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When a Jeep is found wrecked over an embankment in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, red flags go up right away for investigators. The twisted saga of events and acts of betrayal they uncover next lead them to the doorsteps of two lovers.
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Hi, Park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Dilya DeAmbra.
In the case I'm going to tell you about today,
takes place along the eastern edge of
Great Smoky Mountains National Park in
Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
The Smokies are a geographic region I've
covered many times before on this podcast.
The NPS' website explains that
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
is the most visited national park in
the entire United States.
It spans over 500,000 acres between
North Carolina and Tennessee in
this full of scenic drives, waterfalls,
trail systems, and wildlife.
As is the case with many vast landscapes
that are home to winding roads and
dense forests, the potential for
tragic accidents abounds.
On a cool morning in November 1994,
one such scenario emerged, which at
first glance appeared to be a terrible
accident.
A car had gone over an embankment,
but as law enforcement assessed
the scene and started probing further,
the truth behind what happened came to
the spotlight, revealing that the
situation was far from an accident.
This is Park Predators.
Around 9 o'clock in the morning on
Sunday, November 6, 1994, Park Ranger
Helen McNutt responded to a 911 call
from two tourists who were visiting
the Great Smoky Mountains.
The collars were from Missouri, and they
said they'd been driving along the
Gatlinburg bypass when they decided
to stop and admire the view from a
lookout point.
According to the National Park Service,
the Gatlinburg bypass is about a
three and a half mile long road that
connects the park to an urban four-lane
highway that takes drivers between
Gatlinburg and nearby Pigeon Forge
Tennessee.
The bypass is a popular alternate route
to get into the park because it's scenic
and you essentially avoid having to go
through downtown Gatlinburg.
I'd imagine this is probably why those
tourists were on the bypass, hoping to
avoid traffic while getting some
breathtaking views of the landscape.
According to an episode of Snapped
about this case, when the tourists
peered over the edge of the overlook
they'd stopped at, they immediately
noticed a vehicle below them that was
in really bad shape.
More than 30 feet down in the middle of
the dense forest was a black 1987 Jeep
Wrangler, which seemed to have gone
over the embankment and was lodged
headfirst in a tree.
Shortly after spotting the wreck Jeep,
the bystanders called 911 and Ranger
Helimic Nut was the first official to
arrive on scene.
And right away she realized that this
was a serious situation, not to mention
dangerous.
As she began to investigate she was
extremely cautious traversing the terrain
around the Jeep because it was thick
with trees and brush and there was always
the possibility that wildlife like
bears or rattlesnakes could be lurking
nearby.
Gina Stafford reported for the Knoxville
News Sentinel that as Helen approached
the car she saw that the driver's side
door was partially opened and the keys
were in the ignition.
But no one was in the front seat.
She also smelled traces of alcohol
which initially led her to suspect
that maybe the situation was related
to a drunk driving accident.
But those thoughts quickly vanished when
she saw a man's body in the fetal
position in the back seat.
From the looks of it the guy was white
and had very noticeable injuries to the
front of his face and back of his head.
Right away Helen thought it was kind of
strange that the man was in the back
seat as opposed to the driver's seat
if he'd been the person driving.
However, for the time being it seemed
she kept those observations to herself.
It didn't take long for her to determine
that the guy inside the Jeep was dead
and a quick examination of his body
revealed that he'd suffered multiple
bruises and lacerations.
After making those observations Helen
discovered a wallet on the victim's body
which contained an ID for a 33 year old man
named Kelly Lavera who was from Severeville, Tennessee.
A small city about 14 miles outside of
Gatlinburg.
After securing the crash scene,
Helen contacted the Severeville Police Department
because the NPS had a long standing
relationship with them and the man
from the car's ID indicated he was from
their jurisdiction.
When investigators from SPD arrived at the overlook
they agreed with Helen that something
seemed off about the wreck.
Not only was Kelly's body not in the driver's seat
but there was also no blood on the front seats
of the vehicle which was odd
because Kelly himself had several bloody wounds.
Conversely though, there was a significant amount
of blood in the backseat.
According to reporting by Carol McMahon and Gina Stafford
authorities observed a pool of blood
surrounding Kelly's body to the point
where there was even some of it leaking
out of the Jeep's tailgate.
Another interesting detail was that the windshield
was perfectly intact.
No cracks, nothing.
Which logically didn't support a scenario
where the Jeep fell off the embankment
and collided headfirst into a tree.
