x
Breaking News
More () »

Woman confesses to 1974 murders

WTHR.com is the news leader for Indianapolis and Central Indiana. Get the best news, weather, sports and traffic information from Channel 13.
61076_G

Linsay Clutter/Eyewitness News Reporter

Buffalo, April 5 -  A White County woman now faces murder charges for the deaths of her two sons. Those deaths occured more than 30 years ago.

Investigators say she confessed in prison while serving another sentence, this one for killing her grandson.

Sandy Scott will never forget ten years ago when her neighbor Elizabeth Shanklin came to her door saying her grandson had stopped breathing. Scott rushed over to the Shanklin home. "I went over there with her and I'd seen him lying on the davenport. It was a horrible thing."

In 1996 Shanklin went to prison for suffocating two-year-old Gregory Debish to death. She is serving a 40-year sentence.

Scott still has trouble understanding the act. "It's horrible to think somebody could do that."

But the horrible story isn't over. Monday the White County prosecutor filed two more murder charges against Shanklin for suffocating her own two sons more than 30 years ago, six-month-old Christopher in June of 1974 and two-year-old John three months later.

A probable cause affidavit reveals Shanklin confessed to an Internal Affairs officer in prison stating she killed her babies "because she was selfish and didn't want them having the attention and stuff that she couldn't get from other people."

At the local library are Herald Journal articles from 1995 and 1996. They show a grand jury indicted Shanklin for the murders of her two sons, but the murder charges were dropped for her guilty plea to the murder of her grandson.

With Shanklin in prison, the case involving her two sons was sealed and put away. But the town never forgot.

Neighbor Jim Scott said "Rumors have been flying for a lot of years since this happened. They lived there right across the street."

Now that Shanklin is returning to White County ten years later to face those suspicions, the town of Buffalo finally feels vindicated.

Scott is looking forward to the final resolution. "I am glad it is coming to a head now. Maybe things can settle down and she can get what's coming to her, you know."

Before You Leave, Check This Out