I mean, I definitely sensed something.

• 1:13:23Ashley Flowers?

  Same.

• 1:13:24Speaker 01

  So what's Zach in prison for, then?

• 1:13:26Ashley Flowers?

  Also something drug-related, but, like, seemingly separate, not whatever, like, Pocket was, like, going away for.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:13:33Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know. Maybe Brittany or Zach, like, knew how Pocket, like, ended up getting picked up by police? Like, could Britt have been the one who ratted him out? I don't know. Our reporter Madison tried tracking down Zach and Pocket, hoping that they might remember what the heck she was talking about, but she has not had any luck reaching them. And of course, we tried reaching out to everyone named in this episode too, including Eric Shank. But as of this recording, Eric never got back to us. And listen, when we asked Ashley straight up if she is involved or if she knows more, she said most definitely not. And I want to point something out that I find, like... Pretty odd.

• 1:14:16Ashley Flowers?

  And I'm not sure like where the disconnect is, but it's concerning no matter what is going on here. So in the case file, there is this mention of detectives talking to Ashley about potentially taking a polygraph. But then there's like no info on whether or not they followed through. So obviously, we asked people like we were speaking to about this. Did they hear about the results? Did it happen? And Brittany's dad Greg told Madison that St. Joseph County Sheriff's Office told him that both Ashley and Eric ended up taking polygraphs and they passed. But plot twist. Ashley told Mads that she never ended up taking one at all.

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  But wouldn't a past polygraph be good for her? Like that would like help her out a little bit?

• 1:15:00Ashley Flowers?

  I would think so. She told us she was supposed to take one. Like she even went in for it and she spent more than three hours being like pre-screened only to ultimately not be tested because the examiner felt like she hadn't gotten enough sleep. Apparently like she had been on the road a lot for work around that time. And she said that she spent several months trying to coordinate a second exam with a detective, but then like it eventually just like died off.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  I can't even like come up with a reason for any of that to make sense.

• 1:15:28Ashley Flowers?

  Right? Like is someone in law enforcement so confused that they're like imagining polygraphs that never happened?

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  Or is maybe like Ashley confused about the pre-questions, like the pre-screening? Maybe they just told her it was like the beginning part, but it wasn't.

• 1:15:43Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, I doubt it. Like at least from what I know and admittedly like I don't, I've never seen like all a bunch of polygraphs. Like, but I think that like they do the pre-screen before you're like hooked up to the machine. I think you would know if you were taking a polygraph.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Right. I mean.

• 1:15:56Ashley Flowers?

  This is, this is just like the perfect example in my mind of like this encapsulates the case. Like.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  We're missing something.

• 1:16:02Ashley Flowers?

  And like the lies don't even like make sense. If there are lies or is it like everyone's got their wires so crossed, I don't even understand the things that are being said. And yes, I think we are missing a piece. But I like, I really think someone out there has to have the piece. So like this is my plug to everyone to reach out to us. [email protected]. Because Britt, I find that with the stories. That have this like kind of local following. People tend to come out of the woodwork with important information. And no matter which theory you follow, like something just doesn't work here. And maybe that's because what happened wasn't planned. I mean, I think there's a real possibility something spiraled. Maybe tensions that had already been brewing finally boiled over.

• 1:16:48Ashley Flowers?

  Maybe drugs were involved. It could have been an accident and people panicked afterward. Some people believe that Mystery Man eventually caught back up with Brittany after she left John's house, called for help, like went by that second house and then like whatever happened next just went horribly wrong. Others have even speculated that Brittany may have been hit by a car sometime after leaving that teen's house. Maybe Mystery Man had called for a ride for them. That person hit her and then it was covered up. And honestly, when you remember how dark and foggy those roads were that night, there was like a little bit of snow, plus the possibility of drugs being involved. It gets not hard to imagine how quickly things could have taken a dangerous turn.

• 1:17:30Ashley Flowers?

  Almost every scenario in my mind, though, involves someone else. Mystery Man hasn't come forward, so there has gotta be a reason for that, right? Like if he knows what happened, he had to have gotten a ride out of there from someone with or without Brittany. I want to know who else was in that area. I mean, we know detectives didn't even talk to Eric for forever. Like, did they get his phone records? Ashley's, JJ's, anybody's? I would love to know who was in communication with who that night. Right. Maybe one of them were even out that way. I mean, Google doesn't offer geolocation info to police anymore, but they did for a long time after this case.

