Christine Sheddy Case: Did Arson Play A Role In Her Murder ?
Pocomoke City, MD– Christine Sheddy was murdered on the Byrd Rd Farm in Pocomoke City on the evening of November 12, 2007.
The series of events that led up to her murder are stupifying.
Of Particular concern is the rash of fires occuring on the farm and within surrounding areas in the time frame of both of Christine’s visits there.
As the September alarms are no longer accessible on the Pocomoke Volunteer Fire Department Site, you are looking at a cached version confirming the call to the farm and the fact that photos DID exist of what was assuredly a major fire. Three different stations responded at a minimum. The Images have been deleted.
The day before the Byrd road chicken house fire on September 20th, the Showell Fire Department extinguished this chicken house fire:
Also a cached version of deleted information from the PVFD site, is this October Alarm Source, through October 23rd, 2007:
Effective October 1, 2007 the Worcester County Fire Marshalls Office takes over.
“..The Worcester County Fire Marshal’s Office is responsible for conducting fire investigations of all fires in the County where arson is suspected, the fire is undetermined by the fire department, and/or an injury or death has occurred. The Worcester County Fire Marshal’s Office is the local enforcing agency for 3 municipalities and the County…”
Note the October 10th alarm for yet again, a subsequent fire in the chickenhouse on Byrd Road.
On October 11, the neighbors who have already been vicitmized by the Clarence Butch “ Jr” Jackson crew, are victimized again. As you can see the Fire Marshall visits Byrd Road.
What the record does not say, is that the neighbors are awakened at 3 am by the Fire Marshall and Deputy Parnell from the PCPD. They were told if they called the Fire Department one more time for fires on the neighboring property, they would be arrested.
On the exact same day that JR Jackson unsuccessfully seeks peace orders against the neighbors that are simply trying to avoid the menace of his existance at this point are denied on October 13th; there is another chicken house fire. Fire Police and Pocomoke PD are in attendance.
Another outside fire call on October 17th. There is no data past October 23rd on fire activity available for this time frame.
The November calls have been deleted entirely by the Pocomake VFD. The site is managed and maintained by “Choppy Layton” a long time Vounteer Fire Fighter and by all accounts, a solid guy.
What is astounding, is that I am in receipt of an email that confirms a witness gave a statement to Detective Trautman, the original detective in this case, on February 12, 2008.
Should we consider it a coincidence then, that the last time the PVFD site is updated, and apparently when the November alarms were deleted is February 12, 2008?
We have eyewitness accounts of fires on the Byrd Road farmhouse from November 9th through the 13th at a minimum. Fire Police and Marshalls have been to the property. By my accounting, we are talking in the neighborhood of 12 fire alarms to this property alone, starting one month after an emergency outdoor burn ban.
Why hasn’t Clarence Jackson been charged with arson?
Any other suspects? Dead Issue? We know there are surveillance still pictures and security guard witnesses, what did they see?
What is the ratio of alarm calls versus arson arrests?
I digress.
Who was copied on the confirmation email containing a witness statement on February 12, 2008?
Michael McDermott.
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Im not sure about that with it being a private owned business i would doubt it.I do know they started requiring them to do this because of all the thefts of metal and vehicles being turned in for money.So LE could get it with no problem
Good job Private eye, I forgot about that. He is right, When we scrap our alum. cans they record drivers lic. info.
if im not mistaking that would mean they pay out 4.54 to 6.06 per 100lbs
Well, what local building contractor might buy scrap metal on the cheap to cut costs? The tin buyer?
And a tip of the jaunty hat to seashed..!
Estimate a sheet of tin is 2′x10′. A chicken house is 200′x20′. If one sheet weighs 5 lbs. then a chicken house is worth $600 in scrap. That is pretty good money if you are having someone else do the work.
I think giving the ID at a scrap place is more of an LE tool for finding who sold the tin when someone’s chicken house becomes tinless without their permission.
Domo, any idea how much Jr was getting for the tin?
