Elsie was rushed to the hospital but died during surgery. Leeds pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to ten to fifteen years in prison. Shanna was five when her foster-grandmother died, too young to fully understand the tragedy.
When Shanna was barely twenty, she married Arthur Drune, and the couple lived for a while in Delton, Michigan. She was divorced by the time she was twenty-two, but didn’t bother to mention her past to Raymond Strahan when they began dating. Raymond had always trusted the opinions of both his mother and his stepmother. They were smart women, and he knew they had his best interest at heart. He appreciated their advice—until the day he introduced them to his new girlfriend. Neither of them liked her.
It was the spring of 1997, Raymond was twenty-two and infatuated with the dark-haired lady, so petite he says “she weighed ninety pounds, soaking wet.” He thought the elder ladies were wrong about Shanna, and he was offended. Shanna, too, was insulted when he relayed their comments to her, something he now realizes was not his smartest move. “At the time I was naïve,” he recalls. Shanna was mad when she learned his family didn’t like her, and her interactions with them grew more tense.
Ray couldn’t understand why his moms didn’t like Shanna and hoped they’d change their minds when they got to know her. He and Shanna had met at the plastic factory where they both worked in Battle Creek, Michigan. She ran the press, and he was attracted to her from the moment she first smiled at him. He’d just moved from Tennessee, where it seemed that all of the women he’d met were gold diggers, not interested in a guy without a lot of money. After being on his own for a couple of years, Raymond was flattered by Shanna’s flirting.
But he soon realized his new girlfriend had problems. “She was a cutter, but I think she did it for the attention.” Her wrists were often covered with razor scratches, but he never saw signs she’d done serious damage.
Shanna was unreasonably jealous of female coworkers. Once, after Ray had an innocent conversation with a woman at work, Shanna snapped, “What did that bitch want?” He realized his mothers had been right, but he’d become too attached to Shanna to walk away. The fact she was living with him at his dad’s house made it even harder to break up. They bickered frequently, but when they were getting along, they liked to go to the movies or to their favorite restaurant—Battle Creek’s Big Boy Fast Food. One afternoon, in early 1998, they were eating at Big Boy, when Shanna smirked triumphantly and announced, “I’m late.”
It was a shock, but Raymond was determined to take care of her and his baby. “Let’s wait for the right moment to tell my parents,” he urged. She nodded but blurted out the news the minute she found herself alone with his stepmother. Ray was annoyed but tried to overlook Shanna’s quirks. The baby was due in August, and he focused on getting things ready. He bought a trailer, so they could have their very own place to raise their family. It wasn’t exactly a mansion, but it was clean and cozy and located in a trailer park with friendly neighbors. He expected Shanna to be pleased, but she had other ideas. She was eight months pregnant when she suddenly moved into twenty-one-year-old Neil Munson’s house.
“He’s just a roommate!” Shanna insisted. Raymond wanted to believe her, but Neil glared at him when he visited. Shanna told Raymond not to worry about it and invited him to spend the night. Neil rushed outside and got into his car, loudly revving the motor outside their bedroom window. Neil was behaving like a jealous boyfriend, but Shanna insisted there was nothing romantic between them, and she had no idea why he was acting so strangely.
Instead of settling into nesting mode, as most pregnant women do, Shanna was restless, flitting about from place to place and man to man. Sometimes she stayed with Ray, sometimes with Neil, and sometimes at a women’s shelter. Raymond couldn’t help but wonder if the baby was really his. But when Cody Nathaniel Golyar entered the world on August 25, 1998, Ray realized the six-pound infant looked exactly like his own baby photos. This was his son, and he loved him instantly. But it soon became clear that Neil was Shanna’s boyfriend. The betrayal stung, but Ray