In the early morning hours of Easter Sunday, April 4, 1999, Shelly Parks was killed in a violent encounter in Phoenix, Arizona. She was not the sole victim of the tragedy that unfolded inside her brother Andrew Parks' apartment. Both Andrew and his friend, 34-year-old Edward Mendoza 'Eddie' Payan Jr., were also fatally shot. The man responsible for the triple homicide was Brian Jeffrey Dann, Shelly's boyfriend of two years.
The evening before the murders, Dann had visited a former
girlfriend, Tina Pace-Morrell, and borrowed a. 38 caliber revolver, claiming he needed it for protection. He told her that Andrew Parks had shot at him earlier that day and he needed the weapon to safely retrieve his belongings from Andrew's apartment. Later that night, at a local bar, Dann confided in a friend about his conflict with Andrew and his intent to 'straighten out the problem,' showing the friend the gun he had acquired.
Sometime after 2:00 a.m., Dann forced his way into Andrew's apartment. A subsequent confession to his ex-girlfriend revealed the chilling motive behind the slayings. Dann stated that he shot Andrew and Shelly because they laughed at him. He then shot Eddie Payan to eliminate him as a witness to the initial shootings. After committing the murders, Dann returned the gun to Tina Pace-Morrell and then, in a bizarre turn, went back to the crime scene and contacted the authorities, pretending to have discovered the bodies.
Investigators, however, were able to piece together the events of that tragic night. Ballistics analysis confirmed that the bullets used in the killings were fired from the revolver Dann had borrowed. Brian Jeffrey Dann was arrested for the triple homicide on April 7, 1999. He was later convicted on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree burglary. On January 24, 2002, he was sentenced to death for the murders of Shelly Parks, Andrew Parks, and Edward Payan.
