A Deadly Wandering: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption in the Age of Attention (23 page)

“Even on my worst day, a mission was something that I knew I wanted to do.”

In this unusual case, Mormon officials needed to get more information. Records show that Jon Bunderson, the Shaw’s attorney, talked to church officials in early June, giving them qualified reassurance that Reggie could go on a mission. He’d had no indication otherwise from police investigators that Reggie was at fault in the deaths of Jim and Keith.

SCOTT SINGLETON’S CASE NOTES
show that from late March through April and into May, he hunted down who Reggie had been texting on the morning of the accident.

If he could find out who the number belonged to, he could try to prove what the phone records seemed to show: that Reggie was texting during the accident, or right around it. He could find out what Reggie had been texting about; what had distracted him; was there a much clearer, if tragic, reason that two men had been killed?

Singleton’s frustrations in trying to track down the answers were understandable to anyone who has ever had to deal with the phone company—navigating phone trees or getting help from people on the other end of the line who don’t know the answers. There was an added layer of complexity when it was a legal case. The phone company had to make sure the subpoena was in order. Now there were multiple phone companies and different numbers. Lots of bureaucracy.

On March 19, Singleton met with Tony Baird, the deputy county attorney, to get a subpoena on the new, mystery phone number that appears on Reggie’s records as being texted at the time of the accident.

For his part, Baird continued to keep the case at an intellectual arm’s length. It was still very early in the process. He had plenty of work to do, a newborn at home—the fourth for Baird and his wife. Besides, Baird remained skeptical that the Shaw case would amount to much. He saw his job at this point as mainly making sure that Singleton was crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s. And he was impressed by this new investigator: “He was meticulous. He was very, very particular. Not that Rindlisbacher isn’t,” Baird recalls. “Singleton’s more analytical, step by step, block by block.”

By now, though, Singleton was also doing his best Rindlisbacher impersonation. He was obsessed. Not only did he get everything signed by Baird that March morning, he also dropped the subpoena off at 444 North Main Street, the Cingular store, to a woman identified in his case notes only as “Kris.”

Exactly two weeks later, at 3:20 in the afternoon, Singleton called the Cache County Attorney’s Office to see if they’d heard back from AT&T. No, the company had not complied. So the next day, Singleton met with Baird, who suggested the investigator call AT&T’s legal department. Adding yet another wrinkle, Cingular and AT&T had recently merged.

He wound up calling Cingular’s legal department, who told him such requests could take ten to fifteen days, an amount of time that had already elapsed. Singleton was getting frustrated, and he wasn’t the only one. On April 13, a Friday, Singleton heard from Rindlisbacher.

“Keith’s wife, Leila, wants to know what’s going on with the subpoena,” the trooper told the investigator.

“Working on it. I think I’m close.”

Singleton wasn’t. There was a practically comical twist coming.

On May 7, Singleton called AT&T’s legal department, another pester. His case notes read: “They stated that the phone # belongs to T-Mobile.”

He’d been barking up the wrong phone company. All this time wasted! But a few hours later, after talking to T-Mobile’s legal department, he came to understand how he could make such a mistake. T-Mobile confirmed that the phone number had switched to its service, from Cingular/AT&T, on September 6. That was just three weeks before the accident.

That very day, Singleton wrote another subpoena, took it to Baird on Tuesday, May 8, and got it off to T-Mobile.

Then, not surprisingly, more bureaucracy, waiting, and back-and-forth.

On May 23, he spoke to T-Mobile and was told he needed to fax the subpoena to a legal compliance agent in T-Mobile’s Law Enforcement Relations Group. That same day, at just a few minutes after noon, he called Leila to let her know the gears continued to grind. The next day, Singleton pestered the T-Mobile agent.

She told Singleton she had news. “We’re faxing the information tomorrow.” When he heard it, he felt a chill.

HIS CASE NOTES DON’T
reflect the excitement he felt when the fax arrived.

“Received fax from T-Mobile. Briana Bishop, 12/8/87, is the owner of the phone # (801) XXX–3126.”

