More Questions Than Answers in This Tragic Crime.
On August 15, 2002, Michael Short and his wife Mary were discovered dead, shot execution-style while they slept. Their 9-year-old daughter Jennifer was missing, and her whereabouts remain unknown. This discovery led to the largest criminal investigation the county had ever seen, but the case remains unresolved to this day.
That fateful August morning more than 20 years ago, Chris Thompson, one of Michael Short’s employees, made the grim find. Thompson, who had been one of the last people to see the Shorts alive, had worked late into the night with Michael on a vehicle. He was scheduled to meet Michael the next morning before 9 a.m. to head to Christiansburg and pick up a truck for Michael’s mobile home moving business.
When Thompson arrived at the Short residence, he found Michael on the couch in the garage, a place Michael often slept to avoid disturbing his wife with his snoring. However, Michael was not sleeping that morning. The garage door was open, and Michael had been shot once in the head with a small-caliber gun.
Mary’s body was discovered inside the house, also shot in the head with the same weapon, lying in her bed. Evidence indicated that both had been killed while asleep, unaware of their attacker’s presence. The most disturbing find, however, was not a body, but the complete absence of their daughter.
Jennifer Short was nowhere to be found.
The search for 9-year-old Jennifer Short
Chris Thompson called the police, who spent two weeks combing through the house and collecting hundreds of pieces of evidence. Simultaneously, a massive search operation was launched to locate Jennifer Short, with the hope that she had fled the scene and become lost in the nearby woods. Despite the efforts of volunteers, search dogs, ATVs, Amber Alerts, a helicopter, and a search perimeter extending hundreds of miles, Jennifer remained missing.
Jennifer’s body was finally found
About six weeks later, approximately 35 miles south of the Shorts’ home in Oak Level, Virginia, Eddie Albert’s dogs unearthed what he initially thought was a piece of a wig. Two days later, when the dogs found a piece of a human skull, Albert contacted the police.
Authorities began a search of the surrounding area from Albert’s home, discovering teeth, bone fragments, and a small ribcage discarded under a nearby bridge and along a rural road. Given the time elapsed and the state of decomposition, the police could not determine the specifics of Jennifer Short’s fate following her abduction. However, the skull fragments revealed that she had been killed in the same manner as her parents—with a single shot to the head from a small-caliber weapon.
“She’s gone now,” Sheriff H. F. Cassell told the press after the remains were confirmed to be Jennifer’s. “She’s safe now, and no evil can befall her.”
But Who Killed the Short Family?
While the fate of Jennifer Short was eventually discovered, the investigation into the brutal murders of her family remained frustratingly unresolved. The motive for the crime was unclear—robbery was ruled out since nothing of value was taken, and the crime had clearly been premeditated, evidenced by the severed phone lines. Although the abduction of Jennifer Short seemed central to the case, the reason behind her removal from the home and subsequent execution like her parents remained speculative.
Despite numerous leads stretching as far as Missouri, the police struggled to make progress. Early in the investigation, attention focused on Garrison Bowman, a 66-year-old carpenter who had a potential grudge against Michael Short and had fled to Canada the day after the murders. By November, Bowman was extradited from Canada, where he was held on unrelated charges of drunk driving and immigration violations, and appeared before a grand jury in Roanoke, Virginia. However, no indictment resulted.
Garrison Bowman Cleared as a Suspect
In 2007, authorities officially cleared Bowman as a suspect. It was later revealed that some of the initial claims against Bowman were fabricated by three men seeking to collect the reward offered for information about the case. These men were convicted of perjury and false reporting, and sentenced to several years in prison.
The investigation into Bowman had consumed thousands of hours, and the diversion had not brought the case any closer to resolution. Whether the authorities might have made more progress without the misleading leads is unknown. What remains clear is that, over 20 years later, the identity of the perpetrator who so mercilessly took the lives of the Short family remains a mystery.
The Mystery Remains Unsolved
Each year, neighbors and friends of the Short family organize a motorcycle ride to raise awareness and keep the crime in the public eye. This annual event crosses the bridge where some of Jennifer Short’s remains were found, now known as the Jennifer Renee Short Memorial Bridge. According to the sheriff’s office, new information about the case often emerges during the ride, although it has yet to result in any arrests.
Just a few months after the Short family’s murders, their home was sold at auction, but it remained vacant for most of the years since. In 2019, the house was destroyed by a mysterious fire. While it’s unclear whether the fire was intentionally set by the killer to eliminate any remaining evidence from nearly two decades prior, such a theory remains speculative. As with many aspects of this case, the true answers may never be definitively known.
src: the-line-up.com