I've personally never crashed a car into a tree
but I've seen plenty of car crashes in my career
and I can tell you it is rare
that a windshield goes unscathed.
So in Kelly's case, I'd imagine it would have struck
the investigators as pretty miraculous
that not a single crack was in the windshield
of the Jeep he was found in.
But you get where I'm going.
Overall the evidence at the scene
and on Kelly's body was not painting the picture
of someone who'd drunkenly driven off the side
of a mountain into a tree.
So investigators were beginning to theorize
that maybe Kelly had been killed somewhere else
and then put in the car and dumped in the park,
you know, to make it look like an accident.
An episode of I'd kill for you about this case
stated that detectives were fairly confident
that Kelly had been killed in quote,
an explosion of rage, end quote, not in a car accident.
So to get even more insight into what might have happened
to him, law enforcement had his body transported
to the medical examiner's office for an autopsy.
And it was there that officials officially confirmed
Kelly was the victim.
The full results of his autopsy weren't available
right away though.
So in the meantime, the police chief of severeville,
a man named Robbie Fox, visited Kelly's home address.
There he spoke with Kelly's wife,
28-year-old Shane Lavera, who'd grown up in Gatlinburg
and been someone who Robbie had known for a long time.
Chief Fox learned that Shane had actually
reported Kelly missing earlier that morning.
But while they were speaking with her,
Chief Fox noticed something unexpected.
Shane didn't cry or really show any emotion at all
when she learned that Kelly was dead.
She also didn't ask any questions about
how he'd been found or what his cause of death was.
And to the chief at least, her lack of interest
in those kinds of basic details seemed unusual.
But she was cooperative and allowed the chief
and his accompanying officer to come inside
and speak with her.
They asked her when the last time she'd seen her husband was
and what she'd been up to the previous night.
She responded that they'd hosted a house party
at their apartment on Saturday night,
which wasn't out of the norm for them.
She claimed that the last time she laid eyes on Kelly
was during the early morning hours
after the gathering had ended.
She said she'd left with a male neighbor named Brett Ray
to go get food at an all-night diner
and then returned home shortly after 4 a.m.
She said at that time, Kelly was asleep
on their couch in the living room
but woke up suddenly in a foul mood.
Shane said Kelly then began questioning her
about where she'd been and what she and Brett had been doing.
That spat boiled over into Kelly,
sharing that he didn't think she was home enough
with him and their two young children.
And Shane told police that her response to her husband
was to accuse him of drinking too much.
Shane said that eventually Kelly voiced
he'd had enough of their arguing
and stormed out of their apartment.
She said the last time she saw him,
he jumped into his Jeep Wrangler and driven off.
She explained to police that she didn't go after him
because she was too upset and tired at the time
and their kids were already asleep.
So she decided to just go to bed.
It was only when she'd woken up on Sunday morning
that she realized Kelly had never come home.
During this interview,
Chief Fox and the other officer noticed a pair of eyeglasses
laying on the table in the couple's apartment.
Curious as to who they belonged to,
the duo asked Shane if they were hers or Kelly's
and she told them that the glasses belonged to her husband.
She stated that Kelly was nearsighted
and usually didn't drive without them.
The officer accompanying Chief Fox
happened to be nearsighted himself.
So he put on the glasses as I guess a kind of experiment.
And lo and behold, the spectacles were definitely meant
for a nearsighted person
because the officer's vision was properly corrected.
Finding the glasses at the apartment
was a puzzling revelation
because it proved that Kelly had left his residence
without the one thing he would have needed to drive well.
The question swirling in authorities' minds
was why in the world would he have done that
and attempted to drive in the middle of the night
without his glasses?
Was he really so angry that he'd simply forgotten
to grab the spectacles?
Had he never gotten the chance to grab them at all?
To Chief Fox, some of Shane's stories sounded plausible
but he knew from what had been gathered
in the investigation so far that Kelly had not died
in some kind of freak motor vehicle accident.
So figuring out what had happened to him
after he reportedly left his family's apartment
but before his Jeep went over the embankment
was paramount.
When Chief Fox and his colleague wrapped up
their interview with Shane
and it had only been a few hours since Kelly's body
was found and based on what I read in the source material,
it seems that they were beginning to suspect
that Kelly's widow might know more than she was sharing.
But until police could glean more insight
from Kelly's body, all authorities had were suspicions.
But that changed when the medical examiner
wrapped up their review.
The autopsy results confirmed that Kelly had not died
as a result of a car accident,
but rather his head had been severely beaten.
