The gunshots rang out just before midnight. Within seconds, a man kicked in the locked door, rushed inside, and called 911. His girlfriend was lying on the floor with a gunshot wound. He pleaded with the dispatcher to send help as fast as possible. But, there was one detail that changed everything right away.
The man himself was a deputy sheriff. Just minutes later, it wasn’t just police officers who showed up at the house. His own co-workers were the ones responding to the call. His service pistol was lying on the floor next to her body. And investigators found two spent shell casings in the room. Almost immediately, the possibility of suicide was raised.
At first, it seemed like the case was already solved. But, it didn’t take long for troubling facts to surface. Facts that no one could convincingly explain. Just hours before her death, the young woman had told her sister that she was planning to leave her boyfriend that very evening. She had just been promoted at work, was making plans for the days ahead, and had sent messages that her family would read in a completely light after the tragedy.
Then, an independent investigation uncovered witnesses who had never even been interviewed. New forensic experts went on to challenge almost every major conclusion reached in the original investigation. And that raised a question that continues to divide people to this day. What really happened that night inside the deputy sheriff’s house? Hey guys, let me grab you for just a second.
I’m really curious where my audience is watching from, so I’d love for you to drop a comment and tell me what city you’re in and what time it is for you right now. Thanks for taking a moment. Go ahead and share that in the comments, and now let’s keep going. It was just before midnight on September 2nd, 2010, when a frantic, desperate young man called 911 in a panic.
He had just heard gunshots coming from the house. Gunshots are reported. Police. After breaking down the locked door and forcing his way inside, he found his girlfriend lying on the floor with a gunshot wound. Pleading with the dispatchers, he shouted, Get someone here now. The man was a deputy sheriff with the local sheriff’s office.
He was one of them. Can you guys get out to the county sheriff’s office? I’m I work with you. Your fellow deputies are already on their way. In September of 2010, 24-year-old Michelle O’Connell was living with her boyfriend, Jeremy Banks, in St. Augustine, Florida. The historic city sits along Florida’s northeastern Atlantic coast and is part of St. Johns County.
The county sheriff’s office is one of the area’s largest employers. That’s where Michelle’s brother, Scott O’Connell, worked as a deputy sheriff and first met his fellow deputy, Jeremy Banks. About a year after Scott introduced Jeremy to Michelle, the couple had moved into Jeremy’s house, where they lived with Michelle’s 4-year-old daughter, Alexis.
Michelle was athletic, full of life, and loved spending time outdoors. In 2010, she was a young mother everyone knew as outgoing, adventurous, and always ready for the next experience. But what truly defined her was her unwavering devotion to her daughter. For years, Michelle worked two, and sometimes even three, jobs at a time to support herself and little Lexie, who meant everything to her.
On September 2nd of that year, Michelle, Jeremy, and her brother Scott had planned to attend a concert at the St. Augustine Amphitheater. Michelle dropped Lexie off with her sister before the group headed out to enjoy the show. Well, at least most of them did. Jeremy was in a terrible mood, and as the evening went on, it only got worse.
Not long after they returned home from the concert, the night took a tragic turn. At 11:20 p.m., Jeremy called 911. 911, Hey. Please get somebody to my house at 4 12. Please. What’s going on? Please send my girlfriend. I think she’s been shot. I am going to need you to calm down. her. Ma’am, listen to her. It’s her. Listen, hang on. I like it.
Let me tell you the truth. I’m Deputy Banks with the Sheriff’s Office. I’m a Sheriff’s Office. I’m I work with y’all. Get someone here now. When Deputy Jeremy Banks and his fellow officers from the Sheriff’s Office arrived at his house, they found the front door standing open. After walking through the kitchen and into the adjoining room, they saw Michelle lying on the floor.
Jeremy’s service pistol was on the floor to her left. It had already been removed from its holster and the tactical flashlight mounted on the weapon was still turned on. One bullet had struck the floor directly beneath Michelle’s right hand. Investigators also found two spent shell casings in the corner of the room.
