Jason Shea

Her body had been thrown over the fence and then she was drugged by her hair to the cellar.

It was just, it was odd that they had found this.

What are the odds that he found her out there innocently? Sometimes where there's smoke, there's fire.

He had stated that his kids used to go out there and, you know, teenagers going out there and partying at this old abandoned house. I walked over to the galvanized gate, and I propped up on it.

And he showed no indication of deception during that polygraph. And we decided it's time to move on.

She wouldn't get in a car with somebody she didn't know. Everyone just knew that about her. They knew that. I can't tell you how many people came up to us and said, had to have been somebody I've known because she wouldn't have gotten in a vehicle that she didn't know that person.

When we're doing any of these investigations, who are the first people you look at as boyfriend?

I think talking to witnesses who had spoken to John prior to the homicide, that he was worried about the relationship and didn't know how much longer it was going to last.

Quite possible. Could this have been a spat, an argument, and that's why she was killed? We didn't know at that time.

We didn't know if he knew more about what had happened to Shantae than what he was actually telling us. Did you bring him in? We did bring him in and asked him what was going on. So we had a good timeline of where Shantae was at, and we needed to see where he was at during that time.

He had given us his cell phone to download. We looked at that and noticed that there was some communication that had been deleted. So we had to pull him back in. Some messages? Some messages.

You know, he said, hey, this is what was going on. I was using drugs, and those messages were in reference to buying and selling marijuana. And so that's how he explained it.

They were pressuring me.

He lived in the area. He was always seen driving around that area.

Absolutely.

He had gone to another residence and there were multiple individuals there that he didn't leave till late that evening.

We were able to verify that.

We were getting ready for a manhunt.

Correct.

We still needed more information of potential suspects that might be involved in the case. So we had to continue to try to keep him on our side to get as much information as we could.

When we started doing interviews, his name had been mentioned multiple times.

Shantae went missing, and it was right there by Colin's house. Here's where Colin was living at the time. Yep.

And it kind of backs up back to the road to where Shantae was living at, too. Okay. So she would have had to walk down this area the day that she went missing.

Ms. McBee that had been walking with Shantae had told us that Colin Smith had purchased her some shoes recently.

Saying, hey, meet me out by the barn tonight, but don't tell anybody. To Shantae? Yes.

Sure, and that's what we were thinking. Is he the one? Did she say something that upset him? In my opinion, he was a number one that we needed to talk to.

He really didn't. There was a little bit of concern.

A couple weeks ago. He ended up admitting that he had been in a sexual relationship with her.

It's not just his brother that we talked to. Who else is there with you?

Of course, they're family members. So we've got to look at that, too.

It's not the strongest because, you know, family members will cover family members.

It comes back that he's not a match to the DNA that was found on her body. So you're able to clear him? Yes.

were trying to identify potential suspects. John Adams was Chante's boyfriend.

I'm sure there were people who were out there wondering if they were, you know, eating supper beside the person who had done this.

You know, that's always a possibility of things that we look at.

From the very beginning, I didn't believe that it would work.

This is not a TV show, and this is not, they can't do that with DNA.

Yes. I think the county just wasted some money.

It looked like, to me, it looked like every white kid out in Northlake. It could have been anybody.

Maybe this is not a waste of money.

We can't find him. My job at that point was we're going to have to come up with a plan to locate him. If that's out in the woods, out in the brush, wherever he's at, we've got to find him.

We were getting ready for a manhunt.

Colin's name had been mentioned multiple times.

I'm a dad. I've got kids. It kind of hits home to you because we all have kids and it affects you.

As you're processing all of this... How can you process that? That he just confessed to the church that he attended, that he's the one that everybody's been looking for for the last 18 months. You know, driving to the sheriff's office, trying to process that, a million things are going through your mind. Did he really do it? Is he just saying that he did it?

It could have been anybody.

Matter of fact, and that's what surprised us also, there wasn't really a whole bunch of emotion involved in this.

She wasn't involved in any type of drugs or gangs. This was an innocent girl who hadn't done anything wrong, and then we find her in the bottom of a cellar.

Yes, this is the very beginning of it. Besides the crime scene, we knew that she had been over here, so this is the main area where we focused a lot of our investigation.

Somebody that had seen her or seen her get in a car with somebody.

She goes missing.

He could have been. He may have been waiting for her and watching for her and waited for that time to where she was by herself to take his chance.