Briana Bishop, age nineteen. The woman on the other end of the text.

THE DAY AFTER RECEIVING
the information about Bishop, Singleton called a fellow investigator, Stan Olsen. Previously, Olsen had held Singleton’s post in Brigham City but had since moved to the Farmington office, which was located closer to where Briana Bishop lived. Singleton and Olsen discussed how to approach Briana, and they decided to jointly interview her after Singleton made the initial contact.

He called the mystery woman at 2:30 on May 29.

“Ms. Bishop, my name is Agent Scott Singleton. I’m calling from the Utah Bureau of Investigation.”

“Hello. What’s this about?”

“I can’t tell you over the phone. I’d like to arrange a time to get together.”

At 2:48, Briana called back. They arranged to meet the next night after work at the Farmington office. Singleton was excited. He might finally get some concrete answers.

It wouldn’t be so easy. Between the time that Singleton called Briana at 2:30 p.m. and the time she called back, she had two other phone calls. One was made to her friend Trisha, who was dating Reggie. The other call was with Reggie himself. It lasted eleven minutes.

THE NEXT NIGHT, SINGLETON
and Agent Olsen gathered around a wooden table in the modest Davis County office of the Highway Patrol in Farmington with Briana Bishop and her father, Steve Bishop.

In Briana, Singleton saw a “young, blond, nineteen-year-old who was nervous, very nervous.” She wore work clothes. Singleton wore a dark shirt and a tie. He recorded the interview.

“You’re not in any trouble, but we do believe that you have some critical information that you can supply to us,” Singleton told her, according to the transcript. “I’m going to show you a series of photographs,” he said. He showed her photos of young men, white, short hair, clean-cut, young men who at a distance could be mistaken for Reggie. She didn’t recognize them.

He showed her Reggie’s picture. “Do you know that young man?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. And who is he?”

“Reggie Shaw.”

Singleton asked their relationship and she explained, “Umm, we kind of dated a little bit, but we were mostly just friends. We hardly talk anymore.”

Singleton asked what she knew about the accident.

“A little bit, not too much, though,” Briana said.

“What can you tell me about it?”

“Umm, the morning that it happened, I got up, and I was getting ready for work. And I just texted him like I normally did, because I was dating him that day. And I so texted him to say good morning and what was up and stuff. And he texted me back and told me that he had just gotten in an accident and he thinks that the other two guys were dead and he was freaking out.”

“And so he texted you and said—”

Briana cut him off. “It was after it happened. Then I called to see if he was okay.”

Singleton had figured this would be a tough interview and that Briana, being a friend of Reggie’s, may be evasive or even dishonest. He was also extremely aware of the other key person in the room, Briana’s dad. As Singleton would say later: “We were having to appease her father. He didn’t want to see her raked over the coals.” Initially, Singleton started to try to draw her out. He pressed gently for her to explain the initial text. Who had sent it? She had, she said.

And then Agent Olsen asked: “You said good morning and his response was . . . ?”

“I just got in an accident and I’m freaking out and I think the other two guys are dead.”

What Briana apparently didn’t know is that the investigators had all the texting records. Singleton asked: “Do you think it’s possible maybe the accident occurred when he was reading your text?”

“I don’t think so, because he told me right after, he said that he had just—he’s not one to sit there and text and stuff while he drives. He’ll hardly like—he’d hardly like even pick up the phone or anything while he’s driving.”

Singleton’s frustration was simmering. He pulled out the phone logs.

“These are a list of text messages. They start—the crash happened at 6:49. The texting starts prior to that time, 6:43, 6:45, 6:46, 6:47. These were all happening when he was driving.”

Singleton had gotten the crash time slightly wrong—it was more likely between 6:47 and 6:48—but he made his point.

Briana: “Hmm.”

Singleton elaborated, explaining that the texting started when Reggie left his house and that the investigation shows he “was in the process of texting you, and he crossed the center line and he clipped a . . . and the car spun out of control, spun sideways, and was hit by a pickup truck and it killed these two individuals.”

“Uh-huh.”

