Shownotes Transcript
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She was ready to reinvent her life, and just one flight stood between her and a new beginning. But when that plane took off, the 19-year-old expectant mother wasn't on board. Three months later, her family learned the devastating truth. A suspect confessed to the killing soon after, but his defense raised eyebrows. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is the case of Melody Starr DeRozia Waters on Dark Down East.
It was January 11th, 1991, and Carla McMillian checked her watch for what felt like the hundredth time. Her daughter, 19-year-old Melody Starr DeRozha Waters, was supposed to be on a flight out of Manchester, New Hampshire at 3:25 p.m. that day. But even though the arrivals board showed that her plane touched down, there was no Melody making her way up the jet bridge.
According to Deborah Snyder's reporting for the Concord Monitor, the conversations Carla had with her daughter in the days leading up to the flight were both heavy and hopeful. Melody was struggling with money, with substance use, but she just found out she was pregnant just about four weeks along, and she was so excited to be a mom. She wanted to be the best mother she could be for her baby, and Melody was ready to turn her life around.
Melody called her mother from New Hampshire to share the news and ask for help. Melody wanted to pursue her high school equivalency certificate and enter a substance use treatment program. Though their mother-daughter relationship had faced its share of trials, Carla wanted to help her daughter and her future grandchild, so she got her a plane ticket home to West Virginia.
As Carla recalled it, Melody had been near begging when she asked her mother for help, so it didn't make sense that she apparently didn't get on the plane that day. Carla tried to contact Melody after the missed flight to no avail, and then called police in New Hampshire to see if they could track her daughter down. What they learned was only more concerning.
Chokyong reports for the Concord Monitor that when police checked Melody's apartment in Concord, they found it still full of her personal belongings, including her suitcases that appeared to have been packed and ready to go for her trip. But no Melody. Karlyn knew that Melody had a boyfriend at the time, 18-year-old Shane Pitts. Police checked with Shane to see if he had any ideas where Melody could have gone, and he seemed just as confused as anyone that Melody didn't make her flight.
He had driven Melody to the airport himself, he said. Shane told police that he and Melody had spent the previous day, January 10th, driving around town so Melody could say her goodbyes to friends before leaving for West Virginia, and then they decided to stay at Shane's parents' home in Hopkinton that night. His mother and stepfather were going through a divorce, and neither parent permanently lived in the house anymore, so Melody and Shane had the place to themselves.
According to Shane, he and Melody woke up the next day in a bit of a rush. Realizing they'd overslept by a lot, Shane said they ate a super fast and super late breakfast before jumping in the car to head to Manchester. They were so pressed for time that they didn't even bother stopping at her apartment for her luggage. He dropped Melody off at the airport around 2 p.m. and he said that was the last time he saw her.
According to reporting by Paula Tracy for the New Hampshire Sunday News, Melody Starr grew up in Sutton, New Hampshire, and lived there until she was about 13 years old. Her childhood and teenage years were tumultuous. She and her mother moved around a lot after Melody's biological father left and her mother remarried. Melody's stepfather became an influential presence in her life, and Melody eventually took his last name, hyphenating her own to DeRozha Waters.
After relocating to Vermont and then New Mexico, Melody and her family put down roots in West Virginia. And Melody didn't seem happy there. When she was 16 years old, Melody ran away and was missing for three months. Carla eventually found Melody living with a boyfriend and his family. Melody spent the next few years between West Virginia with her mother and stepfather and New Hampshire where she stayed with friends and sometimes her Aunt Nancy in Concord.
Melody had a serious boyfriend for a while during her teenage years. Andrew Gallarno reports for the Concord Monitor that Melody and her boyfriend were basically childhood sweethearts. As Carla described it, that boyfriend was the love of Melody's life even after they broke up. One report indicates that Melody and this boyfriend were engaged at one point. But when Melody started using drugs, the relationship fell apart.
It was relatively easy for teenagers in the Greater Concord area to access drugs in the late 80s and early 90s, particularly the hallucinogenic substance known as LSD. Jim Graham of the Concord Monitor reports that it was cheap, and because of that, LSD was rising in popularity.