Photographs of Michelle and the house were taken almost immediately to document the scene before paramedics rushed in and did everything they could to save her. But by then, it was already too late. Michelle was pronounced dead at the scene. The first officers who entered the house reported that Jeremy smelled of alcohol.
In those first few minutes, several of his fellow deputies later recalled that he didn’t appear devastated. Instead, Jeremy seemed angry. Michelle’s purse was quickly noticed sitting on the kitchen counter. To officially confirm her identity, officers searched through it. Inside, they found two prescription bottles of antidepressants.
Both prescriptions had been written in Jeremy Banks’ name. Several of the same pills were also found in the front pocket of Michelle’s jeans. For the next several hours, the deputy remained inside the house talking with his fellow officers. His first interview took place right there at the scene in the back seat of one of the Sheriff’s patrol vehicles.
All right, this is Detective Hines. It is officially September 3rd at 1:23 in the morning. You were outside in the yard driveway? I was My motorcycle’s in the garage. I was sitting on it. But I heard it pop and I knew exactly what it was and I I inside. I started screaming her name.
The bedroom door was locked and I screamed her name again. I heard it go off again for a second time. I ran into the living room, I grabbed the the phone, and I kicked the bedroom door in and I found her laying in what she is. Took her out of her shirt, took her out of her shirt. Jeremy told investigators that he and Michelle had argued that evening.
According to him, she said she was going to leave him. That’s whenever she said, “I’ll have my stuff out by this weekend.” I said, “Are we breaking up?” She said, “Yes.” I was like, “All right.” I raised my voice, she raised her voice, we argued, but we got to the house, we were fine. As news of the shooting began to spread over the next few hours, more and more employees from the sheriff’s office arrived at the house, both those who were on duty and those who had the day off.
They comforted Jeremy and almost all of them came to the same conclusion. They believed he was telling the truth. The autopsy was performed by the county medical examiner, Dr. Frederick Hoban. He found that Michelle had alcohol in her system, but no drugs were detected, despite the prescription pills that had been found in both her pocket and her purse.
He determined that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the mouth. Dr. Hoban also documented a small cut and bruise above Michelle’s right eyelid. He concluded that the injury had been caused by a shell casing ejected from the firearm when it was fired. There were no signs of defensive wounds. Gunshot residue was found on Michelle’s hands.
A small amount of the same residue, considered forensically insignificant, was also detected on Jeremy’s hand. The medical examiner explained that this was likely because Jeremy had run into the room after the second shot was fired. Based on those findings, Dr. Hoban supported the conclusion that investigators had already largely accepted.
He ruled Michelle’s death a suicide. 12 days after Michelle’s death, Jeremy Banks was brought back to the sheriff’s office for a second interview, but this conversation was nothing like a typical police interrogation. I need to shut spinny chair, not this suspect. [laughter] By that point, Jeremy was no longer being treated as a suspect.
Even before that interview took place, he had already been given access to the Sheriff’s office incident report about the case. I already read through it before I know I probably shouldn’t have. I just wanted to know what what was done on their side. I just wanted to know what was in there or argue all the time. What was it about? Just Just stupid.
It’s just how it was. We were just arguing over stupid petty Okay. That echoes in the chamber. Yeah. Yeah, I know they like that. [laughter] Yeah, great room. In the days and weeks after the tragedy, Jeremy Banks seemed to be the only person close to Michelle who believed his version of events actually made sense.
To the O’Connell family, his story sounded unbelievable. Everyone acknowledged that Michelle had struggled with depression and anger issues as a teenager, but ever since Alexis was born 4 years earlier, those problems had completely disappeared. Michelle had grown into a focused, responsible, and deeply devoted mother. There was no way she would have willingly left her daughter behind.
On top of that, Michelle had just been promoted at the daycare where she worked full-time. The new position came with better pay and improved benefits. She was supposed to start that very week, and she was genuinely excited about this new chapter in her life. And that wasn’t the only reason her family questioned Deputy Jeremy’s account.
