A woman whose body was found alongside a road in Cherryfield last month was shot in the head, and her relatives told police that the man she was dating was a drug dealer who had threatened to kill her if she left him, according to an affidavit released Wednesday.
The affidavit said that the body of 55-year-old Sally Shaw had been dragged to the side of North Main Road, where it was found about 5:45 a.m. on July 19. The affidavit filed by state police also said that there were lines in the sandy road that likely had been made by Shaw’s heels as her body was being dragged.
A .45-caliber casing was found about 6 feet away, police said.
Almost no details had been released by police before the affidavit was unsealed Wednesday by a judge in Washington County after a bail hearing for Quaneysha Greeley, one of two people charged in Shaw’s slaying. Police had identified Greeley, 19, and Carine Reeves, 37, as suspects and charged them with murder after their arrest in New York City on July 26, but authorities had refused to provide any details about their relationship to Shaw or the circumstances surrounding her death.
Greeley was denied bail during her hearing because she is charged with murder and already had fled the state.
The affidavit said that Sally Shaw’s sister, Susan Shaw, told police that Sally Shaw had been dating a man since April who went by the name “T.” Susan Shaw also said that her sister’s daughter, Heather Senechiame, had told her that T sold cocaine and Sally Shaw was his driver. Susan Shaw also said that T had threatened to kill Sally Shaw if she left him and that Sally Shaw had called her sister to ask for a bus ticket in April or May.
Senechiame, who told the Press Herald in late July that she didn’t know Greeley or Reeves, did not respond to emailed questions Wednesday about her knowledge of the relationship between Reeves, Greeley and her mother. She previously told the paper that the last time she saw her mother was in May, when Sally Shaw drove on a whim from Maine to Massachusetts, where Senechiame lives.
Sally Shaw worked off and on in the home health care field or at nursing homes much of her career, most of which was spent in Gray and New Gloucester, where she went to school.
After her body was discovered along North Main Road in Cherryfield, police said they found a rental car crashed and abandoned about 11 miles north of that location. They learned that the car had been rented by Shaw in Bangor and also learned that a man named Robert King had picked up a man and a woman about a fifth of a mile from the site of the crashed rental car the night before the body was found. The couple offered King $200 to drive them to Bangor, after first circling back to the rental car, where the man used a key to get into the car and retrieve some belongings.
As an apparent safety precaution, King called police and had the couple provide their names, birth dates and phone numbers. The man said his name was Christopher Kern and the woman identified herself as Sally Shaw. The number the woman gave was the same as Sally Shaw’s cellphone number except for one digit.
Police said they found pictures matching the description of the woman on Sally Shaw’s Facebook account and identified her as Greeley. Shaw was friends with Greeley on the social media site, as well as with a woman identified in posts as Greeley’s mother, Melissa Greeley.
An informant described in the affidavit as an acquaintance of Greeley’s met with police and told them about a conversation in which Greeley said she was in New Jersey and that Shaw had been killed by her boyfriend.
Surveillance photos at a Bangor motel were used to identify a man seen with Shaw as Reeves, who also was known as T, or “Terror.” Several other acquaintances told police they had seen him hit Shaw.
Police said they obtained recordings of Greeley’s calls from jail. In one call, she and a woman discussed whether Greeley should cooperate with police in their investigation.
At one point, Greeley said, “What I’m saying is, it’s not all him,” the affidavit said.
Greeley is a former resident of Lewiston and indicated on Facebook that she attended Lewiston High School. Neither she nor Reeves has a criminal record in Maine, but Reeves faces separate assault charges stemming from an incident in the Ozone Park section of New York City in February. He is accused of slashing a 36-year-old woman acquaintance in the face from an ear to a nostril, requiring 16 to 20 stitches.
Edward D. Murphy can be contacted at 791-6465 or at:
emurphy@pressherald.com
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