today's story has two significant plot twists and one of them comes at the very end so make sure you stick around to hear the entire story but before we get into that story if you're a fan of the strange dark and mysterious delivered in story format then you come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload once or twice every week so if that's of interest to you please offer to detail the like buttons car but as soon as they give you their keys just fill their car up with an angry
pack of asian murder hornets also please subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads alright let's get into today's story [Music] right in the middle of the united states is a quiet little town called milstat illinois milstat is home to about 4 000 people and had it not been for ashley reeves only those 4 000 people and their friends and family would even know that milstat existed in 2006 ashley reeves was a 17 year old high school student who lived with her parents and her younger
sister casey in milstat ashley was an excellent student who even though she was over a year from her high school graduation she was already thinking about what colleges she wanted to go to she was also extremely likable and outgoing and she had this huge infectious smile and so she had tons of friends and she had a very serious boyfriend who her parents adored his name was jeremy and he was a high school student as well on the morning of thursday april 27th of that year ashley got up and like every other morning she got ready
for school alongside her sister casey and then right before ashley stepped out to head off to school she told her parents that after school she had a job interview on the other side of town and then after her interview her plan was to play basketball with some friends and then she'd be home and so her parents said okay well hey good luck with your job interview and just make sure you're home before 10 30 pm and so ashley said no problem i'll see you tonight and then she left that afternoon after school ashley made her
way to jeremy's locker and when she got to him jeremy handed her his keys to his car he had an suv and he was lending it to her for the day so she could go to the interview and then go play basketball and so ashley took the keys she thanked him she gave him a hug and then she turned and she walked down the hallway where she met up with her sister casey at her locker and then the two girls left the school they went out to the student parking lot they found jeremy's suv they
hopped inside and then ashley began driving them back to their house when they got there casey hopped out of the car she said bye to ashley and then ashley left their house and she began driving to fairview heights which was a town about 15 miles away where her interview was going to be several hours later around 10 pm ashley's parents had not heard from their daughter and was getting close to her curfew and so they asked casey if she had spoken with ashley and you know did she know how her interview went did she know
when she was going to be home but casey would tell them actually no i haven't talked to ashley since she dropped me off from school and so ashley's parents said okay no big deal and they called ashley but ashley didn't pick up so they sent her a series of text messages but after a couple of minutes of not getting any response they decided to just call her boyfriend jeremy to see if maybe he knew what was going on with ashley but when they spoke to jeremy he would say that you know i haven't spoken with
ashley since i gave her the keys to my suv and i've actually been trying to talk to her all day i've been calling her and texting her but i still haven't heard back and so at this point ashley's parents were starting to get really worried and so after hanging up with jeremy they began calling other friends of ashley's to see if maybe they had spoken to her and knew what was going on but all of her friends that they spoke to all had the same story we haven't talked to her since the end of school
and she's not returning our calls or texts and so ashley's mother she just sensed that something was terribly wrong and so without any hesitation she just called the police now the police in this town were used to getting calls every now and again from parents whose teenage child had run off and they were concerned about them but virtually every time the police investigated they would find the teenager had just kind of been blowing off their friends and family and they would pop up maybe a couple hours later totally unharmed but the millstat police would later
remark when they heard ashley's mother's voice over the phone the fear in her voice was so pronounced it immediately pushed the police department to take this case very seriously and so that night right after this phone call the millstat police department went out in force to try to locate jeremy's suv the car that ashley had been driving around that day and the first place they went to to look for this car was ladderman park which is this very popular public park that has a really popular basketball court that lots of teenagers would go to all
the time and ashley was known to frequent that park and this park was located about halfway between fairview heights where her interview was and milstatt where she lived so they go to ladderman park and right away sitting in the parking lot they find jeremy's suv but ashley is not in the car she's nowhere near the car and when they searched the car there was nothing of significance inside of it there was just some of ashley's clothes lying around the police would spend all night and well into the morning combing ladderman park looking for any sign
of ashley but there wasn't one and so as the sun came up and the police were nowhere closer to finding this girl they began to suspect that you know perhaps foul play was involved and so the first person they hauled in for questioning was ashley's boyfriend jeremy but as soon as he sat in the interrogation room he demonstrated a real concern for ashley he had a rock-solid alibi and he basically was an open book and so they quickly ruled him out as a suspect and then the police basically began hauling in all of ashley's friends
and acquaintances and family members basically anybody that knew her they were bringing them into the station to find out if they knew anything that could help them figure out where ashley was and more specifically the police were really looking to see if any of these people were hiding something and sure enough a few of the friends that were brought in were according to a few of ashley's closest friends ashley was in not one but two romantic relationships one was the public relationship she had with jeremy and the other was a secret relationship that was actually
illegal in order to hide this forbidden second relationship ashley would tell her family and her friends that she was going to the park to play basketball when in reality she was going to the park to meet up with the secret second partner and the day before when ashley went missing her friends told police that that was the exact reason she was going to latterman park the police got the name of the secret person from ashley's friends his name was sam shelton and the police tracked him down when they found him he was at a baseball
