didn t want anybody else to have a chance to find that out. so in a small north dakota church, joan taft became mrs. david shannon. i thought he found somebody that was good for him. he was obviously happy. and she, what was your impression of her? she just seemed very nice, very sweet, very attendedtive to him, very much in love. they complemented each other, is what they did. it sounds almost as if you re talking about jonas if she was one of your children. she was almost like a daughter to me, yes. as for joan s two young daughters, daisy and elizabeth, david wanted them to be part of his new family. because he loved me, he loved them. and so he did. david shannon became both a husband and a father. they were all having a good time being a normal family, you know. everybody getting along, fighting, as you do. he loved them, definitely.
arguments and not affection were the family routine. joan now says she realizes she was manipulated by her daughter. i gave up. i hate to admit it. i gave up on that child. i didn t know what to do. joan turned the task of parenting elizabeth over to major david, the military man, who did what he could to keep military order. he was definitely the tough one. he was the one that would decide the punishment, how long the grounding was going to be. a war of wills. david would ground her. elizabeth would escape. david responded with locks and alarms on her bedroom doors and windows. she squirted out anyway. nothing seemed to
we felt that something have gone wrong. that he found out something he was not supposed to have known or. and that they had to get rid of him. execution style, somebody came in with the intent of killing him. with the intent of killing him. what she was telling us didn t really it just didn t really match up at the time. but nobody tried nobody tracked any wet footprints inside. asked what she was telling us just it didn t really match up at the time and something else that didn t seem to match? stashed away in the bedroom were dozens and dozens of pornographic magazines and videos and sex toys. joan gave investigators a completely unexpected and surprising answer. i told them that david and i were swingers.
story, true or not, that she wanted out of the marriage. and by the way, she stood to collect $700,000 in insurance money. the detective confronted joan. and she? well, given her lifestyle, she said, she wasn t surprised at his attitude. he s disgusted. he s automatically prejudiced against him. he s focused on it, determined he s going to get me. in north dakota, david shannon s family tried to keep up with the shocking information. the murder, the revelations about swinging, and now joan was telling them that she had become a suspect, to which they replied joan? not a chance. we tried to play the scenario. did joan have a part in it? none of us could see that she could possibly have done that. it is just not in her nature to do that. she can t. but brenda did have somebody
shadow or did you tell the police you thought it was a shadow? it was a movement, like a shadow that left. she was worried about the safety of the children. she returned back to her bedroom. that s where she made the 911 call. the children. joan and david s eldest daughter daisy was out of town. but their two young boys, just 7 and 10, slept through it all, unaware of what happened. down the hall was shannon s 15-year-old daughter elizabeth, who told the cops she was also in bed, and spending the night with liz was her best friend vera thompson, also just 15. both their statements were similar. they were listening to music, watching tv, and they fell asleep. five people in the house, and not a one saw or heard a useful thing to help determine who committed this horrible crime, or why. and there weren t many clues either, at