daughters. and yeah, it s it s hard. reporter: shelley died here, in the falls , a large housing complex where the art institute arranged for some of its students to live. seemed like a perfectly reasonable place, looked quite safe, when we stopped by to take some pictures one sunny afternoon. about you, i wouldn t let my daughter live there. reporter: really? absolutely not. reporter: dallas, like any big american city, suffers from its share of crime. and the falls? you go there during the daytime, it looks very nice. but at nighttime, totally different story. reporter: innocent 20-year-old girl out on the street in that neighborhood at night, you d worry about her? no way would i let my daughter walk that neighborhood at night, no way. reporter: the nances didn t know any better. little italy, after all, presents few of the issues a person can encounter in the middle of a place like dallas. anyway, on that september day
and piercing and alcohol and sex, for sure. she avoided the majority of everything that could ve got her into trouble, and i was so happy because of that. reporter: and then when shelley was a senior in the italy high school, her teacher suggested she enter an art contest sponsored by the art institute of dallas. and she s like, well, you know, i m not that good. and the art teacher said, no, i think you are, shelley. reporter: and she won. that same piece of art they took and put in the national competition. and it won her fourth place there. so she got a total of $13,000 to a scholarship toward the art institute of dallas. reporter: that s quite markable. so she this is an a major talent. and she was so excited about getting to go. reporter: the art institute of dallas is an urban school. everything about it and around it as different as can be from
so the next morning, when she still hadn t called, that s when we both got worried. reporter: the first thing the next morning, cynthia called the art institute. to find out if shelley was in class. and actually, they well, they wouldn t go check on her. they said they can t leave the office alone and go check on a class. they ll have her call us when she gets a break. as soon as she has a break, they ll have her call us. reporter: then they phoned shelley s sister shauna. i told her really, i was like, stop worrying about it. she s 20 years old. she doesn t want to talk to her mom. you know. i really didn t think anything bad would ever happen to her, so i just kind of brushed it off. reporter: so they kept driving. by now they were almost a thousand miles from dallas. that s when the school called back. when they finally sent somebody to the classroom, and she wasn t there, well, i was ready to turn around right there cause i knew something was wrong. repor
overstatement, at least as the term is generally used in the 21st century. his name was nathan shuck. he was a classmate at the art institute 20 years old, like shelley, and from a dallas suburb, where he grew up with his mom and grandmother. like shelley, he seemed reserved, at least to most people. but in class and with close friends, he was energetic. shelley and nathan had been going out if you could call it that for a couple of months. i didn t even find out till the summer, i think it was like july of 2009, that she had a boyfriend. she said, by the way, mom, i ve got a boyfriend. i m like, you do? she said, yeah, and and dad probably wouldn t like him too much, cause he s got, like, a lip piercing and some tattoos. reporter: but, she told her mom, they hadn t even kissed yet. she, as far as i know, had only held his hand like once. she s just naive that way. i sheltered her. reporter: sister shauna was the only one in the family who d met nathan.
and you shake her again? i saw the blood and and i touched her arm and she was cold. and [ crying ] as soon as you seen that, what happened? i yelled her name i don t know how many times. reporter: ashley told the detective it was all just an innocent mistake when she told the art institute she d seen shelley alive and well the night before when, in fact, shelley was dead by then, which didn t make sent to detective ellzey, any more than did the next thing ashley said, that it was not usual for several days to go by without seeing shelley at all. she said that shelley was a very private person. that she just would put her headphones on, go into her own world, close her bedroom door and start drawing. reporter: and close the door from the bathroom? is that what is that what she had two doors. shelley did. one that would allow entry into the living room to her bedroom.