Re: #236
IMO, corruption is a funny thing how it works.
Say someone takes a 2 hour lunch once a week and goes and gets
drunk…comes back to work drunk.
His coworkers see this and after a few months of this they say, “well, I am going to take extra time for lunch…if he can do it, we can.”
Little by little the drunk starts doing it twice a week.
Then someone else sees this and says, “well, since she takes extra time for lunch some days, and he goes and gets drunk twice a week, and no one says anything, I’m going to leave work 10 minutes early.”
By now, the drunk is going out every day.
People are taking long lunches, coming in late, leaving early, etc. This has been getting out of hand for a long time and outsiders are
starting to be affected.
Then it comes time to crack down on the drunk.
Well, now all these people are used to doing what they want for so long, which is also WRONG…but not as BAD as the drunk.
But if the drunk gets busted, they all are going to have to go back to
following the rules by coming in on time, taking a half hour lunch and
leaving on time. They don’t want to go back to that. So…they continue to cover for the drunk.
One person in an organization is a convicted felon, another took a towel from the hotel, another took a pencil home from work. The pencil thief doesn’t want to go down with the felon but a crime is a crime.
This is a simplified version of why people don’t want the corrupted can of worms opened in PCity. There are going to be a LOT of heads flying and that is not going to be pretty.
Yes, it is an oversimplification, but a very good one, well stated.
B
Yes blink, that was from Fitzgeralds in Lincoln De.
I remember talking with the man who took my info. I asked him why the price fell from $0.63 a pound to $0.32 a pound? He said it was as high as $0.80 a pound, but when the stock market fell so did the price of alum.
right again private eye, they also grade the metal from junk metal (tin) to hard metals like farm impliments ( worn out mold boards, disc harrows )
Thanks, PrivateEYE, that sounds more like a sensible scrap metal price. Your response led me to this article from 9/11/09:
“Since the economy started its downslide, the price of scrap metal has also begun slipping, and that’s got both local scrap yards and area scrap haulers feeling the pinch.
snip ….
Whitehead’s yard had been paying $10 per 100 pounds of scrap just a few weeks ago. Now it’s down to paying $1 per 100 pounds.
snip …..
Industry officials report scrap prices have fallen from around $230 a ton to about $177 a ton in the last few months. The decrease, coming after two years of prices so high they sparked a rash of thefts locally and nationwide, comes as the largest buyers of scrap — steel makers — have shut down or cut production as demand for their products dwindle.”
more here http://www.jacksonvilleprogress.com/local/local_story_308081811.html
Truthfully, I dont know what the angle is. I know Jr. was a fire bug. When I was on the Byrd rd property, there had been fires set everywhere. You could see where he poured gas on pine sapplings and set them ablaze. As far as the chicken houses, the scrap metal was a bonus to his disease.
A list of local building contractors can be found here http://www.md.citysquares.com/district-1-pocomoke
So we know they were stealing tin roofs off of chicken houses. Was there any car, truck or school bus vandalism at that same time? There is a certain high tech metal used in catalytic converters that has caused a rash of vandalism around the country. Evidently, whatever metal is used in them is worth the risk.
Gawd, sometimes woman, I just dont get how you have the time to know this stuff.
Interesting.
B
Motive could be? Tin – make a little $ – besides, it doesn’t burn well so get it out of the way?
My husband used to play on dart league sometimes at PJ’s and let me tell you who arent from around here,it is an extremely ROUGH crowd.
Comment #248
The irony was that the judge in the Princess Anne case was a member of the church that was victimized!
I think the chicken house was 50′x600′ making the scrap worth at least a couple grand by red ryders figures, plus the copper wire.
Not to mention, this was a 3 alarm fire from what I can tell. I can confirm from a direct witness that Christine was helping transport tin for sale when she got to that farm. Point is, the buildings with tin had been burned before November, where was the tin coming from at that point?