The episode of I'd Kill for You About This Case
explained that the 33-year-old had suffered
around a dozen blows to the head
from what the medical examiner suspected
was likely a baseball bat.
The examiner also found numerous last-rations
and penetrating wounds around Kelly's head,
face, and left ear.
The Emmy concluded that those cuts were made
by some other instrument than what had been used
to strike Kelly's head,
but they couldn't say for sure what that other instrument was.
Ultimately, the ruling determined that the blows to Kelly's head
had rendered him unconscious
and his brain had swelled and put fatal pressure
on his spinal cord, which was what led to his death.
Regardless of which or how many weapons
may have been used in the attack,
investigators knew without a doubt
that Kelly's death was a homicide.
And to get to the bottom of who was responsible,
they needed to speak with Brett Ray.
And in a stroke of good fortune,
they were about to get a phone call about him
that would change everything.
The End of The End
According to reporting by the Knoxville News Sentinel
and that episode of I'd Kill for You
that I've mentioned a few times,
the same day Kelly was found,
police received a call from a man named James Christopher
Bernie.
James, who went by Jim,
was a local severevill resident who told officers
that sometime between six and seven a.m. on November 6th,
he'd received a phone call from Brett Ray.
Brett was a mechanic who also lived in severevill.
And Jim said he'd called him from a motel in Gatlinburg
asking for a ride back into town.
Jim said that while on the phone,
Brett sounded desperate and kind of out of breath,
but Jim didn't really think too much of it
and agreed to come pick up his friend anyway.
Jim told police that when he arrived at the motel,
he found Brett panicked and covered in mud
and would appear to be blood.
When he asked Brett what was going on
and why he was so dirty,
Brett allegedly responded by confessing, quote,
I did it, I did it.
I put Kelly over a 100 foot in bankman and quote.
Jim said that when Brett made this declaration,
he immediately knew that the Kelly Brett was talking about
was Kelly Lavera because Jim said Brett
had previously discussed different ways
he wanted to kill Kelly.
I know, this is where things get interesting.
According to Jim, Brett had previously
batted around the idea of tampering with the brakes
on Kelly's Jeep or even shooting him at a firing range.
And you're probably wondering, wait, why?
What was the beef between these two?
Well, that's the question authorities wanted to answer as well.
Jim told them that Brett was very much in love
with Kelly's wife, Shane,
and the pair were romantically involved.
This lead was quite literally a bombshell.
And so on November 7th, police took Brett into custody
and eventually charged him with first degree murder.
Initially, he wasn't super forthcoming,
but after a while, he finally relayed
his account of what happened to Kelly
on the night of his death.
Brett said that since he lived in the same apartment complex
as Lavera, as he'd actually seen Kelly storm out
of their apartment in the middle of the night
after they'd hosted a party.
Brett said seeing Kelly in that state
made him worried for Shane,
so he'd gone over to check on her.
However, while he'd been on his way to do that,
Kelly suddenly returned and became even more enraged
than before.
It was at that point that Kelly accused Brett
of having an affair with his wife.
From there, the two men got into a verbal argument
in the Lavera's apartment, which quickly turned physical.
Brett claimed that in self-defense,
he'd grabbed a nearby baseball bat that belonged
to the couple's son and hit Kelly with it.
He said once he realized that he had actually killed Kelly,
he then carried him out of the apartment
by himself and put him into Kelly's Jeep.
After that, he decided to push it over a hill
to make it look like Kelly had died in an accident.
Apparently, in Brett's version of events,
Shane was nowhere inside.
She and the kids were allegedly
sound asleep in the apartment.
And while that version of the story
was theoretically possible,
none of the investigators were buying it.
They doubted that two adult men could have had
such a chaotic fight in such a small space
without waking up Shane or either of the kids
who were reportedly just feet away.
Authorities also couldn't wrap their minds
around how Brett would have been able to move Kelly's body
out of the apartment and into the Jeep
without someone helping him.
But Brett was adamant he'd done everything on his own.
However, detectives were beginning to suspect
that Shane was definitely involved.
Unfortunately, though,
they had no physical evidence linking her to the crime.
And so far, they'd been unable to get into the Lavera's
apartment with a warrant to search it.
They knew they were gonna need a whole lot more
than just Brett's confession
to be able to legally scour the apartment for clues.
So the police department did something kind of sneaky,
but a good kind of sneaky.
They sent an officer back to the Lavera's apartment
to ask Shane a few more questions.
