Jackson Jambalaya

In the lonesome isolation of the small, rural Clark Cemetery in the Pea Ridge community in northern Scott County, the grave of Shondra Denise May is difficult to miss and almost impossible to forget.

Shondra’s heart-shaped headstone is inscribed with a date of birth of Feb. 26, 1968. The date of death was conspicuously incomplete – Feb. 1986. The blank space for the actual date of her death was left there intentionally. Her unsolved murder made it impossible for her loved ones to know on which of the 22 days of her kidnapping that she died.

The pretty teenager whose remains occupy that grave rests close by her parents, Richard and Genell May, who endured the nightmare of the Feb. 4, 1986, kidnapping, rape and murder of their daughter before interring her body there. Genell May, who was already frail from protracted kidney disease at the time of Shondra’s death, died in 1994 at age 50.

Her father, Richard, the burly but pleasant riverboat captain who plied his trade for a half-century on the wide Mississippi River, would join his first wife there in 2023 at 81.

Only Shondra’s brother, Tim May, his children and grandchildren remain to witness the reckoning in his sister’s brutal death. In 2024, Tim, who bears an uncanny physical resemblance to his father, told Wilson Stribling at WLBT in 2024 what he needed: “Closure. My mother died not knowing what happened. My father died not knowing what happened. I’m it.”

I was a young newspaper publisher in Forest in 1986 with a newborn daughter at home when Shondra went missing. Because of that, I’ve always remembered exactly how long Shondra’s case remained unsolved.

Her disappearance was one of two major crime stories that dominated the early years of my 18-year career at The Scott County Times – Bobby Glen Wilcher’s sojourn on Death Row for the 1982 murders of Velma Odell Noblin and Katie Belle Moore and the unrelated murder of Miss May.

I covered the disappearance, the discovery of the body in Hinds County 22 days later, the autopsy, the agonizing funeral and burial, and began a long relationship with the May family. Richard dropped by the newspaper office frequently in the early years, always anxious to know of any progress in the case. I had scant information for Mr. May, whose grief was palpable.

There were multiple suspects over the years, but lawmen were unable to put the pieces together. DNA evidence and modern crime scene protocols were slow to come to rural Mississippi 40 years ago. Mississippi had not yet invested in modern death investigation. It was a different time and cold case investigations that solved crimes were exceedingly rare in that era.

Last week, Scott County Sheriff Mike Lee, after years of work with his officers and a group of retired investigators, arrested Rubin Weeks, 63, at a Canton RV park. Weeks was a familiar name in the investigation for many years.

In August 1992, I published a story for the front page of The Scott County Times with the headline: “Missouri inmate suspected in May case.” Rubin Weeks was at the time incarcerated at the Missouri State Penitentiary for the 1991 kidnapping and rape of a woman in Millersville, MO. The facts of that case were similar on many counts to the May case.

Sheriff Lee expressed a high degree of confidence in the work of his cold case investigators. Weeks was nonchalant during his April 29 arrest on charges of murder and rape, but the improvements in the science of criminal cold case investigations coupled with the detective work done by Lee’s veteran investigators suggests that Weeks faces a strong prosecution. He denied guilt or involvement in the May case at the arrest scene.

In the 39 years since Shondra was murdered, she missed so much. Her father walking her down the aisle, her mother bouncing her grandchild, and a thousand other joys of life foregone. She hasn’t even had the dignity of a proper inscription on her tombstone.

Thanks to persistent investigators, Tim May and his family may finally receive the closure they deserve.

Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com.