Earlier that day, during lunch, Michelle had told one of her sisters, Christine, that she was planning to break up with Jeremy that evening. For her family, the news wasn’t a surprise. The women in the family knew Michelle wasn’t being treated well in that relationship. Christine begged her not to go to the concert that night, but Michelle wouldn’t change her mind.
She’d already bought the tickets and planned to go through with it. The text messages Michelle exchanged with Kristine and her brother Scott almost seemed to foreshadow that something terrible was about to happen, although everyone interpreted them differently. Starting while they were still at the amphitheater and continuing throughout the evening, Michelle kept texting Kristine asking her to promise that her daughter would always be taken care of.
“Promise me just one thing. Make sure Lexi is always happy and always has a good life.” Kristine replied, “No matter what happens, Lexi will always be safe and surrounded by love.” “What’s going on? You’re scaring me.” Near the end of the concert, Michelle sent her sister one more message. “I’m coming home soon.
” The last text she sent that night was to her brother. “Lexi, never forget.” A few weeks after Michelle’s death, her siblings, Scott, Jennifer, and Kristine, met with Lieutenant Bradley from the Saint Johns County Sheriff’s Office to get an update on the investigation. That’s when they were told the case was being closed. Hopefully this will give you some closure as to to what occurred that night.
All indications are that she was contemplating suicide based on on her texts. I asked the night that Michelle died, I said, “Am I allowed to submit a statement because she told me a lot of things about and I’m just going to spell it out for anyone to hear, domestic violence.” She came to my house, she said, “I’m leaving. I’m scared.
” My life is in my affidavit just to testify to what she said and he said, “No, none of that is it’s all hearsay.” If this was a sheriff’s daughter, it’d be much different. Well, you’re Lieutenant of this agency. Stand up and answer our questions. Ease up, bro. You know I’m doing the very best I can, guys, to to show y’all what happened and I feel like this is a damn inquisition on me.
It’s not against you. anything wrong, guys. I I I’m a sheriff’s officer, I have a badge. And I can I can feel at this table that there is a massive conspiracy theory and there is not one, guys. Can I interject? What conspiracy theory are you talking about? That Jeremy is the murderer of Michelle.
Okay, I keep I keep getting that and I’ve been getting that over the last, you know, several weeks. So, what we need to do, guys, is we need to we need to sit down. We need to just This is what it is. But I mean And this is what happened. And you know In the weeks that followed, Scott O’Connell was fired from his job as a deputy sheriff.
His growing frustration over what he saw as the complete lack of meaningful action in his sister’s case led to emotional outbursts at work, and those incidents ultimately cost him his job. His mother, Patty, continued working as a records clerk at the sheriff’s office for a while longer. But according to her, staying there became unbearable.
She was convinced her daughter had been murdered. Yet every attempt the family made to seek justice was met with silence. In 2010, St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar had just been elected to a third term. In two of those elections, he had run completely unopposed. He was an extremely influential and well-respected figure throughout the county.
Eventually, after roughly 4 months of public pressure, he agreed to turn Michelle’s case over for an independent investigation. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, or FDLE, assigned Special Agent Rusty Rogers to St. Augustine to reinvestigate Michelle’s death. He got to work immediately.
His goal was to fill in the gaps left behind by the sheriff’s office investigation. Since there were no eyewitnesses and no suicide note, the first priority was to interview Michelle’s family to better understand her state of mind before her death. That’s exactly where Agent Rogers began. It felt like to us as a family that it was rushed. They had their mind made up.
It was suicide, and that the investigation could have went a different way. And that he knew there was things in the past that he had done that she was going to report. And that it was going to come out that his this deputy sheriff was not the true person that he was playing to be. And that he was actually a pretty bad person to her.
As Agent Rogers interviewed Michelle’s family and friends, he learned that she had recently been promoted at work. Just 2 days later, she was scheduled to attend CPR training. That same evening, she had also made plans to meet up with her friend Mindy. Before leaving the house, Michelle had even stopped by the garage to grab her purse and touch up her makeup.
