Shannon Green: Dewayne Bell/John Reneer Statement Analysis Pt. One
Support the show: Patreon.com/julesandashleyPatreon.com/thetrailwentcoldBelow is the transcript with my notes in case you would like to follow along: Transcript of Quotes – 14 NEWS Investigation Source material: 14 NEWS (WFIE) article screenshots. All quoted wording preserved exactly as it appeared. Non-quote narrative text omitted. Ordered as closely as possible to the chronological sequence of events. John Reneer on why he recorded the conversation (two days after Shannon Green’s disappearance) "To be honest with you, I thought the police had probably sent him, and he was probably wired or something. I didn't know, you know, so I wired-up." -Question Reneer’s motivation for the ‘why’, he recorded this, he is potentially being deceptive about his underlying motivation, as he uses the phrase ‘to be honest with you’, why would he need to preface his statement with ‘to be honest’, he is potentially worried about how he will perceived and is trying to convince -The use of ‘probably’ makes me question if he truly believes the police had sent Dewayne Bell, this is further underscored where he takes it a step further and says ‘he was probably wired or something’ this is a very wishy washy statement, if he truly believed that Dewayne was wired, he wouldn’t use such a soft tone ‘probably wired up or something’ -Reneer then goes on to say ‘I didn’t know, you know, so I wired up’ Dewayne may not have known if Dewayne was wired but the language used suggests there is a low probability that he truly believed that, his use of ‘you know’ has the intent of convincing the interviewer -It’s unclear exactly what Reneer is being deceptive about, the initial part of the statement suggests his underlying motive and the latter parts suggest that he potentially did not believe that Dewayne would have been wired and is using that as an excuse or justification for why he chose to proceed with the recording. I also question, if Reneer believed the police had sent Dewayne to record him, was he potentially worried that they would find something, even if it was something completely irrelevant to Shannon Green’s disappearance John Reneer on how police handled the investigation at the time "No one set out to find what happened to Shannon. They set out to find what I did to Shannon. There's a big difference." -The first major red flag I want to highlight here which is unsettling is ‘they set out to find what I did to Shannon’ it should be ‘what they thought I did to Shannon’ this very well could be a leaked confession, again it doesn’t mean that Reneer killed her or made her disappear but there are other options of what he may have done that could be causing this type of statement -Ok, so back to the beginning of the statement, he doesn’t say specifically law enforcement, which is strange, typically when expressing frustration about police not doing an adequate job of investigating, the subject would say ‘police’ not ‘no one’ -‘Set out’ is an odd phrase and he uses it twice, does he believe she left? Sometimes a phrase like ‘set out’ means left or went somewhere, was Reneer aware Shannon went somewhere preceding her disappearance? Did they ‘set out’ somewhere together? These are fair questions to ask based on what could be a leaked confession and the odd use of ‘set out’ -The final point I want to address is that Shannon is missing, the police had theorized she ran away because of the phone call that they received and Reneer is saying ‘what happened to Shannon’ this in and of itself wouldn’t necessarily be cause for pause for me but when coupled with the rest of these few sentences, it makes me question if Reneer has more knowledge of what ‘happened’ to Shannon than he is letting on The recorded conversation (tape) John Reneer: "What's going on?" -What we can’t know is when Reneer turned on the recording device, we would think that at some point he would acknowledge Dewayne by name, especially since his objective was to record him, so for the listener it starts abruptly with ‘what’s going on’, we don’t know what led up to this point and for how long they spoke before Reneer his record -When one doesn’t feel the need to say the first name, it could speak to a sense of familiarity, for example, when I see my sister, I don’t say ‘Hi Shanelle’, I likely wouldn’t use her name, if it was a loose acquaintance, I would likely say their name in an acknowledgement that I knew who they were Dewayne Bell: "Aw, nothing. Got any money I can borrow?" -Here Dewayne answers in a strange manner if we are to believe he needs to go on the run after killing Shannon, he says ‘Aw, Nothing’, the ‘aw’ before he says nothing is a way to draw out speech