Transcript of Shad Gandy Kaydea (2 of Spades, Rhode Island)

Our card this week is Shad Ghanday Kadeya, the two of spades from Rhode Island. On a cold night in March 2013, firefighters responded to what they thought was a brush fire at a cemetery in Cranston. What they found instead was the body of a 22-year-old aspiring rapper, strangled and then set on fire. Their investigation would uncover volatile disputes, a suspicious life insurance policy, and a man whose story kept changing. And when you hear what police have, it's hard to understand why this case isn't solved. But over a decade later, Shad's family is still waiting for answers. I'm Ashley flowers, and this is The Deck. It was late Wednesday night, March 20th, 2013, in Cranston, Rhode Island. A guy named Kevin had just parked his car getting ready to meet up with some friends when he noticed flames flickering across the street in an old courtyard that borders the neighborhood called Pacacet Cemetery. Kevin called his friend who could see the fire from their apartment upstairs, and they called 911.

Cranston Fire Department. Hi.

There's a fire right across the street from my house in a graveyard. Okay.

What's your address?

438 Dierab. Okay. And what's it like? Some brush on fire or something?

I don't know.

It looks like it's getting damn bigger. I don't know. I don't know. I never reported something like this before. Okay. I mean, it doesn't look like a building, though. No, no. It's a graveyard, but it's near building.

Okay. Cruz found a patch of burning brush just past a small bridge near the cemetery entrance. At first, it seemed routine, but this was anything but. When they realized something in the flames looked human, they quickly changed course, locking down the scene and calling for homicide. By the time Cranston Detective John Cardone arrived, the fire was out.

It was tough to really get a good gage because of the lighting and what the fire may have burned down that was there originally.

The man lying in the brush near the roadside was mostly on his side, leaning towards his back. His sneakers had melted and his clothes were warped from the heat.

It was unprecedented. It was like one of those things where in my experience, and I'm pretty sure in Bob's experience, we had never run into something like that where it was a fire being used in that manner.

Bob is Detective Bob Lindsay. He was on the scene that day, too.

The disposal of the body that way is just gruesome and cruel.

And Detective Lindsay was first struck by all the things that weren't at the scene. The victim had no ID, no wallet, no phone, and there was no blood pool or anything that suggested a struggle.

I think you would have seen more of a disturbance in that area than there was. I felt it looked like the body was placed there.

If he was right, that meant that there was another crime scene out there somewhere.

The first 24, 48 hours, you're putting the puzzle together and you're still trying to figure out what's going on here. We didn't have that piece of a puzzle.

Even without ID, investigators had a potential clue to who the man was or at least who he might be connected to. On his chest was a large tattoo that read RIP David De La Cruz. According to Providence Journal reporter Amanda Milkowitz, David, who was shot and killed in 2009, had alleged ties to a local gang called Ceeblock, and he was actually buried in the very cemetery there that the victim was found in.

At that point, we were trying to figure out, first and foremost, who the victim was.

Detectives began running David's known associates through their databases, thinking that this young man probably had gang ties, too. But at the same time, an autopsy was being conducted, and that got them their answer much quicker. Thursday morning, March 21st, the medical examiner took fingerprints, and within hours, investigators knew who this was. 22-year-old Shad Ghanday Kadeya, though he sometimes went by Ghanday Shad. The autopsy revealed another major detail. The fire wasn't what killed him. Shad had been strangled, likely with some type of cord. And the fire, the Hemi concluded, was set after he was already dead. And Detective Lindsay has a good guess as to why.

We felt they lit him on fire to destroy any evidence on him. It was probably done for that reason. To try to maybe obscure his identity or any evidence that would have been transferred to him.

To pin down when that fire was set, detectives circled back to Kevin. They knew that that call came into 911 at 10: 49 PM, but they wanted to know if he'd noticed anything else before that call was made. And it turns out he had. Kevin said that along with the flames, he had also seen two people in a four-door vehicle idling near the cemetery entrance. Now, Kevin didn't don't know the people or anything, but he did know cars.

He said he was very good with cars, and he said it was a newer model, white Toyota Corolla, that was leaving the cemetery.

