Love, Jealousy, and 6 Shots: The Case of Shayna Hubers
K County 911. I killed my boyfriend in self-defense. Okay. What you think? Brian Carter posted. He’s an attorney in Cincinnati. The silence of Highland Heights was shattered by gunfire. At 12:43 a.m., a 911 dispatcher received a call that would later be dubbed a live confession.
On the other end of the line was 21-year-old Shaina Hubers. She wasn’t screaming. She wasn’t crying. She spoke as if she were reporting a minor fender bender. I killed my boyfriend, Ryan Poston. He attacked me. I had to do it. When officers entered apartment 12, they were met with the sharp scent of gunpowder and the metallic tang of fresh blood.
Ryan Poston, a brilliant attorney and the man of many women’s dreams, lay on the carpet. His face, which Shaina would later describe as too vain, was disfigured. Six bullets, six lead strikes that ended the life of a man whose only mistake was trying to leave a woman who considered him her property. Today, we dive into the abyss of this case.
We will break down that fatal night second by second and look into the eyes of a person who danced in the interrogation room while her lover’s body grew cold in the morg. This is the full story of Shaina Hubers. We’re diving into our investigation. But first, don’t forget to hit the like button and subscribe. It’s the best way to support our work.
Ryan Poston was what people call the best of us. The son of loving parents, he grew up in an atmosphere of support and respect. His career was on a fast track. Law school, practice, and finally opening his own firm. He was the kind of attorney who would spend hours consulting a lowincome client for free simply because he believed in justice.
Friends described him as a gentleman, perhaps even too much so. Ryan disliked conflict. He was raised to be a gentleman, and that upbringing played a cruel trick on him. He simply didn’t know how to handle aggression that lacked any logic. In 2011, he saw Shaina’s photo on Facebook. Beautiful, smart, and 8 years his junior, she seemed like the perfect match.
Shaina was an honors student studying psychology, possessing the kind of intellect that captivates. Their first dates were like a fairy tale, conversations about politics, science, and art. Ryan believed he had found his equal. He didn’t know that beneath the mask of an intellectual girl lay an abyss that no amount of attention could ever fill.
The cracks in the relationship appeared quickly. For Shaina, love wasn’t enough. She needed total control. If Ryan was even 15 minutes late from work, all hell would break loose. Investigators would later examine their phone records, and the numbers were chilling. Over the course of their 18-month relationship, Shaina sent Ryan thousands of messages.
During her episodes, she could send 75 to 80 texts in a single hour. Where are you? Why didn’t you answer immediately? Are you with that [ __ ] from the office? If you don’t answer in one minute, I’m coming over to make a scene. Ryan tried to break up with her more than 10 times, but each time the script was the same.
Shaina would sob, threaten suicide, and beg for one last chance. She manipulated his kindness and his desire not to cause pain. She was literally draining the life out of him. By the fall of 2012, Ryan was a shadow of his former self. He lamented to a friend, “She’s like a black hole. No matter how much I give, it’s never enough.
” October 11th, 2012. 24 hours before the murder. Once again, Shaina broke into Ryan’s apartment. He tried to throw her out, but she called her mother, claiming she was having chest pains. Consequently, Ryan woke up at 3:00 in the morning to find Shaina and her mother sitting in his living room. It was a surreal nightmare.
Throughout the following day, October 12th, Shaina bombarded him with messages. She was furious that he hadn’t taken her to the hospital. She demanded attention, but Ryan had already made his choice. He had a date lined up. I would definitely love to be amazing at wakeboarding or snowboarding. I like both because right now all I can do is cling on to those handlebars during wakeboarding and I would love to be able to do like some sweet tricks and show off and show the boys up or be able to really cool and cut some snow on the
snowboarding like we did at Chelsea Coolies except without face planning. Audrey Boly, Miss Ohio 2012, was waiting for him that evening. For Ryan, this date was a symbol of liberation. He told his colleagues, “Tonight, I’m finally going to be a free man.” He didn’t know that Shaina had already been googling how to load a gun and how to kill a person with a 22 caliber.
She knew about the date, and her logic was simple. If Ryan didn’t belong to her, he wouldn’t belong to anyone. We must break down exactly what happened in that apartment in great detail because this is where Shaina’s lies collide with the laws of physics. Shaina claimed that Ryan attacked her, screaming and making threats.
She said she just grabbed the gun from the table and fired in a panic. Legend, the jury, what what happened? He set the gun back down on the table and he walked around the table and he was still he was still talking and he was still saying hurtful things. I don’t remember exactly what. And he sat down in his chair for a brief moment. And he was standing up from the chair and he was reaching across the table.
And I don’t know if he was reaching for the gun or reaching for me, but I was still sitting on the floor at this point in time. And I got up off the floor and I grabbed the gun and I shot him. How many times did you shoot him? I know. I know now that it was six times. But the ballistic forensics paint a completely different picture.
Ryan was sitting at the dining table. He might not have even been looking at her, simply trying to ignore yet another tirade. Shaina approached from the side. The first shot was fired into his face. The bullet entered his jaw, knocked out his teeth, and lodged in his neck. Ryan collapsed to the floor.
If this had been self-defense, Shaina should have run out of the apartment, but she didn’t. She walked around the table and stood over the fallen man. She shot him in the back, then again. And again, five shots into a body that could no longer resist. The final sixth shot was delivered to his head at near point blank range.
Shaina would later tell the dispatcher, “He was making such terrible sounds and twitching. I didn’t want him to suffer, so I just finished him off.” These are not the words of a frightened girl, but those of an executioner. After her arrest, Shaina was taken to the station. Detectives intentionally left her alone in the interrogation room for 3 hours, watching through a hidden camera.
