Okie Investigations - True Crime

Trevor Shelby
  • 5.0 (2)
  • True Crime
  • Weekly

Join Host, Trevor Shelby, as he digs into the most interesting stories that show the darker side of True Crime in Oklahoma. Every episode we will feature a true crime story that has been forgotten through time. We will cover Cold Cases, Missing Persons, Serial Killers, and Horrible Crimes that happened in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Episodes

  1. 4d ago

    The Oklahoma Cannibal: The Death of Theodore Canatis

    On a Thursday night in May 1977, two Midwest City patrolmen met a few blocks from an apartment complex at Southeast 25th and Douglas so neither one would have to walk in alone. They’d been sent on a welfare check: a man nobody had seen all week. What the older officer found when he opened the refrigerator stayed with him for the rest of his life. The man was Theodore Canatis, a retired Air Force man who worked maintenance at the OU Health Sciences Center. Six months earlier his son Gregory, nineteen and just out of Hawaii, had come to live with him. By the following morning, police said Gregory had told them he killed his father. What came after is the stranger story. Gregory was charged with first-degree murder, but he was never tried and never convicted. Doctors called him insane, the court sent him to a state hospital, and the charge was dropped three years later. Then came a lawsuit over the warning nobody gave, a federal ruling that rewrote Oklahoma’s commitment law, and a grocery store in Norman. For thirty-seven years, nobody could quite decide what to do with him. We first told this story in August 2020. This is the full version, rebuilt from the newspapers of 1977 through 2017, the court filings and the press photographs. Content warning: violence, dismemberment, cannibalism, serious mental illness and self-harm. The newspaper coverage and links to the 1977 press photographs (Oklahoma Historical Society) are at Section29.com. Follow us at⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@Sect29⁠ ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/0TzmO5YuMYA2ECbTiCKdEt⁠ If you or someone you know is struggling, call or text 988, the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, any time in the U.S. Okie Investigations, by Forgotten True Crime. Hosted by Trevor Shelby.

    The Oklahoma Cannibal: The Death of Theodore Canatis

  2. Oct 15

    The Murder of Rob Andrew: Brenda Andrew, Jim Pavatt and the Supreme Court

    Monday, the twenty-sixth of November, 2001. Oklahoma City. At Crossings Community Church, a family from Enid is burying a thirty-nine-year-old advertising executive, a deacon, a father of two. His name is Rob Andrew. Six days earlier, he was shot to death in the garage of the house he'd just moved out of, with his children inside. His wife and his children aren't at the funeral, and nobody seems to know where they are. Rob saw it coming. In the weeks before he died, he told his family, a friend at work, and his prayer journal that he was afraid. He took the cut brake lines from his car to the police. Then he went back and told them again. The day before he died, he handed them a cassette tape. This is Rob's story, told the way his family lived it: the boy from the swimming pool in Enid, the marriage, the friend from church who sold him an $800,000 life insurance policy, a search for two missing children, an arrest at the Texas border, two trials, two death sentences, and a handwritten letter that nobody in this case says is true. And it isn't over. Brenda Andrew and Jim Pavatt were both convicted of Rob's murder and sentenced to death. Brenda Andrew still says she's innocent, and her case has been to the U.S. Supreme Court and is headed back there. On October 14, 2026, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board denied Jim Pavatt clemency. He is scheduled to be executed on November 12. Content note: this episode describes a shooting, with children in the house at the time. Nothing in it is graphic, but if that's not for you today, sit this one out. There'll be another one. ON THE BLOG: Everything I found for this episode is at Section29.com: the newspaper coverage from 2001, pages from Rob Andrew's prayer journal, and the court records, from the 2003 and 2004 trials to the Supreme Court. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING: If you covered either trial, sat in one of those courtrooms, or knew Rob, I'd love to hear from you. Reach out at Section29.com. And if you have a forgotten case you'd like me to dig into, send it along. Okie Investigations, in partnership with Forgotten True Crime. Narrated by me. AI used in post to improve the audio. MUSIC: Music by TrackTribe, copyright-free music for creators. TrackTribe is Mike Chiavaro, Gunnar Olsen, Otis McDonald, and Fred Beteille. tracktribe.com FIND THE SHOW: Blog: Section29.com · YouTube: Forgotten True Crime · Facebook: Forgotten True Crime Subscribe wherever you're listening so you know when the next one drops. And if this episode got you, leave a review and share it with somebody who loves true crime. For an independent show, that's worth more than you'd think.