While talking with her,
the officer walking around the apartment
noticed one of Kelly's diplomas displayed
near the couple's couch,
which is where Shane had originally told chief Fox
her husband had been laying when she returned
from getting food at around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning.
As the officer studied the diploma,
he noticed that there were what appeared to be specks
of blood on the corner of the frame.
The officer realized in that moment
that where the diploma was positioned in the room
next to the couch was the perfect spot for blood to land.
If, for instance, the person who'd been struck
had been lying on the couch.
This revelation was enough for authorities
to get a judge to sign off on a search warrant
for the Lavera's place.
When a team of investigators descended on the apartment,
they didn't immediately find anything other than that blood
that looks suspicious,
but they were confident that if they got down
into every nook and cranny and sprayed luminal,
it would reveal much more than what met the eye.
If you're not familiar with luminal,
it's a chemical agent that will react
with certain enzymes, including enzymes found in blood.
Typically, no matter how hard you try
to scrub blood off a surface,
there are still proteins that stay behind.
Instances where luminal isn't really helpful
are when certain cleaning products
like bleach are used to clean up blood.
Anyway, according to what Chi Fox told producers
for I'd kill for you,
when police asked everyone to step outside the apartment
so they could do the luminal testing,
Shane protested and didn't want to move off the couch.
That wasn't gonna fly though,
and ultimately some of the officers
had to physically make her stand up and walk out.
After the team sprayed the whole house,
the results showed traces of blood
on the front and back of the couch,
almost as if someone had been brutally attacked
while laying down and then pulled over the back of it
and dropped onto the floor.
There was also a trail of blood
that extended down the hallway
and into, of all places,
the couple's children's bedroom.
Then it went out a window inside of that room.
To authorities, it appeared that whoever had moved Kelly's body
didn't want to drag him out the front door of the apartment,
so instead they'd chosen to get him out of the house
by pulling him past his sleeping children.
Outside of the residence,
the blood evidence just kept coming.
The luminal testing showed the trail
going out of the kid's window
and across the lawn of a church
to where investigators believe Kelly had parked his jeep.
In essence, everything they'd found seemed to tell
a slightly different story than the version of events
Brett had confessed to.
Investigators were now more confident than ever
that a second person had to have been involved,
especially when it came to moving Kelly's body.
And in their minds, that second person was likely Shane.
So on December 13th, just over a month after the slaying,
they arrested Shane and charged her
with first-degree murder.
She vehemently denied being involved in her husband's death
and claimed that Brett was just some guy
who'd been weirdly obsessed with her.
Not long after their arrest, both defendants
were indicted for the crime,
but their trials wouldn't start for another 15 months.
This was partially because forensic evidence
that was collected from the apartment
needed to be tested for DNA.
And unfortunately, according to Gina Stafford's reporting
for the Knoxville News Sentinel,
the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations Crime Labs
were experiencing a major backlog at the time.
So while everyone waited for that additional testing
to be done, both Brett and Shane posted their bonds
and were released pending trial.
Brett went back to work as a mechanic in a repair garage
and Shane, along with her and Kelly's two kids,
moved in with one of her cousins
who lived in nearby Kodak, Tennessee.
During that time, investigators continued
to build their case against the pair,
which mostly included uncovering
as much information about their alleged affair as possible.
According to the coverage about this case,
Kelly and Shane had moved to Severeville
four years before his death.
Of the two of them,
it seemed that Shane was the more well-known person
in the area.
And that's because of who she was,
or rather where she'd come from.
According to coverage in the Hamilton Spectator,
Shane's birth name was Alicia Shane Good,
though she seemed to always prefer
to go by her middle name, Shane.
She'd grown up in a rural area of Tennessee
with little means.
When she was three years old,
her mom left Shane's father
and the two of them moved to Gatlinburg.
Soon after that,
her mom began dating and eventually married
a well-known man named Brent Mills,
who worked as the president
of the First National Bank in Gatlinburg.
Brent adopted Shane when she was about seven years old.
Growing up, Shane her stepfather developed a really close bond
and according to the source material,
she considered him her best friend and father figure.
Her mom's marriage to Brent drastically changed
the mother and daughter's lives
and their social standing also shifted.
They became part of one of Gatlinburg's
most respected families, essentially overnight.
You see, because Brent wasn't just
an influential banker in the community,
his grandfather had actually founded
the First National Bank of Gatlinburg
and played a big role in putting Gatlinburg on the map.
Brent's father had followed the same path
and was also a pillar in the community.