In fact, the same year Melody disappeared, 1991, police would make the largest LSD bust in state history at the time, confiscating 13,000 single doses. The street value was about $5 per dose. Melody was known to use LSD.
Melody's mother said that the last time she visited Melody's apartment in Concord, it was apparent that she'd reached a point in her substance use that required help. But Melody was surrounded by it. The drug had infiltrated her social circle. At least one report indicates that as Melody began to struggle to pay her bills, she may have turned to selling small quantities of the drug to get by.
But that all changed when Melody found out she was pregnant. Melody had previously suffered a miscarriage, and she wanted to turn things around for her baby. She'd already started taking classes with the Project Second Start program in Concord to work towards her high school diploma before calling her mom about a plane ticket. It was Carla's understanding that Melody had also stopped using drugs when she found out she was pregnant and hadn't used in the weeks leading up to her scheduled flight to West Virginia.
Melody had also met Shane Pitts through mutual friends in the weeks before she decided to move back to West Virginia. Friends of Shane's were in a band, and the band practices often became parties, and Melody was at one of those parties in November of 1990.
They hung out as friends for a few weeks. Melody still had a boyfriend when she met Shane. But when things ended with that boyfriend, Melody spent more and more time with Shane until the friendship turned into a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.
The paternity of Melody's baby has never been conclusively determined, or if it has, it has not been publicly disclosed. Friends of Shane's and Melody's said that Shane was not the father. However, Carla said Melody told her that Shane was the baby's father. There were plenty of reasons for investigators to keep their eyes on Shane Pitts as the days passed without Melody's return.
So a little over two weeks after Carla reported her daughter missing, local police caught up with Shane for a second interview. It turned out that Melody's pregnancy was a topic of conversation before she disappeared. As reported by Jerry Davies for the Concord Monitor, police interviewed Shane again on January 29th.
He explained that he and Melody had gotten into an argument either on the 10th or the 11th, which would have been the same day he said he dropped her at the airport. The argument was about pregnancy and abortion. Shane suggested that Melody should terminate her pregnancy, but Melody planned to continue it. Shane maintained his story about dropping Melody off at the airport.
Conversations with Shane and Melody's friends were unremarkable. They told police that Shane was his usual quiet self after Melody disappeared. In fact, the same day he supposedly dropped her off at the airport, Shane went to a party at a friend's house. Other people there said he joined in on a prank that had everyone running around trying to put ice cubes down each other's shirts.
As more people learned of Melody's disappearance and the topic came up in conversations among friends, Shane didn't seem upset, but he also didn't say much of anything about it. He'd always been quiet, so it wasn't unusual to those who knew Shane well that he didn't join in the chatter when Melody's name came up. Prior to Melody's disappearance, reports indicate that Shane had been going through an emotionally challenging time.
He spent most of his days and nights alone at the house that used to be the family home, a large estate on Hedgerows Lane, and reportedly one of the most expensive in the town of Hopkinton at the time. Ever since his mother and stepfather started divorce proceedings, though, both of his parents were living elsewhere.
Interestingly, Shane's stepfather adopted him when he was a child after Shane's biological father, Stanley Shane Bassett, went to jail for possession of pot and PCP and then disappeared under suspicious circumstances after he was released. In addition to Shane, Stanley had another child, Shane's half-brother Aaron. After Stanley got out of jail, his wife left him and the baby.
Now, Stanley was reportedly a devoted father to Aaron and was dedicated to caring for him. But on April 3rd, 1977, the infant was found abandoned in a box outside the Massachusetts State House. The baby was unharmed, but Stanley was nowhere to be found. He's never been found.
Although reports say that Shane never got to spend much time with his father since he was just a toddler when Stanley went to prison and then disappeared, the unresolved disappearance weighed on him. Then his mother's divorce was going to separate him from the only father figure he knew. And the unrest only intensified in March, when a judge revoked possession of the Hedge Rose Lane house and a vehicle that Shane always drove from Shane's mother and
and granted possession back to Shane's stepfather. When Shane's stepfather returned to the house on Hedge Rose Lane, he did so with a police officer, though it appears that police officer accompanied Shane's stepfather for other reasons associated with the divorce, not the ongoing missing persons investigation.