He was able to narrow it down even further. Said that if he had to guess, it was a 2011 or 2012. And police were confident that he was right after a second witness came forward. She said that she was driving down Dierre Avenue around the same time, and she saw a white four-door car that looked like a Toyota Corolla in the same spot that Kevin had pointed out to police. So you got two independent witnesses, same car, same place, same window of time. Couldn't be a coincidence. But detectives wanted to confirm it and get eyes on whoever was inside. And they should have been able to, based on a sign at the cemetery entrance, warning would be intruders that the area was under surveillance. But unfortunately, when they went to the cemetery staff to collect the footage, they were told that there were no cameras. The sign was a bluff to scare off Vandals. So they didn't get the money shot inside the cemetery, but that didn't mean that there wasn't other video footage that could be helpful. Cranston is a suburb south of Providence, Rhode Island's capital and largest city. It's fairly busy.

There are a lot of businesses up and down that street, decent amount of residents, and it's funneling out of Providence. We had a portion of the unit going out, trying to see what we could find footage-wise.

Right away, they got a hit. Video showed a white car traveling southbound on Dierre Avenue pulling into the cemetery at 10: 40 PM. It stayed about five minutes out of view and then left. This made them sure that they were onto something with this white car, but the footage didn't drive them to their next lead. It wasn't clear enough to read a plate or see who was inside. So instead of chasing the car, they decided to turn to Shad himself. Who was he? Who might have wanted him dead? Could they maybe tie a white car to that person? On March 21st, detectives began at Shad's last known address in nearby Providence. But the young woman who answered the door informed them that Shad didn't live there anymore, though she didn't know him intimately. Her name was Maciel Ortiz. She was Shad's ex-girlfriend and the mother of his daughter, Milan. She said that she and Shad split almost a year ago, around the time that Milan was born in July 2012. And since then, he'd been crashing with friends, and they really didn't talk much. But she had last seen him on Monday, March 18th, when he stopped by her family's restaurant with some girls that she didn't recognize.

The detectives hadn't told Maciel why they were there asking about her ex, and her lack of curiosity still strikes them as odd.

She was indifferent, which struck me.

They couldn't tell her why they were there, not until they notified next of kin, which Maciel wasn't super helpful with. She just said that they might live in the Philadelphia suburb of Langhorne, Pennsylvania, but she wasn't close with any of them and couldn't help them more than that. Now, Shad's mom did, in fact, live in Pennsylvania, but she had lived in Rhode Island before and a few other places. Turns out Shad's family fled Liberia during the first Civil War when Shad was a baby. It was a violent time. Loved ones were killed, including Shad's father. He'd actually been a prominent figure, a close ally of the former Liberian President, and his death was allegedly a poisoning tied to the political chaos consuming the country. So Shad's mom raised her kids mostly on her own, bouncing between Rhode Island, Virginia, and eventually Pennsylvania. She'd moved there in the mid to late 2000s, but Shad was already a teenager by that point. His whole life was back in Providence, so he kept drifting back, staying with relatives. All that to say, it took another full day of working through out-of-state departments and chasing down outdated addresses before they finally found Shad's mother and delivered more terrible news to a family that had already experienced experience so much.

So that was on March 22nd. But from there, word spread quickly within the family and even beyond.

I was getting out there that something had happened.

Actually, people were piecing together what might have happened even before Shad's family was notified. A group of his worried friends even showed up at the Cranston police station, like an hour and a half prior to detectives making the next of kin notification. They were concerned because they couldn't reach Shad. They said his phone had been off for three days, which was totally unlike him.

We weren't at liberty to say anything until after the family were notified.

Shad's sister, Julie, was away at college when her younger brother called, and she remembers him saying that something terrible had happened to Shad, but she told us she couldn't have imagined what it was.

So I'm thinking he's in the hospital because you're not going to think what actually happened to him happened.

And certainly not to a guy like Shad. That was the consistent message detectives heard early on from friends, from family, and from people who came into the station. Shad was an aspiring rapper who, according to most, wasn't in a gang. Many described him as straight-laced, even a little nerdy. And listen, some of his friends had connections to local crews. But at that point, the only person telling people Shad was in a gang was Maciel, who said that he was part of Ceebleauk. And while detectives thought Shad leaned into that image, maybe as part of his rap persona, they couldn't find any evidence that he was actually a member of anything.

