SHONDRA MAY: INTERVIEW WITH TONY ADAMS

On May 29, 2022, I Found and interviewed Tony Adams, Shondra May's boyfriend, before she was kidnapped and murdered by an unknown assailant. 

Unable to reach Tony Adams by phone, I did some research and eventually found where he lived.  When I arrived, I first went to the front door and didn't get an answer so I went around through the garage, and his wife opened the door and I explained who I was they were gracious enough to let me in their house for an interview.  

We sat down in their living room and began our talk about the night Shondra went missing.  

"I was at home watching TV at my mama and daddy's house", says Tony, "when I got a call from Shondra's aunt, that lived right there beside Shondra, asking me if I had seen Shondra." 

 "Well, no, I replied, and she informed me they had found Shondra's car up at the top of the hill and the door was open and she was gone.  

They called that night, and you know, of course, they didn't have cell phones back then, they called mama and Daddy's house and we were watching tv and they were looking, and they said, is she over there, had I seen her and I said no.  they said well they found her car up there and I'm telling the best I remember,  they found her car was over there on the hill, the door was open and she was gone. Anyway, I hurried down there as fast as I could. 

I felt very anxious, this was very unusual to me, you know, her car door open and she is not there, I knew something had happened.  

Did she ever tell you she was afraid, or someone was following her or anything like that?

How long had ya'll been dating?

"We had been dating about six months, I was in love, you know I thought I was deep in love, I guess I was.  I don't know how many days I stayed at her parents house, but I didn't come back home for several days, you know, hoping something would break, something would happen.

Did you ever have a feeling about who you thought might have done it?

"I was clueless, although you start suspecting people, I had no idea who might have done it."

Tony's wife.  "We were talking awhile ago about how surprised he was, you know he always knew how anxious Shondra's mom was always worried about talking about Shondra's mom and bout how she was always worried about when Shondra would get home, and he mom was real sick at that time too.  

I underrstand that, I have one in college and I have a tracker on my phone where I can pin point his location, he knows I do it, but I'm just saying, we didnt' ahve anything like that back then , you just called your parents.  The fact that she called her mother shows you right there her intentions were to come home. 

I met Shondra through a friend, a distant cousin of mine,  at a ballgame.  Someof the edinburg boys would go to the Leake Academy ball game, and then one of my friends dated one of her friends, I guess that is really how I met her. 

When ask if they ever heard anything about who it might have been they said the news had an interview with Neil Brandford, who was the investigator at the time and he said he knew who done it.  He thought it was William Kenneth McLain, but Bradford is dead now.  

Bradford was someone I didnt' like because you know , he put a lot of pressure on me, you know before they ever found her, and almost ever time we talked they seemed to insinuate I knew something.

You know, you are already in a very uspet condition, and then to have somebody try to make you feel like you know something about somethign, like he wasn't being compliant. 

It was valentines so you would not have been meeting her early.

Wife:

It was close to valentimes, but he, his mom and dad and little siter were all at the house watching the same movie, but Tony still went and took a lie detector (polygraph test).  I would do anythign to help, you know, like I'm talking to you, and I 've kind of let it go, but you know, I dont like to talk about it. It was devestating, and it still brings feelings back, but I would like for it to be settled and know who done it. 

I forgive them, which it ain't for me to forgive, (ask him forgive who) I do wish they would find out, but it is very doubtful they ever will.  

The sheriff back then, I didn't like him either, he was bad, and I think after that he got in some kind of trouble. That man was mean, I mean he treated me bad. The state people that gave me the polygrapy was real nice and ironically, his last name was Valentine. 

The would try and trick me.  They would say we want you  to do this, go down to jackson, and then they gave me a polygraph, which I would have done anyway.

I was about 18 then, maybe 19, I was working at the time, but my dad was in the logging  usiness so I started working when I was 17.  I started to school when I was five so I graduated when I was 17 1/2.

I've talked to I don't know how many people, investigators, you name it.

According to Angela, the worst was the investigator who took his DNA.  "you know, this was after we had kids and everything and they would not come to the house, they made him meet over at Sunrise community, and took his DNA.

"I told Angela, I ain't ever meeting with anyone else again unless I have a witness.  

"It scared me, because he was so adamant about me not telling my wife or anyone about it, and he got really mad because I told her." "It seemed legitimate, he did a mouth swab, but was just kind of strange, how it went down."

