The Murder of Shauna Maynard

Episode # 84 The Murder of Shauna Maynard

[Shaun] 

In early 1998 Shauna Maynard left her home in California and headed to Las Vegas. She was searching for freedom and in a hurry to grow up after high school, just like so many teenagers are, even today

[John] 

Her family was worried about her leaving home and moving somewhere she didnt know many people and trying to start a life.

Just a few months later her mom got the call that every mother dreads… From the Clark County coroner.

(Music - Pause for 8 seconds)

[Shaun] 

Hi and welcome to Sins and Survivors, a Las Vegas true crime podcast, where we focus on cases that deal with domestic violence, as well as missing persons and unsolved cases. I’m your host, Shaun

[John] 

And I’m your co-host, John

[Shaun] 

Today’s case is a little bit different. It's the case of Shauna Maynard, a young woman who moved to Las Vegas in 1998 over the objections of her family. She obviously got in over her head fast and didn't make it out. 

What we know about Shauna comes from interviews with her family and from the detective assigned to the cold case, Terri Miller of the LVMPD.

Do you want to start us out?

[John] 

Sure. Shauna Ann Maynard was born on September 22nd, 1980 in Torrance California (they lived in Norco then). 

She was the second eldest of 4 siblings, with an older sister named Andrea, and a younger sister and brother (whose names we don’t know)

After the episode in the swing shift, we’ll talk a little bit about the well-documented dynamics of having 4 siblings and the “typical” relationships the oldest can have with the second oldest (not that every family is the same, but Shaun has some experience in that area)

In an interview from March of 2024, her mom Inez described Shauna as “fiercely independent” and “challenging” as a teenager (that makes sense for anyone who has a teenager or remembers being one, i think a lot of us went through a phase like that)

She also described her as fun-loving free spirit, but “still immature” (which again makes sense when talking about a 17-year-old)

She attended Buena Vista High School (we were able to find her high school  yearbooks), and her family told interviewers that she graduated in an accelerated program (which sounds like it might have been a GED?) and was interested in going to college to become a fashion designer, and she loved music.

[Shaun] 

As we said, Shauna was a very independent teenager. By December 1997, she had left her family home and was living with her older sister Andrea in Norco, California.  

When she told her sister she wanted to go to a New Year's Eve party, her older sister told her she thought it was “not appropriate for a 17-year-old”. 

As you can probably guess that caused a problem.. such a problem in fact that Shauna decided to REALLY leave this time. It happened fast, and on December 31st, her mother had reported her as a runaway to the Colton police department. It was clear she was worried sick and had no idea where she might have gone.

Shauna traveled to Las Vegas with a male friend (whose name wasn't specified in the record). She lived with that friend for a couple of months, but eventually, there was some sort of problem with her friend’s girlfriend, and again, she had to pull up stakes and move.

This time she moved in with two older women into an apartment near Las Vegas Blvd and Owens. Police investigators said that the apartment was very crowded and that the two women she was living with had at least 7 children between them.

It was crowded, but it came with benefits for Shauna. She took a job at a restaurant and was also making money babysitting for her roommates. 

Still the rooms were small and there was very limited space. Terri Miller from the LVMPD commented that Shauna was likely putting up with living conditions that were pretty bad and uncomfortable to avoid being homeless. 

Based on everything investigators were able to uncover, it seemed like a really bad situation

[John] 

We also learned that Shauna had cut her family out of her life entirely during that time. She wasn't in contact with her mom or any of her siblings, and they had no idea where she was. They hadn't spoken to her AT ALL since New Year’s Eve. She’d just taken off.

Her mom said that she was desperately looking for her, but remember it was 1998, and it wasn't as if she could look at Shauna’s Facebook or Instagram feed or track her phone.. She didn't have any of those.

In fact, Inez said that the time when she was looking for Shauna was “a living hell”. She tried to talk to people in Shauna’s circle (friends from school) and no one would give her any clues about where she was. 