Rogers also discovered that deputies from the sheriff’s office had never gone door-to-door through the surrounding neighborhood looking for potential witnesses. Less than 2 weeks after launching his own investigation, Agent Rogers uncovered not just one but two key witnesses. Two women, each inside their own homes on neighboring streets, reported hearing an argument coming from Jeremy’s house on the night of September 2nd.
Both women, independently of one another, said they clearly heard a woman screaming for help followed by two gunshots. And um we heard a woman yell for help. And then we heard a gunshot. And then there was another yell for help, and then another gunshot. The witnesses’ statements were considered so significant that both women were asked to take polygraph examinations administered by the United States Secret Service.
Investigators viewed their accounts as potentially critical to understanding what had happened, so they decided to further evaluate their credibility. Both women passed the polygraph. The results showed no signs that either of them had intentionally provided false information. It was becoming increasingly clear that Jeremy Banks had never been treated like a typical murder suspect.
Many of the investigative steps that are normally carried out in cases like this were either never done at all or were only completed in part. He was never thoroughly questioned, nor was the full range of forensic procedures performed. That would later become one of the biggest criticisms of the original investigation.
Blood droplets found on the inside of the T-shirt Jeremy had been wearing that night were identified through DNA testing as Michelle’s. That result became one of the most puzzling pieces of evidence in the entire case. Even more surprising, it appeared to be a different shirt from the one he had been wearing at the concert.
That inconsistency raised even more questions about what had happened after they returned home. Jeremy was never able to explain how Michelle’s blood ended up on the shirt. Even so, no convincing explanation for the blood stains ever emerged. What’s more, investigators never pressed him to provide one.
Critics of the investigation argued that one of the case’s most important pieces of evidence had been left largely unexplored. Other DNA findings also raised serious questions. They failed to provide a clear answer about what had actually happened inside the house that night. Michelle’s DNA was found on the handgun, confirming that she had handled the weapon.
But investigators found neither Jeremy’s DNA nor his fingerprints on it. Considering that it was his service weapon, that absence seemed highly unusual. And this was despite the fact that he had been carrying that very gun with him throughout the day. That’s exactly why the complete lack of any trace of him on the firearm raised even more questions.
The gun itself also showed no traces of blood, even though visible blood spatter surrounded it. That detail, too, never received a definitive explanation. Another unusual finding involved the prescription pill bottles recovered from Michelle’s purse. They became the subject of separate forensic testing. Investigators found none of Michelle’s DNA on them.
That was yet another unexpected forensic result. Then there was the question of the second gunshot. It remained one of the most difficult aspects of the entire case to explain. In an effort to reconstruct the events and determine whether the physical evidence was consistent with the suicide theory, Agent Rogers brought in veteran crime scene reconstruction expert and former police officer Jerry Finley.
He was asked to conduct an independent analysis of the physical evidence and determine whether it actually supported the official conclusion. Finley’s final report raised even more doubts about the Sheriff’s Office investigation. His analysis challenged several of the official findings. He questioned whether Michelle could have removed Jeremy’s service pistol from its retention holster at all.
The holster had been specifically designed to prevent unauthorized people from easily taking the weapon and in Finley’s opinion, accessing it would have been far more difficult than the official investigation suggested. He also pointed out that turning on the tactical flashlight required two separate actions. That detail, he believed, was important when reconstructing the final moments before the gunshot.
Would Michelle even have known how to do that? Finley considered that another key question. But the most significant part of his work came from the practical experiments he conducted to determine the shooter’s likely position based on where the shell casings had landed. Those experiments ultimately became the foundation of his conclusions.
To do that, Finley fired the weapon 18 times. He repeatedly recreated different scenarios, comparing where the shell casings landed with the positions documented at the original crime scene. After firing from multiple positions, he concluded that for the shell casings to end up exactly where they were found, in the corner of the room, behind and to the left of Michelle’s body, the person who pulled the trigger would most likely have been left-handed.
According to Finley, that explanation best matched the physical evidence. The only left-handed person in the house was Jeremy Banks. Finley included that fact as another important point in his final report. Finally, directly contradicting the conclusions of Dr. Hoben, Finley stated that the cut near Michelle’s eye could not have been caused by an ejected shell casing.