So much so that he was given the nickname Mr. Gatlinburg.
After Shane's mother and Brent married,
they had a daughter of their own,
but Shane still had her own special connection
with her stepdad and was said to have him
wrapped around her finger,
especially when it came to getting material possessions.
Brent would buy his stepdaughter pretty much anything she wanted.
From expensive clothing to her own luxury Buick Riviera,
which was the car she drove in high school.
In addition to having wealth,
Shane was also well-liked, pretty, and captivating.
And she loved the limelight,
succeeding academically, being in social clubs
and participating in the Junior Miss Pageant program.
By all accounts, the Mills family was seemingly
living the perfect life.
Until 1984, Shane senior year of high school.
That year, one of Brent's bank employees
was reportedly caught laundering money
for drug dealers via his bank,
which led to a huge investigation
into the financial institution.
Although law enforcement never found any evidence
that Brent himself was involved in the scandal,
he was still in the crosshairs of suspicion
due to being the bank's president.
So the whole ordeal really cast a negative light on him
and the Mills family name.
It was an extremely stressful time, especially for Brent,
because he'd been required to meet with the FBI
and bank examiners and suspected that his job,
his family's reputation and the business itself,
were all at risk of being ruined.
People around him saw the pressure mounting,
but his friends and family never expected
what would happen next.
According to the coverage in this case,
in May 1984, authorities discovered Brent had sustained
gunshot wounds while in his bed,
and they quickly ruled the incident as a suicide.
The natural assumption was that Brent had taken his own life
because of the embarrassment and stress
of having his bank's loan practices questioned by authorities.
For months and even years after his death, though,
people from the area speculated as to whether his death
was the result of foul play,
but nothing ever came of those rumors.
Whether he died by his own hand or someone else's,
the loss was devastating to his family, especially Shane.
Her high school graduation rolled around
and the only father she'd ever known wasn't there
to celebrate or help her transition
into the next phase of her life.
In the wake of Brent's death,
Shane's mother learned that the family's
financial situation was also not very good.
So by the time the entire investigation into the bank
was over, the mills were left
with almost nothing to survive on.
And after all that hardship,
Shane was more than ready to get out of Gatlinburg for a while,
so she enrolled in a small college in Columbia, Missouri.
She joined a swimming class and quickly met Kelly Lavera.
He was about five years older than her
and was originally from a city in Missouri
about 20 minutes southwest of the heart of St. Louis.
After graduating high school in St. Louis in 1979,
Kelly enrolled in the University of Missouri at Columbia
with the goal of earning a degree in mathematics.
He loved music and had been active
in his high school's jazz and symphony bands.
He'd also been a competitive swimmer
and helped coach a swim club.
That hobby continued on into college,
which is how he met Shane.
And the two of them hit it off right away
and quickly fell in love.
Even though Kelly was known to be a bit of a math nerd,
the I'd kill for you episode describes him as a quote,
all-American college boy, end quote,
who was also athletic, amicable,
and someone who liked to have a good time.
By all accounts, he was the type of guy Shane had been looking for
and Kelly, of course, couldn't resist Shane's beauty and charm.
While they dated, Kelly became a safe place for Shane.
She'd come to college still reeling with grief
from the loss of her stepdad
and when she was with Kelly, he made her happy.
At that point in time, she'd been struggling
with a lot of self-doubt about her future
and having a stable and mature boyfriend
helped her not be so down on herself.
The pair dated for one month and then moved in together
and just six months later, in 1985,
they officially tied the knot.
Kelly eventually graduated with a bachelor's degree
in mathematics, but Shane ended up dropping out
before completing her studies.
She had their first child, a boy, in 1987
and a daughter not long after that.
In the late 80s and early 90s,
Kelly taught at various high schools in Missouri
while Shane stayed home to take care of their kids.
In 1990, the whole family moved back
to Shane's home state of Tennessee
so Kelly could continue his education
and get a master's degree from the University of Tennessee.
After settling down, he took a job teaching
at what was known at the time
as Pellissippi State Technical Community College in Knoxville.
The pay wasn't much, but he was hopeful
the opportunity could lead to a tenured
professor position one day.
For her part, Shane seemed genuinely excited
to move back to Tennessee.
However, because finances were tight,
the family couldn't afford to live in Gatlinburg
where she'd grown up.
Instead, they rented an apartment in nearby severeville.
The apartment complex was a place that locals
referred to as Frog Alley.
