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Shannon O'Connor Opened a File at 11:41 p.m. She Was in a Van by Dawn.
Published 2 months, 3 weeks ago
Description
Shannon O'Connor taught new dispatchers by making them find the error themselves. On the night of July 14, 2020, she found one of her own, a client billed twice, and drove out to her Nebraska freight terminal at 11:34 p.m. to pull the paper copy. She texted her brother Dennis that she would be back by midnight. He wrote back two words: what discrepancy. She never answered. Seven minutes after midnight, a scale at that terminal weighed a truck that was 240 pounds too heavy.
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Shannon O'Connor, 39, of Columbus, Nebraska, was a logistics coordinator with eight years at the Apex Inland Transport Terminal in Platte County. She badged into the records room at 11:34 p.m. on July 14, 2020, and opened the Meridian file at 11:41. The printed copy was never found. She was discovered the next morning in a company van on Osprey Lane by a teenager on his newspaper route. The cause of death was asphyxia, with ligature marks on both wrists and a contusion above the left ear.
Randy Myers, a coworker whose shift had already ended, badged back into the secure office area at 11:50, signed a loading authorization at 12:17 and signed out the van at 12:18. Contract hauler Gary Fenn carried an unlisted freight container out of the dock on a truck whose papers listed flour alone, and transferred it to Myers at a turnout on Osprey Lane; he later pleaded guilty to making a false report and received probation. Investigators found no evidence that he agreed to a kidnapping or knew what he was carrying. Myers was arrested on July 28, 2020. After a 17-day trial the jury deliberated four hours and convicted him of first-degree murder; he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, and his appeals were denied by 2024. In 2022 he entered negotiated guilty pleas in the deaths of two former coworkers, Amy Schroeder in Dawson County and Lori Haynes in Lincoln County, one death originally ruled undetermined and the other originally treated as an accident.
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This episode is fiction. The people, businesses, agencies and investigation are invented, and the account is assembled the way a real one would be, from terminal records, laboratory findings, trial testimony and the families of the three women.
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The sixteen-year-old who found the van is not named in this episode.
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Shannon O'Connor, 39, of Columbus, Nebraska, was a logistics coordinator with eight years at the Apex Inland Transport Terminal in Platte County. She badged into the records room at 11:34 p.m. on July 14, 2020, and opened the Meridian file at 11:41. The printed copy was never found. She was discovered the next morning in a company van on Osprey Lane by a teenager on his newspaper route. The cause of death was asphyxia, with ligature marks on both wrists and a contusion above the left ear.
Randy Myers, a coworker whose shift had already ended, badged back into the secure office area at 11:50, signed a loading authorization at 12:17 and signed out the van at 12:18. Contract hauler Gary Fenn carried an unlisted freight container out of the dock on a truck whose papers listed flour alone, and transferred it to Myers at a turnout on Osprey Lane; he later pleaded guilty to making a false report and received probation. Investigators found no evidence that he agreed to a kidnapping or knew what he was carrying. Myers was arrested on July 28, 2020. After a 17-day trial the jury deliberated four hours and convicted him of first-degree murder; he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, and his appeals were denied by 2024. In 2022 he entered negotiated guilty pleas in the deaths of two former coworkers, Amy Schroeder in Dawson County and Lori Haynes in Lincoln County, one death originally ruled undetermined and the other originally treated as an accident.
---
This episode is fiction. The people, businesses, agencies and investigation are invented, and the account is assembled the way a real one would be, from terminal records, laboratory findings, trial testimony and the families of the three women.
---
The sixteen-year-old who found the van is not named in this episode.