Do you know who murdered Shauna Maynard? On a Tuesday morning, April 21, 1998, the body of 17-year-old Caucasian female Shauna Maynard was discovered in a remote desert area off Blue Diamond Road, south of Las Vegas. Two men on their way to work spotted her body and alerted the police around 6 a.m. Investigators determined she had been shot multiple times, including once in the face, and had also been pistol-whipped. A police officer had reportedly heard gunshots in that vicinity at approximately 3 a.m.
but was unable to locate the source at the time. Shauna had no identification on her; authorities were only able to identify her through a high school class ring from Buena Vista High School in Corona, California, which was inscribed with her name.
Shauna had been reported as a runaway by her mother in Colton, California, on December 31, 1997. She had moved to Las Vegas with a friend after a disagreement with her sister. Her life in Las Vegas was transient; she initially lived with a male friend but had to move out due to issues with his girlfriend. She then moved into a crowded apartment near Lake Mead and Las Vegas Boulevard with two women and their seven children, where she worked at a restaurant and as a babysitter for her roommates. The apartment was roughly 15 miles from where her body was later found.
The investigation into Shauna's murder was quickly met with challenges. In the early morning hours of her death, around 2 a.m., a frightened Shauna had called a friend, crying and stating that her roommate was going to hurt her. Her friend offered to call her a cab to a nearby casino, but Shauna never arrived. When police later executed a search warrant on her apartment, they found all of Shauna's personal belongings were gone. Her roommates claimed they were asleep when she left and that when they checked the closet where she kept her things after learning of her death, her possessions were missing.
No arrests have ever been made in connection with Shauna Maynard's murder, and the case remains cold. Investigators have followed up on various leads over the years, including a tip about a man and a woman who were seen in a parked 1950s-era brown Ford or Chevy pickup truck with "rounded fenders" near the area where Shauna's body was discovered. The roommates' names have not been publicly released, nor has the name of a man who was reportedly with a group of people in front of the apartment on the evening of her murder. Shauna's family has expressed their belief that she may have been killed after rejecting someone's romantic advances. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department continues to seek information from the public regarding her unsolved homicide.