• 1:18:12Ashley Flowers?

  I want to know what detectives have and who was in that area. And as unlikely as it seems, it is possible that there was someone out there who isn't part of Brittany's circle. I mean, there was some like, super strange events that happened like out that way after she vanished. Like, for example, a couple of weeks after Brittany goes missing, a woman in a neighboring county reported that someone driving a white Cadillac stole gas off her farm. Seemingly unrelated, right? Well, the Ring Cam footage of the event ends up being circulated, and that's when some people in town start saying that they can hear Brittany screaming in the background,

• 1:18:55Ashley Flowers?

  like maybe she was being held captive by the guys who were in this car. Even Grandma Vicky reportedly thought that the man who turned out to be the driver of that car resembled mystery man. But the man later claimed that it was only a friend asleep in the car, who he had like startled awake or something? And deputies did process the vehicle, even recovered blood evidence, but when testing came back, the samples belonged to two unidentified men. Dead end. Then, there was an abandoned property off of, guess where? Fawn River Road, that investigators paid really close attention to. This was like a place tied to rumors, like basically that after the crash, Brittany had

• 1:19:36Ashley Flowers?

  been taken there against her will, where she was subsequently assaulted, tortured, and eventually killed. There had also been sex trafficking rumors tied to this house, which I think is important to mention, knowing what JJ brought up earlier in that body cam footage. And what really like fueled this theory around this house was the fact that it burned down via arson, possibly to try and cover things up? Question mark? Investigators photographed the scene, searched the property multiple times, even collected evidence, all after the fire. And they even found women's underwear that looked like it was the kind that Britt wore, like found near a burn pit. There was a knife with what looked like possible blood stains in the basement, along with

• 1:20:21Ashley Flowers?

  more suspicious stains on the basement floor. Again, you're thinking like, this has to be it. I guess all of it. It turned out to be nothing. Apparently it wasn't actually blood and likely nothing was connected to this case. And Brit- there is so much more where that came from, stuff like this. If anyone were to want to go down like a deep rabbit hole, there is this podcast called Hide and Seek, hosted by James Basinger. He is like, deep, deep, deep, deep in this case, has been for literal years. The guy's done like 50 plus episodes just on Brittany's case. That's how much there is to this. So anyone who wants can go take a listen. Brittany's case was his third season. He's in a couple now.

• 1:21:04Ashley Flowers?

  I really liked the one that he did, his first season on Nancy Moyer. So that's Hide and Seek. Go listen, you can go way deeper. You'll hear, I mean, so many stories like this. And like, this is the thing about these stories, like, some of them are so detailed and specific and disturbing that part of me wonders like, how could all of this just be made up? But then there's another part of me that wonders like, what if what we're really seeing here is just like, an entire community trying to make sense of something horrific after one of their own vanished? Because sadly, in worlds shaped by instability and rocky relationships and paranoia, trust disappears fast.

• 1:21:47Ashley Flowers?

  People hide things, people protect each other, stories shift, rumors spread faster than actual facts do. And once fear enters the picture, every coincidence starts feeling sinister. So I keep coming back to the simple things. The Facebook messages that disappeared. How did Brittany's gas receipt actually turn up? I think somebody out there really does know exactly what happened to Brittany Wallace Shank that day, November 30th, 2018. And maybe all the accusations and the chaos and the outlandish stories just served another purpose entirely. Maybe it was creating so much noise that detectives would never find the truth buried underneath it.

• 1:22:32Ashley Flowers?

  But I believe the answers are there. And I believe that the right person can still get to them.

• 1:22:52Ashley Flowers?

  So if any of our listeners know anything about the disappearance of Brittany Wallace Shank, especially if you recognize the man in the sketches, which we've also posted to our blog, you can contact the St. Joseph County Sheriff's Office at 269-467-9045. You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkie.com.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  And you can follow us on Instagram at Crime Junkie Podcast.

• 1:23:21Ashley Flowers?

  We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

• 1:23:39Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. I think Chuck would approve.

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir, and that can only mean one thing: Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful, you never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.