Episode 26: The Texas Killing Fields: Shelley Sikes

She Goes By Jane

When he spoke of what happened to his daughter Shelley, Ed Sikes said, “It was a crash course in good and evil.” In 1986, when Shelley was 19, she was working as a waitress at a popular restaurant in Galveston. The night she disappeared, she left work and headed to her boyfriend’s house, but Shelley never made it there. Based on eyewitness accounts and, eventually, the confessions of her killers, investigators were able to piece together a pretty detailed account of what happened that night. The one thing they don’t know? Where Shelley is now.

This week our guest reader is actress Gus Birney. Gus can currently be seen in her second season starring opposite Courteney Cox in the Starz series SHINING VALE, for which she received a Saturn Award nomination. This past year she also made her Broadway debut in the Tony-nominated revival of THE SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW. She can currently be seen returning to the BAM stage in the New York premiere of OUR CLASS. Her other television credits include Apple TV’s Dickinson, Spike TV’s The Mist, and on Insatiable, Blue Bloods, Bull, Jessica Jones, Instinct, Law & Order: SVU, and Chicago Med. You can follow Gus on Instagram.

Join us on Patreon! Your support helps us continue to shine light on America’s missing and unidentified women. Flashlight level members also get access to additional content like Behind the Poem, a weekly conversation about the episode’s featured poem, and our monthly true crime/mystery book club. Our February 2024 selection is the true crime book The Hunt for Brianna Maitland by Greg Overacker.

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To buy Aimee’s book, Doe, it’s available now with University of Akron Press, at Bookshop.org, and Amazon.