Even though he would associate with people that had alleged gang affiliations, he wasn't part of that. As far as having a long criminal pedigree, it wasn't there. And he was more focused by the people closest that he called friends. He was into his music, his daughter and his music. That there's the order right there.

We felt like we got to know him a little bit. I think he was getting that reputation from the people that he was friends with. I think he was a young man that was trying to find his way in life, that's He'd been taking GED classes at the Institute for the Study and Practice of Nonviolence, a providence-based nonprofit.

Based on everything they pieced together, it seems like that is where Shad was last seen, leaving the institute, which is less than three miles from the cemetery. Shad's friends had been hearing that he left shortly afternoon on Wednesday, March 20th. That's the day that his body was found. And when he left, apparently he wasn't alone. One of Shad's close friends, a guy named Tony, had told them that Shad left the institute with a 30-year-old man named Ruben Ortiz. That's Maciel's uncle. Now, according to Shad's friends, Ruben acted as the mediator between the two exes, helping arrange visits with Baby Milan. And apparently, they really did need a mediator because things were tense between Shad and Maciel. Had been for a while. And it seemed that things had only gotten worse as time went on. Shad and Maciel met in Rhode Island and eventually spent a little time living with Shad's mother in Pennsylvania. But once Maciel found out that she was pregnant, they moved back to Providence to live with her mom. Shad's cousin, Dee Conway, told us that there were concerns about the young couple's relationship, which only deepened once there was a baby in the picture.

I think we were all happy, but his mom, mother's instinct, I think she was like, This is going to lead to some... I'm happy I'm having my first grandchild, but she was foreseeing trouble in the future. I feel like a lot of friction came into the relationship when she did get pregnant.

Maciel's let them stay in her home and helped Shad get a job, but it didn't last, which frustrated Maciel's family. They didn't think that he was stepping up in what was about to be a huge responsibility. Add to that, Shad's loved ones say that there was another layer that Maciel's relatives who were Dominican didn't want her dating a Black man.

They were very hyper-religious and stuff like that, too. So it was like having a baby out of wedlock and all this stuff. I think her family frowned upon the situation, which probably made her feel away about it. And then that presented itself in the relationship as other problems.

Shad was kicked out of the family house before Milan was born, and the rift only grew. He wouldn't go back to Pennsylvania since he wanted to stay close to his daughter, but that didn't mean that he got to see her. A few months before his death, Shad showed up hoping to take Milan for a visit, and it turned into an argument with Ruben and Maciel's family which police had to come and break up. But a more recent incident, one just two days before he was killed, is what really caught Detective's attention. On Monday, March 18th, Shad gathered some friends and family to go see Milan, including then 13-year-old D.

It was supposed to be the one chance for everybody from his side to meet the baby all at once.

Shad was late getting there, and by the time they showed up at Masiel's apartment, which she shared with Milan and her family, no one was home, and Shad was upset. Now, he found out that Maciel was working that day at her family's restaurant, Lagran Parada, so he went there to confront her. Maciel threatened to call the cops when he got there, but instead, she called her mom, who contacted Ruben. And when Ruben showed up, things just escalated.

When he's talking to him, he's like, Yeah, what are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here. Why would you come to her job? Just berating him, hands in the face, mushed his head off his head. Growing up, I looked up to him, can't do no wrong. So I'm looking at my sister like, Did he just do that? And he just let him do that? Chad's not going to do anything. He's not going to punch him.

Chad didn't fight back. He didn't want to risk losing the chance to see his daughter.

Chad was just quiet. When he pushed the hat off his head, he didn't even flinch. He just stood there, let him say what he was saying. And then he was just like, I just came here to see my baby. He just kept saying that.

Then suddenly, Ruben switched gears.

He's like, All right, you know what? I'll take you to go see her. I'll take you guys to go see the baby. I'm going to get in the car with you guys, and I'll tell you guys where to go to go see the baby.