She had the impression they KNEW but weren't telling her, probably because Shauna told them not to tell her, which had to be incredibly frustrating. 

Investigators have some theories (which are unconfirmed, but they did share them) that there were some pretty potentially sketchy things happening at the apartment with her roommates. 

They had a theory that Shauna might have been attracting unwanted attention from both the women.. and men in their lives. Again, a very bad position to be in when she had no other place to go.

[Shaun] 

On April 21st, 1998, just 4½ months after moving to Las Vegas, Shauna called a friend around 2 am (not the same friend she came to Las Vegas with) and told her that there was “a problem at the apartment”, and that she was afraid for her safety, and said she thought someone was going to hurt her.

The friend she called was living at home with her parents at the time with a brand new baby, so she couldn't leave to get Shauna at the apartment, but she told her she needed to get out of there. 

She told her essentially to just run, and she would send a cab for her at a nearby casino (the Silver Nugget on North Las Vegas Blvd near Lake Mead). Unfortunately, Shauna never made it to the Silver Nugget to get that taxi.

This was before the widespread use of cellphone videos or surveillance systems in general. Now of course, in Las Vegas, we have the Metro Police Fusion Camera network. 

That’s a network of surveillance cameras that are monitored 24/7 by the Metro Command Center, and can do things like gunshot detection, and facial recognition, and uses a crime pattern analysis software package that helps the command center dispatch police around the valley.

Between 3 and 3:30 am that same night, a metro police officer out on patrol in the south valley said he heard gunshots, and he thought they were coming from the area of Rainbow and Decatur. He went to investigate, but couldn't find any evidence of a crime there.

[John] 

This was 1998, and of course, we’ll often remind you that the Las Vegas Valley was much less populated then. Back then Blue Diamond was just a dusty and desolate two-lane road, mostly used by commuters coming in from Pahrump which had sparse houses and a few businesses. 

If you were to visit that corner today, you would find very few rattlesnakes and scorpions.. But you would find a lot of places like Wing Stop, EOS Fitness, Walgreens, the Silverton Casino, and more subdivisions than you can even imagine. It's fully built up now and not even near the edge of Las Vegas.

Pahrump is a much smaller city about 1½ hours to the west of Las Vegas, and much more rural.. even today. There are about 45,000 residents there today, but in 1998 there were only about 20,000, and many of them got to Las Vegas using Blue Diamond, AKA State Route 160.

Two of these commuters were making the early morning drive to Vegas along Blue Diamond, and near Decatur Blvd, one of them said he thought he saw something that might have been a body about 10’ off the road. 

They turned around and pulled off the road to check it out. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a young woman’s body that had been shot several times. To them, she seemed like she was deceased and they called in Metro immediately. 

[Shaun] 

EMS arrived quickly and confirmed she was gone. In Metro’s initial investigation, they came to the conclusion that she seemed like she had been shot while running away from her assailant.

Strangely though, she didnt have any belongings on her such as a purse or wallet. They canvassed the whole area, searching for anyone who might have seen a young girl in the area in the early morning hours, and even looked for any video surveillance from nearby businesses.

They followed up on reported tips including one about a man and a woman in a mid-1950s Ford truck, and with the metro officer who heard the gunshots, but they didnt learn anything useful.

It was the Coroner who found the key piece of evidence they needed… that she had on a class ring. When they removed it they saw it was from Buena Vista High School, Class of 1997, and on the inside was inscribed with a name

Shauna Maynard

They cross-referenced that name with known runaways in the system and found that Shauna had been reported missing to the Colton Police Department in December.

They were able to find out where her family lived. That was when Inez got the call that every parent dreads. She’d had no idea where her daughter was for almost 5 months and only found out she was in Las Vegas when the Clark County Coroner called her to give her the heartbreaking news.

[John] 

Her family drove to Las Vegas immediately to meet with Metro and identify her. 

There are definitely some strange things here. Shauna was murdered almost 15 miles from where she lived in North Las Vegas. How did she get there? Who drove her? What possible motive would there be?