Speculation on my part, but lends itself to the fact she stumbled onto something. The tin from that chicken house was burnt and off by the time she was in the picture, so was she there long enough to figure out what happened and pay the ultimate price for it?
So, if your saying a few grand for the tin.. I wonder who got the windfall of Hayward and Byrd Rd, fires were 9/19 and 9/20/07.
B
i personally think scrap metal dealers are like adult vid stores they bring garbage to the community (thefts/support drug sales and the list goes on).Then once they get what they want they end up closing shop and moving to another community.
With that said…
I just want to let JR,Domo,Justin,Tia,Levi to know.. Cause i know your reading..this is not going away we are coming full force and will not stop until christine is home with her family.
You are a true advocate for this family. Truly.
B
If I am not mistaken, cat. converters have a small amount of platinum in them.
Couldn’t help but notice that scrap copper was one of the higher price per lb metals. Anyone ever notice those huge wooden spools sometimes around construction sites or by telphone poles along side the road? It’s all copper wiring. Copper can also be quite heavy, especially by the roll. These guys had nothing better to do so they probably wouldn’t be afraid to take the time to cut it up into lenghts. Easier to transport and less suspicious if it was stolen.
spot on
i know Mr.Long very well he is a good man.
264: there was catalytic converters stold off cars right in broad daylight in the pocomoke lowes parking lot.Funny thing is the guy stealing them which was never caught to my knowledge fit the discription of JR.
Gypsy, that metal would titanium or platinum. Can’t remember which. Also on cars and very high in demand are those cool blue headlights
When the economy was going up the price of metal soared. Especially, with the war. Whenever we are at war metal is usually higher.
It is not just druggies who sell metal. My husband used to have the contract at the local NASA base to buy all of thier scrap metal and he would re sell it. In order to make the most money the contractor must go to smelter thus cutting out the middle man like Allstate and Salisbury Steel and Fitzgeralds. We went all the way to Philly.
There is nothing easy about dealing in scrap metal. It is hard and dirty work. In order to make the most money you must separate and clean it is well.
Such as removing bolts and screws of another type of metal. This is very time consuming. In order for copper to be sold for it’s highest price if it is in wire form you must have a wire stripper, and pull it off as you will get nothing for it if it is covered in plastic.
Funny thing about the price of scrap metal going so high, I must say that the Eastern Shore has never looked better. All of the crap that was lying around in the woods or in peoples back yards all of a sudden became enough for a couple of bags of grocery or enough for an electric bill, and people started hauling it off by the ton.
Tin, like in metal roofs has never brought much money and is far more trouble than it is worth.
#267, okay, but after you start stealing catalytic converters off of cars, where do you turn them in?
That seems like it must be someplace under the table.
Or, I guess what I mean to say is that, unless the scrap metal guy is a crook, he would have to get a little suspicious if someone starts showing up with a whole bunch of catalytic converters, right?
He could have gone out of town, to various places, I would guess.
Sorry Charity, I cannot candone multiple IP and email addys. It is deceptive and not permitted here.
B
You see these in the news from time to time. Here’s a recent one (sayyyyy, isn’t jr in TN now?)…
Nashville woman electrocuted trying to steal copper wire
September 12, 2009
A woman trying to steal copper wire from a closed auto dealership early Friday touched a live wire and was electrocuted, according to Metro police.
Police said Viola Farnsworth, 36, of Shepard Street, and three men broke into the vacant Carl Black Chevrolet dealership on Murfreesboro Pike, southeast of downtown…..
http://www.tennessean.com/article/20090912/NEWS03/909120355/1001/NEWS
I also recall a couple in snow hill that where building a brand new home starting out was there first home.They just had all the electrical work/wires installed someone went in and cut every bit of the wiring out of there brand new home.
im researching now to get dates and all the facts on this aswell as the lowes deal.
wymzie: sorry about my comment i should have re-worded that meaning most scrapers are into drugs and only scrapping for quick cash.