practice but the police didn't care they marched right on to the baseball diamond and they grabbed sam and they brought him back to the police station and then when he got there they sat him down in the interrogation room and he's still wearing his baseball uniform and they asked him about his relationship with ashley and he immediately denies it and says he does not have a relationship with ashley he's got no idea why he's here but pretty quickly after a few questions sam's answers became inconsistent and so the police just ratcheted up the pressure on
him and then finally after 12 hours of questioning the interrogator brings up sam's mother and his grandmother and he says to sam you know how would they feel if they knew you were lying to the police right now and this just broke sam and so he cracked now at this point the police were already expecting the worst when it came to ashley but they were not ready for just how brutal sam's confession would be about what exactly he did to her the following is an account based on his confession 30 hours earlier ashley wrapped up
her interview in fairview heights and she made her way to latterman park to meet up with sam and now it's not clear exactly how they met up but eventually the two of them did connect and they made their way over to sam's car where they became intimate afterwards the two are sitting in the front two seats of sam's car sam is in the driver's seat and ashley is in the passenger seat and while they're sitting there something happens that causes this huge fight between the two of them and at some point sam tells ashley to
get out of the car but ashley refuses she wants to talk to him she wants to deal with their issues but sam's not having it and so he gets so mad at her that he lunges across the center console of the car and he puts ashley into a vicious chokehold now he tells police his plan was to kind of yank her out of the car but he squeezed so hard around her neck that he heard this loud popping sound coming from her neck it was the sound of her neck breaking and so as soon as
he heard it sam let go and ashley kind of crumpled forward and hit the front dashboard of the car and so sam is staring at her wondering what he should do he's kind of looking around making sure no one saw what he just did and then he reached over and lifted her back up to see if she was still alive and he saw she was but instead of trying to get her help he decides right then and there he's going to kill her and so he reaches over and he begins choking her but after several
minutes of throttling her she just wouldn't die and so sam pulled his belt off of his waist and he wrapped it around ashley's neck and then he began pulling but he would tell police he couldn't stand looking at ashley's face while he did this he said she was staring right at him her tongue was coming out of her mouth she was frothing and her face was turning this ghastly shade of gray blue and so at some point when she still hadn't died he released the belt from around her neck and he turned her body so
she was facing the window away from him and then he repositioned the belt on her neck and then he put his foot on her back to use as leverage and then he pulled as hard as you possibly could on her throat for quite a while until the belt actually broke around her neck and then at that point he checked to make sure she was dead and when she was he stuffed her down into the floorboards in front of the passenger seat and then he drove several miles across town to another park called citizens park that
was very heavily forested and once he parked in the parking lot he looked around to make sure no one was watching and then he dragged ashley's body out of the car and deep into the woods where he abandoned her it would turn out ashley was far from the only teenage girl who found sam shelton attractive many teenage girls in the area thought he was the perfect catch he was smart he was handsome and he had these beautiful striking blue eyes that you couldn't help but just stare at however there was something unique about sam that
made him fundamentally different than all the other guys at their schools sam was not a student he was a 27 year old middle school teacher in milstatt and he also was the high school baseball coach he had never been ashley's teacher directly however years earlier when she was in middle school he had begun grooming her for exploitation and so fast forward to 2006 when she was 17 he had effectively manipulated her into believing she was in this romantic relationship with him when in reality he was just using his position of power to abuse her in
addition to being a schoolteacher sam was also an aspiring pro wrestler he would often compete in local showcases under the nickname the teacher while sam was probably nowhere near good enough to actually become a professional wrestler like you would see on tv he was extremely strong and really knew how to do a chokehold and so when he attacked ashley and put her in that vicious chokehold she had no chance at escaping she was completely doomed shortly after his confession sam would tell the police that he would take them out into the forest of citizens park
to try to find ashley's body but when they got there it was late it had been raining for several hours and sam right away acted like he couldn't figure out exactly where he had left her and so the police were actually starting to think you know is he lying to us is this whole thing just kind of made up did he really attack her is she really out here but after about 30 minutes of the police and sam kind of trudging around the thick forest one of the officers suddenly sees something on the ground he
raises his flashlight and there in a clearing is ashley's body and so the police and sam they walk over to her and they're standing above her ruined body her neck is totally bent at a grotesque angle she's covered in bugs but as they're standing there and they're watching her her chest suddenly starts to move she wasn't dead she had been left for dead and she'd been out in the woods with a broken neck for 30 hours in the freezing cold and the rain she only had a t-shirt and some pants on but she was alive
and so moments later the paramedics they come rushing into the forest they pick her up really gently they bring her out and they rush her to the hospital where she'd be put into a medically induced coma the doctors would tell her family that unfortunately her injuries were just too serious and we don't expect her to ever wake up again but miraculously she would now she would have to re-learn how to walk and talk and eat and drink but she would do all of those things and today she is 32 years old she is happily married
she has two kids of her own and by and large she leads a very happy normal life as for sam shelton he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempted murder and he's still in prison today however he is up for parole in 2024 so that's gonna do it if you got something out of today's episode and you haven't done this already please offer to detail the like buttons car but as soon as they give you the keys just fill their car up with an angry pack of asian murder hornets also please subscribe to
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