Screams in the Night: The Terrifying Abduction of Angela Hammond
The Last Call
On the evening of April 4, 1991, twenty-year-old Angela ‘Angie’ Hammond attended a barbeque with her fiancé, eighteen-year-old Rob Shafer. After the festivities ended, she dropped him off at his family’s home where his little brother was waiting. It was just after 10:00 p.m. when she drove off into the night.
An hour later, Angie called Rob from a phone booth located smack dab in the middle of their hometown of Clinton, Missouri. Even though they would be together soon, she wanted to check in and solidify their plans to meet up later.
A few minutes into their conversation, Angie mentioned that a truck appeared to be circling her. Wary of the driver’s intentions, she made a point of telling Rob that the vehicle was a green, two-tone older model pickup truck with a decal depicting a fish jumping out of water on the back windshield.
As Angie was relating the details, the truck pulled up next to her. The driver, a bearded man dressed in dirty overalls and glasses, got out and made his way to the phone booth beside the one Angie was using. After a short time, he returned to his truck, where he began rummaging around with the aid of a flashlight.
Her anxiety level slowly rising, Angie had told Rob about the man’s odd behavior. Not quite ready to jump to conclusions, he suggested that perhaps he needed to make a call, and the other phone had been out of order. Since that made perfect sense, Angie asked the stranger if he needed to use the phone. Rob heard him say “No, I’ll try again later,” or something to that effect. With no reason to believe that anything was amiss, the couple resumed their conversation.
Suddenly, in mid-sentence, Angie let out a bloodcurdling scream. Rob then heard a man say, “I didn’t need to use the phone anyway.” Realizing instantly that Angie was in trouble, he had dropped the receiver and ran out the door. Jumping in his car, he raced to the phone booth, which was only seven blocks away.
As he flew through the empty streets, a truck headed in the opposite direction blew past with its windows down. In a scene out of his worst nightmare, he heard Angie scream “Robbie!”
Slamming on the brakes, Rob threw his car into reverse, spinning around in the middle of the road. Flooring the accelerator, he went after the truck.
In a tragic turn of events that haunts Rob to this day, two miles into the pursuit, his car engine died. Unable to restart the vehicle, he was forced to watch helplessly as the truck — and Angie — disappeared into the night. She has not been seen or heard from since.
The Search for Answers Begins
Rob would later learn that putting the car in reverse while it was still in motion had destroyed the transmission. Though he had done everything humanly possible to save her, it was apparent that Angie’s fate had been sealed as soon as the man in the truck laid eyes on her. This had offered little consolation to Rob, who had promised on the day he asked for her hand in marriage to protect her and keep her safe from harm.
Even though Rob was racked with guilt, Angie’s family knew that he had kept his vow. Sadly, due to circumstances beyond his control, it wasn’t meant to be.
Upon being notified of the brazen abduction, authorities got to work coordinating searches, both by land and air. In spite of their best efforts, no traces of the truck or Angie were found.
With the aid of computer databases, investigators managed to track down sixteen thousand trucks that matched the basic description of the suspect’s vehicle. One by one, each was eliminated.
Since Rob was the person closest to Angie, and there had been no eyewitnesses who could corroborate his story, he was a suspect early on. Though he was subsequently cleared of any involvement, he still receives the occasional call from agents asking if there’s anything he would like to get off his chest. Rather than being defensive, Rob takes these communications with a grain of salt. He appreciates the fact that investigators have never given up on their quest to find out what happened to Angie.
Three Months of Terror
During the course of their investigation into Angie’s abduction, detectives learned that forty-two-year-old Trudy Darby had gone missing under similar circumstances three months earlier.
On January 19, 1991, Trudy had been working the evening shift at a convenience store in Macks Creek, Missouri, a little over an hour from Clinton, when she noticed two men loitering in the parking lot. Alone and vulnerable, she had phoned her son, who told her he would be right over. When he arrived ten minutes later, his mother’s purse and belongings were inside the store, but she was nowhere to be found.
Two days later, a resident who lived near the Little Niangua River contacted police to say that they had heard a gunshot on the night Trudy went missing. When investigators scoured the area, they found blood and clumps of blonde hair on the riverbank.
Divers soon discovered Trudy’s body lying four feet under water, trapped in a whirlpool. An autopsy revealed that she had been raped and shot twice in the back of the head.
On February 28, a month after Trudy’s body was found, thirty-year-old mother of two Cheryl Ann Kenney went missing from a convenience store in Nevada, Missouri, which again was about an hour’s drive from Clinton. She too had been working the evening shift when she apparently met with foul play.
Records showed that Cheryl had clocked out at 10:00 p.m., setting the store alarm seventeen minutes later. Witnesses reported hearing a woman screaming sometime after ten o’clock, but they hadn’t thought to call police at the time. Cheryl’s car was found abandoned in the lot, indicating that she had been grabbed shortly after walking out the door.
The store’s janitor, who had left before Cheryl, told investigators that he recalled seeing a lone customer on the premises as closing time approached. He remembered the man as having dark hair, a mustache and beard. Since there were no cars in the lot besides his and Cheryl’s, the janitor had assumed that the man had either parked elsewhere or was traveling on foot.
After eliminating the janitor as a suspect in Cheryl’s disappearance, detectives exhausted every lead at their disposal to no avail. While the case remains open, no traces of Cheryl have ever been found.
Blood Brothers
A break in Trudy’s case came in 1995 when detectives received tips from an ex-girlfriend of twenty-year-old Jess Rush, as well as a former neighbor, claiming that he had talked openly of having been involved in her murder.
When he was interviewed by investigators, Rush admitted that he was present when the murder occurred but had only been a bystander. According to him, the people responsible where his half-brother, thirty-four-year-old Marvin Chaney, and another man he couldn’t name.
