Shamekka Garnette found in Rapides Parish and William Lyles found in the Vermilion River in Lafayette Parish Louisiana. Shamekka Garnette was last seen August 13, 2004, when she left with a friend for a night out. She was found four days later in a drainage ditch off I-49. William Lyles was last seen at approximately 3a on September 10, 1995 and was found approximately 6 hours later in the Vermillion River close to I-10. While the cause of death was drowning, he had injuries consistent with a beating. www.mysteriesofthebayou.com Full Transcript Below Roy with Mysteries of The Bayou (00:03): Hello, and welcome to another episode of mysteries of the Bayou. I'm Roy with Mysteries of The Bayou got a couple of a couple other short cases to cover today. Uh, the first one is going to be, uh, Shameeka, Garnette. Uh, Shameeka was, uh, 20 years old. She was last seen October 13th, 2004. This was just a few days prior to her 21st birthday. Uh, she is from the Alexandria Louisiana rapedmy parish area. So, uh, she was last seen, seen leaving home at approximately 11:30 PM with a friend in their vehicle. Uh, the vehicle was later abandoned on Lee street on the Lee street on ramp two 49 near, uh, base road. Um, the weird thing about this case is that there wasn't any other information that I could find that talked about her friend. It sounded said the car was abandoned, but they never talked about either finding this other individual, questioning them if it was man, woman or anything about it. Roy with Mysteries of The Bayou (01:19): So I did feel like that was a little bit strange. The, um, so, uh, on August the 17th of 2004, about four days later, her body was found in a drainage ditch off of old Boyce road. Now, um, it's uncanny. It's the other thing that's strange about this is it's very unclear who is investigating this case. When you look at most of the coverage that this received in the media, on the internet, it was credited with repeat Sheriff's department, but, um, in contacting them for more information on the case, they expressed explicitly said that the Alexandria police department was handling it. So, um, what I did was reached out to the Alexandria police department for an open records request. And they, after talking with three or four people in that, that, uh, jurisdiction told me that, that they were not handling this case. So it's a little bit strange that neither one of these, uh, agencies and, you know, before I kind of get off on a rant, I want to make sure that I'm very clear that I'm very pro law enforcement. Roy with Mysteries of The Bayou (02:42): I know these guys do a great job. A lot of the times there's not much to go on. And so some of these cold cases go cold, not because there really wasn't much effort. There just wasn't much to go on. But having said that, I do believe in, I do believe in, uh, law enforcement agencies honoring the open request, open records, open, you know, information requests from the public as per the statute of the state. In this case, it's our S 40 four.one. And it lays it out in very clear what is considered, um, public information now in ongoing investigations, of course, you know, they always want to hold things back. They don't want to, uh, uh, do something to jeopardize the, uh, investigation in case they worked to arrest somebody in the future. But the reality is that, that there is still information that can be released. Roy with Mysteries of The Bayou (03:48): And, uh, not only did they not release it, but I really felt like, and going back to the case that we had last week with, uh, Teresa Gil crease, I really feel like that the repeat Sheriff's department was just playing games. And I actually reached out to the Louisiana attorney General's office. And of course they acted like first off, they acted like they didn't know what was going on. They said they don't represent individuals. I explained to the young lady that this was a state statute, that they are the lawyers for the state and that they should be enforcing the statutes that the legislature deems necessary to put out. So in turn, they should be making sure, and then they should be investigating when agencies aren't being transparent and aren't releasing public information as they should. But needless to say, I never heard back from the investigator, supposedly that was assigned to this through the attorney General's office. Roy with Mysteries of The Bayou (04:55): So it's easy to understand why families get very discouraged because of the lack of information and understand have a much better understanding. Now, a while a lot of people that I know, uh, out of the Louisiana area are very distrustful of local law enforcement and of the Louisiana government structure altogether. I have, I can officially say that I have bumped into that, excuse me. And I know exactly what they're talking about, and it's just a little bit fishy that nobody knows who's got the investigation. And, um, the other ...