The house was a mess, with beer cans scattered around and dishes stacked up and things in general disarray. Police found drug paraphernalia too, though no charges were filed because it wasn't clear who the items belonged to. Despite the mess pretty much everywhere in the house, there was one room that looked like it had been spit-shined to perfection. Shane's room in the basement of the house was damn near spotless. ♪
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When neighbors on Hedgerows Lane peered out their windows in the days and weeks after Melody DeRozha Waters disappeared, more often than not, there was a police officer parked on the street in close proximity to the Pitts' home. On April 12th, 1991, the single cruiser multiplied as investigators led a trained cadaver dog down the driveway towards the home where Melody spent her final night before she vanished.
According to reporting by Amy Augustine for the Concord Monitor, Shane's stepfather had granted permission for police to search his property, and so a German shepherd named Kaiser pinned his nose to the ground and diligently sniffed for any indication of human remains. The dog's keen senses pulled him towards one of the garages, a two-bay unit attached to the main house.
The dog started to alert at a locked door located in the back of the garage. The door opened to a set of steps that led into a small room, also described as a root cellar in many sources. Kaiser started to dig at a pile of firewood, and once the firewood was removed, the dog kept digging at the dirt beneath it until his paws reached a wooden board a few inches down. Officers dug out the board, revealing a blanket below.
As they lifted the blanket from the dusty pit, they could see a human arm. At that moment, Shane's stepfather revoked his permission for police to continue searching. Investigators left to obtain a search warrant. A warrant in hand and several hours of digging later, investigators had recovered the remains of Melody DeRozia Waters. She was fully clothed but not wearing any shoes.
Her arms were tied with a wire that was strung through her belt loop, with one hand behind her back and the other in front.
Autopsy findings revealed that Melody had been shot several times. According to court records, one bullet entered her back nearly perfectly centered, severing her spine and piercing her aorta. Two other bullets crisscrossed through her brain. One of the head wounds was described as a contact wound, meaning the gun was pressed against her head when someone fired it.
Two of the bullets were recovered from Melody's body. A complete search of the house turned up a third bullet lodged in the subfloor of Shane's bedroom. The bullets were believed to have been fired from a two-shot, 32-caliber Derringer, a small handgun.
Police interviewed two people who Shane's stepfather had hired to clean the house after he took possession of it, and they reported finding two spent bullet casings, a live round, and an empty box for a two-shot .32 caliber Derringer in a room Shane was known to use.
As the Hedgerows Lane house was fully searched and processed for additional evidence relating to the disappearance turned homicide case, word got back to Shane Pitts and his mother that the remains found buried in the locked room of the garage had been positively identified as Melody. Shane decided at that moment to tell the truth he'd been concealing for three months. He admitted to his mother and to two of his uncles and to a friend that he shot Melody.
But he didn't do it knowingly. Shane claimed that he'd been unwittingly drugged with LSD, and he killed Melody while suffering the effects of the strong hallucinogenic. Anne Marie Timmons reports for the Concord Monitor that Shane's mother turned to her divorce lawyer, attorney Paul Haley. She set up a meeting for Shane, and Shane told the attorney everything. With that, the attorney advised his new client to surrender to police, and Shane agreed.
The next day, Shane and his attorney drafted a written statement detailing the events that resulted in Melody's death. They brought it to the police station together, and after confirming that the words in the statement were true, Shane was placed under arrest. His attorney also turned over the murder weapon, Shane's .32-caliber double-barreled Davis Industries Derringer handgun. On April 15, 1991, Shane was arraigned on first-degree murder charges at Concord District Court.
At first, he did not enter a plea but was ordered held without bail.
Later, paving the way for his defense, Shane entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. As he'd told his mother and family members and his attorney, Shane claimed that this was a case of involuntary intoxication. He believed that it was Melody herself who put a large dose of LSD in his food or drink without his knowledge, causing him to experience hallucinations and shoot her.
