Cold Case Mendocino: Shannon House Vanishes; His Brother Awakens to Find Him Gone

When people go missing in Mendocino, they have a new ally—Ukiah High School journalism teacher Matt LaFever has started a website, Cold Case Mendocino, devoted to posting the details of their disappearances in a coherent story in hopes this might spark some further information and possibly lead to learning their fate. He’s joining us here on Redheaded Blackbelt twice a month to try and spread the missing people’s stories to more people. You can also follow his work by liking Cold Case Mendocino on Facebook.

The night Shannon House disappeared in October of 2015 he was working on a marijuana growing operation in Trinity County with his brother Thomas. Thomas was concerned about his brother who had been demonstrating signs of paranoia for two weeks ever since quitting a prescription medication. On the evening of October 11th, Shannon seemed “quiet and deep in thought”. Thomas fell asleep and when he awoke his brother Shannon was nowhere to be found.

Shannon and his brother Thomas. [Photo from Lavonna Kehm, Shannon’s mother]

For 8 months, Shannon and his brother Thomas had been growing marijuana on Mina Road, approximately 17 miles south of Kettenpom, California near the Trinity/Mendocino County border. The area had multiple grow operations adjacent to each other conjoined by single-track dirt roads, the domain of 4X4 trucks and quads.In the two weeks preceding Shannon’s disappearance, he had stopped taking his medication. According to Shannon’s mother Lavonna, her son was prescribed the drug Gabapentin. Thomas said Shannon began taking the medication after an injury at a worksite coupled with surgeries on each wrist from carpal tunnel.American Addiction Centers describes symptoms of Gabapentin withdrawal that include “nausea, dizziness, headaches, insomnia, and anxiety.”Thomas reported Shannon exhibiting signs of paranoia when he “thought he saw something outside of the trailer window. He was acting just a little off.”Along with the paranoia, Shannon experienced insomnia in the two weeks before his disappearance.But Shannon hadn’t always been this way. He had been very close to his family. “[He] never missed a birthday, he would always remember to call everyone,” his mother Lavonna Kehm said. “He loves the ocean, swimming, and fishing. His favorite time to visit the ocean was during a storm….He is a loyal and trustworthy friend and was never too busy to help anyone who needed help. Very thoughtful of others’ feelings.”  She added, “I miss him every second of every day.”

Shannon House holding his catch on a happier day. [Photo from his mother]

In the weeks before Shannon disappeared, though, after he had quit taking Gabapentin, he had been acting differently.Thomas, his brother, said that while he himself went to bed early on that October night around 7:20 PM, Shannon was outside the trailer sitting in his pick-up truck.Thomas said “[Shannon]was contemplating, thinking about something really hard…He was just staring off.”Thomas said he woke at approximately 4 a.m. to the sound of the trailer door abruptly closing. He said he looked at the time and went back to sleep.Assuming Shannon had slept in another trailer on the property, Thomas was not yet aware of his brother’s disappearance. He went about his morning chores until approximately 10:00 a.m. when he wondered why Shannon was not up and checked the other trailer. But it was empty. He knew something was very wrong.Immediately, Thomas said he got on his “quad and rode up the road four miles and called my mom to come help search.” Within hours an impromptu search party has arrived including Shannon’s mother, his three sisters, the two owners of the grow, and an assortment of cultivators from nearby farms. The search party found that Shannon had left his cell phone, footwear, and wallet in his truck. Apparently, Shannon had wandered into the Northern California hills barefoot wearing nothing but an olive green Carhartt shirt and black basketball shorts.

When asked as to why law enforcement was not contacted immediately, Thomas insisted the family was “expecting him to just come walking back up.” It is also worth noting the predictable resistance to law enforcement’s presence from the perspective of marijuana cultivators. For many on the ground that day, it would have been ideal if Shannon could be found without law enforcement’s involvement.

Lavonna, Shannon’s mother, described an encounter on the first day of searching that demonstrates the anti-law enforcement sentiment: “Thomas and Angie, Shannon’s younger sister and brother were searching on the quad and were stopped by a man that introduced himself only as Tim and he told them that we had better not contact search and rescue or the whole mountain would go crazy.”

