Creep of the Week - July 3, 1999

What would you do if your girlfriend did something really selfish that pissed you off big time while you were both on a romantic vacation cruise? Would you:

• A - Break up with her on the spot and spend the rest of the cruise down in the singles section.
• B - Toss her overboard for the sharks and piranhas to feast on while you shrug your shoulders and feign innocence when they start looking for her.
• C - Say "What the hell, we're on vacation! Let's go back to the cabin and play Hide The Salami until it's time for the breakfast buffet!"

When Ronald Shanabarger had such a choice to make back in 1996, he took a different route altogether. He and his girlfriend Amy were on a cruise when Ron's father died. He wanted to cut the vacation short, but she refused. At that point, Ron began what business executives call Long Term Strategic Planning. He hatched a three-year plan to make Amy feel just the way he did when his father died. Back in their hometown of Franklin, Indiana, Ron married Amy, got her pregnant, and last Thanksgiving, they had a son, Tyler. Ron waited a few months until he thought Amy had bonded with Tyler sufficiently before he made his move. He killed the boy by wrapping plastic wrap around his head and face, then removed the plastic and left Tyler face down in the crib for Amy to discover. On Father's Day. The coroner ruled that Tyler died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Ron might have got away with it, but he hadn't fully dealt with all the contingencies required to pull off a long term strategic plan. The contingency he hadn't planned for was his own guilty conscience. Just hours after Tyler's funeral last week, he confessed to police because the image of his son's face, "flat and purplish from rigor mortis", haunted him. He then begged the police to shoot him. Unfortunately, Ron doesn't live in New York City, where he could have begged the police to shove a broomstick up his ass.

If you think your opinion of Ron couldn't possibly get any worse, you're wrong, of course. When the judge asked him if he had enough money to hire his own attorney, Ron said, "I don't know. I'd have to check with my wife." No word on her reaction, but she may have suggested the broomstick, also.

But wait, it still gets worse. Ron even managed to make the prison chaplain start looking for another line of work. The Rev. Randy Maynard said Ron was complaining about life in jail and all the things he had lost: his job, his house, his money, his wife, his friends. When the Reverend reminded Ron that he'd also lost his son, he responded "Oh yeah, I lost the boy too." Minister Maynard says, "That was it for me. He said the wrong thing. I was out of there."

Here's what some other people have to say about Ron and his strategic planning skills:

• Prosecutor Lance Hamner: "It's just so bizarre, it's hard to really comprehend the facts. It's the most bizarre case that I've ever had any dealings with and probably the most bizarre motive I've ever heard of."
• Amy's father, Robert Parsons: "We don't want vengeance, but we do want justice."
• Congressman Bob Barr: "If the Ten Commandments had been hanging in the cabin of that cruise ship, none of this would have happened!"

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