With that kind of defense, he essentially blamed Melody for her own death. In his written statement to police, Shane claimed that he and Melody got back to his house on Hedgerows Lane around midnight on January 11th, and they had toast, brownies, and possibly some water together before going to bed.
He said he was fiddling with his gun and watching TV when he started to feel the effects of what he believed to be LSD. He said he knew what an LSD trip felt like because he'd taken LSD before. As the supposed effects of the drug took over, Shane said his brain was overwhelmed with suicidal thoughts. He'd been experiencing them for months and the drug caused them to come flooding back.
He said that he, quote, believed myself to be like an animal that should be destroyed, end quote. Shane wrote that he then put the barrel of the gun in his mouth, but then he was startled by a sound. He started shooting at it.
For the next 12 to 15 hours, Shane said he was experiencing the effects of what he believed to be LSD. He told officers he ran around his house like a quote-unquote madman until he started to come down. With a more firm but semi-distorted grip on reality, Shane returned to his bedroom in the basement. That's when he realized Melody was dead and he had shot her.
Shane claimed he was still experiencing some effects of the drug when he decided to bury Melody's body. He spent the rest of the day cleaning the house and trying to sleep, but sleep didn't come. He went to a party at a friend's house that night, but returned to the very house where he'd shot and buried Melody and lied to police when they came looking for her.
Before this case, involuntary LSD intoxication had never been used as a defense in a New Hampshire murder trial. And so there was plenty of scrutiny surrounding Shane's version of events.
Since Shane hadn't been tested for any traces of LSD after Melody disappeared, there was no way of knowing if he was in fact under the influence of the drug when he pulled the trigger. And given the type of firearm used in the killing, Shane would have had to reload the gun to fire three shots. To investigators, that was a sign of intent, not something done during a hallucination.
Shane's defense attorney tried to clear up at least one of these questions before trial, hoping to prove that LSD was in the vicinity when Shane shot Melody, and therefore possible that he did receive a surreptitious dose of the drug as he claimed.
According to an Associated Press report published in the New Hampshire Union-Leader, in July of 1991, Shane's defense attorney released information about Melody's toxicology screen to the public, much to the dismay and distress of the medical examiner's office. According to court documents, three different tests were performed to determine if LSD was in Melody's system at the time of her death.
The first two tests indicated the presence of LSD, but the third test was inconclusive. Still, the toxicologist working on behalf of the defense concluded that the first two tests proved Melody did have LSD in her system when she died. The findings state in part, "...at and for some time prior to the fatal incident, this individual was under the influence of LSD."
The topic of LSD would take center stage during the trial of Shane Pitts. A leading expert in the drug would testify for the defense. Among the other defense witnesses, Shane Pitts himself. Now's the time for a great deal on a new Honda.
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After a brief delay, thanks to a classic New England snowstorm, opening statements and testimony began in December of 1991 for the murder trial of Shane Pitts. The jury was faced with two primary questions. Was Shane experiencing temporary insanity due to the effects of LSD when he shot Melody? Or was the murder intentional?
If the jury found that Shane was sane at the time of the crime and found him guilty of first-degree murder as charged, he'd face life in prison without the possibility of parole. However, if the jury decided that there was no evidence of intent, they could find Shane guilty of the lesser second-degree murder charge.
It is so rare that a person facing murder charges in a possible life sentence would be advised to testify at their own trial. However, defense attorney Paul Haley thought it was an important part of the strategy to have Shane tell his side of the story in his own words.
Shane spoke so quietly from the witness stand that the volume on the PA system had to be turned way up so the jury could even hear him. In a hushed tone, Shane told the jury what he could remember of the night he killed Melody, explaining how he felt the familiar effects of LSD setting in when the suicidal thoughts surfaced in his head. He described the apparent trip as, quote, "...like looking at static through a kaleidoscope, maybe. It's hard to explain."
End quote. He testified about the noise that startled him and how, with a gun already in his hand, he started shooting. Shane told the jury he believed he fired anywhere between three and eight times and he didn't realize Melody was dead for hours after when the effects of what he believed to be LSD finally wore off. He didn't remember moving or burying her body.
