Episode 171: Shawnta Pankey – Bite-Sized Crime

When a young woman goes missing while camping in the Idaho mountains, investigators desperately search for clues to find her. What happened to Shawnta Pankey?

Episode Media

Surveillance image of Shawnta and Eddie at their apartment building on April 15, 2018 *(ICSO)*

Area where Shawnta was last seen on April 15, 2018 *(Google Maps)*

Episode Sources

Episode Transcript

Welcome back to Bite-Sized Crime. This week I’m bringing you a cold case that is still waiting for justice to be served. This episode discusses sensitive topics, so listener discretion is advised.

Shawnta LaRae Pankey grew up in Lewiston, Idaho, a small city nestled between the banks of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers. One of four siblings, Shawnta was known for her fiery red hair and her equally fiery personality. Her family described her as having a contagious laugh, making friends easily and always wanting to see the best in people. Her mother LaDena told Dateline, “She has a good heart, and she’s very friendly. And she’s always willing to help people.”

In 2012, Shawnta gave birth to a baby girl, the light of her life. Shawnta loved being a mother and wanted to give her daughter the world. She filled her Facebook page with pictures of herself and her daughter playing together and enjoying life.

In the spring of 2018, 25-year-old Shawnta was living in the town of Grangeville, about 70 miles south of Lewiston. She rented an apartment with her boyfriend Eddie, and the couple often took advantage of the town’s proximity to the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forest. They enjoyed camping and hiking in the beautiful mountain landscape.

Although Shawnta’s family lived an hour away in Lewiston, they still made time to see each other. LaDena often babysat her now 6-year-old granddaughter, and Shawnta kept in close contact with her brother and sisters.

On one particular weekend in April of 2018, Shawnta’s daughter was spending the night with her grandmother. Shawnta and LaDena had arranged to meet up at 5pm on Sunday, April 15th so Shawnta could pick up her daughter and have her ready for school the next day. But around 3:30 on Sunday, LaDena got a call from Shawnta’s boyfriend Eddie.

LaDena was surprised when Eddie asked if Shawnta was with her. LaDena said she wasn’t – they weren’t scheduled to meet up for another hour and a half. LaDena later told KLEW that Eddie said, “Well, she’s not with me, either,” and then hung up the phone.

Concerned, LaDena tried calling Eddie back, but he didn’t answer. She tried texting him, but again, he didn’t respond. LaDena knew that Shawnta and Eddie shared a phone, so if they weren’t together, she had no way of contacting her daughter.

LaDena decided to wait it out. She brought her granddaughter to the arranged meeting spot at 5pm, but Shawnta wasn’t there. LaDena told Dateline, “We waited 45 minutes and she didn’t show up. Eddie and her shared a phone, but he had it and wasn’t answering. She would’ve found a way to call me, if she could. She would have never ran off and left [her daughter].”

On Monday morning, when she still hadn’t heard from Shawnta, LaDena contacted the Idaho County Sheriff’s Office and reported her missing.

Right away, investigators reached out to Shawnta’s boyfriend Eddie. Eddie told them that he and Shawnta had gotten up early on Sunday morning to go camping at the Pine Bar campground along the Salmon River just west of Grangeville. They had packed their camper and driven the 28 miles up Highway 95 and down towards Cooper’s Ferry until they reached Pine Bar, where they set up camp along the river.

Eddie told investigators that around 10am, he and Shawnta had gotten into an argument. Shawnta had walked off, following the path of the river. Eddie had packed up the camper and headed back to Grangeville. Hours later, he called LaDena to see if Shawnta was with her, assuming she would have hitched a ride home.

Cell phone service was extremely limited in the area surrounding the campground, so investigators couldn’t pinpoint its exact location during the time Shawnta and Eddie were supposedly there. But surveillance video from their apartment building confirmed that they had packed up their camping gear and left Grangeville shortly after 2:00 that morning just as Eddie had said.

However, other parts of Eddie’s story didn’t make sense. Eddie said that Shawnta had been wearing a tank top and blue jeans with pink cowboy boots, an odd choice for camping in 40 degree weather. Even if she had walked off in the heat of anger, leaving without a jacket wasn’t smart.

Then there was the question of why Shawnta and Eddie would go camping that day when Shawnta was supposed to pick up her daughter at 5pm. It seemed strange to do all that work packing the camper when they weren’t even going to stay overnight.

Perhaps the biggest question was why Eddie would leave Shawnta at the campground knowing she didn’t have a phone or car. If they had argued at 10 and he was back at the apartment by 11, he hadn’t waited very long to see if she would come back to the campsite after blowing off steam.

Also, when Eddie called LaDena and learned that Shawnta wasn’t with her, why hadn’t he called the police to report her missing? At the very least, why hadn’t he gone back to Pine Bar to look for her?

While detectives questioned Eddie, search teams from multiple agencies were scouring the area by land, water, and air. Shawnta had already been missing for nearly 24 hours – if she was out in the elements, she could be in danger of hypothermia or worse.

Unfortunately, initial searches didn’t turn up any sign of Shawnta. Idaho County Sheriff’s Detective Jerry Johnson told the Lewiston Tribune that they were exhausting all resources to look for Shawnta, and they weren’t ruling anything out. “We’re looking at all possibilities. We’re trying to cover the time when she walked away and we’re looking at foul play… Or maybe she did walk away and caught a ride or got hurt. But we’re trying to look at all the possibilities.”

