The BEAUTY QUEEN was found in her own apartment. It took 17 years to FIND OUT THE TRUTH 

The BEAUTY QUEEN was found in her own apartment. It took 17 years to FIND OUT THE TRUTH 

a young woman who won a beauty contest was found dead in her own apartment the police began searching for the culprit not suspecting the consequences it would bring today we will tell you what happened to Sheila Josephine Harris and why this case outraged the public Sheila Josephine Harris was born on February 26 1963 in Douglas County Nevada from an early age she wanted to become an actress or a model so she actively participated in various Beauty contests in her school years when she was young her parents divorced and her mother

remarried later they had two more daughters and Sheila actively helped her mother take care of her younger sisters in her senior year of high school Sheila won a local beauty contest in her district and planned to compete for Miss Nevada and Miss Carson City in case of Victory she intended to apply to participate in the National beauty contest despite such ambitious plans the young woman decided to obtain a higher education in the field of business and trade after graduating from high school at the age of 18 Sheila moved to Carson City

and enrolled in Community College she rented an apartment and took a part-time job at a supermarket to cover her living expenses the young woman took her studies and worked very seriously because she wanted to have a good education and provide for herself independently she’ll also dated a guy named Stephen Furlong they tried to see each other as often as possible but due to her studies and work they only managed to spend time together a few times a week on January 4th 1982 Sheila went to his house to check on Steven’s condition

since he had recently broken his arm and the young woman periodically visited him she spent the evening with him and his parents after which she went home the next day Sheila was supposed to start her morning shift at the supermarket so she wanted to go to bed early despite his injury Steven decided to see her off and they parted at the entrance to the residential complex the next day Sheila did not show up for work the store manager noticed her absence and was greatly surprised since the young woman had never been late not even

once he called her home phone but there was no answer so we contacted Sheila’s mother and asked has anything happened to her at first her mother thought that Sheila might have just overslept but when the building manager said he had called her home phone the woman became nervous she decided to go to Sheila’s apartment and asked her friend to accompany her because she was very worried and afraid to go alone the mother arrived at the apartment complex with a spare set of keys and her friend entered the apartment first there

she was met with a horrifying sight that made her scream Sheila lay in bed without Signs of Life there was blood around her and bruises were visible all over her neck her friend tried to stop the young woman’s mother from seeing this heart-wrenching sight but she still entered the apartment and saw her dead daughter police who arrived at the scene began to investigate the crime scene they immediately realized that the young woman had been strangled and had been dealt several strong blows with a heavy object a dent was found in the wall near

the bed presumably left by Sheila herself trying to fend off the attacker in addition wood chips were found under clothing and body medical examiners concluded that the young woman had been tied up and subjected to violence the perpetrator had dealt her several blows presumably with a board or other heavy piece of wood and then strangled her with an electric cable which caused her death investigators could not find either the board or the cable in the apartment but they noticed that the wire had been ripped off the desk lamp which could

have been the murder weapon experts were able to extract biological material from the perpetrator but they could now conduct a DNA test in 1982. at first the detectives thought that this crime could have been committed without preparation and that the perpetrator could have been mentally unstable their thoughts were led to this by the cruelty with which he dealt with his victim however it quickly became clear that this attack was meticulously planned firstly no signs of forced entry were found on the door which means

Sheila must have let the perpetrator in herself secondly none of the Neighbors in the apartment building heard anything the killer must have carefully planned every step to carry out such a cruel crime without making a sound Additionally the killer took a wire and a wooden board depriving the police of two important pieces of evidence all of this land investigators to believe that the perpetrator was not a first-time offender possibly a serial killer or someone who had been planning the attack long before it happened

with almost no evidence investigators began searching for Witnesses they interviewed all of the building’s residents but none of them noticed anything suspicious that night the area where Sheila lived was on the outskirts of the city and was not considered safe she chose the apartment because the rent was low and she could not afford to live in a more prestigious neighborhood on her salary from the supermarket this only complicated the police’s work since many people in this area Were Somehow involved in criminal activity

for a month after the murder investigators carefully studied local residents and tried to identify who might be involved as a result they questioned about 70 men but they were unable to establish their involvement from the first days the police had the most obvious suspect Sheila’s boyfriend Stephen statistics show that it is often people close to the victim who commit such crimes and Stephen might have been the last person to see Sheila before the murder he said he accompanied her to the entrance but detectives were not quick

to believe him the young man did not have an alibi for the rest of that day and could not prove that he did not enter Sheila’s apartment during the investigation another problem arose local media learned the detectives were considering Stephen as a suspect journalists quickly discovered that the young man’s family had close ties to the police his brother was the sheriff of Carson City and his father held the same position before retiring as a result newspapers began to speculate on the topic of whether the police were

covering up the young woman’s killer as a result City residents were particularly convinced that Stephen was behind the crime and his brother and father were using their position and connections to cover it up this led to people protesting sending angry letters to Stephen and his family and even threatening violence the residents of Carson City demanded that the teenager be immediately arrested and some even called for the death penalty the situation was further Complicated by the fact that just a few days after