After what they just witnessed, Dee didn't want to go anywhere with Ruben, but they split up in two cars anyway. Shad with his buddies, Ruben with some more of Shad's friends and cousins, and they headed to Maciel's aunts where Milan was. Dee remembers how agitated Ruben was during that car ride.

That's when the monolog started. He's just basically telling us about all the stuff that he did for Shad. He's like, Yeah, your cousin fucked up for the last time. He fucked up for the last time. And he just kept saying that.

Ruben seemed to assume that Shad's cousins were just visiting from Philadelphia and that Shad didn't have people nearby. And in the middle of this rant, he started bragging about his alleged criminal history, things that he'd supposedly gotten away with in the past. This tense ride finally came to an end at Masiel's aunt's house, but the mood did not shift. They weren't allowed inside, so Shad's friends and family passed the baby around outside. Shad wasn't even allowed to do that, though. He waited down the street until the visit was over.

That's when we found out that that's what the rule was set by Marcia's mother, that he's not allowed to see the baby.

On the drive home, Shad was quiet, defeated. It was the last time that Dee saw him, and And on Friday, she learned that he was dead. And at first, she couldn't believe it.

Because to me, he was invincible. How does he... He can't die. Grande cannot die.

Do you know who that is?

That is Grande. He cannot die. There's no way he's dead. I was very much in shock, and it wasn't until his siblings and his mom got down there that it became real for me because I'm like, okay, they wouldn't be here if it wasn't something serious. They're actually here.

And of course, her mind went straight to that confrontation.

Me and my sister, we just kept replaying that. When the family came down and everything happened, we were like, he said for the last time. And that was what we highlighted to the police. He said for the last time.

Finding out Ruben was the last person seen with Shad, then hearing this story from family intrigued detectives. And every time they dug in, they found more to make them suspicious. Remember Shad's friend Tony, who first told everyone about seeing Shad leave in Ruben's car. Police even found a text Tony sent saying exactly that. But when they interviewed him, Tony all of a sudden denied it until they confronted him with the text message. And he wouldn't say why he lied, but I think it's possible he was scared. According to Shad's family, on Thursday morning, this is March 21st, before Shad was even identified, Ruben went to Tony's demanding to know why Tony was telling people that he had been the last one to see Shad. And Ruben wasn't exactly someone you would want pounding on your door. After all, he'd apparently bragged about crimes he committed. And his record included a 2007 felony assault conviction, reduced from the original charge of attempted first-degrees sexual assault after he played no contest.

He definitely had a history. I'm not quite sure how far it went and how far it was embellished as compared to what he's really been responsible for.

When detectives pulled security footage from the institute, there was Shad walking out at 12: 26 PM, getting into a waiting white car. They couldn't identify the driver, but they would bet it was Ruben behind the wheel, and it was the last confirmed sighting of Shad alive. Soon after that, his phone went dark. No calls, no text, nothing. And speaking of surveillance footage, police tried to verify Shad's family's account of that blow up at the restaurant on March 18th. But when they went to collect the surveillance video, staff at the restaurant said that the footage from that day, and only that day, was just gone, supposedly damaged or lost due to a system issue.

What are the chances?

The restaurant owner, Ruben's brother-in-law, ultimately loyered up. And that might mean that police couldn't talk to him, but that wasn't going to stop Shad's family from doing their own investigation. Early Saturday morning, March 23rd, his sister Julie and other relatives went to confront Maciel and her family.

I wasn't playing with them because I already knew. And I told her, I said, Your uncle killed my brother.

Straight up to her, Ruben showed up while they were there. Julie caught a glimpse inside his car, and she saw Shad's stuff in the back, including his distinctive pink TV. Now, Ruben told her Shad packed everything up because he'd been planning to head back to Pennsylvania, and he was supposed to give Shad a ride there, but his schedule changed, so he just never did. But Julie wasn't buying that. If that was true, she would have known.

He was not coming back to Pennsylvania because he was trying to get comfy at his daughter.

