Shayna Ritthaler told her friends that she was in love. The 16-year-old Upton girl had Michael Campbell (17) in an online dating app Dakota.
Campbell thwarted the attempts a few times before finally getting his nerve to follow, the authorities say.
Finally a plan was hatched. It was Thursday, October 3, 2019. Campbell drove to Moorcroft and took Shayna during her lunch break in a local café and a petrol station that was from the Moorcroft High School.
The video surveillance from the coffee cup clearly showed that Shayna climbed into a jeep-like vehicle with an unknown driver and illegible license plates.
The school staff immediately jumped and notified the grandparents Shelly and Reuben Ritthaler, who had applied the girl on her ranch in rural Weston County since a young age. The school told them that according to Reuben, Shayna had not returned from her lunch break.
The Moorcroft police authority was called up and an attempt to find (ATL) was exhibited for both Shayna and the Jeep. The agency worked with South Dakota Law Enforcement to follow them to Campbell's house in Sturgis.
When the authorities were able to legally enter the house on October 7, it was too late. Shayna was found dead in a closet covered with clothing. Campbell later told the investigators that the two had come into a dispute in which he had returned with his mother's pistol and once shot her in his head.
Campbell, then a teenager, guilty of homicide first degree and was sentenced to 55 years in prison.
Do you need protocols, say grandparents
It was a case that achieved national and international news and which broke out the hearts of the Ritthaler family. The fact that children don't come with a manual is still complicated when they make a fatal mistake, Reuben told the Cowboy State Daily.
Although Reuben Ritthaler knows that nothing can be done to bring his granddaughter back, he also does not want the child to happen to another.
Reuben made it clear that he does not accuse anyone for Shaynas Death, apart from the teenager who shot her. He also understands that Shayna willingly brought herself into a situation that ultimately cost her life.
Nevertheless, he also has the feeling that the Moorcroft police could have been more done when Shayna was reported as missing.
Reuben was on behalf of the former police chief of Moorcroft, Douglas Lundborg, a lot of handwriting, which believed that he seemed more about the costs of overtime to work on the case. Lundborg retired after more than three decades in 2021.
Reuben's main questions are the reason why the police took so long to get an arrest warrant against Shaynas phone, and even longer to ultimately get access to Campbell's house that took four days.
Reuben asked how the police could act faster and with more assertiveness and worked in a stolen car case. Last month, he noted, a stolen car from Upton was reported in Sturgis within three hours after the missing reported, the same place where his granddaughter was found dead.
“Why can you find a car so quickly, but no person?” Asked Reuben rhetorically.
The law enforcement authorities need protocols for missing person, explained Reuben, so that everyone is on the same side and families have clear indicators for what they can do and how the process works.
Solid legislation
For this reason, Reuben is a pronounced supporter of the Senate Act 114, which was just sailed by the Wyoming Senate last week. The Cowboy state is one of six in which no requirements for the reported person are currently reported, and enables every agency to dictate their own guidelines.
If it is adopted, the draft law would follow the law enforcement authorities that follow certain protocols
The bill will go into the house next week.
Although Reuben is satisfied with the invoice, he also does not believe that it is far enough and instead you would see more procedural dictations, as if an agency should be obliged to pinge a telephone and receive an arrest warrant and get more protection for the victim Ensure, not the predators, he said.
He feels disappointed by the Moorcroft police, which he believes that she did not behave quickly enough or took the impending danger of his granddaughter to heart, and told him that she would probably come home alone .
The boss under Reuben's complaints was that the police lasted two days for an arrest warrant only on October 5 to search Shaynas phone, which was of the greatest importance for her because she had communicated with Campbell online.
Bill Bryant, the current police chief and senior investigator in Shaynas Fall, did not agree to the characterization that his department reacted only slowly and the view is NCIC (the National Crime Information Center) on the same afternoon.
Bryant, who has been chief of police for four years, said Shaynas Fall is still pursuing him because of the tragic way it turned out and that they could not save them. In fact, he and Upton police chief Susan Bridge, who had to give their grandparents the news of Shaynas Death on October 8 after Shayna had been identified.
He feels terrible that she died.
The police report shared by the Moorcroft police suggests that Shayna probably died on the morning of October 4th on the basis of the social media correspondence that Bryant later accessed on October 17, after he was arrested for the search for Shaynas Social – Media accounted and received.