Stephen’s murder he was arrested for being drunk in public nevertheless investigators tried to determine if the boy had a motive for committing such a crime after speaking with Sheila’s friends they concluded that the couple had never had any serious problems and that the young woman had never complained of aggression from Stephen in addition the victims suffered serious injuries that required the killer to exert significant effort and Stephen had a broken arm at the time making it almost impossible for him to

do this as a result the detectives began to lean towards the belief in the boy’s innocence but it was too late under pressure from the public threats and constant accusations Stephen took his own life before he could be definitively cleared of Suspicion after this the police had only one candidate for the role of the murderer a gardener and handyman named David Winfield Mitchell who was assigned to the residential complex where Sheila lived there was no direct evidence against him but several indirect factors

made investigators suspicious firstly the man could enter any apartment in the complex to do some repair work secondly shortly after the murder he resigned and left in an unknown Direction the police tried to find him but he seemed to have disappeared when suspicions began to mount against Mitchell detectives re-interviewed residents of the complex and other employees they tried to find out if anyone had noticed any strange or suspicious behavior from The Gardener and indeed several witnesses told the police that Mitchell couldn’t take his

eyes off pretty young women when they passed by he silently watched them until they were out of sight several tenants found this strange and investigators increasingly believed that he was the one who killed Sheila a man was declared wanted but over the next several years investigators failed to obtain any leads on his whereabouts meanwhile forensic scientists had one more card up their sleeve they found a hair in the victim’s apartment that could have belonged to Mitchell he was originally from the small island state of Trinidad and

Tobago and experts were able to determine that the hair found matched his ethnicity DNA analysis was still unavailable in those days so they couldn’t determine a hundred percent match with Mitchell’s DNA in 1986 four years after the murder the police finally received a lead on the man’s whereabouts he was living outside the state and was soon arrested during questioning Mitchell denied his guilt and the detective said only one card a hair that presumably belonged to him the suspect himself claimed that he had

cleaned the apartment a month before Sheila moved in which should explain where his hair came from investigators continued to believe that he was the one who killed the young woman but they had no serious evidence they understood that this case had zero chances in court so they decided to release Mitchell no judge would have found him guilty based solely on one hair which could indeed have been left there during cleaning since then there have been no developments in this case investigators were convinced that it was Mitchell who

was the killer so they didn’t really try to find other suspects but they couldn’t prove the man’s guilt so the investigation was practically Frozen it was only in 1999 13 years later that the case was reopened Sheila’s mother heard about how new DNA analysis Technologies could help solve such crimes and contacted the detective in charge of the case the woman convinced him to send the Killer’s biological material to the laboratory and request a comparison with Mitchell’s blood which had been given after the questioning in 1986.

after a long wait the investigators finally received the long-awaited results the semen sample from the victim’s body matched David Mitchell’s DNA completely experts also confirmed that it was his voice that was found in the victim’s apartment thus the police obtained 100 confirmation of his guilt however they faced another problem Mitchell had left the USA for his home country where he got a job as a security guard in a government Institution now investigators had to obtain his extradition which was quite problematic

they had to go through all the bureaucratic red tape and proved to the government of Trinidad and Tobago that it was Mitchell who committed the murder this process took several years and federal authorities and the state government engaged in dialogue with the other state for the next seven years until 2006 when a decision was finally made to extradite him the suspect was brought to Carson City and soon one of the most high-profile trials in the state’s history began firstly DNA analysis was not as actively used in those days as it is now and this

technology still raised some doubts in society secondly journalists paid a lot of attention to the fact that the victim’s friend Stephen had taken his own life because of accusations against him and now the court had to decide whether David was the real killer or whether the entire town had wrongly believed Stephen was guilty Mitchell’s lawyer used these doubts in his strategy and insisted that Stephen was the real killer and DNA analysis could be mistaken the prosecution side refuted these arguments citing compelling evidence that DNA testing in

modern conditions has extremely low chances of error moreover they had another indirect argument on the day of the murder Stephen had a cast on his hand firstly the young man was unlikely to have been able to inflict all these injuries on the victim using one hand secondly particles of the cast would undoubtedly have been found at the crime scene but there were none but these were not the only arguments of the prosecution side during the trial they revealed information that had not been publicly available before it turned out

that Mitchell had already been convicted of five episodes of violence against women in the late 1960s when the suspect lived in New York he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for attacking three young women in their homes Mitchell broke into their home tied women with an electric cable and subjected them to violence after his release from prison he moved to California where in 1979 he broke into the house of Two Sisters there he attempted to assault them but the young women managed to fend him off they contacted the police and nine months

later Mitchell was arrested here the most interesting part began despite his previous sentence the man received only three years in prison of which he served one and a half and was released on parole he was supposed to be deported to his homeland but the man disappeared from the police moved to Carson City and got a job as a gardener in that same complex all these facts outraged not only Sheila’s family but also the public if the system had not allowed him to get out so early the young woman would most likely be alive the same goes for the

management of the residential complex which without knowing it hired a serial rapist who fled from the police the work of investigators also raised questions after Sheila’s murder they had no idea about Mitchell’s criminal history according to the prosecution’s version on the evening of Sheila’s murder David knocked on her door and said that he needed to do some repair work he should have had a board with him which he used to stun the victim then Mitchell committed all these atrocities with her and left the scene taking the

board and the electric cable with him as a result it took the jury only 30 minutes to unanimously find David guilty of the young woman’s murder he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole but his lawyer tried to get more lenient conditions he pointed out that for 25 years after the murder Mitchell had reformed lived an honest life and had not harmed anyone fortunately the corps rejected these demands and left the original sentence in force at the time we began his prison term David was 63 years old he spent

most of his life on the lose and now he only has to spend the rest of his days behind bars Sheila’s mother thanked the court for not giving this monster the opportunity to walk free she stated that if he had not been released early in the early 1980s her daughter would be alive now in all the story there remained one question that haunted investigators how many more victims could Mitchell have had all his known crimes are undoubtedly serial in nature so the criminal could have attacked other women he spent 25 years at large out of police

site and there is a high probability that his actions could have harmed other people but whether the police will be able to uncover the truth is a big question share your opinion in the comments and don’t forget to like this video If you enjoyed it thank you for watching