Julie took her brother's things from Ruben's car. She didn't know why they were in there, but she definitely wasn't going to let them keep his stuff. Later, she'd been sorting through it all, looking for something. She didn't really know what, but she did know it when she found it. There was this business card for a life insurance company. Now, she passed this on to detectives, and they ran down this strange path. They found out that Shad, a young man with no steady job, no stable address, and no real track record of financially supporting his daughter, had an active policy on his life at the time that he died for 250,000 dollars. The policy named Masiel as the sole beneficiary of the payout, and Shad listed her as his intended spouse, which really didn't make sense since he'd gotten the policy in late November, less than four months before his death and months after Shad and Masiel broke up. And guess who helped arrange all of this? Ruben. Police records show that he was the one who set up the meeting between Shad and the insurance agent, of all places at the gym where Ruben had trained for years in boxing and MMA.

And by the way, since Shad didn't have any money, Ruben even paid some of the $18. 63 monthly premiums himself. When Julie found out about this, it refrained everything for her. She'd long felt that Maciel's family didn't like Shad because he was Black, but she didn't think they would kill him over that. Money, though, that was different. Now, detectives had already talked to Ruben the day before finding this out. He'd shown up at Maciel's on Friday while they were interviewing her and her mom, and he hadn't breathed a word about life insurance, although he was happy to discuss other things. He confirmed seeing Shad at the institute Wednesday around noon, less than 11 hours before his body turned up. Ruben said that he'd been driving a rented Nissan Maxima, which police later learned was white, and he'd been driving it because his SUV was in the shop after an accident. But he insisted that Shad never got in that car, that they just stood outside and talked, arranging for Shad to visit Milan that night. Ruben said that he went to Maciel's around 07: 00 PM. He waited for a couple of hours, and when Shad never showed up, he said he left.

He needed to go home to East Providence. And that was all a fine story on Friday. But by late Saturday, police had way more info, and they wanted to talk to again. So on Sunday, March 24th, detectives went to Ruben's place. And guess what they saw when they pulled up to his house? Two white cars sitting in the driveway. The Nissan Maxima he told them about, and a 2012 Toyota Corolla, just like the one witnesses had described. Ruben's story on Friday was that he'd been driving a rental Nissan Maxima because his SUV was out of commission after an accident, right? Well, part of that is true. You know, two truths and a lie. This is two lies and a truth. The truth is that his SUV had been in an accident, but the accident happened in early March, weeks before Shad's murder. First lie, he didn't rent a car right after the crash. He rented one on March 20th, the day Shad was killed. Lie number two, the rental wasn't the white Nissan maxima. That was his fiancé's car. The vehicle he rented that day was a white 2012 Toyota Corolla. Now, Ruben gave detectives permission to search the car, even agreed to come in for an interview with Detective Cardone.

Appreciate coming in.

But when Ruben got to the station, he changed his mind.

I thought I was coming here to be asked questions in regards to everything else that's been going on. I don't know. But here's the thing. If this is something that I can advise you off, I'll read everyone. You can read it. I know the rights.. It's just a formality, okay? I'd rather do all this for my lot of present, if you don't mind. No, that's completely your. I'd rather be looked at as a suspect for his men. I have nothing to do with it.

With Ruben Stonewalling, detectives turned back to someone else who might help connect the dots, Maciel. But when she sat down with them on March 29th, she denied knowing anything about what happened to Shad or who'd want to hurt him. She said they hadn't talked in months, not until he showed up at the restaurant that Monday before his murder. She said any issue her family had with Shad was about his lifestyle, not his skin color. And she explained that she'd been keeping him at arm's length because of his gang ties. It made him a target. She said that Ruben had even told her Shad was shot at recently, and she didn't want her daughter near that. Still, she wasn't concerned when Ruben and his family stopped by around 7: 00 PM on March 20th with news that Shad wanted to see the baby. She said that Ruben texted Shad, but when he didn't hear back, after a couple of hours, he went home. And what struck detectives was how selective Marciel's knowledge seemed to be. She had all the neutral logistics down cold, but anything substantive, especially if it reflected badly on her family, suddenly she didn't know, didn't see, never thought to ask.