The girlfriend later told the police that some of the news she was delayed that night was concerned and did not come from Shayna.
Need more training
Dave Wolfskill, a deputy sheriff of Crook County, and the voluntary private detective, who specializes in cases of missing person, believes that the Moorcroft police should be on the last number to call Shaynas phone and to ping it immediately .
He said that he and Reuben made the heavy lifting.
“You didn't do anything,” said Wolfskill. “Reuben had to tell them what I had found.”
Reuben agreed and assigns Wolfskill to get the ball rolling and fed his information about law enforcement in Wyoming and South Dakota.
“If Dave didn't have it, we would probably never have found her body,” said Reuben.
Wolfskill said he had entered the Ritthaler family as soon as he learned that Shayna had disappeared. First, the last number was procured on his to-do list, the Shayna on the day before she disappeared from Reuben on October 3. Wolfskill then led the number through a public database and was able to bind it to Campbell in the southwest of South Dakota.
Wolfskill continued to raise a few groups of volunteers to search the area of Sturgis near Campbell's house that were able to collect intelligence via Campbell and Shayna.
Where the Moorcroft police lasted two days to recognize Campbell's identity. .
The police report shows that Bryant applied for an arrest warrant against the phone on October 5 and that the Moorcroft police were actively tracked on leads, which was placed by their Facebook post the day before.
The following day, Bryant also applied for an arrest warrant to search the Campbell's phone after Reuben stated the name and the number, the report says.
The correspondence between the teenagers showed that they had planned this for a while with the aim that Shayna lived in Campbell's basement bedroom because his parents did not come to his room. He provided her with food, and Shayna could either work with him or hide in his room and use his phone, said the report.
On October 6, the report states that Bryant received a call from Deadwood Police who “had taken the lead over the case” and said that they found the vehicle in Campbell's house with Shaynas backpack. When Campbell was asked by the police, he said that he and Shayna had come into a fight this Saturday and she hiked on the I-90.
At this point there was not enough reason to search his house, said Bryant and noted that they could not simply enter a residence without proper arrest warrants.
Just the following day, the sheriff of Meade County Campbell contacted his work in Deadwood, where he confessed to kill Shayna and led the law enforcement to his house, where they discovered the body.
Until then, Bryant was also able to obtain an arrest warrant to raise Campbell due to disorders of custody, and to kill Campbell, Shayna on the same day.
Shaynas body was ultimately discovered in Campbell's basement bedroom in a closet that was barricaded behind a bed and a chest of drawers.
Change of protocols
Bryant said when it comes to missing teenagers, the judgment is important and knowing that this specific teenager.
“If we have dealt with the child enough, we somehow know,” he said. “If you are not known to us, it's completely a different world.”
He also said that his department has a protocol for the investigation of missing teenagers, which she see best in her small, close -meshed city of just more than 1,000. The protocol is in accordance with the proposed legislation, including taking a report within eight hours after the disappearance of a person and the national law enforcement databases immediately like in Shayna.
In his experience, the MoorCroft Police Department finds missing teenagers very quickly.
He also noted that law enforcement requires a probable reason to secure an arrest warrant and that they have to meet the legal standard. When they faded Shaynas phone, they learned that it had been thrown out of the window somewhere between Moorcroft and Sundance.
Nevertheless, he and his department learned a lot from Shaynas case, including the importance of cell phone and social media activities.
As a result, they have implemented revised protocols since then, according to which the officials immediately fill out the corresponding form -including description and your wearing -so that the shipping can send to neighboring agencies and on the Facebook page of the department.
According to new protocols, the responding officers must also receive information about cell phone numbers and social media accounts in order to obtain faster option certificates.
Everything is good and good for Reuben and his family, and he plans to work for improved protocols to prevent other families from undergoing similar tragedies.
“You have to forgive, but you don't have to forget,” he said. “This must do the condition of Wyoming. It is almost as if they lose weight as if they were automatically back or show a place. “
That is the prevailing attitude, he said.
“We have to do it better,” he added, “because our children deserve it.”
He also questioned the need for necessity that parents automatically gave their children mobile phones as an automatic right to privacy as a minor.
“There is a lot of information about a stupid phone, especially if this someone is a teenager and may be at risk,” he said.
“You cannot create a law that fixes everything, but you have to have some logs as a starting point.”
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
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