while one thinks of an appropriate answer. If he would have simply answered ‘nothing’ and said nothing else, I would have believed his statement was truthful, always as Mark Mclish says ‘the shortest sentence is the best sentence’ -He then goes on to say ‘got any money I can borrow’, what we are looking for is ‘do YOU have any money I can borrow’ we have missing pronouns and words, which is very often indicative of deception, even if spoken in the pattern Dewayne was using it should look like ‘Do you got any money I can borrow’, -Also note here he uses the word ‘any’ which would potentially indicate that he would accept any monetary value shared with him John Reneer: "How much? I might have a few dollars?" -Again we see with Reneer, not ‘how much do you need’ he simply says ‘how much’ which may be the pattern in which he speaks -The use of the word ‘might’ is interesting, he likely does have a few dollars and is potentially playing coy with Dewayne and seeing what he will say in return. -If you only have a few dollars, you are likely very aware of exactly where those few dollars are and how many of them you have Dewayne Bell: "About a couple hundred anyway." -Again, we don’t see a definitive amount Dewayne needs, he is unclear. If he had a specific amount in mind he may say something to the effect of ‘I need 200 dollars’, the fact that he starts out with ‘about’ weakens his statement and saying a couple hundred is non specific, a couple to me means two but it may mean three to someone else, it isn’t as well defined as two or three -He ends the sentence with ‘anyway’, it’s an unnecessary addition and odd phrasing, which again calls into question the veracity of the statement John Reneer: "S**t. I ain't got no two hundred dollars. I wish I did have." -The grammar here is abysmal, so one thing I will say is it is more difficult at my skill level to cut through the noise of poor grammar, but we will do our best -Reneer starts his statement out with ‘shit’, it is less common for liars to use harsh words or curse words, there is always the exception but the addition of ‘shit’ here when we haven’t seen Reneer curse thus far tells me that he likely doesn’t have a couple hundred dollars or as he puts it ‘I aint got no two hundred dollars’ -We see that Reneer has defined a couple hundred as two, there is a change in dictionary, in that Dewayne has said ‘a couple’ and Reneer has said ‘two hundred’, it could be significant but I would say it’s the most probable scenario that Reneer, like myself has deduced that ‘a couple’ means to him personally, ‘two’ -He also says ‘I wish, I did have’ so, is there a comma or is it all run together? This would change the meaning of the sentence, either way we cannot extrapolate and only analyze what is before us, it’s tempting to add ‘it’ to ‘I did have’ but since we cannot make assumptions of what he potentially meant to say, we must examine the simple phrase ‘I did have’, that tells me that Reneer did have two hundred dollars and now he doesn’t Dewayne Bell: "I need it pretty bad, I need to get out of town." -Dewayne has spoken earlier about the money but rather than saying ‘I need the money pretty bad’ he says ‘I need it pretty bad’, if one needs something badly, they likely would reference exactly what they needed and wouldn’t need to preface ‘badly’ with ‘pretty’ it weakens how badly he needs it. His inability to say exactly the number he needs calls into question how much and for what purpose or objective he needs the money -The next part of the sentence Dewayne says ‘I need to get out of town’, which is clear, concise and succinct, I believe him in that this part of the statement is truthful, or Dewayne believes it to be truthful John Reneer: "Why's that?" -Not much to analyze here, it’s a simple question Dewayne Bell: "I done something the other day. I need to get out of town for a while." -When he says ‘I done something the other day’ this isn’t an untrue statement, he of course did many things, what I can say is what is missing. One would expect a truthful statement of someone who potentially committed murder to say ‘I done something bad’ or something similar. There is an incongruity with the gravity of the situation and the language used -Done vs did, it’s grammatically annoying but we know that Dewayne isn’t a wordsmith and this may be his pattern of speech, either way like I said, we can’t analyze what think he may mean or what he could have said, I believe this part of the statement to be true, he did do something the other day, every day is filled with ‘something’ that would be a true statement for anyone who is conscious -The lack of specificity with ‘the other day’ is standing out to me, if we are to believe that you in