After Tony met him and gave his DNA we got kind of worried about it, like what was the motive behind it, he was in an unmarked car.  He tole me, "You can't tell nobody."

"I was so worried about it because it was so underhanded how it was done, states Angela, so I told Tony to call me and keep me informed .

"The investigator talked to me later about the DNA, you know, like they have some DNA, but I don't know. 

Her best friends were Stephanie Thornton and Tammy Thompson.

Tammy is the one I kind of met her through.  

There were times when she was working, I would go down there and follow her home to make sure she made it safely, she would go up her driveway and I would go home.  and this one time, Thank the Lord I didn't do it that night, I mean I guess I should not say that because I might have caused this not to happen, but I'm thinking what would they have done if I hadn't been at home... 

Angie:  If he hadn't been home...

What driveway did she use?  Did she go up the first or the second driveway?

"She always went up the first drive way. It would be a hard turn to turn into the second drive way from the direction she would have been coming."

"One of the times I followed her from work she went on up her drive way, and of course I slowed down, and I touched my brakes for some reason, and I looked in my rearview mirror and there is a drive way across the road, I think her grandma and grandpa lived up there, anyway, my tail lights lit up enough that I could see the taillights of a vehicle, and I thought to myself, someone is parked in their driveway.  You know, the vehicle wasn't on, it was just sitting there with the lights off. and best I remember that was a long driveway. It wasn't like it was sitting at their house.

"It was enough to make me think, "What is somebody doing there?" Of course, I didn't think about nobody being out to get somebody. Looking back, that is one thing that makes me think somebody could have been watching her moves at that point.

Did she ever ask you to follow her home?

"No, I would get off work, and go by there, I guess go by there to get something to eat and maybe get to see her for a little bit, because you know her mom and dad did not let her go out much on the weekends.  She was only allowed to go out once, you know, like a Friday or Saturday night.

It was long distance to call me, you know, she would have had to drive up to Walnut Grove if she wanted to call me. I didn't get to talk with her much when she was at work.

I didnt' like her working down there, I can tell you that.  Her mama and daddy made her work, I guess, you know, going to a private school." 

Tony currently works as 

Tony's wife worked as a teacher for 28 years, teaching high school English and Journalism, and also teaching middle school some.  She is a former employee of Neshoba Central in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and taught at Edinburg for almost twenty years until it was consolidated.  1

We Want Answers... The Death of Chancey Lee Dansby

Forty-two year old Chancey Lee Dansby was found face down on Highway 49 In Newton County Mississippi, the alleged victim of a hit-and-run. His obituary states he was an avid outdoorsman who loved the outdoors; hunting, fishing, and riding 4-wheelers.

According to Chancey's widow, Michelle Kyzar Dansby, she and Chancey were split up at the time, and Chancey was living with a friend and visiting with a woman named Donna and her boyfriend in Lake Mississippi near the Newton County/Scott County line.

Chancey decided to leave Donna's house and go for a ride on his bicycle.

A neighbor, Josh Parks, had been riding on his golf cart earlier, and passed Chancey riding on his bicycle. The next thing he knew, he heard Donna's boyfriend screaming, "Help! Help! He's been hit."  Josh ran over and Chancey was laying in the road injured. When Josh got there he said it looked like the side of Chancey's face had been hit with brass knuckles.

"No one heard anything when the accident happened, no tires screeching, nothing.", says Michelle.

911 was called and the first official to the scene was Pete Lingle, a Shift Sargent with the Scott County Sheriff's Office in Forest, Mississippi.  Officer Lingle told Michelle that when he arrived Chancey was face down in the road.  "I turned him over and and tilted his head back until the paramedics got there or else Chancey would have drowned in his own blood." Chancey was transported to the University Medical Center in Jackson where he later died on August 20, 2022, after his sister, Nicole Dansby Pinter, had to make the hardest decision of her life, and remove him from life support.  

Michelle later ran into officer Lingle at a gas station.  "He told me there was a video from The Hornets Nest store in Lake, and the hit-and-run vehicle was a red, flatbed truck, but they could not make out the tag number. There was something on the back of the truck, like a jug, but they could not make out what it was. 