I mean, take March 18th. Maciel could tell them exactly how long her mom waited for Shad to arrive before she left with the baby. She knew that Ruben arranged that group visit at her aunt's house, even that he caught a ride there with Shad's friends. But the confrontation between Ruben and Shad outside the restaurant? No idea. That Shad had to wait down the street while everyone else saw his daughter? News to her. Same thing for March 20th. She knew that Ruben met Shad outside the Nonviolence Institute, that Shad didn't get in Ruben's car, and that Shad was waiting on a ride when Ruben left. But what plan they made for him to see the baby? Big question mark. Detective Lindsay and Cardone pressed her on it.

Well, the What was the conclusion of that meeting? Uncle Ruben had to share them. What terms did they come to as far as this arrangement? I don't know. I just know that he showed up in my house that night and he said, Oh, I talked to Shad earlier. He said that if he could That's something I'm going to talk to you guys about seeing the baby. No times? Huh? You had no time set that Chad agreed to? No, I guess we just- No days that Chad agreed to? Okay, so when was the conclusion of the meeting? I don't know what they talked about, honestly. I'll ask you. Okay, but who said- All he told me was that he met with him for that purpose, but he didn't- Visiting the child? Yes. Okay. You're the child His mother? Yes. Okay, so what was the result of the meeting? He had to have told you it was your child. He just said that he talked to him about that, and then he just, you know what I'm saying? I know, but what was the outcome? Did he stand up for it? I don't know what Chad said.

Then there was the life insurance. Maciel told them that Chad didn't have any. But four days earlier, on March 25th, the agent who sold Chad that policy notified the company of his debt. So someone obviously told him, meaning either Maciel was lying or another person did the honors and didn't bother to mention it. Maciel's memory might have been selective, but records aren't. Detectives pulled phone data and bank statements. They confirmed Ruben paid some of Shad's monthly life insurance premiums and that cell tower data placed Ruben near the Nonviolence Institute around when Shad got into that white car, a car they believe Ruben was driving. But even with all of this circumstantial evidence mounting over the next few months, they just couldn't prove anything. They needed someone to come forward and confirm some of their suspicions. And two months after the murder, someone did, and it was the last person they ever expected. In early May, Ruben came in for an interview, this time with his lawyer. And by then, his story had changed a lot. I mean, he still denied any involvement with Shad's murder. But you know, now that he thought about it, yeah, he did pick up Shad at the institute that day, driving the white rented Toyota.

He said they had started hashing out visitation stuff the day before, and this was just a quick follow-up. They cruised around for a couple of minutes, agreed that Shad would go to Maciel's that night to see the baby, and then Ruben dropped him off a block away from the institute in front of a library. Ruben said that Maciel knew about the visit and agreed to the time, contradicting what she had already told police. And Ruben stuck to the part where he waited at Maciel's for a couple of hours. But now he added that when Shad never showed, he took his family home to East Providence, then drove nearly 30 miles Southeast to his brother's place in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where he spent the night. Ruben had plenty to say about his relationship with Shad. He said he tried to help him, but he didn't approve of Shad's choices, selling marijuana, maybe even cocaine, and getting caught up in gang violence, including an alleged recent incident where he was in a car that got sprayed with bullets.

I just think he was trying to put insulation, trying to cast shade on Shad, trying to make him look like where it just wasn't there.

As for the insurance policy, Ruben said that it was Shad's idea. All he did was connect him with agents and kick in some cash to get the policy going. Ruben claimed that Shad wanted Milan provided for and maybe also wanted to get back in Maciel's good graces, which doesn't really track considering she told police she didn't even know about it.

He tried to betray himself as like, he was in the best interests of Shad. I did this for him. I did that. Opened a bank and account for him. I got the life insurance. He almost present him something like a father figure to him. There was more animosity between the two than him being a father figure.

Nothing Ruben told them checked out. Detectives pulled video from the library for the window of time when Ruben said that he dropped Shad off. Shad wasn't on the footage.

At minimum, being devil's advocate, which I don't like to do, you would see him get out of a car at some point or be seeing him walking.

Next, they drove to New Bedford to talk to Reuben's brother. And at first he was cordial. But when they asked if any of his Rhode Island relatives visited him around that time, his demeanor shifted. He said no. Then he got nervous and agitated, but it didn't really matter because because Ruben's own cell data told a different story.

