Twisted Sisters: The Mass Murder That Shocked A Small Oregon Town
GRANTS PASS, OR — On November 5, 1988, police in the small town of Grants Pass, Oregon, found a horrific crime scene.
Two-year-old Nathaniel Greene was found slumped in his high chair, covered in blood. The body of his mother, Lynnann “Lynn” Greene, 32, was found on the kitchen floor. Both had been shot, and a message was found scrawled in blood on the wall: “Trust in Jesus.”
David and Lynn Greene [Investigation Discovery]
David Greene, 32, had been wounded, and after waking up at the hospital he told investigators that he was shot as he ran to the neighbors to call for help.
Lynn died at the scene. Nathaniel was paralyzed from the chest down after emergency surgery to save his life.
The cold-blooding killings that shocked the community are the subject of “The Naked Truth” episode of Investigation Discovery’s new series Twisted Sisters.
Soon police identified two people of interest: Sisters Sharon and Deborah Halstead.
Deborah Halstead had recently moved back to Grant’s Pass from Los Angeles with her two sons, Leo Shively, 9, and his 12-year-old brother Michael.
Michael Halstead [Investigation Discovery]
Investigators would later learn that the girls had been raised as Seventh Day Adventists, and continued to be a member of an offshoot group who believed that angels spoke directly to family members. “Looking back at it, this was a cult,” Michael said.
According to Michael, his brother Leo believed that he could see and hear angels — and his mother and aunt believed that the boy had the power to determine who was good and evil.
“I can still remember the big apple jug. Every time he would answer a question, they would put a penny in for him,” he said.
Eventually, Michael, who says that he has never spoken on camera about the incident before, said that his brother Leo believed that he could determine who was “totaled” — or completely controlled by evil forces.
Crime scene photo with message written in blood on the wall [Investigation Discovery]
Investigator Sergeant Verlin David called the crime scene at Grant’s Pass “the strangest case that I had ever investigated.”
Police appeared to get a clue when they determined that a red truck had been spotted near the crime scene. But detectives still struggled as they searched for a motive for the multiple murders.
Why would the sisters shoot an entire family, who by all accounts were their friends?
Was the murder of 58-year-old Marston Lemke at a nearby horse ranch tied to the killings?
David Greene [Investigation Discovery]
And what was the meaning of the mysterious messages in blood scrawled on the victims’ walls?
When a second family is killed across the state, police learned that their work was just beginning.
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