Dr Phil a Family Divided Over an Unsolved Murder

SEVIERVILLE — At first glance, it looked like Dawn Shannon Hercutt went for a late-night drive, veered off the road and plummeted 125 feet to her death.

So when authorities found her body inside her crashed SUV at the bottom of a steep gradient off Walker Trail — 10 years agone on Saturday — they chop-chop ruled her decease an accident. The Cadillac Escalade was towed to an impound lot, and the 40-year-old baron'southward trunk was sent to a funeral domicile to be prepared for burial.

But subtle clues soon tipped off her loved ones that there was more to the story. Hercutt wouldn't have been out driving that late. She would've worn her seat chugalug. And she never would accept had a window downwardly.

"She was kind of vain in the fact that she wanted her hair to be perfect all the fourth dimension," said her first cousin, John Madewell. "She was a well-kept lady."

Madewell recalled driving dorsum to Sevier County from Ohio the day after Hercutt's death on Aug. iii, 2009. He learned the concerning details of the crash from employees of Hercutt's vacation rental holding business, and the family unit requested an autopsy just in time.

That dissection found Hercutt suffered head injuries she couldn't peradventure have sustained in the crash. Someone likely killed her at her abode, detectives determined, then placed her body in her SUV and sent information technology tumbling off an embankment virtually some rental cabins she owned.

The sheriff's part launched a homicide investigation. Rumors swirled. Hercutt's family fell apart every bit accusations flew. And a decade subsequently, the case remains unsolved.

"Even though an arrest has non been fabricated, information technology's never been put on a shelf and ignored," said Sevier County Sheriff's Office Master Detective Jeff McCarter, who worked on the instance dorsum in 2009. "We've always kept this instance open. We've always constantly tried to do things to effort to solve it. And we all the same are."

'Murderer'

A successful baron, Shannon Hercutt founded her visitor, Auntie Belham'south Realty and Nightly Rentals, as the demand for vacation rental properties in the Great Smoky Mountains skyrocketed in the 1990s. She lived alone on East Milford Haven Drive outside Sevierville, and she never married or had children.

"She was a hardworking lady. She was a beautiful lady. She was very passionate nearly her company," said Madewell, who now runs Auntie Belham's alongside his wife. "And everybody who worked for her — obviously she was pretty stiff-willed — simply she had very loyal people who worked for her. And we nonetheless have some of those here today."

Hercutt's father, Ted, was potent-willed, too. The two had a tumultuous relationship characterized by bouts of estrangement and reconciliation. At the time of her decease, Ted Hercutt told the News Spotter in 2009, male parent and girl were embroiled in litigation over a piece of property. Family members said he was all simply cut out of her volition.

That may have been why some in the community grew to doubtable the father had a hand in his daughter'due south killing. In old interviews, Ted Hercutt openly acknowledged his status as a suspect but consistently denied any involvement. He said he once received a call with no caller ID; someone breathed the word "murderer," then hung upwards.

Ted Hercutt, his then-married woman and his other daughter, Penny Stephens, were vacationing some 380 miles away in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, when authorities responding to an alert from Shannon Hercutt's OnStar safety system institute her dead inside her SUV.

In his telling, the begetter quickly realized his daughter did not die by accident, recruited a retired park ranger to investigate and pushed for an autopsy to be performed. He went on to criticize the state highway patrol, which worked the crash, and the sheriff's office, which received the case afterwards the autopsy on Aug. 6, 2009. The lawmen at the scene, he said, did not go down the embankment to view his girl's body.

Authorities have always been tight-lipped about the details of the case. McCarter, the chief detective, would not release the initial report a decade afterward the crash. He would not elaborate on Shannon Hercutt'southward crusade of death, nor would he say what deputies found when they went to her home. The Sevier County medical examiner did non respond to a request that he release the autopsy report. Jimmy Dunn, the district attorney full general, declined to comment.

Much of the publicly available information has come from family unit members and remains independently unconfirmed. Ted Hercutt, for example, said the SUV'southward airbags did not deploy, in that location were no slip marks at the scene and an electronic device in the Escalade showed it was going just 7 mph before it wrecked. Penny Stephens said she went to her sister'south house later on the killing and saw a baseball bat, claret on the outside refrigerator and two busted bottles of booze on the flooring.

A family feud on Dr. Phil

The case reached a new level of prominence in 2015 when Shannon Hercutt's sis went on the Dr. Phil show to accuse their father of orchestrating her murder.

"I know you accept paid someone to kill Shannon," Penny Stephens told Ted Hercutt, his mouth afraid. "And don't sit there and human activity similar you're so innocent."

Stephens had been outspoken about the case in years past, speaking with local media outlets, offer cash rewards for information and expressing a lack of conviction in the investigation. At present she was appearing on national television to accuse her begetter — whom she described as a "pathological liar" who made her "fright for her life" — of having her sis killed.

Stephens did not render requests for comment for this story. Ted Hercutt was never charged, and he died in 2017. Investigators never found any prove that he was involved in the killing, McCarter said.

Indeed, the bear witness has pointed to someone outside the family, someone who knew Shannon Hercutt, McCarter said. The 38-year law enforcement veteran believes investigators accept nailed down the motive but said, "If I told you what it was, it'd be obvious who I was talking nearly."

Detectives meet regularly with prosecutors to get over the case, McCarter said, and Deoxyribonucleic acid evidence was recently resubmitted to the state offense lab for testing. The Sevier County Sheriff's Office, he insisted, has not forgotten nigh the killing.

Shannon Hercutt's cousin believes him.

"Information technology's distressing," John Madewell said. "And I recall that sometimes it takes years and years to solve a case. There's but something that comes together at some bespeak, and I truly believe that it will hither, also. Maybe somebody knows something who just can't talk about it right now, simply down the road they may. They may have information.

"As long equally they don't give up, I call up in that location's promise."

Regime ask anyone with information in the case to call the Sevier County Sheriff's Role at 865-453-4668 or 865-428-1899.

Travis Dorman covers criminal offence, breaking news and law enforcement. Electronic mail him at travis.dorman@knoxnews.com and follow him on Twitter @travdorman. If you savor coverage like this, consider a digital subscription that will allow you lot access to all of information technology.

smithvoth1968.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.knoxnews.com/story/news/crime/2019/07/31/dawn-shannon-hercutts-bizarre-killing-remains-unsolved-decade-later/1820694001/

Share this post