We had the route basically everywhere he went that day, mapped out for us.

Spoiler alert. He wasn't in Massachusetts. Cell records put him in the Cranston, Providence area that night. Detectives also learned that Ruben texted a friend at 10: 32 PM asking him to open up because Ruben was outside his house. That friend's house is less than a mile from Pacaset Cemetery, and 10: 32 PM is just minutes before the fire was set. The friend told investigators that he was asleep and never saw Ruben. But either way, Ruben wasn't where he said he was. To zoom out, look at what detectives were sitting on. Ruben had lied to police from the start. Days before Shad was killed, Ruben got physical with him, then told a car full of people that Shad effed up for the last time. The restaurant surveillance footage from that day was mysteriously gone. Shad's brand new quarter million dollar life insurance policy was arranged by Ruben, paid for, at least in part by Ruben, with Ruben's as the sole beneficiary. Plus...

I mean, you have him getting into a car with a guy he had a disturbance with two days earlier. As soon as he gets in my car, his phone goes dead. You have him on video getting into a white, compact car. You have a way compact car at the bottom of the cemetery when the body's burning in the background on the brush at the time. And you have an eyewitness saying it was a way to a carola. We find a way to the carola at his house. And then we have him saying, I dropped them off at the library on the corner, but yet there's no activity on this kid's phone right after we even picked him up.

Then there's Ruben's alibi that he was out of state, disputed by his own cell records. Detective Objectives also found out that before the public even knew he was dead, Ruben asked a friend of Shad's if she thought Shad was involved with the murder in the graveyard. At the time, it was a strange question, but in hindsight, it is downright chilling. So how much more do you need, right? Well, according to prosecutors from the Rhode Island attorney general's office, more.

They said it's not there. It's close, pretty close, but it's not there.

Presumably, they wanted a confession. Wouldn't that be nice? Or an eyewitness to the killing, or some physical evidence before moving forward with prosecution. Obviously, we know the fire destroyed most of the physical evidence that would have been on Shad's body. But our reporter, Nina, asked detectives if they ever were able to get anything from the white Toyota.

I know they went through the trunk. They vacuumed the trunk out several times, different parts of the car, and barely nothing was revealed from it.

We just didn't understand, why are you not arresting him? And my mom could not understand it.

It's difficult because you're trying to explain McClane, you can't jump the gun. You have to do it a certain way. But there's so much passion and so much emotion. He was loved. And just to see that in the mom's face, it's, I don't know. It's tough.

It's tough for me to understand, and I'm not even related to Shad. Yes, this case is circumstantial, but a lot of cases are. So I wanted to hear from the horse's mouth, the AG's office. What exactly should we tell our audience that police need to bring this to prosecution? So we reached out to the AG's office multiple times for clarity. But after an initial acknowledgement, we never heard back, which should be incredibly disappointing to hear for the people of Rhode Island paying the bills or anyone in Rhode Island who expects answers when a loved one is killed. Julie says that their mom never recovered from the loss her son.

She just wasn't the same. She just didn't know how to handle it, and she was just too sad.

She fought for years to try and keep the life insurance money from paying out to Marcial. She wanted it to go into a trust for Milan. And police did what they could to help. I mean, based on the state's Slayer statue, if Maciel was found responsible for Shad's death, she wouldn't be entitled to a dime. And investigators told the insurance company that Maciel and family members were persons of interest.

We were in touch with the insurance company and their investigators, and they tried to hold off as long as they could because we did tell them our concerns.

Caught between a valid policy on paper error, messy facts, and competing claims, the company asked a federal court to decide who, if anyone, should get the money. And this case dragged on for years. But Chad's mom stopped contesting. And eventually the policy paid out to Maciel. Now, Maciel has always denied having anything to do with Shad's murder. Shad's loved ones, including Dee, also seem to believe that.

From the beginning, I always thought that Massey was innocent in it to where she didn't know.