In his opinion, that explanation simply did not match the nature of the injury. He believed it was a separate wound that was not directly caused by the gunshot itself. One possible explanation he suggested was that Michelle had been struck with the handgun during a struggle. After reviewing the newly uncovered evidence, Dr.
Hoban reconsidered his original findings. Once he examined the additional materials, he changed his opinion. He officially changed the manner of death from suicide to shot by another person. It marked one of the most significant turning points in the entire case. For a time, it appeared that the investigation would finally move forward as a homicide.
It seemed the case might be headed in a completely different direction after years of uncertainty. As part of his investigation, Agent Rogers also interviewed the deputies who had responded to Jeremy Bank’s house on the night of September 2nd. He wanted to understand what their initial impressions had been when they first arrived at the scene.
It turned out that even the officers who immediately felt something about Jeremy’s story didn’t add up eventually accepted his version of events. When I first walked into that room, the first thought that went through my mind was this is not good for Jeremy. Did you think it went down like Jeremy said it did that night? Um I I don’t think so.
I mean, just I was a little uneasy where the I remember seeing the uh shot in the floor and where the gun was. I mean, I was in homicide unit for a few years and it didn’t add up, but I didn’t do more investigation into this to see why things were like they were. She had pulled the gun out of the secured holster and shot herself.
Does it seem strange to you? Yes. Explain why. Um it’s a retention holster. Uh most people don’t know how to use them. Um Is Jeremy known to have an explosive temper? Oh, yes. Yeah, he’s had he’s had temper issues. Um you know, his temper was What happened when he was living with you? He’d drink and he’d just get pissed.
You know, he’d throw around and just throw fits. I didn’t have any suspicions that it was anything other than suicide. It I think that’s what we were all kind of discussing, but just making sure that we covered our bases. After Agent Rogers completed his report, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement forwarded the case to the State Attorney’s Office.
By that point, the investigation included a substantial body of evidence, expert opinions, and investigative records that now required legal review. However, the local State Attorney’s Office declined to handle the case because of its close relationship with the Sheriff’s Office. To avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest, officials decided that local prosecutors should not be responsible for reviewing it.
Instead, a special prosecutor from another judicial circuit was appointed. The hope was that an independent review would provide an objective assessment of the many contradictions that had surfaced during the investigation. That prosecutor was Brad King. He was tasked with reviewing the entire case file and determining whether there was sufficient evidence to change the official manner of Michelle’s death.
In evaluating the evidence, King relied heavily on the opinions of three forensic pathologists. Their medical conclusions were given particular weight because they were considered central to determining how Michelle died. All three ultimately concluded that her death was a suicide. Although they differed in how they interpreted some of the individual details, they all reached the same overall conclusion.
After Dr. Hoben changed his original opinion, two additional independent forensic pathologists were brought in to review the case. Their role was to provide an independent medical assessment and evaluate whether the revised conclusion was supported by the evidence. Finding himself in the minority, Dr.
Hoben once again reconsidered his position. After reviewing the case a second time, he withdrew his revised opinion. He changed his conclusion for a second time, stating that Michelle’s death had, in fact, been a suicide. At that point, all three forensic pathologists were once again in agreement. All three experts argued that the strongest evidence supporting that conclusion was the complete absence of defensive wounds on Michelle’s body.
In their view, that was one of the key reasons to reject the theory that a physical struggle had taken place before her death. But critics believe there was an obvious problem with that reasoning. They argued that important details in the case still required their own explanation. Michelle still had both a bruise and a cut on her eyelid.
Those injuries remain some of the most disputed pieces of evidence because there was no clear consensus about how they had occurred. For the suicide conclusion to be correct, those injuries would have had to result directly from the gunshot itself. Otherwise, they could indicate that something had happened before the fatal shot was fired.
The county’s new chief medical examiner, Dr. Predrag Bulic, was one of the three forensic pathologists who advised special prosecutor Brad King. After carefully reviewing the case, he offered his own explanation for the disputed injuries. He developed a theory that attempted to explain how Michelle could have sustained those facial injuries without anyone else being involved. Dr.