"I just feel like something else happened to him because the road was straight and you could easily see traffic from both ways, and my kids heard he was beaten and robbed. I think someone hit him with a blunt object.  I was told he had stolen and sold his father's tractor and that he had money on him.  The Newton County Sheriff's Office has jurisdiction, and I want someone from there to call me, and explain to me what happened and let me see the video or release the video of the truck so I can put my mind at rest."

"We had been married about a year when he got caught with a firearm, and because he was a convicted felon he went back to prison.  We were both hooked on drugs, and when he got out he still had a drug problem, and I did not want to go back to that so I had to stay away from him, but I still cared deeply for him because he was with me through some of the darkest times of my life."  

"The last time I saw him was a few months before he died, and he and his girlfriend, Lisa, came by my house to see my kids, but he was suppose to bring divorce papers with him, and I made him leave because he did not bring them, and I could not be around him and keep my sobriety."

"I just feel like he was a convicted felon so they don't care about what happened to him, but he was still a human being, and deserves justice. Me and his family deserve justice."

"Although I was still legally his wife, no one in power reached out to me when he died.  I was never questioned, called, nothing. I called The Highway Patrol in Meridian, and they gave me a number to call to talk with the investigator's office, but he has never returned my call."  

I reached out to the Newton County Sheriff's Office and the Scott County Sheriff's Office, and tried to reach other family members, but have yet to receive a reply on this case.  When, and if I do, I will give an update.

My strangest case yet.... What happened to Molly Ruth Netherland?

                   

                          Molly Ruth Netherland

                 Missing from Kemper County

 It was a cold, clear night in January 2022. I had been to Philadelphia and was on my way home.  As I passed the Pearl River Resort Casino, I saw several police cars on the right side of the road with their lights on. Nothing unusual for a Saturday night.

As I got a little further down the highway, I passed a figure dressed in dark colored clothing walking alone on the right side of the road.  Although they had on a jacket with a hoodie, I determined from the shape of their body it was likely a woman. 

"0h my goodness," I thought.  "It is so cold outside they are probably about to freeze", and then I thought about the lady in Meridian that froze to death under a bridge.   

"I don't pick up hitch-hikers," I reminded myself, but as I got a little further down the road, I checked the temperature: 28 degrees.  I wondered at what degree a person freezes to death, so I ask Siri.

At 50 degrees and under a human can get hypothermia and die, but under 32 is freezing.

I decided to turn my car around and check on them. At first I breathed a sigh of relief.  I didn't see them anywhere and I surmised that someone had picked them up, but a little further down the road there they were.  

I had a dilemma.  Should I pick them up or not. I decided if it was a girl I would give them a ride, and if not, I could at least see if there was someone I could call for them.  

Although her head was shaved, I determined it was a girl, so I asked her why she was walking on such a cold night, and she said she had gone to sleep on the bathroom floor at the casino and they had kicked her out.  

I told her to get in the car and asked her where she needed to go.  She said Bogue Chitto and I asked where that was. Wiping tears from her eyes, she gave me some kind of vague directions and I decided I would not drive there that time of night, but instead would take her home with me.

I asked her name and she told me it was Cherokee Bell.

My nephew Justin was there and so was my friend Arlie so I felt it would be safe to take her to the house.  

Before I went to town, I had cooked a big pot of chicken-n-dumplings so when we got home, I fixed her a warm bowl of dumplings and she ate it like she was really hungry, and I knew the warmth was helping her defrost. 

She asked if she could she have another bowl and I said, "Sure."  Then she said, "You are the mother I never had."

If you know me, you know I like to talk so that opened up the conversation, and the first thing I wanted to know was why she was walking down the road on a freezing night and no one from her family had come to pick her up.

  

 TERRY BELL, A RETAIL SUPERVISOR AT PEARL RIVER RESORT,

DIED FROM STAB WOUNDS DURING A FIGHT WITH HIS SISTER.

She then proceeded to tell me that she had manslaughter charges pending against her because she and her brother had been drinking one night and got into a fight.  He was beating on her, so she stabbed him with a knife, and he died.  After that she said her mother and the rest of her family would not have anything to do with her, and that she currently lived with her cousin. 

I could tell from our conversation that she felt remorse about her brother so I told her, "We all make mistakes and God can forgive you and wipe the slate clean."

As we settled into more conversation, she asked me what I did for a living, and I told her I was an insurance agent. 