But they do think that she learned more after he was killed. We tried to ask Maciel about it. According to her handyman, she was home when our reporter Nina knocked on her door, but she never came out or responded to the note we left. Whatever she did or didn't know at any point, she didn't let Shad's family see Milan, and that was the next loss that they suffered. And then in 2019, they were hit again when one of Shad's brothers died of a heart attack, and the next year, so did their mom. Investigators have kept trying to get the magical missing piece prosecutors are looking for. In In 2021, they got a search warrant for Google geo-fenced data, hoping that they could pull location history from any device near the cemetery when the fire started.

They came back with absolutely no records at all.

Detectives think that the missing piece might be witnesses out there, people who could break this case wide open if they were willing to talk.

The street knows exactly how this went down, but the street's not talking. The people that would know, that would say whatever, that do know the particulars, don't want to end up as a brush fire. So that's a real weight on their shoulders where they may have been close and maybe cared for them, but that's a real realistic threat.

That fear made sense back then, but detectives think the danger has fated. And Detective Lindsay says that the AG's office could help protect anyone who wants to talk.

They could set something up for Somebody who's been wanting to come forward that's afraid, but I don't think there's any reason to be afraid, to be honest with you.

There's still a lot that detectives don't know. They never determined what cord was used to strangle him, although there is speculation among his family that it was Shad's own headphones. Julian D said that he never went anywhere without them, and it doesn't appear that they were ever recovered. And they're still not sure where he was killed. I mean, there's no noticeable damage inside the Toyota or in Ruben's fiancé's Nissan, which police also searched. And investigators say that they would expect to see some sign of a violent struggle if it happened there. Do you think he was killed in a car?

It's tough to say. It's tough to say if it was that or another location close by. I can't see it for what it's worth based on past cases. When you're fighting for your life, that's a different level. And he was a good-sized kid. He was a young kid.

Ruben's digital trail gave them a solid picture of his movements that day. So if they ever pinned down a specific potential murder site, they can compare it. What detectives feel more confident about is that Shad was likely killed soon after he left the institute, that it was probably planned, and more than one person was involved. Shad wasn't someone that you could easily overpower, and strangulation takes time. For one person to manage that alone while he fought back, it's hard to imagine, but exactly how that day unfolded remains a mystery. Rumors have tried to fill in the gaps. Shad's family heard one about a video showing him being tortured in a trunk, but police don't seem to know anything about that. Throughout our reporting, we have tried to make contact with Ruben, but he's been hard to find. Records list him under multiple spellings of his first name. He used at least three different last names, sometimes in combination, plus two different birthdates and social security numbers. On top of that, he's got connections to at least four states and two countries, the US and Dominican Republic, all of which makes it hard to follow his criminal history.

But records and news coverage show that since Shad's death, Ruben played no contest to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge, and he's been arrested on accusations of extortion and impersonating a police officer. Those last two charges still appear to be open, though, like everything else with Ruben, it's confusing as hell. We tried phone numbers, certified letters, everything we could think of, but we weren't able to reach him. And I don't think detectives have been in contact with him since their interview. For Shad's family, the passage of time hasn't made any of this easier.

I want people to think about if it was them or their family. They want somebody to say something because it's never I'm not going to go away. I'm never going to get my brother back. But I just don't think that it's okay to just kill somebody and just move on. Even though it's been a long time, we're still hurt. And this is something that we're still thinking about every day. Every day in my life, I had to think about that.

Milan is a teenager now. One of Shad's brothers managed to reestablish contact, and some of his relatives do get to see her occasionally. But no one mentioned Shad. Dee says it's basically like an unspoken rule.

We don't want to overstep any boundaries and then lose the access to her that we've been trying to get for all these years.

As for investigators, they have a message for whoever is staying silent and whoever is responsible.

I don't know how anybody could live with themselves. We just need somebody to look up forward just to get us over that hop. And I think it could be on Ruben's side of the equation. Somebody closer to them and that know something. It's still being looked at, and we're still optimistic it'll be solved. So don't sleep easy, I would say.

If you have any information about the murder of Shad Ghanday Kadeya, Cranston police want to hear from you. You can reach them at 401-942-2211 or submit a tip anonymously by texting the keyword Cranston PD and your tip to 847-411. The Deck is an audio Chuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis. To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast. Com. I'm. I think Chuck would approve.