Bulic proposed that Michelle had held the pistol upside down in her left non-dominant hand before placing it into her mouth. That assumption became the foundation of his explanation for how the injuries could have occurred and remained one of the most controversial aspects of the entire case. down in her mouth upside down, and you find that hard to believe.
Not just that, it would have been with her left hand. The shooter was apparently left-handed. Everyone agrees on that. The only left-handed person in the house that night was Jeremy Banks. Michelle was right-handed. Dr. Bulic proposed that the tactical flashlight mounted beneath the handgun struck Michelle’s eyelid after the gun was fired.
In his view, that was the most likely explanation for the distinctive injury that had become one of the most controversial pieces of evidence in the case. But for that to happen, the gun would have had to move forward after the shot. According to his theory, only that sequence of events could have placed the flashlight in a position to cause the injury.
Other experts argued that such a scenario was physically impossible. They pointed out that it conflicted with the basic mechanics of how a firearm functions. When a gun is fired, it recoils backward, not forward. For that reason, they concluded that the tactical flashlight could not have moved forward in a way that would have caused the wound Dr. Bullet described.
Despite those objections, special prosecutor Brad King accepted the upside-down handgun theory. After reviewing the evidence, he concluded that the theory could account for some of the disputed details, even though several experts disagreed with it. In the end, King determined that there was not enough evidence to officially reclassify Michelle’s death as a homicide.
In his opinion, the evidence simply did not justify changing the official ruling. While Brad King was conducting his review, Sheriff Shore further complicated the situation. As the official review continued, new conflicts emerged between the different parties involved, adding even more tension to an already divisive case. Dissatisfied with Agent Rusty Rogers’ investigation, Sheriff Shore prepared his own 152-page report.
In it, he laid out a detailed criticism of Rogers’ work and raised a number of serious allegations. Shore accused Rogers of fabricating evidence, pressuring witnesses, and making false statements in order to obtain search warrants. Those were extremely serious accusations that called into question the legality of parts of Rogers’ investigation.
As a result of the report, an internal investigation into Rogers was opened. His work was carefully reviewed to determine whether the allegations were supported by the facts. He was placed on administrative leave while the internal investigation was underway and remained away from his duties until the review was complete. Some of the complaints against Rogers were ultimately found to have merit.
At the same time, the investigation’s findings were far less severe than Sheriff Shore had claimed. Investigators identified several procedural mistakes, but they did not substantiate the most serious accusations made against him. For example, Rogers searched Jeremy Banks’ cell phone without obtaining a separate search warrant because he mistakenly believed that the existing warrant authorizing the wiretap and the search of the house also covered the phone.
That mistake became one of the primary issues examined during the internal investigation. In reality, it did not. A separate warrant was legally required to search the phone and no such warrant had been obtained at the time. In addition, Rogers referred in his report to text messages that had not been properly documented as evidence.
That raised questions about how certain pieces of digital evidence had been handled during the investigation. One of those messages was a text Michelle sent to her sister shortly before her death saying that she was on her way to pick up Lexi. It became one of the messages referenced throughout the investigation even though a complete forensic extraction of Michelle’s phone was never officially performed.
The full contents of Michelle’s phone were never formally recovered. As a result, some of the digital evidence was never preserved according to standard investigative procedures. Instead, the case file contained only official investigative notes describing the messages. Those notes were later relied upon to support the contents of the texts even though the phone’s data itself had never been officially preserved.
In the end, Rogers received disciplinary action and was placed under increased supervisory oversight. That concluded the internal investigation which found several procedural violations but did not support the most serious allegations made in Sheriff Shore’s report. Uh Agent Rogers was used as a a to show people if you don’t look the other way, you will be punished.
You’ll lose your job. We’ll put you through the wringer. As the years passed, the case drew the attention of far more than just true crime enthusiasts and independent investigators. Professional journalists also became deeply interested in what had happened. The more time that passed after Michelle’s death, the more people began trying to unravel the many contradictions left behind by the official investigation.
