(Feb. 26) -- It has been more than two years since Lynn Dodenhoff has looked into the face of her blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter,
Christine Marie Sheddy. The 26-year-old's sudden disappearance in late 2007 remained a mystery until today, when police announced that human remains found last week have been positively identified as Sheddy's.
"We were holding out hope that was her," Dodenhoff told AOL News. "We wanted her children, my grandchildren, to know that their mother did not abandon them."
Sheddy was living with her mother in Bowers Beach, Del., with her three children -- two boys and a girl, ages 2, 4 and 8 -- when she traveled to Pocomoke City, Md., in November 2007, to stay with Clarence Jackson, his girlfriend, Tia Johnson, and their friend, Justin Hadel. Sheddy knew Jackson and his girlfriend through her boyfriend, Levi Hall.
"Christine and I had a fight prior to her trip," Dodenhoff said. "At the time, milk was three dollars and something a gallon, and her youngest son loved milk. He could go through a gallon of milk a day. I mean, this was the dumbest fight on the planet. She was also very stressed out about problems she was having with Levi, so when this milk thing came about, she just exploded and I reacted. She then left with the two boys for Clarence Jackson's Byrd Road farm in Pocomoke City."
Roughly one week after arriving at the farm, Sheddy was ready to return to Bowers Beach. Things were not going well, and an accidental chimney fire that had burned a hole in the roof of the farmhouse only added to her discomfort. As a result, Sheddy was desperate to go home, but she was hesitant to call her mom, because of their argument.
"Christine was a very stubborn and proud girl," Dodenhoff said. "Rather than give in and call me, she reached out to her best friend, Jimmy 'Q' Quail. Following that conversation, Q called me and said, 'Christine wants to come home. Why don't you give her a call?' So I did, and I said, 'Won't you please come home?' She wanted to know why, and I told her, 'You have no heat there. I want you and the boys here.' "
In the end, Sheddy and her mother reached a compromise. She would leave the farm and travel to Philadelphia to stay with her sister, Jennifer.
"Jennifer had already said Christine could stay there," Dodenhoff said. "There are more job opportunities, people, places and things there. From my understanding, Levi was supposed to pick Christine up after work on Nov. 13, but she called Q and made a backup plan because she felt she could not rely on Levi. The last time I spoke with her I told her I loved her and she said the same back."
Unfortunately, something went terribly wrong between Sheddy's Nov. 10 call and Nov. 13, the date she was set to leave the farm.
"On Nov. 13, Jennifer received a phone call from Jackson, saying they had gone to run some errands, and when they got home, Christine was gone and the boys were there alone," Dodenhoff said.
According to Dodenhoff, Jackson told her there were no signs of forced entry. In addition to her two children, Sheddy's belongings were left untouched.
"Jackson called me back later that day and said he had a fight with Christine prior to her disappearance. Apparently, he had concerns that she was not pulling her weight," Dodenhoff said. "He then said, 'I found a letter she wrote, and it was a letter stating thank you for letting me stay.' He called back again a little later and said, 'We had a fifth of vodka and half of it is gone,' and then he called me back yet again and said, 'We had $30 in change and that is gone.'
"He just kept calling and calling and calling. In the end, there were at least three different stories," Dodenhoff continued. "When I confronted him about that, he started screaming at me, and I screamed at him. I said, 'Look, I am just trying to find my daughter.' He then said, 'If you want to talk to me, you will have to do it through my lawyer -- don't ever call here again.' That was the last time I spoke with him."
Concerned about her daughter's safety, Dodenhoff contacted the Pocomoke City Police Department to file a missing-person report.
"I called Pocomoke police because she was in Pocomoke City when she went missing," Dodenhoff said. "They told me to call the police in Delaware because Christine was from Delaware. So I did, and Delaware police said that since she went missing from down there, I would need to call them. So after getting the runaround from everyone the first day, I was finally put in touch with the Worcester County Sheriff's Office and the Worcester County Bureau of Investigation on Nov. 14."
Dodenhoff says a sheriff's deputy went to the Byrd Road farm and spoke with Jackson and Johnson, but nothing relevant was learned during the conversation.
"We still don't know where she is," Detective Robert Trautman of the Worcester County Bureau of Investigation said in a November 2007 interview with The (Salisbury, Md.) Daily Times. "We've expanded our search to Delaware and Virginia."
Trautman also said he did not suspect any foul play in Sheddy's disappearance.
Investigators conducted a
search at the Byrd Road farm but came up empty. According to Dodenhoff, police treated her daughter's case as a runaway investigation and ultimately issued a warrant for Sheddy's arrest for child abandonment.
"I was angry with the way the case was being handled, so I took it into my own hands," Dodenhoff said. "I posted fliers and spent a lot of time online trying to track down leads. I made contact with some people who had been at the farm during the time Christine went missing, and they were telling me stuff I was forwarding back to law enforcement. I angered a lot of people, but I didn't care. I wanted answers."