Singleton pulled out pictures of Keith and Jim that ran with their obituaries in the local paper. “This is a father who has a daughter, and this one is a father who has two little children. They were both married. I would really like as much help as I could because Reggie refuses to talk to us.”

“I thought that he just texted me right after it happened.”

Singleton said he had records for eleven texts between Reggie and Briana prior to the crash and for thirteen texts afterward.

And her dad then asked a question. “So these are responses—she sends a response and he sends one back, that’s considered a text message?”

Yep, Singleton explained. He was trying not to show his frustration. This young woman remembered sending a text to say good morning, something so insignificant, and claimed not to remember anything else. “The only one I remember is just like the one after the crash happened, like he just texted me. That’s all I remember about it.”

They went back and forth, gentle parrying, trying to draw her out. Her dad said: “I think it’s important you tell them everything you know.”

“I know.”

“Every little detail.”

“Like, that’s seriously all I remember about it. It was, you know, last September or so.”

This was just shy of halfway through the interview. The investigators quickly covered a bunch of other ground: Who else Briana had talked to about the accident; how many texts she had sent that day; a bit about the process going forward. Briana asked: “So are you guys trying to get it so he goes to jail?”

“What we want is accountability,” Agent Olsen responded. “If someone were to be texting and clipped your father while he was driving and was—and your father was killed,” he asked, “would you want accountability?”

She had nothing further to offer—an indication of a standoff moving to a new phase, into a more formal legal arena, with the sides entrenching.

Indeed, by now, Singleton and Rindlisbacher, emboldened by discovery, were nowhere near close to giving up. In fact, Briana’s own texting and phone records had offered them yet another level of indignation. Her records showed that she had sent Reggie six texts during his drive; he’d sent five, and she’d sent six.

Eleven texts, sent and read by Reggie Shaw on his fateful drive.

But Reggie didn’t know anything of this discovery. He felt in the clear. Besides, something very good was about to happen, or so it seemed.

REGGIE WAS IN THE
living room when the call came in. It was the local bishop, Eldon Peterson. He’d taken over for David Lasley, the bishop who Reggie had lied to about having relations with his girlfriend.

Reggie took the call on the landline.

“Great news, Reggie.”

Before the next words came out, Reggie’s eyes had already filled with tears.

“You’re going on a mission,” Peterson told him. The bishop gave a few key details, namely, that Reggie would be leaving in less than two weeks. Get your bags packed, kid, you’re heading to Provo to the MTC, the Missionary Training Center, then to Canada, where you were supposed to go on the first mission.

“I know how hard you’ve worked, Reggie.”

Reggie wept with relief and joy.

ON JUNE 7, AT
three p.m., agents Singleton and Olsen took another crack at Briana. This time, unannounced. They showed up at Bukoos, a freight warehouse where she worked. They recorded the interview sitting in a back room with cubicles in it. They were the only people in the room but they shared a cubicle, the three of them, doing the interview.

Singleton was sure that Briana wasn’t telling them everything, and suspected she’d been coached, maybe by Reggie. By coming to her place of work, they could avoid having her dad in the room and press a little harder.

Singleton explained that the prosecutors were now looking at the case. “In pouring through the records, text and cell phone records, I got quite a bit of evidence. I know you haven’t been totally up front with me on what was said.”

“I haven’t?” Briana asked.

Singleton again explained about the cell phone records, the eleven text messages that took place before or just during the accident. And Briana responded: “That’s what me and my dad were talking about after we left, you know, because like I thought—I told my dad like I thought I had only text him once, but apparently I was texting him before. I don’t know.”

“So you’re saying you could possibly have been wrong?”

“I could have been wrong, yeah. I wasn’t completely sure.”

Singleton was feeling a light buzz, the thrill of closing in on some truth, something that had been elusive. He followed up by asking about her exchanges with Reggie after the accident; what had Reggie said? She explained, as in the previous interview, that he’d gotten into an accident. “They just ran into each other.”

Singleton: “I want to know absolutely everything.”

“I don’t know what else to tell you. That’s like honestly all I remember.”