Another unsettling occurrence on this day was when Thomas found himself on foot wandering about the property desperately screaming his brother’s name into the quiet woods. According to Thomas, a group of trimmers from a neighboring grow site “were mocking me.” He said, “I was yelling Shannon’s name and they were yelling it back in a mocking tone. The area was so heavily wooded I couldn’t see them but their tone was taunting.”

After a day of fruitless searching, Trinity County Sheriff’s Office (TCSO) was contacted on October 13th. Lavonna called at approximately 9:00 a.m.. According to Lavonna, that day TCSO, “only wrote up a report, did not search the property even though they were told by [the property owner] and Thomas that they could, they drove back up the next day too, neither day did they search.” Thomas and Lavonna reported troubling comments from law enforcement officers regarding his brother’s disappearance. The phrase “tis’ the season” was uttered by one of the officers implying due to the marijuana harvest missing persons were to be expected.After taking preliminary reports, Lavonna, Shannon’s mother, said, that TCSO’s Detective Bryan Ward “wouldn’t okay” the utilization of helicopter company Air Shasta and Humboldt County Search and Rescue to look for Shannon. Lavonna described how, “one police agency has to have another’s permission to get involved” and the jurisdiction of the search was muddled because, “he went missing in Trinity County but three miles from Mendocino County and 11 miles from Humboldt.” Not until December 18th did TCSO bring tracking dogs to the property attempting to pick up the scent of Shannon. This effort proved futile.

Cold Case Mendocino attempted to speak to Detective Josh Ford (the new investigative detective in the case) regarding TCSO’s search for Shannon. Several contact attempts were made, leaving messages, with no return communication.

Another peculiar incident happened two days after Shannon’s disappearance: an excavator was hauled out of adjacent marijuana grow. According to Lavonna “It was on a semi flatbed, you couldn’t have missed it.” The girlfriend of the property owner spoke with the driver who said the excavator was being used “to cut down trees in hopes of blocking the road from law enforcement.” Thomas said the property where the excavator was being hauled from “was the same one that was mocking me.” According to Thomas and Lavonna, the excavator’s appearance just days after Shannon’s disappearance could suggest the neighboring farm had an unexpected need to dig a grave.

Drone footage Thomas took surveying the area of his brother’s disappearance. [Screen shot from YouTube video entitled “Kpsearchforshannon”]

Lavonna’s exhaustive efforts to locate her missing son have included the use of drone footage to discern possible routes Shannon could have taken, enlisting a private helicopter pilot to fly over the area Shannon went missing, and the recruitment of two separate trackers.Thomas’s brother was the drone operator. He took the drone to strategic points around the area of Shannon’s disappearance hoping to find evidence of Shannon route. From the bird’s eye view, nothing concrete was identified.Lavonna utilized the private helicopter service Air Shasta to aid in search and rescue efforts. She said “We hired them for three different days.” They were chosen because the company “had located a hunter up there previously.” Air Shasta pilots combed the area “either Thursday or Friday” of the week Shannon went missing “then again a week or so later because [Lavonna] read a storm was coming and [she] thought he might die because of the cold.”

The pilots spotted disturbances in foliage that were consistent with cross-country travel but upon inspection by tracker Diana Totten, the trail was indicative of a heavy booted hunter rather than a barefoot man.

Cold Case Mendocino had the opportunity to speak with both trackers who searched for Shannon. The first tracker on the scene was Diana Totten. She was recommended to Lavonna by the mother of the property owner where Shannon went missing. Totten has worked on many “missing person cases all throughout Northern California the last 15-20 years.” When engaging in a search for a missing person, Totten describes how the “largest component of tracking is building a profile of a person and narrowing down the search area of where that person would be. The profile has to be more mental or maybe even spiritual. You have to know what this person might do when they’re facing death. Are they going to panic? Are they going to hunker down and come up with a plan?”