In anticipation of what the prosecution was sure to drill him on, Shane clarified that although he and Melody had discussed her pregnancy, he said he did not demand that Melody terminate her pregnancy, but rather suggested it because according to him, she used drugs while pregnant. Shane testified that when Melody said she would not terminate the pregnancy, he fully supported her decision.
The prosecution needled into Shane's story during cross-examination and challenged his entire explanation of the circumstances. If he was hallucinating and experiencing the extreme visual effects of having been dosed with LSD, how was it possible the first bullet entered at the precise center of Melody's back? What about the two in her head, including one described as a contact wound fired at close range?
Shane could not explain the placement of the wounds. The state introduced evidence that on the same day as their discussion about Melody's pregnancy, Shane found a love letter that Melody had written to an old boyfriend. The prosecution raised the question, was it possible that Shane was not only angry with Melody's decision to continue the pregnancy, but also jealous of the former boyfriend? Shane denied feeling any jealousy.
Prosecutors also questioned Shane about his use of LSD after he killed Melody because evidence showed that he'd bought more LSD in the weeks after the murder, despite the fact that the supposed secret dose had turned him into a killer. Shane admitted to buying more, but he claimed that he bought it for friends, not for himself.
The state called a firearms expert who explained to the jury that the kind of gun used in the murder required fine motor control and several precise steps to reload and continually fire. When a leading expert in LSD named Dr. David Smith took the stand, he explained to the jury that those experiencing the effects of LSD lose their fine motor control. However,
Dr. Smith also said that if Shane really did receive a dose of LSD without knowing it, then his story of temporary insanity brought on by the drug was plausible. Dr. Smith explained that those who consume LSD unintentionally are more likely to have a psychotic reaction to it. Relatively neutral objects, relatively neutral sounds can seem quite frightening. End quote.
If Shane really did receive a dose of the drug without prior knowledge, then it's possible he could have reacted the way he described. The tricky part of this defense and something the prosecution harped on was the fact that there was no way to prove that Shane had taken LSD, either intentionally or not.
Remember, the defense wanted the jury to believe, based on toxicology results, that Melody herself had LSD in her system, and therefore it was at least accessible to her and Shane on the night of the murder. But there's never been any consensus about this. Interestingly, the defense did not call as a witness the forensic toxicologist who concluded that there were traces of LSD in Melody's blood when she died.
Instead, the defense called two different medical experts who discussed the conclusion reached by that other forensic toxicologist. One of the experts agreed that Melody had LSD in her system, but the other did not, saying that the third test with the inconclusive results was the quote-unquote gold standard for forensic toxicology,
And so inconclusive results from that test discounted the results on the first two, in their opinion. Two other witnesses, a psychologist called by the defense and a psychiatrist called by the prosecution, had opposing views of Shane's mental state when the murder occurred and pre-existing conditions that may have influenced his behavior.
According to the psychologist testifying for the defense, he'd interviewed Shane for eight hours and reviewed his medical file and found that Shane experienced moderate depression and struggled to achieve emotional intimacy with others. The doctor said that there was evidence Shane experienced suicidal thoughts from the age of 15 and those had worsened or resurfaced with the divorce of his mother and stepfather months before the murder.
He told the jury that he accepted Shane's count of the evening and was certain that Shane wasn't acting voluntarily when he shot Melody. However, the psychologist also said that he could not find anything in medical literature where a person experiencing the effects of LSD had shot another person multiple times. The scenario was, as the psychologist admitted during testimony, exceptionally rare.
Interestingly, the doctor revealed more details about the crime than Shane had disclosed during his own time on the witness stand. The doctor said Shane told him he remembered tying Melody's hands with wire. However, during his testimony, he said he could not remember tying Melody's hands.
Another discrepancy between the doctor's testimony and Shane's was that Shane told the doctor he aimed at Melody's upper body before firing, but he told the jury he fired in the direction of the sound that startled him. As for the state psychiatrist, his evaluation of Shane ended in different conclusions.