Apparently, when the building developers began
to build in the area, they knew ahead of time
that it was gonna be low-cost housing,
so they didn't bother to fully drain
the surrounding swamp land.
In the first few years after the apartments were built,
there were more frogs living in and around the structures
than actual people.
I know, not a great way to attract new residents.
And the family's new digs were certainly
not what Shane had envisioned for her future.
The living situation in finances caused resentment to rise
and that put more pressure on the couple's marriage.
In the episode of I'd Kill For You,
Kellyanne Shane's friends stated that it was around this time
they began to see cracks in Levere's relationship.
For example, at Shane's 10-year high school reunion,
her former classmates were counted that while Kellyanne
was showing everyone pictures of their kids
and giving off a calm, sweet, fatherly demeanor,
Shane was acting like she was a teenager again,
even flirting with the bartender in front of her husband.
Aside from those problems,
the money issues between the couple
only got worse the more time passed.
Apparently, Shane had no problem spending money
in ways Kellyanne thought were unnecessary.
And their disagreements over their finances came to a head
when Kellyanne bought his black 1987 G.
Reportedly, Shane was adamant that she needed
to have one exactly like it,
even though the family didn't have the money
or the need for a second car.
Eventually, though, Shane got what she wanted
and ended up with a vehicle just like her husband's.
In the summer of 1994, several months before Kelly's murder,
Shane's half-sister, Kim,
moved into the same apartment complex as the Levere's.
Kim's place had two rooms
and so she wanted Shane to help prevent possible roommates
so she could make some extra money on the side.
One of the people who Kim interviewed
was 24-year-old Brett Ray.
Brett was described in the episode of I'd Kill For You
as a quote, good old Tennessee boy.
It was reported that his main concern in life
was partying and looking for ways to have the most fun.
He'd previously served in the Navy
but had been dishonorably discharged
after punching a fellow officer.
His dad was a financially well-off publisher
who operated a local newspaper in Severeville
called The Mountain Press,
which is actually where some of the source material
for this episode came from.
Anyway, Brett had a reputation for being a risk taker
and kind of rebellious.
Basically, he was willing to do whatever to have a good time.
He made a good impression with Kim and Shane right away
because he fit into their crowd of friends
who loved to party and he didn't take life too seriously.
So Kim offered him the extra room in her apartment
and he took it, which put him that much closer to her
and of course her sister Shane.
Not long after Brett moved in,
Shane learned from Kim that he didn't have anyone
to spend his birthday with,
which prompted Shane to go pay him a visit
and deliver a gift.
While she was there, Shane and Brett hung out
and had a drink together
and that's sort of where things started
as far as their affair.
Fast forward to after their arrests though
and Shane's main defense had always been
that she had nothing to do with her husband's murder
and Brett was just a violent man who'd been obsessed with her.
But if that was the case,
then law enforcement knew that it wouldn't look good
if for instance the two of them were caught
seeing one another while out on bond.
So without their knowledge,
police began keeping tabs on the defendants
by assigning a detective named Steve Ratcliffe
to surveil them.
And what he saw was damn.
Detective Ratcliffe caught Brett and Shane
meeting up on multiple occasions
while they were out on bond awaiting trial.
In April of 1995, about five months after Kelly's murder,
he witnessed them meet alone at a hotel room
and later that month witnessed them drive
to a recreation area to have sex and change Jeep.
These encounters did not support Shane's claim
that Brett was some obsessed dude
who was dangerously into her,
but rather that the pair was in a voluntary romantic relationship.
And if these sexual rendezvous weren't bad enough,
in January of 1996,
less than a month before their trial was set to begin,
Brett decided to jump his bond and flee to Mexico.
According to a series of articles
for the Knoxville News Sentinel,
Brett reportedly left his job at around 11 a.m.
on Monday, January 22 and drove away in a red Mazda.
This impromptu trip came right after the prosecutor
had recently announced the state was going to seek
life without parole for the defendants
instead of the death penalty.
And it didn't take long before a federal warrant
was issued charging Brett with interstate flight
to avoid prosecution,
which allowed the FBI to then get involved
with the search for him.
On January 28, after less than a week on the run,
he was apprehended while trying to reenter the country
and arrested in Miami, Florida
by agents with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service.
Meanwhile, back in Tennessee,
Shane's bond was revoked
and she was taken into custody that same night.
At that time, Kelly's mother
took temporary custody of Kelly and Shane's two kids.
According to Jamie Satterfield's reporting,
Shane was later charged with additional counts
for knowing that Brett was going to run
and wait for it,
had funded his escape with her own money.