Christine was a beautiful person inside and out. I knew her she was my sister. I would say Christine didn’t have it as easy as many do. She still managed to make you laugh and loved her children. She loved music, and she wasn’t afraid to dance. Everyday I think of her. Losing her was a tragedy in of it’s of self. Then EVERYTHING goes wrong. The kids were gone, the police saying it would be too expensive to look for her, explaining to hear daughter her mommy was missing. That is just the beginning. We had the Tattler to turn to since they were the only ones who cared to talk about it since it was barely mentioned in your newspapers. We hired a private detective, wrote and called every level of office, and offered a reward. I was dumbfounded with how un-important her disappearance was to law enforcement. Hearing McDermott’s opinion that she was a bad mother and a sponge on society left us feeling very confident that they cared enough to do their job. So my mom single handedly organized her own searches, and her and my grandmother went into the woods to look for their daughter. Christine was helping me pick out dresses as my maid of honor. My grandmother had a pin of her on her purse instead. I also made her an aunt this year. This year she missed seeing her son off to first grade. We have been through hell, and not a day goes by that we are not searching for answers. We still have faith. Please can we focus on laying her soul to rest.
- I posted this on the Tattler, but I felt the need to share it here too. Thanks for reading.
A quick observation off topix, but I’m thinking TG from WS has instincts that fall alittle short for a self professed web sleuth! (Yeesh)
Who?
B
Trish, She’s all over the tattler
lol. It was metaphoric my friend. I “sighted” my scope, not looking in the peripheral.
B
I’m sorry blink, boo #276, it’s spelled Tricia and I think she forgot where she lives.
What, that’s not tricia?
is.
B
Don’t know if this helps but two more semi-precious metals to lookout for are Tungsten and aircraft grade aluminum. Aircraft grade aluminum is actually in more products than one might think. Hot rollers, not sure about engine blocks and/or the heads on thos engines etc. Some electrical wiring is also made of aluminum, I think but am not sure, high voltage lines.
I just made a post to the Pocomoke Public Eye severing my ties to his site. I have only posted once …maybe, but I don’t think so.
Anyway after reading the nonsense that he is allowing to be said anonymously on a blogger that he cannot track IP’s I will simply not be a part.
I am appalled at the hate and veiled threats aimed at my husband, all using anonymous but two of his commentors.
Just thought I’d let you know.
Steph
I am very sorry to hear that. In the minimum amount of correspondence I have had with the 2 of you, it is clear to me you are committed to supporting Christine’s family, and are professionals regarding your site.
B
Just wanted to stop in thank everyone for hanging in there. Blink and team are the best. Thank you, thank you, thank you for embracing my daughter’s case. Your selflessness is awesome. You are a force to be recond with. Forgive the spelling mistakes, the coffee hasn’t kicked in yet. Our family couldn’t be more pleased with all the support and well wishes from all involved. With Gods blessings, Christine will come home.
So nice to see your posts again Red! You guys please be careful! I live in a Good ol boys town and when you go diggin where they don’t want anyone to it can get mucky for the truthseekers. I know you know what you are doing and are well protected but they can be dangerous and do it out in the open cause they have no one to answer to. Enough of the mother hen. Go get ‘em TEAM BLINK! Besides, these small thinkers are no match for your crew, just seriously stupid!
#282 wymzie…chin up, good news is you broke off “links” with the “Count Chuckula”!! (High Five)!!!!
Blink..it is so hard to keep track of all the people involved here. Did they all split as far as you know?? i heard justins in
Any reports of air conditioning, ch&a, heatpumps being stolen or trashed? The copper in those would fetch a pretty penny, some have aluminum too. The time of year would be right, wouldn’t need ac in cooler weather. I’ve had several rentals and repo’s with units stolen and/or trashed for scrap. Oh yeah I’ve seen people burn box springs and put the springs beside the curve so scrap dealers would pick them up.
My sister in Hampton Va had the heat pump/AC unit stolen right off of her house(vacant and up for sale) and the police told her it was people stealing them for the metal.