The New York Times published a major investigative report on the case. The article reached a wide audience and once again raised serious questions about aspects of the law enforcement investigation. The newspaper had originally been examining how sheriff’s offices handle domestic violence allegations involving their own deputies.
That was the primary focus of the investigation until it unexpectedly led reporters to another highly controversial case. That path eventually brought them to St. Johns County and ultimately to Michelle O’Connell’s case. As they dug deeper, they carefully reviewed investigative files, witness statements, and other evidence surrounding her death.
One of the independent researchers who also became deeply involved was 38-year-old Ellie Wastell, who had been named Craig at birth. Determined to find answers, Wastell began independently reviewing the case hoping to shed light on the questions that had haunted Michelle’s family for years. For more than a year, Wastell investigated the case on his own.
He stayed in regular contact with Patty O’Connell and repeatedly filed public records requests seeking documents from the sheriff’s office. Piece by piece, he gathered information, analyzed the available evidence, and worked to obtain records that might reveal more about how the investigation had been handled.
Then, on the morning of January 31st, 2019, at around 7:30 a.m., Wastell’s teenage son returned to their apartment from a neighboring unit and made a horrifying discovery. What he found that morning marked the beginning of another tragic chapter, one that would soon raise even more questions and fuel a new wave of speculation. Okay, what’s going on there? Um Gotcha.
Okay, what makes you think that He is currently laying on the floor. Did you Did you see a weapon there, sir? Yes, there is a weapon. It was his own gun? Yes, it was. The night before, Elliot had sent his son to spend the night at another apartment in the same complex. It was an unusual decision, one that would later draw particular attention from those trying to piece together the final hours of his life.
It appeared that Elliot believed something terrible was about to happen. After his death, many people pointed to that decision, wondering why he had felt his son would be safer somewhere else that night. What made him think that remains unknown. No clear answer has ever emerged, and the circumstances that may have influenced his decision have never been fully explained.
The following morning, Elliot was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head. The tragic discovery only deepened the mystery surrounding his death, and the decision he made the night before would go on to become one of the most widely discussed details of the entire story. There was a lot of gunfire.
He was shot more than once? I don’t know, but there are shots going through the wall. Both Patty O’Connell and Elliot’s father believed that Elliot’s death was connected to his interest in Michelle’s case. In their view, his death was not a random tragedy, but may have been linked to the fact that he had devoted himself to investigating the highly publicized case and trying to uncover what had really happened.
Although law enforcement never confirmed that theory and found no official evidence connecting the two cases, his family continued to believe there was far more linking the two deaths than investigators were willing to acknowledge. For them, that conviction never changed, even years after the tragedy.
I think uh if he wasn’t looking into that or if he wasn’t involved with that or whatever, yeah, I think he’d still be alive. That’s That’s my gut feeling. What I heard was that he put Chandler in a downstairs apartment two floors down because he was afraid of what was going to happen or something was going to happen and he didn’t want him getting hurt.
Because of a potential conflict of interest, the investigation into Eli Wastell’s death was transferred to the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office. The decision was made to ensure the investigation would remain as impartial as possible and to eliminate any concerns about its objectivity. To this day, no one has been arrested and no suspect has ever been publicly identified.
Despite years of investigative work and the evidence that has been gathered, the case remains unsolved and the person responsible for Eli’s death has never been identified. Investigators have said they believe Eli most likely knew the person who killed him. From the very beginning, that theory became one of the central focuses of the investigation and largely shaped its direction.
There were no signs of forced entry and it would have been extremely difficult for a stranger to get through the secured entrance to the Lara Condominiums complex. Those circumstances strengthened detectives’ belief that whoever entered Eli’s apartment was someone he trusted or at least someone he willingly allowed inside without suspicion.
For that reason, and possibly for other reasons investigators have never publicly disclosed, detectives with the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office do not believe Eli’s death is connected to Michelle O’Connell’s case. Despite years of speculation and repeated attempts to link the two high-profile cases, investigators have never changed that official position.