She'd reportedly given Brett $250 to get
to Mexico City, Mexico.
And after he called to tell her he'd been injured
after wrecking his car there and running out of cash,
she'd wired him another $500 that she borrowed
from coworkers.
Apparently, this whole situation happened
because she believed that she had a lesser chance
of being convicted if Brett was absent from the trial.
But there were witnesses that Shane likely had no idea
were already working with authorities.
For example, her longtime friend of 15 years,
a woman named Mary had been cooperating with the police
and Mary ended up testifying against Shane
as a confidential informant at a pre-trial hearing.
According to Mary in conversation she'd had with Shane
while Shane was out on bond,
Shane had threatened to leave severe ill
on multiple occasions.
She'd also told Mary that she and Brett had a plan
to go to Mexico and would leave a note
in which he'd take all the blame for the murder.
I imagine that Brett fleeing the revelations
about Shane assisting him and a confirmed backlog
at the TBI crime labs were all factors
as to why the trial ultimately got delayed
to March 26th, 1996, more than 16 months after Kelly's murder.
Although they were represented
by different defense attorneys,
Shane and Brett were tried together
in front of the same jury.
At trial, the prosecution presented witnesses
including members of law enforcement, forensic scientists,
two of Shane's family members, Brett's friends,
and even another man from the Laverra's apartment complex
who Shane had had an extramarital affair with.
Many of these folks helped to build a fuller picture
of what the state believed happened
the night Kelly was killed.
Prosecutors and a forensic pathologist
went over the details of Kelly's autopsy
as well as all the physical evidence
that had been gathered in the case.
It was pointed out that post-scene analysis had shown
that the blood on the floor of Kelly's jeep
had run uphill, not downhill,
which literally defied the laws of gravity.
If, one were to believe he'd been killed in a vehicle crash.
Crime scene techs had also discovered
one of Brett's fingerprints in Kelly's blood
on a lamp inside the Laverra's apartment,
which of course was pretty damning evidence.
However, Brett's story had always been
that he hadn't intended to kill Kelly,
but rather what had happened was birthed out of self-defense.
It was also revealed in court
that near where Kelly's jeep was discovered,
investigators had found a blanket from the Laverra's couch,
a shirt that belonged to Brett, and some plastic wrap.
The prosecution then called various witnesses
to describe Shane and Brett's thoughts and actions
before and after the murder.
Jim Bernie testified to Brett's confessions
to him about pushing Kelly off the embankment,
as well as his prior ideas for how he might kill Kelly.
Another one of Brett's friends, a guy named Mike Step,
also testified that Brett confessed to him
about killing Kelly, telling him, quote,
I've got a favor to ask you.
I need you to keep your mouth shut.
I did it.
The risk was worth the money, end quote.
And you're probably wondering, wait, what money?
Well, investigators found out through talking to Shane's friend,
Mary, that the Laverra's had taken out
a life insurance policy on Kelly
that would be doubled if he died in an accident.
It seemed that Shane had promised not only
to give Brett her love and devotion if he killed Kelly,
but some of the insurance money as well.
This is why Brett ultimately staged Kelly's death
as a car crash.
In regards to Shane's culpability,
detectives had discovered that she had not just
been cheating on Kelly with Brett,
but also with that other guy from their apartment complex.
He testified that Shane had complained to him
about how Kelly, quote unquote, cramped her lifestyle,
and she'd even asked him for suggestions
of undetectable poisons that were fatal.
Detective Ratcliffe also got on the stand
and recounted the various instances he'd caught,
Brett and Shane meeting up and having sex
while they were out on bond.
To further solidify the sorted details
of the couple's affair, Shane's cousin,
who she'd been staying with after Kelly's murder
also testified before the jury.
She said that not long after Shane moved in with her,
Shane began seeing a mysterious man
who she only came to know as Cory.
Shane had told her cousin that Cory was a prominent
member of the community and he was married,
which is why Shane made it such a big deal
to keep his true identity a secret from her cousin.
Eventually Cory began visiting Shane regularly
and Shane always asked her cousin to stay in her own room
so she wouldn't see him.
While on the witness stand, Shane's cousin testified
that on January 14th, 1996, which by the way,
was just over a week before Brett would flee America,
she caught Shane kissing Cory goodbye in their apartment.
To no one's surprise at trial when Shane's cousin
was asked if Cory was in the courtroom,
she confidently pointed to Brett Ray
and said he was the guy who'd come and gone
from her place while visiting with Shane.