One of the people Dodenhoff reached out to was Mandy Albritton, co-founder of the nonprofit missing-person search and recovery group
3View Search Services.
"I can tell you, after working with Lynn for 10 months, there have been times she has called me and said, 'I am about to do this,' and I go, 'Oh crap,' " Albritton told AOL News. "I tried to tell her, 'Lynn, I think we need to stay calm and quiet on this,' but she would do it anyway. I did not always approve of her tactics, but each time she seemed to uncover another piece of information in the case."
Albritton said she was also concerned with Dodenhoff's unwillingness to accept the reality that she might never find her daughter.
"I was worried about that position she took, because in this business less than 10 percent of missing persons are ever located," Albritton said. "The odds are stacked against you, so I wanted to prepare her for the likelihood that she would not be found, but she just kept telling me, 'I am gonna find her, I will find her.' "
In January 2008, Dodenhoff thought the search for her daughter was over when she learned that human remains had been found in Westminster, Md. The find, however, proved to be a false alarm, when authorities later determined they did not belong to Sheddy.
"It was difficult," Dodenhoff said. "You don't ever want to hope your child is found dead, but at the same time, you are so desperate for answers."
However, the find did prove to be helpful, as shortly thereafter Dodenhoff learned that her daughter's dental records and DNA had not been entered into the National Crime Information Center database. The information was not officially entered until a year later.
In September 2009, Jackson was
arrested in Rogersville, Tenn., and charged with aggravated burglary and arson for allegedly breaking into his girlfriend's former house and setting the shower curtain on fire. Fortunately for the homeowner, the fire extinguished itself before spreading. Jackson was held in the Hawkins County Jail without bond.
With Jackson behind bars, Dodenhoff and the police continued to work their own angles in the case.
"You can't put all your faith in the police," Dodenhoff said. "They are gonna do what they are gonna do. You have to keep pushing if you know in your heart that there is not enough being done. You push, you shove, you speak and you talk to anybody that will sit down and listen to you and tell them."
The case took yet another turn earlier this month when, according to a source close to the investigation, police received a tip. Authorities are not yet commenting on what the "tip" was; however, SbyNews.com has reported that it was credible enough for investigators to travel to Tennessee.
"They flew to Tennessee to speak with [Jackson]," an unnamed source told
SbyNews.
Upon arriving back in town from that trip, authorities went to a location in Snow Hill, Md., and
found human female skeletal remains next to the River House Inn. The location is roughly 10 miles from the Byrd Road farm. Jackson is a
former handyman at the inn.
In an interview with
WMDT.com, Worcester County Deputy State's Attorney Mike Farlow confirmed that his office had received "information that there were remains at a location in Snow Hill," but he declined to say how authorities got that tip.
The owners of the River House Inn were out of town at the time Sheddy disappeared. Authorities say they were unaware the remains were there and are not considered people of interest.
According to Albritton, the remains were found buried between a couple of cottages at the inn.
"They were in a side yard that backs up to a huge municipal parking lot that the post office is on," Albritton said. "It was a 15-by-15-foot area with sandy soil surrounded by evergreen trees."
Clothing and a shoe were the only known items found with the remains.
Based on authorities' trip to Tennessee and the sudden find thereafter, Dodenhoff and Albritton felt it likely that the remains would be identified as Sheddy's.
Sheddy's 10-year-old daughter, Hailey, was also resigned to the belief that she would not see her mom again. Last week she wrote the following poem for Albritton:
Beautiful Nightmare
This could be a sweet dream or a beautiful nightmare
Or it could be a good dream
Oh no I could believe in you
But you made it a beautiful nightmare for a sweet dreamAs Sheddy's family agonized over the possibility that she had finally been found, authorities Thursday reportedly arrested Justin Hadel, one of Jackson's guests at the Byrd Road farm when Sheddy was staying there. Hadel was
reportedly picked up by police in Tomball County, Texas, on a child obligation and fugitive warrant.
The timing of Hadel's arrest has raised eyebrows; however, authorities will not say if there is any connection to Sheddy's case.
"I don't talk about pending investigations," Worcester County State's Attorney
Joel J. Todd told AOL News.
So while a connection to Hadel remains unclear, Sheddy's family did finally receive the news they were hoping for today, when Todd announced that the remains found in Snow Hill had been positively identified as those of Christine Marie Sheddy.
"No cause of death has yet been determined," Todd said. "All involved law enforcement agencies are treating this as a suspicious death."
The news came as a bittersweet relief to Dodenhoff.
"I knew she was no longer with us, I just knew it," Dodenhoff said. "I felt in my heart that Christine had been dead and with Jesus ever since she went missing, because she would never ever leave her children. I kept telling myself it would all come out in God's time. I was right and that time is today."
The investigation into the Sheddy case continues. No suspects or people of interest have been named.
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