Chapter 1: What happened on the morning of November 6, 1994, in Great Smoky Mountains National Park?
Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to tell you about today takes place along the eastern edge of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The Smokies are a geographic region I've covered many times before on this podcast.
The NPS's website explains that Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited national park in the entire United States. It spans over 500,000 acres between North Carolina and Tennessee and is full of scenic drives, waterfalls, trail systems, and wildlife.
As is the case with many vast landscapes that are home to winding roads and dense forests, the potential for tragic accidents abounds. On a cool morning in November 1994, one such scenario emerged, which at first glance appeared to be a terrible accident. A car had gone over an embankment.
But as law enforcement assessed the scene and started probing further, the truth behind what happened came to light, revealing that the situation was far from an accident. This is Park Predators. so so Around 9 o'clock in the morning on Sunday, November 6th, 1994, park ranger Helen McNutt responded to a 911 call from two tourists who were visiting the Great Smoky Mountains.
The callers were from Missouri, and they said they'd been driving along the Gatlinburg Bypass when they decided to stop and admire the view from a lookout point. According to the National Park Service, the Gatlinburg Bypass is about a three and a half mile long road that connects the park to an urban four lane highway that takes drivers between Gatlinburg and nearby Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
The bypass is a popular alternate route to get into the park because it's scenic and you essentially avoid having to go through downtown Gatlinburg. I'd imagine this is probably why those tourists were on the bypass, hoping to avoid traffic while getting some breathtaking views of the landscape.
According to an episode of Snapped about this case, when the tourists peered over the edge of the overlook they'd stopped at, they immediately noticed a vehicle below them that was in really bad shape. More than 30 feet down in the middle of the dense forest was a black 1987 Jeep Wrangler, which seemed to have gone over the embankment and was lodged headfirst in a tree.
Shortly after spotting the wrecked Jeep, the bystanders called 911 and Ranger Helen McNutt was the first official to arrive on scene. And right away, she realized that this was a serious situation, not to mention dangerous.
As she began to investigate, she was extremely cautious traversing the terrain around the Jeep because it was thick with trees and brush, and there was always the possibility that wildlife like bears or rattlesnakes could be lurking nearby.
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Chapter 2: What evidence suggested that the Jeep accident was not an accident at all?
And to the chief, at least, her lack of interest in those kinds of basic details seemed unusual. But she was cooperative and allowed the chief and his accompanying officer to come inside and speak with her. They asked her when the last time she'd seen her husband was and what she'd been up to the previous night.
She responded that they'd hosted a house party at their apartment on Saturday night, which wasn't out of the norm for them. She claimed that the last time she laid eyes on Kelly was during the early morning hours after the gathering had ended. She said she'd left with a male neighbor named Brett Ray to go get food at an all-night diner and then returned home shortly after 4 a.m.
She said at that time, Kelly was asleep on their couch in the living room, but woke up suddenly in a foul mood. Shane said Kelly then began questioning her about where she'd been and what she and Brett had been doing. That spat boiled over into Kelly sharing that he didn't think she was home enough with him and their two young children.
And Shane told police that her response to her husband was to accuse him of drinking too much. Shane said that eventually Kelly voiced he'd had enough of their arguing and stormed out of their apartment. She said the last time she saw him, he'd jumped into his Jeep Wrangler and driven off.
She explained to police that she didn't go after him because she was too upset and tired at the time and their kids were already asleep. So she decided to just go to bed. It was only when she'd woken up on Sunday morning that she realized Kelly had never come home. During this interview, Chief Fox and the other officer noticed a pair of eyeglasses laying on the table in the couple's apartment.
Curious as to who they belonged to, the duo asked Shane if they were hers or Kelly's, and she told them that the glasses belonged to her husband. She stated that Kelly was nearsighted and usually didn't drive without them. The officer accompanying Chief Fox happened to be nearsighted himself, so he put on the glasses as, I guess, a kind of experiment.
And lo and behold, the spectacles were definitely meant for a nearsighted person because the officer's vision was properly corrected. Finding the glasses at the apartment was a puzzling revelation because it proved that Kelly had left his residence without the one thing he would have needed to drive well.
The question swirling in authorities' minds was, why in the world would he have done that and attempted to drive in the middle of the night without his glasses? Was he really so angry that he'd simply forgotten to grab the spectacles, had he never gotten the chance to grab them at all?
To Chief Fox, some of Shane's story sounded plausible, but he knew from what had been gathered in the investigation so far that Kelly had not died in some kind of freak motor vehicle accident. So figuring out what had happened to him after he reportedly left his family's apartment, but before his Jeep went over the embankment, was paramount.
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Chapter 3: Who was Kelly Levera and what details emerged about his death?
Brett was described in the episode of I'd Kill for You as a, quote, good old Tennessee boy, end quote. It was reported that his main concern in life was partying and looking for ways to have the most fun. He'd previously served in the Navy, but had been dishonorably discharged after punching a fellow officer.
His dad was a financially well-off publisher who operated a local newspaper in Sevierville called The Mountain Press, which is actually where some of the source material for this episode came from. Anyway, Brett had a reputation for being a risk-taker and kind of rebellious. Basically, he was willing to do whatever to have a good time.
He made a good impression with Kim and Shane right away because he fit into their crowd of friends who loved to party and he didn't take life too seriously. So Kim offered him the extra room in her apartment and he took it, which put him that much closer to her and, of course, her sister Shane.
Not long after Brett moved in, Shane learned from Kim that he didn't have anyone to spend his birthday with, which prompted Shane to go pay him a visit and deliver a gift. While she was there, Shane and Brett hung out and had a drink together, and that's sort of where things started as far as their affair.
Fast forward to after their arrest, though, and Shane's main defense had always been that she had nothing to do with her husband's murder, and Brett was just a violent man who'd been obsessed with her. But if that was the case, then law enforcement knew that it wouldn't look good if, for instance, the two of them were caught seeing one another while out on bond.
So without their knowledge, police began keeping tabs on the defendants by assigning a detective named Steve Ratcliffe to surveil them. And what he saw was damage. If you like your true crime like you like your coffee, Red Handed is the podcast for you. It's dark, intense, and might just keep you up all night. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti.
And every week on Red Handed, we break down a different fascinating case. From the most recent US trials everyone is obsessing over, like Brendan Banfield, Karen Reid, and Ellen Greenberg, to the most unbelievable stories from around the world, there's nothing we love more than digging into every detail of the cases we cover, getting beyond a basic analysis and cutting to the heart of the story.
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Hi everyone, it's Delia D'Ambra here, and I want to tell you about a podcast that's one of my personal favorites that I know you're going to love too. Dark Down East. Hosted by my friend and fellow investigative journalist Kylie Lowe, Dark Down East dives into New England's most haunting true crime cases.
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