A few days into the search, a local resident called in a tip. They had seen a man with a dog camping near Pine Bar the same weekend Shawnta had disappeared. The man was driving a green pickup truck with Utah license plates and had a camper on the back. Investigators tracked the man down, hoping he would have some information about Shawnta, but it ended up being a dead end.

A few days later, there was another tip. This time, a man said he and his family had seen a woman matching Shawnta’s description walking up the road a few miles from where Rice Creek flows into the Salmon River. The woman had been wearing a tank top, jeans, and cowboy boots – the man described her as looking out of her element. He hadn’t thought too much of it until he saw news reports about Shawnta’s disappearance and realized it might be the same person.

Search teams headed to Rice Creek, bringing along two cadaver dogs and their handlers from Clearwater County. Detective Johnson told the Lewiston Tribune that the dogs alerted in two spots, but the rainy weather and slippery terrain made it difficult for teams to search the area. They would have to return when things were drier.

On May 1st, two weeks after Shawnta disappeared, a pink cowboy boot was discovered 75 miles away from the Pine Bar campground. According to the Asotin County Sheriff’s Office, the boot had been found upside down on a tree limb near Beachview Park in Clarkston, Washington. The park is located on the banks of the Snake River, which meets the Salmon River on the border of Idaho and Oregon. The boot was soaking wet and looked as though it had been in the water for quite some time. If the boot belonged to Shawnta, investigators had to look into the possibility that it had somehow drifted downriver.

A month into the search, Shawnta’s family hired a private investigation firm in the hopes that they would be able to get answers. A community search was organized for the weekend of May 19th, focusing on the Rice Creek area where Shawnta was allegedly spotted walking along the road. During the search, a volunteer came across a hairbrush in a ditch near the junction of Boles Road and Joseph Road. According to Detective Johnson, the brush had quite a bit of red hair tangled in the bristles. They immediately sent it to the Idaho State Police forensic laboratory for testing.

Idaho County Sheriff Doug Giddings told Dateline that they were following up on every lead and covering as much ground as they could, but it wasn’t an easy task. “This county alone is 8,500 square miles. It’s a huge county, and it’s rough terrain. Where do you begin to look? Most likely place? The river.”

Sheriff Giddings also confirmed that they still weren’t ruling anything out. “We don’t have a crime yet, so we don’t have any suspects. We may have a crime, but we don’t know it yet. Does someone just disappear? It’s possible. But is it probable? No.”

In June, the sheriff’s office announced that they believed Shawnta had met with foul play, and they considered her boyfriend, Edward Mills, a person of interest in the case. In a statement to the press, Detective Johnson said, “We’re operating on the premise that some type of foul play occurred to Shawnta. We don’t believe, and the family doesn’t believe, that she intentionally went missing. [Edward] Mills met with us for an interview and agreed to a polygraph. But he failed to show up for the polygraph and has been uncooperative since then and not talking to us.”

Detective Johnson was also clear that while this was certainly a step forward in the case, they still had a lot of work to do. “We’re continuing to work on the case very hard, but there’s still no significant development. Nothing that has us on the verge of finding Shawnta, as much as we would like.”

As time passed, Shawnta’s family continued to try everything they could to get answers. In August, they announced a $3,500 reward for information leading to Shawnta’s recovery with an additional reward leading to an arrest and conviction if there was foul play involved. Through community donations, the reward later grew to $12,000, but it didn’t bring the answers Shawnta’s family so desperately needed.

LaDena told KLEW that they weren’t giving up the search. “[We’re] in the same place. Still trying to find her. Still in a lot of pain. We’re still looking.”

Shawnta’s sister Cayla was worried that people were afraid to speak up about what they knew, but she hoped they would think about Shawnta and her family. She told KLEW, “She’s a good person. She has a good heart. She is a mom, she’s a sister, she’s a best friend, she’s a daughter, and she’s a human being… She deserves to be found and she deserves justice.”

In April of 2019, on the one year anniversary of Shawnta’s disappearance, Detective Johnson told the Idaho County Free Press that the investigation was slowly moving along even as leads dried up. “Are we getting closer to finding Shawnta than when it was reported a year ago? We’re not. We can exclude a lot of things, we’ve learned a lot of things and continue to. The important thing… to understand is we’re going to be here week after week, month after month, year after year. We’re not going to give up on this case. It’s not going to go away.”

Sadly, just a few weeks later, there would be a major update in the case. On May 5, 2019, a search and rescue team from Nez Perce County found a human skull along the banks of the Snake River near Buffalo Eddy. A dive team recovered more bones from the river. Using dental records, the coroner was able to identify the remains as belonging to Shawnta Pankey.

Shawnta’s remains were sent to the FBI lab in Quantico for forensic examination, which took several months. In November, the Idaho County Sheriff’s Office announced that the examination was complete, but they would not be releasing any information to the public, presumably to protect the investigation. Shawnta’s remains were returned to her family.

In the six years since then, there have been no further updates in Shawnta’s case. No suspects have been named, and no arrests have been made. There are no answers to the many questions that surround Shawnta’s disappearance and death. Her family is still waiting for justice.

If you have any information about the death of Shawnta LaRae Pankey, please contact the Idaho County Sheriff’s Office at 208-983-1100.