What they saw made even seasoned officer’s blood run cold. Shaina didn’t huddle in a corner. She didn’t call for a lawyer. She began to sing loudly, defiantly. Thank you. [singing] She performed hymns and then switched to pop hits. At one point, she began twirling around the room like a ballerina, stomping her feet to the rhythm of her own macab or song.
“I killed him. I did it. I’m finally free,” she muttered between verses. When Detective Dalton entered, she instantly flipped the switch to play the victim. But her story was fueled by hatred. “He was so vain. He always wanted a nose job.” Well, I gave him his nose job,” she said, referring to the shot to his face.
She criticized his looks, his manner of speaking, and his family. She acted as if she had performed an act of mercy, purging the world of Ryan Poston across the table, and there’s a lamp and he could put his arm across the table and had it in my face and was screaming at me at the top of his lungs after he had thrown me around the room.
and was saying emotionally to me. I hate you. I hate everything about you for what you can’t. He was craving and he was he had his head on the table and he wasn’t completely standing up. He was like this. He was like he was sitting he was enough when I was like this literally that’s when I knew it was dead or close to it and twitching and that’s and I couldn’t I let him I still even though it hurt I still loved him but I couldn’t stand to watch him twitch.
I knew he was going to die or have a completely deformed face. He’s very vain. One of our last conversations we had that was good was that he wants my best friend who’s a dentist to do as a nurse and wants to get a nose job. Just that kind of person. And I shot him right here. I gave him his nose job. He wanted from coit. The 2015 trial was short but striking.
The defense tried to portray Shaina as a victim of domestic abuse, but they didn’t have a shred of evidence. Tom is live in Newport with the new information. Tom, well, the first defense witness was Shaina Huber’s mother, Sharon. She described meeting Ryan Poston for the first time, how he wouldn’t look her in the face, how there were conditions inside the condominium she called nasty, and how there were guns visible, and that made her fear for her daughter’s safety. now. But much of the
testimony of Sharon Hubers focused on October 12th, 2012, the day Ryan Poston was shot. She got a call from Shaina early in the morning, and it sounded like she was scared. Sharon drove to Highland Heights, tried to get her daughter to the emergency room for a sore shoulder, but never said what caused that problem.
They parted that afternoon. Sharon went to a relative’s house in Zenaia, and then told defense attorney David Mahia about a shocking phone call she got at 8:50 p.m. that night. You must follow my direction. Do not repeat what Shane is saying, but I want you to describe her voice. Just the tone of her voice.
What you heard of her voice. She was hysterical, terrified, in shock, um beside herself. She was she was a mess. Now, Hubers told her daughter to immediately call 911. In court again, she wasn’t allowed to say what prompted the emotion from that call. Back on the stand today, this time for the defense, Highland Heights Police Chief Bill Burkenower talking about conditions in that condominium as the defense tries to lay out the emotional stress that Ryan Poston was supposedly under at the time this all went down. Tom McKe night on
your side, live in Newport. There wasn’t a single bruise on her body other than those she might have inflicted on herself, nor a single police report filed by her in 18 months. On the other hand, there were thousands of pieces of evidence documenting her obsessive control. She was found guilty and sentenced to 40 years.
The Poston family breathed a sigh of relief. But a year later, the system faltered. It was revealed that one of the jurors had failed to disclose a past felony conviction for unpaid child support in the state of Kentucky. This is ironclad grounds for an overturned verdict. Shaina was jubilant. She believed it was a sign from above.
While awaiting her second trial, she turned her prison cell into a virtual media center. She gave interviews, wrote letters to fans, and even got married. Her wedding to Unique Taylor, a transgender woman, became a headline in every tabloid. Shaina relished the attention. She was at the center of her own movie, one where she was the misunderstood and slandered protagonist.
The second trial in 2018 was even more emotional. The prosecutors were better prepared. They called Shaina’s cellmates to the stand who testified how she had bragged about the murder. I knew what I was doing. I wanted him to die. The most powerful moment came during the testimony of Jay Poston, Ryan’s father.
He looked directly at Shaina and spoke about seeing his son’s empty bed every single day. He spoke about how Ryan’s dog still waits for him at the door. This time, the jury showed no mercy. The verdict, guilty. The sentence, life in prison. The judge noted that in his long career, he had rarely seen such a cold and calculated crime.
Shaina Hubers was shocked. She truly believed her acting performance would work once again. For us, it was your big brother never is never going to be there. He’s not going to be there. He picked up the gun off of the table. Now, this prosecutor is fighting to make sure she spends the rest of her life behind bars.
Was there any behavior during the trial that sort of made you think, hm, she shouldn’t be acting that way? There was no sign of empathy whatsoever. It was all about her and she didn’t want to watch him die. That was hard to hear. How you going from here? One day at a time. One day at a time. One minute at a time.
One hour at a time. One day at a time. Today, Shaina Hubers is in a Kentucky women’s prison. She is still writing letters, still seeking attention. She created a profile on the Write a Prisoner website where she describes herself as a gentle soul in trouble. She has never admitted her guilt.
In her world, she is still the heroine, but the facts say otherwise. Ryan Poston died because he wanted to be free. He died at the hands of someone who didn’t know the difference between love and possession. This case teaches us that digital footprints, messages, search queries often speak more truth about a person than their words in an interrogation and that the silence after a shot is sometimes louder than the gunfire itself.
Ryan Poston found peace. Shaina Hubers found walls. And we were left with a grim le on how dangerous it is to ignore red flags in a relationship until they turn into crime scene tape. Thanks for watching. If you made it to the end, don’t forget to leave a like, drop a comment, and subscribe to the channel.
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