The way Rush remembered the events of that night in January 1991, they had gone to the convenience store specifically to kidnap the cashier and steal whatever money was in the till, which turned out to be $200. After throwing Trudy in their car, they had driven to a barn where they had taken turns raping and beating her before shooting her in the head.
Acting on Marvin’s suggestion, they had placed Trudy’s body in the trunk with the intention of disposing of her in a watery grave where she would never be found.
When they got to the banks of the Niangua and opened the trunk, Trudy moved, necessitating another shot to the head. Though they didn’t realize it at the time, their actions had alerted neighbors, which would ultimately lead to her body being discovered forty-eight hours later.
Rush and Chaney were arrested and charged with kidnapping, sexual assault and first-degree murder in the death of Trudy Darby. While being held in county lockup, Rush would allegedly confess his involvement to three other inmates, all of whom ended up testifying against him in court.
One of his trusted cellmates was a seasoned criminal whom Rush believed could help him beat the rap. In an effort to plead his case, he had written numerous letters detailing his role in the murder. His words revealed a callousness and lack of humanity that painted him as nothing short of a monster.
In one letter, Rush lamented the fact that he had allowed his brother to talk him into dumping the body in the river instead of letting him “burn that b##tch up” back at the barn like he wanted. He went on to say that his goal that night had been to sexually assault her and shoot her in the head so he could “watch her brains come out.”
Throughout the vile communications, Rush never once referred to Trudy by name, choosing instead to use every derogatory term in the book to describe his innocent victim. To date, he has never been able to muster an ounce of remorse or regret for his actions. Judging from his conduct, it would appear that he is a sociopath in its truest form.
When the case went to trial in 1996, despite the defense teams efforts to soften their client’s rough demeanor for court observers by constantly labeling him a “child,” the jury knew a lost cause when they saw one. After careful consideration, Rush and Chaney were found guilty and sentenced to life without parole.
In 2012, the state of Missouri overturned Rush’s sentence after determining that life without parole shouldn’t apply to those who committed their crimes, no matter how heinous, before the age of eighteen. Since Rush was fifteen when Trudy was killed, he was handed the chance to walk out of jail a free man one day. Unfortunately, that opportunity came sooner than anyone would have liked.
In 2022, at the age of forty-eight, Jess Rush was released from prison after serving twenty-six years for the abduction, rape and murder of Trudy Darby. A year later, he was back in custody on a parole violation after being found in the possession of several firearms. He remains behind bars as of this writing.
Marvin Chaney died in prison of natural causes in 2017 at the age of fifty-six. It’s a widely held belief among the public and law enforcement alike that, given his penchant for preying on women who were alone at night, Chaney may have had something to do with the disappearances of Angela Hammond and Cheryl Ann Kenney. The investigation into his and his known cohort’s possible involvement in the unsolved cases remains ongoing.
Theories Abound
Thirty years into the investigation, authorities floated a new theory. It seems that on April 4, 1991 — the day Angie Hammond was taken — an informant who had turned state’s evidence in a case against a powerful drug ring received a letter threatening to take revenge upon him by way of his daughter, who also happened to be named Angela.
The recipient is referred to in the letter by the court issued number assigned to him prior to going to trial in a bid to protect his identity. Whoever penned the note knew the family well enough to use the names of the informant’s wife and daughter, both of which are blacked out in the copy released to the public.
While detectives weren’t willing to say outright that the letter was a clue in Angela Hammond’s case, they let it be known that it was yet another stone left to be turned.
Even though this new information breathed life into the investigation, nothing has come of it thus far. Truth be told, it’s a bit of a reach to think that a crime syndicate based eighty-six miles from Clinton would target the daughter of the man who tried to bring them down, only to follow the wrong car and grab the wrong girl.
If drug lords were responsible for kidnapping and murdering Angie, their methods of operation were certainly questionable. While the girls were said to be similar in appearance, that wasn’t much to go on. That they were both named Angie seemed to be the only real connection, which was hardly enough to make such a monumental mistake.
Not to drive the point into the ground, but one has to wonder why an organization bent on revenge would send a lone, unkempt perpetrator to track a young woman down, only to snatch her at a payphone while she was in the middle of a call. Anything’s possible, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
The more likely scenario is that Angie fell victim to an opportunistic predator who saw her standing at the phone booth in passing and decided to make his move. After driving by a few times to make sure the coast was clear, he had pulled in, waited till the time was right, and grabbed her. After forcing her into the truck, perhaps at gunpoint, he had taken off down the road.
Rob’s appearance had been totally unexpected. What was going through the abductor’s head in those harrowing moments will probably never be known. One can, however, imagine the hope Angie must have felt when she saw the familiar car with her fiancé behind the wheel.
When Rob’s car broke down, severing her only lifeline, Angie must have known what was coming. In a tragic twist, she would have feared not only for herself, but also for the baby she was carrying. She and Rob would have welcomed their first child in September. Sadly, thanks to the actions of a man who had viewed the young mother-to-be as expendable, the day the couple had been looking forward to for four months would never come.
Rob Shafer still grieves for Angie and the life they once shared. Determined to go on, which she would have undoubtedly wanted, he eventually married and started a family. Even so, he hasn’t given up on finding the man who snatched Angie from the phone booth, forever altering the course of their lives.
As of October 2024, the investigations into the disappearances and presumed murders of Angela Hammond and Cheryl Ann Kenney are open and active. Detectives from the state of Missouri, working hand in hand with the FBI, are confident that justice will someday be served. It’s only a matter of time.
For more paranormal/true crime stories, check out my books at https://www.amazon.com/author/cindyparmiter
Resources:
·findlaw.com
·springfieldnews-leader.com
·ladycultblog.com
·fox2newsnow.com
·unsolved.com
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