Scott Bird

Something very brutal happened out there. You don't just walk and lose your hair and your bracelets and your jewelry. Traumatic events were happening. Just the brutality of it is what sticks out. You could tell the person thought this would be a great place to hide a body.

We didn't know what it came from. It was kind of jagged lines, almost like triangles. We even took a picture of that and sent that to FBI headquarters.

We didn't know if somebody had hit her with a car or a blunt object. Was it a shoe print?

Not only did we have a murder, we had a rapist as well.

I thought we already found who did this because you're five miles away from where everybody else is looking. You're in the middle of nowhere. She can't be seen from the road. You have to get out of your truck, climb a fence, walk through 100 yards of tall grass to get to where she was.

In the very beginning, absolutely.

Yes, people will come back to see what we have found or to downplay what they've done or to hide in plain sight.

Just to see if somebody was acting strangely or causing issues with the family.

I heard sirens and my heart kind of dropped. Kids would call it a haunted house.

They weren't the Ozzie and Harriet. They weren't perfect. Shantae liked to wave at boys, and boys would wave back, and it made her feel good. That made him a little jealous. Now, she didn't mean anything by it, but John was a little bit jealous, so it upset him some.

Sure. Would tell her what to eat, what not to eat, where she could go, where she couldn't go.

They searched everything. He was, come in my house, search my vehicle, look anywhere you want.

So he was very open.

He told us exactly where he was, what he had done, and everything he told us was truthful.

Yes, through video. I mean, it doesn't get much better alibi than that. He was just worried and upset that his fiancée had been killed. He wanted to figure out who had done this also.

That's a big red flag.

Texas Ranger Shay and I knew we had to get to the brother to talk to him before Colin could to get the true story and not Colin calling his brother and saying, hey, cover for me.

Colin told the polygrapher that he had an alibi. He was with his brother. but couldn't explain why he failed the polygraph.

Nobody may have ever looked in that cellar. It may have been years.

We were very lucky, very blessed. There's all kinds of predatory animals out here. Coyotes, bobcats, stray dogs, any kind of occasional mountain lion. If we hadn't have found her, that's probably what would have found her, some kind of animal.

A lot. Hundreds. At first, it was just, try this name, try this name, try this name.

Anytime somebody called in and said, hey, this person was in the neighborhood, we'd go talk to them and we would ask the male for a buccal swab to take their DNA.

Back to square one. Just heart-wrenching.

Called me. every day, every two days, every three days, wanting to know what we found and asking questions about the evidence.

Yes.

When somebody becomes too involved in your case, sometimes they're trying to figure out what you do know, what you have found out, what you haven't found out, to protect themselves.

A lot of sleepless nights laying there wondering, what did I miss today? Did I talk to this person today? it makes you start second-guessing yourself. What are you missing?

Absolutely.

I'm willing to try anything.

Thank you.

I was trying anything I could. We were lost. We didn't know what the next step was.

It tells us who the killer is. It doesn't give us a name, but it tells us who did this, and it's undisputable.

Right. That's how I've described it to people. I know exactly who you are.

One of our investigators, who doesn't work for us anymore, saw a show on TV. And it was about phenol topping. And he told me about it.

I did, including the sheriff, the district attorney, and then I had to convince them to give me some more money.

That's not easy.

$3,600.

I pulled it up, and it said the image was included. Oh, goodness.

I hope I recognize the person. I hope this gives me an idea of who the person is.

So I opened it and I had no clue. It was just a stranger.

Zero.

I did.

We went to social media.

We start diving into Ryan Riggs to find out who he is.

We found that he was a suspect in an illegal dumping case. That's where he dumped some trash on a county road.

He knows the area.

We find his mom and dad. They let us come in and look in the house. He's not there. They don't know where he is. Hasn't been home for several days.

So now we know Ryan's on the run from us. We figure he's seen the sketch. He's seen the news release.

Scott Bird believed he was on the run. We're calling informants. We have his picture out to the police department, our department. Everybody out driving around is looking for him.

Very brutal assault. There was cuts, bruises all over her face and head.

Oh, yes.

Pastor Keener calls Sheriff Hill and says, I'm bringing in Ryan Riggs. He's just confessed to me in the church of killing Shante.

The sheriff met him out on the highway and followed him in to make sure Ryan didn't have a change of heart.

I kept thinking, my job's not done yet. Now it's time to talk.

Yes, he did. I've always had this, it's like this different part of me that just wants nothing but destruction and evil.

What I'm going to do is take you back a little bit and go through some of this stuff.

When y'all were sitting in the truck talking, what were y'all talking about?

While she's unconscious.

He told us he knew he couldn't let her live because he had raped her. And he couldn't have her talking.

So he stomped on her chest to try to kill her. That was the mark. And that's the mark from his shoes.

I can't grab a hold of him. I can't find him.

This guy's dangerous. This guy's scary. He kills without remorse. And I'm shocked he hadn't done it again.

Absolutely. If you could say something right now to Sean Tate, what would you say?

I've never seen that house before. I don't know that I'd ever been on that county road in my career.

The floor is gone. It's just joists going across. You're going to find snakes in there, other living animals in there.

We looked for shoe prints, what's being left in the dirt, tire tracks, looking for any kind of biological material, blood, hair.

She wore a bunch of different colored bracelets. There was one on this side of the gate, and then there was one just on the other side of the gate.

Somehow or another, she's losing them off of her arm. At that point, we didn't know what caused that.