On Independence Day of 1988, a pair of teenagers rekindling their romance would disappear from a Texas lakeshore and be found dead four months later.
Eighteen-year-old Sally McNelly and sixteen-year-old Shane Stewart had met in high school and had been dating off and on for a year; they had, in fact, just moved in together in January of 1988, though they had moved out of their apartment in May and spent some time out of town separately before returning to their hometown of San Angelo, Texas that summer. On July 4th, the couple planned to drive Shane’s copper-colored 1980 Camaro out to Lake Nasworthy in San Angelo to watch the fireworks.
According to some sources, the teenagers had previously been involved with a questionable circle of friends who were into drugs, sex parties, the occult, and perhaps more serious criminal activities. A few months before their Independence Day excursion, Shane and Sally had reportedly turned in a gun to police that they claimed had been used by a member of the cult to murder someone.
Though authorities were able to determine that the firearm was indeed stolen, they were never able to link it with a specific crime like that Shane and Sally had described. But the deputy who took their statement recalled that the teenagers had seemed nervous, and had told him that the people they hung out with were dangerous and might hurt them.
Likewise, a friend of Sally’s named Helen Williams later asserted that two weeks before Independence Day, Sally had expressed fear that someone was trying to kill her.
On the 4th of July, both Shane and Sally were seen at Lake Nasworthy at approximately nine p.m., watching the fireworks display. Less than three hours later, a fisherman named Randall Littlefield spotted Shane and Sally sitting in the Camaro at O.C. Fisher Lake, six miles away from their original destination. Randall told authorities that the couple appeared to be arguing or talking animatedly about not wanting to be “with them people no more,” but the conversation was not unusual enough for him to attach any significance to it.
This sighting was the last time that the couple was seen alive. Shane’s vehicle was found abandoned on the following day, the keys left on the dashboard and fast food wrappers littering the interior. The whereabouts of Sally McNelly and Shane Stewart would remain unknown until late autumn of 1988.
On November 11th, the skeletal remains of Sally McNelly were found near the Twin Buttes Reservoir, about four miles from where the couple had last been seen. Three days later, Shane’s body was also found in the same area. It appeared that both victims had been murdered by shotgun blasts to the head.
Though the cult angle has been a focus of the investigation from the start, the case got a massive break in 2017, when a forty-seven-year-old man named John Gilbreath was pulled over in San Angelo on suspicion of marijuana possession. His girlfriend informed police that Gilbreath was a dealer, at which point authorities filed for a search warrant and conducted an inspection of his property. In the course of their search, they turned up blood, a lock of hair, and a fingernail that possibly could be linked to the McNelly-Stewart homicide. Also present in Gilbreath’s home was a notebook allegedly containing the teenagers’ names, and three audio tapes which bore the initials SS.
Gilbreath remains a person of interest in the double murder, though it is unclear whether he had been acquainted with the victims in 1988 and had been a part of the purported cult which they believed was out for revenge against them. The case is ongoing.
Crime Immemorial 