It didn't seem like a coincidence to the psychiatrist that the murder occurred on the night before Melody was leaving for West Virginia and the day after Shane found out she was pregnant. The doctor also testified that Shane appeared to be someone who looked for ways to escape consequences for his actions.
During the psychiatrist's testimony, he explained that while LSD can cause behaviors that are considered purposeless, not every behavior while under the influence of LSD is purposeless. He doubled down on topics that the prosecution surfaced during their cross-examination of Shane, suggesting that Melody's gunshot wounds showed purpose. They didn't appear to be injuries inflicted by a person firing a gun at random.
Though Shane described what he could have experienced while under the influence of LSD, the doctor said given Shane's admitted previous experience with the drug, he could have been describing any night and any hallucinations.
Under cross-examination, the defense asked the state psychiatrist if Shane, with his known history of depression, might be more susceptible to the effects of LSD, and the doctor said yes. The defense also asked the psychiatrist if Shane should be expected to remember every detail of the night of the murder if he was, in fact, experiencing the effects of LSD. And the doctor said no, but Shane should have remembered more.
After almost two weeks, each side rested their cases in the murder trial of Shane Pitts.
In closing arguments, defense attorney Paul Haley told the jury that Shane had no motive to kill Melody, despite what the prosecution tried to prove. He said that Shane supported Melody's decision not to terminate her pregnancy, and he was not jealous of her other boyfriends. He was simply under the influence of a powerful hallucinogenic drug against his will, and that alone caused him to pull the trigger.
The prosecution challenged the defense's conclusions, telling the jury there absolutely was a motive and it had everything to do with Melody's pregnancy. What's more, there was no evidence to support that Shane was dosed with LSD by Melody except his own words, but there was plenty of evidence to suggest he was not hallucinating when it happened.
Deliberations lasted eight hours over the course of two days as the jury considered all the evidence. And on December 13th, 1991, the jury returned with a verdict. Shane Pitts, guilty of second-degree murder, not first-degree murder as he'd been charged. The jury also found that Shane was sane at the time of the shooting.
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A juror for Shane's trial told news media after the verdict was read that they simply could not find Shane guilty of first-degree murder because the state had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the shooting was premeditated. However, another juror said in a media interview that many members of the jury had either first- or second-hand knowledge of LSD, meaning members of the jury had seen or been with someone experiencing the effects of LSD and helped them through it,
And they felt that Shane's story just showed too many inconsistencies to find that he killed Melody under the influence of LSD. With that conviction, a life sentence was still on the table for Shane, but it was not mandatory as it was with first-degree murder.
According to reporting by Linda Goetz for the Concord Monitor, Shane was supposed to be sentenced within six weeks, but things were delayed because Shane fired his attorneys. He claimed ineffectiveness of counsel and asked the court to appoint him a new lawyer, specifically Mark Sisti, a prominent defense attorney in New Hampshire. So Mark Sisti took over Shane's defense and led the appeals process over the next several years.
At the center of Shane's appeals was an argument for ineffectiveness of counsel, claiming that there was a conflict of interest with his former attorney, Paul Haley. As detailed in court documents, Shane argued that the former attorney had negotiated a contract with him to obtain the literary rights to his story, everything from the murder and concealment of Melody's body to his actions after the murder and his defense that he killed Melody while on LSD.
Now, Paul Haley did actually sign an agreement with Shane for the literary, television, and film rights to the story. Apparently, TV producers were calling nonstop when news broke about the murder and the unusual sensational defense. There was an agreement between the attorney, Shane, and a publishing company to split proceeds from any deals they signed to turn the case into a TV show or book or any other production.
According to the former defense attorney, Shane wanted to try and reimburse his mother for the money she had put towards his defense, and that is why they signed an agreement. Paul agreed to split any profit as a way to cover the costs of Shane's defense, he said. In any case, the story was never sold. All interest went away after the guilty verdict.