Then she mentioned a nice woman she knew of that use to go and visit the prisoners at the Neshoba County jail, but her following words blew me out of the water. 

"You remind me of that missing white woman.(she did not say which white woman). My cousin killed her, and I just think it is horrible to kill someone for money."

Although I felt some apprehension, I had two able bodied men at my house and one of them had a big gun, so I felt safe letting her spend the night on my couch.  

I wanted to question her some more, but when I got up the next morning she was gone.  

I called the Neshoba County Sheriff's department so see if they knew of a missing white woman and they said no.

I immediately started searching google for a missing white woman from Neshoba County but could not find anyone.  Then I went to Facebook and searched for a missing white woman.

I pulled up a post of a woman missing from Kemper County, the next county over, named Molly Ruth Netherland."

When I saw Molly's picture, she had short blonde hair like mine, and although she was older, I could see a resemblance. I felt in my gut this was the missing white woman Cherokee Bell was talking about. 

I looked on a map and found Bogue Chitto (although Cherokee never said which cousin murdered the missing woman),and saw that it was not far from where Molly disappeared.  

I surmised that if a person went from Bogue Chitto to Meridian they would likely take the back road, Highway 495 South, the road Molly disappeared on.  

On Thursday, September 2, 2021, Seventy-Nine-year-old dementia patient, Molly Ruth Netherland, disappeared from her Kemper County home, never to be heard from again.

 Molly was last seen around 6:30 pm sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch of her Old Jackson Road home, enjoying a cool breeze, a quiet country view, and an Almond, chocolate-covered, vanilla, Haagen-Dazs ice cream bar. Next to her chair was a basket she put collectibles in, such as rocks and sticks.  

Molly's sister, Ginger McKee, was busy inside finishing up the laundry.  Around 7:15 Ginger went out on the porch to check on Molly, but Molly was gone.  Ginger figured she had walked down the 1/2 mile long, winding, dirt driveway looking for sticks and stones and anything else she might find for her basket of collectibles.

Ginger waited and waited and when Molly did not return, she took her car and went to look for her, but could not find her so they called the Sheriff and reported her missing.

"The Sheriff's Department did everything they could possibly do to find her including Thermal cameras, a helicopter, Sonar, and search and rescue teams, all to no avail.

The best lead came from a tracking dog that followed her scent to the end of the driveway, right onto Old Jackson Road, and then South on Highway 495 toward Meridian. 

According to Sheriff Moore the dog followed her scent for 15 miles, all the way to the Lauderdale County line.  The tracking dog can track a person's scent whether they are on foot of in a vehicle.  It is believed that she was picked up by someone in a vehicle.

Over the last week she had talked about going to Pascagoula, her former home place, to look for some papers.  In her demented state she would have been confused and easily fooled.

Kim Turner, one of Molly's stepdaughters says, "Molly was always busy doing something and used to drive an Asbestos x-ray truck across the country doing x-rays.  My dad, Gary Crawford was from Sandtown and when he passed in August of 2020 Molly didn't' want to be by herself so she moved to Kemper County to live with her sister Ginger."  

Crystal Gale Crawford, another one of Molly's stepdaughters says, "Molly did not have any money or ID on her when she went missing.  I took care of Molly and my father for a long time and continued to take care of Molly after my father, Gary Crawford passed away.  I cry myself to sleep every night. If you find her, please mention the name Gary Crawford and tell her we love her."

It is hard enough to lose a loved one, but to have them missing and not know if they are dead or alive or where they are is sheer torture.

Molly is a white female with short, gray hair, 5'5", 125 lbs, blue eyes last seen wearing white jogging pants, a white shirt, crocks and a dark colored sweatshirt. 

Whether Molly was the missing woman Cherokee Bell was talking about or someone else, her story led me to this sweet, wonderful woman who has been missing for too long, and needs to be found.  Please pray for the family.

If you have information leading to Molly's whereabouts or info that leads to the arrest and conviction of anyone that may have abducted or harmed her, you can leave tips with: Muddy Mississippi Justice at 601-745-6276 or 601-842-7461 or email us at MuddyMississippiJustice@gmail.com.  

Also, you can reach The Kemper County Sheriff's Department: 601-743-2255 or Crime Stoppers: 855-485-8477.

 There is a $5,000 dollar reward being offered.