Totten arrived on the site of Shannon’s disappearance approximately four days after he went missing. She garnered “not much information” from TCSO’s investigation. She expressed concern “they hadn’t gone onto his phone.” The profile Totten then developed was based primarily on discussions with the immediate family of Shannon. Once the land search commenced, any evidence of Shannon’s “tracks were essentially already gone.” Results of the search were limited because “deer hunters, cultivators had walked all through it, cops have worked all through there.” Totten did find a set of tracks leading into an on-site irrigation pond.

The second tracker to get involved was Kevin Hodges, recommended to Lavonna by the Forest Service. In an interview with Hodges, he described his tracker training beginning by “taking a couple of classes in tracking” and teaching himself the skill. Kevin described how tracking requires “separating the conscious from the subconscious mind and learning to manipulate tunnel vision.”

Hodges was contacted in late October 2015 by Lavonna who requested his help finding Shannon. Over the course of that month, Hodges would make five separate trips to the area thoroughly surveying the site of Shannon’s disappearance.November 20th would be the last visit Hodges made to the area and his findings could offer a possibility of Shannon’s fate the night he went missing: “I walked down the Haman Ridge Road. When I got 25 feet past Mailbox 40, I found a sign that would match the sign that someone as large as Shannon [he was approximately 350 pounds] would leave (feet wide apart and toes pointed out and moving fast). I followed the sign to an area that was torn up covering an area of 20 by 30 yards. I took pictures of the area and sent them to Joel Harden of Professional Tracking Service asking Joel his opinion. He saw the same thing I did. What looked like tracks, where the body might have been laying, and what looked like heel marks being drug through the leaves.”

In follow up interviews, Hodges clarified that he believed the “torn up area” indicated a man as large as Shannon had been beaten badly and then loaded into a vehicle.Hodges said his research into Shannon’s life before his disappearance suggests a man who had developed hostile relationships with a few people he encountered. Hodges spoke with people who described Shannon “doing things that teed people off. One person told Shannon he’d kill him if it was the last thing he did.”

These patterns of behavior were corroborated by Shannon’s mother Lavonna when she described two fights at a Fortuna bar: “one was with an ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. And the other fight was with a Richard. They fought over Thomas punching Richard first.”Thomas spoke frankly of the second fight at this bar: “That one was my fault. We were leaving the bar and my brother said he heard them say ‘There go those fuckers’. So I went back and I did hit him. And then my brother came and started fighting them, too.”

When asked about prior behaviors that pointed towards Shannon’s actions that night, Thomas said there was “no past behavior” that was similar and his disappearance was “completely out of the ordinary.” Thomas spoke of the family meticulously considering “every angle possible.” He candidly speculated what could have happened to his brother: “I go back and forth between somebody did something to him or he hurt himself. I don’t think he just left and started a new life.”

If Shannon was considering suicide, Thomas suggested that “he was the type of person, don’t talk about it, just do it.”

Shannon’s family desperately wants answers. Lavonna lamented how the disappearance “has affected Shannon’s siblings and I for four very long years. All of those involved in the search spoke of his mother Lavonna’s steadfast commitment to finding closure. Thomas reminisced about the good times long past of “watching movies with Shannon” and going to the casinos for a good time.

On October 11, Shannon will have been missing four years. Do you have any information?

Essential Questions about the Case:

• Why did the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office offer so few resources to assist in the search and rescue of Shannon?
• Why would a group of neighbors be mocking Thomas for searching for his brother? 
• What is the relationship if any between Shannon’s disappearance and the appearance of an excavator just days afterward?
• Does it mean anything that the same property that reportedly had occupants mocking Thomas’s search for his brother also had an excavator hauled out two days after Shannon went missing?

If you know anything about the disappearance of Shannon, email us at [email protected], message us via Facebook, or call in a tip at #(707)560-1543

 

Earlier Chapters on Redheaded Blackbelt:

• Missing Man in Trinity County
• Family of Missing Man Says They Have to Hire Searchers Because Trinity Sheriff Won’t Help During Harvest
• Missing Man’s Mother Asks Community to Keep Looking
• On Birthday of Man Missing Since October, Family Pleads for Help

Note: Though Cold Case Mendocino’s columns are always posted under the CRIME section, this is just for standardization purposes, we do not know the fate of those missing.