His family and friends certainly deserve closure. It's tragic that they have had to wait for answers over a year now while those responsible for his disappearance have been walking around. I truly hope those responsible will be brought to justice.
Based on what we know about his criminal history and the criminal history of the alleged suspects currently being held, all signs point to this being a drug related crime.
This community has a serious problem. The drug use here has reached epidemic proportions and it is tearing our little community apart.
Prayers for Shane, for his family and friends, and for this town.
ALL residents think " This is a corrupt/ bad/ scary/ druggie county" when a young adult is likely murdered in what looks like a drug hit. I personally thought from the start he was awakened and dragged out of his house around 4 AM, the most likely reason for someone with his criminal history to leave in what were probably shorts and a T shirt and apparently no shoes are either to commit a crime or to become a victim of one.
I'd like to say this. I come from a small cluster of towns on the Tennessee River in the heart of the deep South which are considered to be one combined area. I still read the local paper from there online, mostly because I'm knowing more and more people in the Obits. ( natural deaths usually, huge exception my friend and former co-worker,.Clo Stoner)...That area is much more of an uneducated and addiction prone area that an area so close to two major cities as Granbury/Hood Co. are, and also has a huge unemployment rate of able to work adults not looking for jobs due to the loss of many major industries because of the very long militant pro-union actions. ) I mean, it's bad when the 2 major grocery stores pack up and leave, not because of slow business, but because their staff goes on strike twice a year as part of their labor union demands).
People with time on their hands, generational lack of ethics, both work ethic and morality are the rotten apples in the bottom of the barrel there. Lots and lots of productive good people, but some that are bad to the bone ( Mark Montgomery, for example).
This area I used to live in thinks they are the " crime capital" of the South, because they have little to nothing to compare ONE drug bust (without known homicides connected to it) to a major city's daily news and headlines of murder after murder, gang violence and racial killings one after the other. I lived in a major city for years after getting out of the dusty, slow area I was dragged to by my parents as a teen, and have seen what a violent city's news mostly consists of, night after night after week, month and year. I didn't get jaded to crime and the people whom it hurts, kills, or otherwise destroys, but I LEARNED what quantifies " major crime area".
That's why we chose a quiet private community to live in when we moved to Texas instead of either in Dallas or Fort Worth.
. The truth is that there is very little violent crime in that area, or in Hood County, Texas. We have a total NUT for a sheriff, IMO, ( I didn't vote for him) and he wants publicity more than he wants to solve the very few violent crimes which do occur in the county. The nearby town of Granbury is the only town of any size at all here, and it's mostly a very pretty, active town steeped in Texas history ( and some interesting folklore).
As an aside- What we DO have in Hood County is an almost unbelievably high number of RSOs, most of whom were convicted of crimes committed in other places, then moved to this area to live with relatives, friends, or rent a trailer near the lake or river to live cheaply with our really lovely natural resources and warm climate. ( The same thing happens in clusters in Florida- usually an ex-con owns the rental properties and word spreads regarding where to go to live at a low cost and no background check hassles)).
The common denominator between urban dwellers and rural residents is the pervasive use of drugs, which produces the dealers and the organized crime syndicates which supply the already- addicted. This is usually opposite of the drug addition of the 1970's and 80's, where the dealers got people hooked on illegal drugs through parties with free samples and all that.
I've read over 20 articles written in the past seven days by physicians for physicians on the prescription opiate new rules, the doctors who practice on a " cash only" basis and profit from the first step in the addiction process in many or maybe even most cases, and the out of control drug abuses and addiction problems we have in the USA ( and probably in most of the developed nations, I'd think).
There are two things I believe strongly- 1)
Our mental health system used to protect the weak and the addicted with extensive inpatient treatment of 30 inpatient days or more, regardless of insurer. Managed care changed, then BROKE, our mental health system. People who have co-existing mental health problems and no intense treatment options are ripe for the picking for addictions- alcohol, legally prescribed opiates, and illegal drugs.
2)
The Texas Rangers were assigned to Siddall's case in the beginning, and have remained in charge. We would be babes in the woods to think they don;t know what his wife saw and knows about that morning and his activities in general, and who his so called " friend" was that he left his home with. The story was 2/3 written in the circumstances of his leaving, if his wife was telling the truth. I'm surprised she's alive, but glad. Usually, no potential witnesses are around to talk
I could be wrong, but I believe this case will be solved, or is already solved except for the legal formalities of a trial ( or plea bargain ).. The public will know--- if they don;t already fill in a very few blanks already-- and another unsolved disappearance in Hood Co, Texas, will be sad but solved.
Two remain, at least as far as is known, Mr. Moore, who lived with his son and daughter in law here in Pecan Plantation after the death of his wife, and a lady I've just become aware of through the pressers related to Siddall's year long status of " missing". I'm sorry but I do not recall the lady's name, never having read it or heard about her case before the past week or so.
I apologize for not knowing, but I have one device which crashes every time I try to post on WS, and a little 5 pound guy ( photo below) has been keeping me running.
My sympathies to Michal Siddall, Shane's mom, most of all. it's obvious that she loves her son.