As the police investigated it only got stranger. They visited the apartment where Shauna lived and talked to her roommates, who gave pretty consistent stories. They both denied that there had been any arguing or fighting, and one of them said that around 1 am Shauna knocked on her door and said she was going out. The other roommate said that a group of people were hanging out in front of the apartment, and she came into the apartment and saw Shauna on the phone around 11pm (though she didnt know who Shauna was talking to)

The police said the roommates were pretty unhelpful, and none of this matches what Shauna’s friend said about what happened that night. 

Also, and maybe the weirdest and most suspicious thing was that when the police visited the apartment, there was NOTHING there that belonged to Shauna. Nothing. Not a purse, not a pair of jeans. Nothing.

When the roommates were asked about this, one of them said that when they heard the news Shauna had been murdered, they went to the closet where Shauna kept everything but found that her stuff was just gone. 

As strange as this is, there wasnt any evidence to charge the roommates in her murder

There was another incident in 2015 involving a claim made online on the website 4chan, but we’re going to save the discussion of that for the Swing Shift episode. It didn't turn out to have a material impact on the investigation, and for reasons you'll understand when you listen, it caused horrifying and unnecessary distress to her already suffering family, so we’re going to talk about that separately.

If you want to hear the Swing Shift bonus episodes, head over to sinspod.co/subscribe and sign up on Apple Podcast Subscriptions or on Patreon

[Shaun] 

Shauna’s family has lived with the unbelievable pain of not knowing who did this to their beloved sister and daughter for 27 years. Shauna would be 45 years old today, and who knows what might have become of her life.

In 2024 Channel 8 News spoke with Shauna’s family and the cold case detective assigned the case, Terri Miller. In that interview her family floated some theories about what might have happened to Shauna. 

They thought that Shauna might have rejected someone’s romantic advances leading to someone wanting to harm her, but it wasn't clear what the theory was based on.

Shauna was traveling back and forth from Las Vegas to California in the weeks before her murder. She was seen just the week before by friends of the family back in California, and her family never knew.

One thing is quite likely though. Someone knows what happened to Shauna. Someone knows more. She had friends in Las Vegas, and of course, anyone who was a witness or heard about the crime could report it too. 

Anyone can report a crime anonymously by visiting crimestoppersofnv.com or calling 702-385-5555 or you can contact LVMPD Homicide directly at 702-828-3521. There is a reward and a separate reward is offered by her family for information leading to a conviction

[John] 

We’ve mentioned this before, but in 2022 then sheriff (now Governor) Lombardo authorized a much-needed and long overdue expansion to the Metro, a 5th squad, dedicated to cold cases. 

They have a sergeant, three full-time detectives, and FIVE part-time investigators who are diligently working on and pursuing a resolution to unsolved homicides, and you can even help. 

If you get your DNA tested by Ancestry.com, 23andme.com, familytreedna.com, mnyheritageDNA.com etc you can upload your DNA to DNASolves.com, FamilyTreeDNA.com or GEDMatch.com to make it accessible for police investigations and genealogy research. 

If you arent comfortable with that, you can upload directly to Othram using Othram’s Own “Swab Collection Kit”. that last one is JUST for Othram, and only used to help aid in unsolved cases rather than the DNA being in a recreational ancestry or genealogy site.

We’ve both done that, and we recommend it if you can, and if you’re comfortable with that, it can really make the difference to a family and help solve crimes. 

Shauna deserves justice; her family and our community also deserve closure and to know who did this to her.

Shauna was a white female, approximately 5’4" and about 150 lbs, with red hair and brown eyes. She was last seen in North Las Vegas, near Owens and Las Vegas Blvd. It is unclear how she managed to get to Blue Diamond and Decatur.

If you have information about what happened to Shauna please come forward. Her family has waited long enough.

If you’re enjoying the podcast please take a moment to leave us a review on your platform of choice. It helps us get these important stories out to a wider audience, and we remind you as always that what happens here happens everywhere.