For David Spivey it was a night like any other night. Lying on the sofa watching TV, vehicle lights coming up the South driveway shone across the curtains and into the living room. I knew it was Shondra because I knew her rate of speed so I told my dad, "Shondra is home, there goes her car headed up the hill."
Not long after I saw the car lights our phone rang. It was aunt Nell, Shondra's mother. She said, "Is Shondra at your house?" She said Shondra had called and said she was headed home but had not arrived yet. We told her no.
Aunt Nell got into her car coming to our house, and as she was pulling down the hill her car lights hit Shondra's car, pulled over to the left, door open, but she didn't see Shondra.
When I got to the car, the door was open and unlocked with the window cracked about an inch. The radio was on with the volume turned down, like you would if you were talking to someone, and the passenger seat was pulled back. Her billfold was in an open position, but her drivers license was missing.
It was misting rain and three tiny muddy footprints led toward the back of the car and disappeared. The driveway was shaped like a triangle with the Hypotenuse (the longer part of the triangle) facing Highway 35, and the legs of the triangle (being the South and North driveway) meeting at 90 degrees at the tip of the triangle and going straight out from the angle to Richard May Road that went past Shondra's house and remained a dirt road (now paved) that when followed dead ended into Pea Ridge Road. Taking a left on Pea Ridge Road would head you back toward Forest, and a right would take you toward Lena, Mississippi.
It is my feeling that whoever took Shondra came down Richard May road and blocked her car from entering. As she came up the South driveway her tracks went straight across the longest part of the triangle, like she may have been blocked, and then her car swung around to the left and parked on the edge of the North driveway. (Theoretically someone could have followed her as far as the first Pea Ridge Road turn off and went past her house the back way and blocked her entrance.)
I think Shondra felt she was being pulled over by an officer of the law, or someone she knew, because if she felt she was in trouble she would have honked her horn. We also had three dogs and not a one of them so much as made a whimper, and they would bark at their own tail.
We called the Sheriff's department and they said she was a runaway, and would be back.
I didn't believe that, but a secret Shondra had shared with me begin to weigh on my mind. Three days before she disappeared she told me someone in a Dark colored truck stopped at Calvary Baptist Church on HWY 35 had blue lighted her on her way home. At first she thought it was her boyfriend Tony's truck, but when the person stepped out of the truck she realized it was not Tony or his truck so she took off. (It is rumored that both McLain and Willie McCurdy owned a dark truck during this time period.)
"I like making my own money and buying my own clothes, Shondra pleaded, Please don't tell mom and dad because they will make me stop working, and I don't want them to worry!" "I didn't tell cause I promised Shondra I wouldn't", says David through his tears.
The night before she disappeared my aunt and great-grandmother saw a dark complected man about 6'3" wearing a blue windbreaker going through the trash and burn barrel at Shondra's house. The police were called, but he was gone when they got there.
Shondra had left a note on the door for her boyfriend Tony telling him she was at her grandmothers house because her grandad was in the hospital. Tony never got the note. The note was found several days after Shondra disappeared, down the embankment not far from where her car was found. It was given to Sheriff Glenn Warren and he just threw it in the trash can.
Shondra had a lot of admirers. One day someone went through the drive through at McDonalds and handed a flower to the girl at the window, (this version varies from the one I was told by someone else) The girl said, "I don't want it" and they told her, "It isn't for you, it's for Shondra." They waited at the drive through until Shondra got the flower, then left. Only one person was in the car, and as soon as they left Shondra threw it in the trash because it was dead.
Kenneth McLain was another one of her admirers. He worked out at the Karate place next door to McDonalds, and was always trying to get her to go with him, but she wouldn't because she was head over hills in love with her boyfriend, Tony Adams.
One Sunday afternoon after church we all went to Roosevelet State park in Morton, Mississippi. Kenneth McLain was there and Shondra said, "This dude wants me to ride around the lake with him in his black Pontiac Trans Am. I won't get in the car with him, we will just ride on the hood." Shondra and my sister Elizabeth rode around the park on the hood of his car, and then came back.
After that McLain came into McDonalds and told her he wanted to take her water skiing, but she said the place he wanted to take her skiing was not big enough for a boat.
McLain destroyed and burned his Trans-Am right after Shondra was killed.
One night I went to the casino and McLain was there dancing. When I saw him I said, I got to go, I think that SOB killed my cousin. I took the backroads through Laurel Hill and he followed me in my Grand Prix GT. If I sped up he would speed up, if I slowed down he would slow down, but never pass me.
Not long before Shondra May disappeared another young girl, Robin Lewis, was headed home through a swampy area between Harpersville and Hillsboro. She drove a car similar to Shondra's and it is belived she was blue-lighted. She was thrown out the sunroof of her car and landed in the water of the creek and drown.