Another damning piece of evidence prosecutors presented
that trial was a taped phone conversation
between Brett and Shane.
That conversation had occurred the night of Kelly's murder
and in the recording, the pair can be heard making plans
to meet at Brett's apartment after the Lavera's house party.
Once the prosecution rested its case,
the defense began their arguments.
Brett chose not to testify in his own defense,
likely because he didn't want to implicate Shane
on the witness stand.
I'm sure he figured without his testimony,
she likely had a better chance of being acquitted.
Shane, on the other hand,
despite a mountain of circumstantial evidence against her,
chose to testify.
She claimed that Brett had blackmailed and threatened her
into covering up Kelly's murder.
But in the end, Shane's story must have fell on deaf ears
because the jury deliberated for only 90 minutes
and returned a verdict of guilty for both her and Brett
on the count of first-degree murder.
Before sentencing, both defendants agreed to plead guilty
and waved their rights to appeal their convictions
in exchange for life's sentences
with the possibility of parole after 25 years,
instead of facing the possibility of receiving life in prison
without the possibility of parole.
And Kelly's family ultimately agreed to this
because they knew that an ongoing appeals process
would be difficult to cope with,
especially for the Lavera children.
Baked into the arrangement,
Kelly's mom Monica Lavera,
who had custody of the children at the time,
would take the kids to visit Shane one last time in prison.
In an episode of Snapped About This Case,
Shane and Kelly's daughter recalled this meeting,
which happened when she was seven years old.
She explained that after that one time,
she didn't see her mom again until she chose to go visit her
when she was 19 and about to become a mother herself.
Even though she had never really felt like Shane
was a mother to her, she still wanted to see her,
but the reunion only confirmed for her
that she had no connection with her mom
and there never really had been.
Brett and Shane both attempted to file appeals
despite the fact that their sentencing plea deals
didn't really allow that.
They claimed that the details of their initial plea agreements
were not well explained
and they weren't properly informed of what rights
they did and didn't have.
But the court wasn't having it
and rejected both of their arguments.
Shane tried again for post-conviction relief in 2013 and 2016,
but both those requests were also denied.
In October 2020, she had her first scheduled parole hearing
because the parole board wanted her
to get a psychological evaluation beforehand
that hearing was delayed until 2021.
In April of that year, the board voted four to two
in favor of her release
and she walked out of prison in January 2022.
As part of her release, Shane was ordered to reside
in a recovery residence and new community service
until she could secure employment.
What's interesting to me is that during her parole hearing,
she still claimed that she had nothing to do with killing Kelly.
She emphasized that any conversation she might have had
which discussed murdering him
were only, quote, dark humor, end quote.
And of course, the prosecutor who helped convict her
was disappointed with the result of her parole hearing,
telling journalist Jeff Ferro, quote,
I question letting her out when she still denies her guilt.
She's obviously not rehabilitated.
I think it's known if a person never owns up to their conduct.
They're more likely to reoffend than someone
who does accept responsibility
and show genuine remorse, end quote.
I guess based on the conversations
the parole board had with Shane
and the results of her psychological exam
which are not public,
they felt that she wasn't a danger to society anymore.
Brett, on the other hand,
has been denied parole in all his hearings as of this recording.
And to date, he remains incarcerated in Tennessee.
According to the Tennessee Department of Correction,
his next parole hearing is right around the corner
in April, 2026.
After Kelly was killed,
his remains were cremated
and a fund was set up for his two children who are now adults.
His reputation as an outstanding educator lived on as well.
In a letter to the editor of the Knoxville News Sentinel,
one of his former students at Pellissippi State Community College
wrote that he had a knack
for making mathematics studies interesting,
which he said was an accomplishment in an of its own right.
It's heartbreaking to me that Kelly's life
was stolen from him far too soon
because I for one firmly believe
he probably would have gone on to do great things
in his career and as a father.
Whenever you find yourself helping the kids in your life
with their math homework
or trying to figure out what a fraction of a fraction is,
I hope you think of Kelly Lavera.
Because from everything I gathered,
it's clear that he was a problem solver.
And I'm grateful that the investigators
who handled his murder case
solved the problem of who took his life.
Park Predators is an audio-check production.
You can view a list of all the source material
for this episode on our website, parkpredators.com.
And you can also follow Park Predators on Instagram
at parkpredators.
I think Chuck would approve.
I think Chuck would approve.
I think Chuck would approve.
I think Chuck would approve.
