The Killer in the Pew

On a Sunday morning in May, Texas, a couple searching for a missing 25-year-old woman stumbled upon her body in a storm cellar at an abandoned farmhouse. She was beaten so severely with a broken lawnmower blade that she was nearly unrecognizable. The killer had vanished. But what investigators didn't yet know was that he had already inserted himself into the search party, attended her funeral, hugged her grieving parents, and would spend the next year and a half hiding in plain sight—until a technology that could predict a face from a single DNA sample finally caught up with him.

The Crime Scene and the Suspects

Shauntae Blankenship disappeared on the evening of May 13, 2016, after going for her usual walk in the small, deeply religious town of May, Texas. When her body was discovered two days later, deputies found fresh tire tracks at the scene, suggesting the killer might still be nearby, watching. The brutality of the attack—blunt force trauma to the head and neck, no defensive wounds, bruising indicating she had been dragged by the elbows—led investigators to suspect this was not a first-time crime. Male DNA recovered from her body confirmed a sexual assault had occurred as she was dying or after death.