Hoping to have Michelle’s official manner of death reconsidered and the investigation reopened, the O’Connell family turned to independent forensic pathologist Dr. William Anderson. They hoped that a fresh, unbiased medical review would provide another careful examination of the evidence. Dr. Anderson agreed to perform the work free of charge.
For Michelle’s family, it was an opportunity to obtain an independent forensic evaluation without the financial burden and to once again examine the circumstances surrounding her death. Michelle’s body was exhumed and a second autopsy was performed. It was an emotionally devastating process for her family, but they believed a new forensic examination was the only way to move closer to the answers they had been searching for over so many years.
The second autopsy revealed an important finding that had not appeared in Dr. Hobin’s original report. That discovery would later become one of the most heavily debated aspects of the entire case and once again draw attention to the circumstances of Michelle’s death. Michelle’s jaw had been fractured. They discovered the fracture only basically on the second autopsy.
So, all of those people that were making the assumption this was a suicide were unaware of the existence of the fractured mandible. And that’s a different injury pattern and it creates a whole different scenario in the case. We have external trauma. We have significant trauma unrelated to the wound itself. And that means that someone else was involved.
At the very end of his report, Dr. Anderson stated plainly, “The manner of death should be ruled a homicide.” About 3 years later, Scott O’Connell was reinstated as a deputy with the St. Johns Sheriff’s Office. His return to law enforcement marked an unexpected turn after spending years closely tied to the investigation into his sister’s death.
Over time, Scott came to accept Sheriff Shore’s version of events. His views changed and he no longer supported the conclusions he had once shared with the rest of his family. Scott accused Agent Rusty Rogers of creating a false narrative about his sister’s death and convincing the O’Connell family that Michelle had been murdered.
In Scott’s view, it was Rogers’ conclusions that led his family to believe for years that Michelle’s death was a homicide rather than a suicide. Today, he no longer believes that. As time passed, Scott completely changed his position on the case and publicly renounced his earlier beliefs. Sheriff Shore announced Scott’s return during a staff meeting in the summer of 2013.
The announcement officially confirmed that Scott would once again serve with the Sheriff’s Office. During that same meeting, Sheriff Shore publicly voiced his support for Jeremy Banks, describing him as the victim of years of unfounded accusations. Shore said he believed Jeremy had been unfairly placed under suspicion and had spent years facing allegations that, in his opinion, were never supported by sufficient evidence.
There may be some of you in this room who have doubts about this case. I don’t know, man. I think it was a homicide. Jeremy Banks had nothing to do with that case. This guy right here came so damn close to being charged with homicide based on nothing. Let’s give these two guys a hand. As of 2019, Jeremy was still working as a deputy sheriff.
Through his attorney, he told reporters that Michelle’s death had destroyed his life. According to Jeremy, people would walk down his street, even at 2:00 in the morning, yelling at him, “Murderer!” The Justice for Michelle O’Connell Facebook page remains active to this day. It continues to serve as a place where Michelle’s memory is honored and where updates and information related to the case are shared.
A case that has continued to weigh heavily on her family for many years. David Shore served four consecutive terms as sheriff, a total of 16 years in office. Throughout that time, his name repeatedly resurfaced whenever the public revisited the investigation into Michelle’s death and the decisions law enforcement made during the early stages of the case.
In early 2023, Shore left law enforcement and became the head of investigations for a large law firm with offices in Florida and Texas, bringing his long career in public service to an end. After a 3-year internal investigation, Agent Rusty Rogers was fully cleared of wrongdoing.
The review found that the allegations against him were not substantiated, and he was officially reinstated as a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Alexis O’Connell grew up surrounded by her family. Through all the years that her mother’s death remained the subject of controversy, renewed investigations, and public debate, it was her loved ones who stood by her side.
Even today, the O’Connell family has not given up hope that Michelle will one day receive justice. Despite everything that has happened over the years, they continue to believe that the full truth about her death will eventually come to light, and that the questions which have remained unanswered for so long will finally be resolved.
Disclaimer : This content may be created by AI for entertainment purposes. Any resemblance to real persons, events, or places is coincidental.