Red
If Domo was to fess up to what he knows then he’ll be a snitch by his buddies standards. He has several chilluns which means a bunch of baby mamas and double the grandfolks that he may feel someone could harm. Or are all the kids by one woman? Anyhoo, could you offer him a way secretly to get to you so they don’t know he’s flipping on them?
From what I understand, Jr. is now in Tenn. working landscape/carpentry with a guy he was in prison with. I dont know how long that will last given his temperment. So by now he is more than likely back to the same thing he was doing in p-city. Would it pay to give the Tenn. local authorities a heads up.
I have also heard he has a protection order out against him already.
I checked on that. He does not have a TRO or peace order at this time. Not sure about the prison affiliation.
B
You have your work cut out for you trying to solve this one. I too, come from a good ole boy town, Pocomoke City is around 4,000 people, the whole county is around 50,000. Most people with the same last names are related somehow and even the worst of the worst may have a brother or uncle in the FD or the PD. Also, there are rules and regulations about how things are supposed to be done, paperwork filed etc…. and then there’s the real world and the smaller that real world, the less likely to have everyone stick to the rules. I think the key lies in investigators relationship with the suspects. Surely within those relationships will be found a person who will give up the information that keeps this case from getting solved. I’m no firefighter but I know those weren’t drought related fires that many times in one place. Every one of us amateur sleuths know that should have been investigated. Arrest the arsonist, there must be enough evidence. Then you’ll have the murderer. Bless Christine’s mom. If I was finished with lawschool I’d volunteer my services in any way. but you’ll have to wait a couple more years
Hey Melissa, I think Domo could go to a library or internet cafe away from his home. He could type out what he has heard or seen. He could type the location that he has heard Christine’s remains were placed. It would be important to be as specific as possible. If he remembers a big oak tree or a specific bush it would be helpful to say so. Wite down every detail he has heard or remembers seeing. Then he could print it, being sure to pay with cash. Then he could simply mail it to
Detective Kagan
300 2nd St
Pocomoke City, MD 21851-1048
I think Domo is basically a good guy. I think he has some valuable knowledge that is weighing heavily on his heart. I think he wants to tell what he knows but cannot be bullied into it. His background of Jr bullying him makes him hate a bully. The only question is when will he step up and tell what he knows. I hope it is soon.
Dont hold your breath on Domo. Anyone who lived with this info for two years and didnt say anything is guilty or not that good of a guy. I say GUILTY. Let him go down with everyone else. This is not going to go away.
notalemming,
Thanks for the support and the offer of your services. God has blessed me with people like yourself and others on this site. He is sooo good.
blink..sorry i read through and saw what you took out my apologies to you n your team if i offended you. Nothing ceases to amaze me now so i wouldnt be surprised if it was true but i’m sorry for crossing the line on here. Just keep checkin in to see if there’s any word about the latest search. I know you have to be discrete i’m just waiting for the day we hear some breaking news. Keep searching and posting people this is nowhere near over until we hear justice is being served for this family. Thanks Blink for keeping this case open to the pulic eye and keeping the faith alive i know the family appreciates you SO SO much.
p.s. it is very sad that there was no arrests for the mistreatment of the animals that were in that house as well especially if they taken from there and it was acknowledged that this was going on! AND WERE THEY ILLEGAL FIREARMS w/ children in the house!? were they straw purchases?? And cps came out and didn’t do a thing about it?? So corrupt..it just needs to end.
#291 Red Ranger…good idea listing det. Kagan’s info.
Has anyone considered contacting the BATF?
I just left a comment on wymzie’s post, “let’s not be rude” where I let her know her post reminds me of my mom’s hairy eyeball look. We could probably share stories of our mom’s disapproving looks all day.
true, but I think she is right, and I dont think it was intended for you Boo.
My Mom had eyes in the back of her head
B
Thank you Red. If Domo doesn’t help now given a way to protect him and his loved ones then let the chips fall where they may. Ball is in your court Domo. Put an end to the nightmare!