steve had said to me that he loved me and would do whatever it took to have me, and then last night he said he had an uneasy feeling. he apologized to me and said it was his fault. i asked him what was his fault, and the only response i got was the entire situation. you think steve hurt kevin? at this point, yeah, i do. morgan asked for a cigarette break. detective maurer went outside with her. she had been talking all this time without a lawyer and the detective wanted to keep the conversation going, hoping she would reveal something, and did she ever. we re standing in the shade because it is still extremely hot and there s no air conditioning in the building because of that thunderstorm and she says, steve told me he hit kevin in the back of the head with a shovel. i m like, whoa. we run back in, i turn the recording back on at that point. morgan, you just told me something. would you mind repeating it? steve hit kevin in the back of the head with a shovel.
she was saying steve had done the deed a week earlier and only admitted it to her later. she hid his secret out of fear. i didn t know if he was going to whack me upside the back of the head with a shovel of if i did and you guys showed up and he flipped out. the man you re having a relationship with tells you that he hit your husband, the father of your children, in the back of the head with a shovel and you don t tell me that information. a bit of shock. i personally feel it s because you had some role in this. i didn t. but detective maurer did not believe her. he looked over the timeline she had written out, puzzling over that one word, snapple. why did she write that down? the detective took a break. went upstairs to speak with his partner, detective sedlack. and it was sort of like a mental slip. i asked him if he minded if i had a shot. i wanted a chance to talk to her myself.
michelle could not believe what police were telling them. she remembered steve shappell as that scrawny, unassuming guy who worked for kevin mowing lawns. in fact he had done some work on michelle s yard just a few weeks earlier. michelle felt badly when he told her he just had his wisdom teeth out. i was so worried about him for the two days that he was there, and to think what he did to my brother. and her sister-in-law? it felt impossible to take that in. when i saw her mug shot i didn t even recognize her. she just had a different look about her. she s been in my life for 15 years and i didn t even know who she was. the next morning detectives recovered kevin s body buried in a shallow grave behind that high school right where morgan said it would be. and the following day steve shappell was picked up nearly 2,000 miles away in colorado. i still can t imagine him doing it.
then i walk over to shappell who s still sitting in the passenger s seat and he has a dead stare straight ahead. there was something inside the truck that the detective thought was peculiar. the back seat was full of clothes. i could see a laundry basket, bags and backpacks. he said, oh, morgan is going to do laundry across the street. i said, well, morgan has a washer and dryer in her apartment. i saw it yesterday. things just aren t adding up. i said, would you mind coming back to the police station, i do have a couple more questions for you. and in that moment as the detective turned his back on steve, something unexpected happened, something chris mengel, still filming, caught on video. yo, yo, yo. steve jumped in the driver s seat, pulled out of the lot and sped away. that s him, the dude with the red hat. that s steve. morgan walks over and sits down on a step, puts her hands in her head and says oh my, maybe he did do something to kevin.
here was morgan laying the blame on steve, telling police he had attacked and killed kevin at the landscaping garage on the day he supposedly left her and the kids. the detective was stunned. that earlier sighting of kevin alive and well in town, had it been a mistake? how long had she been lying to police? i m floored. i m like, why didn t you tell me this? when your boyfriend tells you that he hit your husband in the back of the head with a shovel, you call the police. are you trying to protect steve? not at this point. morgan said that steve had only just revealed to her what he had done, but the detective suspected he wasn t getting the full story. hoping to trip her up he asked her to write down a timeline of events for the week kevin disappeared. you going to write it down? uh-huh. most of what she wrote stuck to the story, but this was a strange detail.