going it had your passion. i m gonna do what i have to do and i don t care who s toes i step on. shannon s only thing that made sense was that she had been abducted. police were investigating every option. the first thing you do on a missing persons case of this magnitude is try to interview all of the acquaintances and friends. and we didn t get as much information as out of those as we can. the melendi s were eager to share. because they knew their shannon would never put them through this kind of pain. they re shannon put everybody else at ease. she had a smile that warm to rome. she would walk in and people would go, shannon is here! from a young age, she commanded her parents attention. she had her father under her thumb. and she would just look at him and say, but daddy please! she was very good at
pray that they saw what we saw. see him for the monster that he was. the jury deliberated for three days. then the moment that they had been waiting for finally came. we the jury find the defendant guilty. i ll never forget when they announced the verdict. just the sheer joy, and pain that you just saw on the faces of shannon s family. it was good to know that this monster would be away. the sheriff cups him. and when i hear the click. from the cuffs. i took a deep breath and said this is over. but the family found out it actually was not over. he was sentenced to life in prison. and the melendis assumed that he would remain behind bars forever. they were crushed when they learned that because he
not mean that you cannot prosecute a murder case, it does of course complicate it. but it would be a steep mountain to climb? absolutely. still the prosecutor did have some key witnesses that painted a portrait of butch and possibly linked him to shannon s murder. inmates who shared a cell with him. butch never really confessed per se to anybody. but he made a horribly incriminating statements to 3 inmates that to me were so believable. one of them remembered an eerie late night conversation. but she had woken up in the middle of the night and said i don t do this, the demon inside of me killed that girl. and went back to sleep. and yet jailhouse snitches, as they re called, get a lot of side eye. and what is this guy get an exchange for sitting here and telling us the story?
him, but then came that startling discovery, police had recovered her ring, but could it lead them to shannon? back to dennis murphy with shannon s story. after more than a week of theories, of speculation, investigators now had a promising lead and shannon melendi s disappearance. an anonymous caller had left a cloth bag, like this one, carrying gianna s ring at the phone booth. could that be proof of life? is there a glimmer of hope here, that you re in a period of ransom negotiations with whoever this caller was? and that moment, i kind of had hopes. you know, all of a sudden, i said, maybe we can recover. so you re waiting for another phone call? if this is about money, maybe we can there still a chance, that she still alive. the fbi was less optimistic. what was your instinct telling
u.s. officials are undergoing efforts to recover debris after shooting at a suspected chinese surveillance balloon saturday. secretary of defense lloyd austin said the u.s. fighter aircraft floated down in a statement, china s foreign ministry expressed wrong dissatisfaction with the u.s. of u.s. force. calling it an overreaction. the biden administration has responded saying, quote, we are confident we re seeking to monitor sensitive military sites. now, back to dateline. welcome back to dateline, i m craig melvin. missing college student, shannon melendi s was seen at a softball tournament, we re at umpire butch hinton was acting strangely. word had it then he kept his eye on shannon more than the ball. police were quick to question