Serendipity

A truck similar to the type Shawn loved to build and paint Infidelity/Betrayal/Murder...Families torn apart. Is the right man spending life in prison...or...did the real killer flea to Costa Rica with a new wife and start a new life? No! This is not the next James Patterson or John Grisham novel, nor is it a Hollywood blockbuster! This is a true story about my son Shawn Campbell whom was convicted in 2005 for murder in the second degree and is currently serving 25 years to life in a maximum security prison in upstate New York. Please take a few minutes of your time to read this story. September 27, 2004, was a day that changed a lot of lives and a day that rocked the small town of Bath, NY. A woman by the name of Rhonda Bilby was murdered that morning. On the morning of September 29, 2004, my son Shawn received a call from Senior BCI Investigator Ricky Kemp asking him to come into the Bath State Police Barracks because they had some questions about  the “Bilbys”....

Right from the beginning, Shawn's arrest and then sentencing has been a hard pill for me to swallow. No mother wishes to see a child in prison, but when it happens...what then? For me, it couldn't have come at a worst time.  I was still deep in the grip of my breakdown, still not able to function mentally and emotionally...and I know that I wept a lot during this time.  I couldn't believe that my son, a big, huggable teddy bear that everyone loved, could do something so terrible.  It just didn't fit. Shawn's case was high profile, this was a big deal in a county that is one of the biggest in New York, and as much as I wanted to be there for my son...I couldn't.  I couldn't make myself go to the court hearings, I didn't want to be seen by the public or in the media...as I said, I was having a very hard time coping. A war raged inside of me then too...unending questions, uncertainties, blaming myself, even though I did my best to bring my son  up righ...

False Confessions In this part of the interview with Shawn Campbell, who pleaded guilty to the murder of Rhonda Bilby in 2005, the question of 'false confession' emerges. The New York Times published an article, Oct 3, 2010 called:    “I Did It”   Why do people confess to crimes they didn’t commit? An expert on the subject, Alan Hirsch (who was mentioned in the news video) has a website:  The Truth About False Confessions where he offers his input into why this happens. There are many mitigating factors that drive people to confess to crimes that they did not commit, and it's certainly worth the effort to take a look at the information I have linked to.  The reality is that it does happen. This is the question I have dealt with since he pleaded guilty:  Why--IF he is innocent? It's so easy to say "Well I wouldn't have pleaded guilty if I was innocent," however...most of us are have not tried those shoes on. (And yes--I have a few seconds...

screen grab of one of the letters sent to the District Attorney It wouldn't be until after the sentencing that Shawn found letters that had been sent to the District Attorney's office of a "murder plot for hire" that had circulated Wende Correctional Facility in the weeks prior to Rhonda Bilby's murder. Here was information that would have been the key to PROVING Shawn's innocence. So why was Shawn never told about them?   These letters were and are key instruments to prove that Shawn had no part in the murder of this woman. In the interview below, the ADA Baker states that Shawn DID know about them and didn't want to pursue the issue as part of his defense.  It's a lie. I remember when Shawn found those letters...he was extremely angry that he hadn't been told about them and I am literally the first person he called when he found them.  He was excited too...this would mean the difference between life in prison or freedom!

Does this look like a murderer? From the beginning, there have always been unanswered questions in Shawn's case...why was he targeted to take the fall...there was no proof of his guilt--and plenty of reasonable doubt --yet here is a county that was driven to convict him at all costs. In 2008, a new set of eyes looked at Shawn's case through eyes that were far removed geographically.  KJ Mullins, a Canadian journalist wrote two stories about Shawn's case that appeared on a website called Digital Journal: A Global Digital Media Network : Murder In A Small Town Op-Ed: When Rumours Swirl Both take a look at the thoughts, the facts as were known then (and now) and asks a lot of important questions . In the years since, nothing has changed except that Shawn has taken a more active role in his case, determining what will be done and how, along with having a lawyer who is willing to pull out the plugs and fight against a county that is Hell bent on keeping the truth burie...

On January 16, 2008 I published my first blog, titled “ The Handyman...Who Is He? ”. What I didn’t say then, but what might be intuited was that this story was about someone close to me, but I didn’t say…didn’t want to admit …it was my oldest son. When I wrote that entry, I was still angry…mostly because of the fact that it was my son in prison, and I was having a extremely hard time dealing with that. Even back then (and now), I hated the term 'handyman' because the local media had really played up that term to describe my son...linking that term so that it equated to "murderer".  Thankfully, for the most part, the media has dropped the 'handyman' when they talk about him and his case, which has some new developments . (2 separate links.) My son was accused of murdering Ronda Bilby at her home in what the police and the District Attorney referred to as a "botched robbery-gone wrong".  All the evidence was circumstantial, there was no blood f...