In New Hampshire, it is against the rules of professional conduct for attorneys to make contracts with clients in order to obtain the rights to their stories. It's not outright illegal or anything, but obviously it could cause a conflict of interest for a lawyer involved in the defense of an accused killer. For example, a lawyer might be less likely to pursue or encourage a client to accept a plea deal with the thought that a trial made a better story.
Ultimately, a judge rejected Shane's appeal, finding that although Paul Haley acted unethically and violated the terms of professional conduct, there was no clear conflict of interest. Months later, a Merrimack County Superior Court judge finally sentenced Shane to 40 years to life in prison. His efforts to get a new trial and shorter sentence continued, but all of his early appeals failed.
At the sentencing hearing, Melody's mother addressed the judge and Shane directly. She wanted Shane to face the highest possible sentence for what he did. "I think he should be punished like she was for the rest of his life." A little over 15 years later, Melody's mother had a change of heart. She now wanted Shane pardoned and released from prison.
In 2008, Melody's mother, who went by the name Lila at the time, shared her story with New Hampshire Sunday News reporter Michael Cousineau. Lila shared how she once hated Shane Pitts so much that she brought a gun in her vehicle to the courthouse during his trial and planned to shoot Shane. But a voice in her head, one that sounded like Melody's, told her not to do it.
Lila said her perspective had shifted since the trial. She'd formed a connection with Shane through a victim-offender dialogue program at the prison. She said their conversations helped her healing process, and she understood the details differently outside of the courtroom setting. She didn't think Shane should be in prison any longer. During one conversation, Lila told Shane something he didn't know was possible. He could ask to be pardoned.
He worked on a letter to request pardon and it was Lila who delivered it to the state attorney general's office on his behalf.
That pardon letter included Shane's new reflections of the day he killed Melody. Though his story at trial was that Melody secretly dosed him with LSD, Shane wrote in his pardon request, "...it was never my belief that Melody slipped or in any form gave me drugs that night, with or without my knowledge."
He said he believed one of his friends slipped him the drug as he drove Melody from place to place to say goodbye before she left for West Virginia. Shane's letter did not win him a pardon, and he remained in prison. Shane continued to fight for early release from prison after his pardon request was denied. With his sentence, he wouldn't be eligible for parole until 2031, 40 years after he killed Melody.
However, according to an Associated Press report, Shane filed a motion in 2021 asking a judge to suspend the final 10 years of his minimum sentence to make him eligible for parole. Melody's mother, who went by the name Carla again, had written letters in support of Shane and asked the judge for leniency. Carla said in a media interview, quote,
Melody's Aunt Nancy, who Melody lived with at one point in her life, disagreed with Carla's view. She did not want to see Shane get a sentence reduction because Melody would never get that privilege and neither would her baby or surviving family members.
On August 12, 2021, a judge amended part of Shane's sentence, meaning he would be eligible for early parole. I reached out to the New Hampshire Parole Board to see what happened next. I was informed that about seven weeks later, on September 30, 2021, the state parole board approved Shane Pitts' request for parole.
He was released from prison after serving about 30 years behind bars for the murder of Melody DeRozha Waters. Back in 1991 and again in 1992, as the murder trial unfolded, the case was covered with such sensationalism that sometimes Melody was lost beneath headlines.
It's something her mother called out more than once, frustrated and saddened that her daughter was reduced to her association with a three-letter acronym. That her admitted killer's defense essentially blamed Melody for her own brutal murder despite no verifiable evidence to support it. Here's the Melody that her family wants you to know and remember.
Melody was creative. She loved nature and animals. Her mother remembered how even from a young age, Melody wanted to help other people. Carla once found Melody gathering blankets and food from their own cabinets during a time when they themselves faced hardship, so that she could give them to people in her community who needed help.
Melody's father described her as someone who was always taking people under her wing. No one was a stranger in Melody's eyes. She could find the good in everyone. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. You can find all source material for this case at darkdowneast.com. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram at darkdowneast. This platform is for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers.
I'm not about to let those names or their stories get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East. Dark Down East is a production of Kylie Media and Audiocheck. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve? Want the same expert advice from the pros at a discount tire store while shopping for tires online?
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