What is the case introduced in this episode?
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to share with you today is a true labyrinth of a crime story in that it includes two homicide victims and several sexual assault survivors, many of whom have a truly disturbing nexus.
There's going to be a little bit of jumping around in the timeline in this episode, but hang in there because I promise it's not too hard to follow once you dive in and really start to piece the big picture together. It takes place in Angelina National Forest in East Texas, a roughly 153,000-acre space that's known for its rolling landscape and abundance of native pine trees.
The nearby Sam Rayburn Reservoir, which was built in the early 1960s, is one of many places you can picnic, fish, hike, and boat. With the proper license, hunters who visit the forest have captured everything from deer to duck to wild turkeys to squirrels.
Over many decades, archaeologists have discovered evidence that humans have been coming and going from the forest for some 8,000 years, leaving traces of their activity behind. In the summer of 2006, that tradition continued, but in a most alarming way. Someone entered Angelina's boundary and left two particularly disturbing things behind. Bodies. so so
On Sunday, July 2nd, 2006, a woman named Margaret Anderson was talking on the phone with her 25-year-old granddaughter, Shante Coleman. The two were discussing the fact that the next day, July 3rd, was Shante's deceased mother's birthday, and she expressed to her grandmother that she wanted to go visit her mom's grave to leave some flowers and asked if Margaret would join her.
You see, Shante was a mother of two toddler-aged boys, and she'd been living a bit of a complicated life as of late.
According to an article by April Barb for the Jacksonville Progress, Shante had struggled with drug use, and actually one of the last times that Margaret physically saw her, which was just a few months earlier in late May 2006, was at Shante's mother's funeral, and some of her family members didn't even recognize her. Her life in her mid-20s was a far cry from who she'd been in high school.
According to her obituary, she was the daughter of a reverend and had been in clubs like Delta Debutante, Top Teens of America, and sang in a youth choir. She graduated high school and was active in a local Baptist church too, but somewhere along the way, her friends and family said she just got mixed up with the wrong crowd.
Still, the young mother had at least kept a line of communication open with relatives like Margaret. After chatting on the phone for a bit, the pair seemingly ended their conversation like normal. Which is why about a month later, on Friday, August 4th, Shantae's 26th birthday, Margaret fully expected to hear from her granddaughter again. But strangely, she didn't call.
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