    The Murder of Rob Andrew: Brenda Andrew, Jim Pavatt and the Supreme Court

  3. Oct 7

    Waiting Down the Street: The Disappearance of Fawn & Rozlin Abell

    On a summer afternoon in July 1985, two sisters walked out of their family's house in Bethany, Oklahoma. They said they were going to look for jobs. Their brother remembers one of them calling back, "Hurry up. They're waiting for us down the street." Rozlin Abell was 18. Fawn Abell was 15. Neither has been seen since. There was no newspaper story, and no search. For 25 years the case sat in a file, until a phone call about bones found at a wildlife refuge made a Bethany detective pull it. In this episode we follow that detective through what was written down, and what wasn't. Who was waiting down the street? Why did no one go looking? And why did the law of Oklahoma treat two sisters who walked out the same door on the same afternoon so differently? The case is still open. If you know anything about what happened to Rozlin and Fawn Abell, call the Bethany Police Department at 405-789-2323. Sources, newspaper pages and the timeline are at Section29.com.

    Waiting Down the Street: The Disappearance of Fawn & Rozlin Abell

  4. Aug 9

    The Sirloin Stockade Murders: Roger Dale Stafford and Verna Stafford

    Oklahoma, the summer of 1978. A family pulls over on Interstate 35 to help a woman with a broken-down car. Twenty-four days later, six people are shot to death in a walk-in freezer at a steakhouse in south Oklahoma City. For eight months, nobody knew the two crimes were connected — until a ten-year-old boy came around the side of his house holding a paper sack. Nine people died: Melvin, Linda and Richard Lorenz on the highway near Purcell, and Isaac Freeman, Louis Zacarias, David Lindsey, David Salsman, Anthony Tew and Terri Horst inside the Sirloin Stockade on SW 74th. Roger Dale Stafford was executed in 1995. His brother Harold died six days after the massacre and never answered a single question about it. And Verna Stafford is 73 years old, still in an Oklahoma prison, and standing in front of the Pardon and Parole Board this week. She is the only person still alive who was in that building. She is also the only reason the case was ever solved. This is Episode 1 of Okie Investigations. Court records, the appellate opinions, the parole docket, and a full list of every place the sources contradict each other — and on this case they do it constantly — are at Section29.com. Music by TrackTribe. Listener discretion advised. This episode describes the murders of children.

    The Sirloin Stockade Murders: Roger Dale Stafford and Verna Stafford

  5. 06/16/2024 ·  Bonus

    The Cheyenne Mystery: The Muder of Jack Leary

    When Jack Leary is found brutally murdered in Cheyenne, Oklahoma, in 1933, the community is left reeling. The investigation that follows spans nearly a decade, punctuated by false confessions, dismissed charges, and a trial that raises more questions than answers. Join Trevor Shelby as he examines the evidence, the key players, and the enduring impact of this baffling case on the town of Cheyenne.

    The Cheyenne Mystery: The Muder of Jack Leary

  6. 09/04/2022

    Okie Investigations Teaser

    Hello everyone, and welcome to Okie Investigations, the podcast where we look at the darker side of Oklahoma's history. For each episode, we will bring you a different true crime story that was headline news in the Sooner State. We tell the stories that others can't. Make sure you subscribe today so you don't miss a single episode. If you have case that you would like looked into, please contact me on our website truecrime.blog

    Okie Investigations Teaser
  • 6 Episodes

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
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About

Join Host, Trevor Shelby, as he digs into the most interesting stories that show the darker side of True Crime in Oklahoma. Every episode we will feature a true crime story that has been forgotten through time. We will cover Cold Cases, Missing Persons, Serial Killers, and Horrible Crimes that happened in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

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