NBC “Dateline”’s Josh Mankiewicz spotlighted the “legions of people” involved in the search for 22-year-old Lafayette resident Michaela “Mickey” Shunick on Tuesday night, delving into the rigorous investigation that would later see Brandon Scott Laverne face two accounts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Shunick and another woman in 1999.
“Dateline”’s account of the search for the missing University of Louisiana-Lafayette student depicted a twisting investigation involving multiple prime suspects, hoaxed tip-offs and countless helping hands.
Mickey disappeared in May after riding her bike home late at night. Her older sister Charlene Shunick would spearhead the search across Lafayette to find her younger sibling with little to no evidence as to her location.
“It was like wildfire — everyone got involved,” Mickey’s father, Tom Shunick told “Dateline.”
Charlene, who was known by her nickname, Charlie, enlisted anyone and everyone willing to scour the streets of Lafayette for any sign of Mickey. Charlie spent late nights giving interviews to local radio shows and spoke on local television as well to raise awareness.
“There was very little physical evidence that we had to follow,” one Lafayette detective told Mankiewicz.
The investigation began at the last place Mickey had been before her disappearance: the house of her friend, Brettly Wilson.
The investigation took a turn, however, when surveillance footage from the night of Mickey’s kidnapping unveiled a person who appeared to be Mickey riding along the road to the Shunicks’ house, removing Wilson from the running as a possible suspect and igniting a series of emboldened, yet ultimately fruitless, searches.
The first concrete lead for the Lafayette police to follow was surveillance footage of a white Chevrolet Z71 pickup truck following close behind Mickey the night of her disappearance.
The videos “proved that somebody we don’t know probably took her,” Charlie told Mankiewicz. “It was so shocking. Who does this happen to?”
Though the footage enlightened the investigation as to what had happened to Mickey, Lafayette detectives reported an approximation of more than 3,000 white pickup trucks in Lafayette and its surrounding parishes, limiting the scope of the search.
The first response, according to Charlie, was to tell all locals to keep an eye out for someone who is badly beaten up or showing signs of physical harm.
“If someone took her when she was conscious, they’re going to have broken ribs,” Charlie said in the special.
After weeks of following leads from phoned-in tip-offs — one of which proved to be a hoax — one report produced a suspect in Brandon Scott Laverne of Church Point, La., and the report was called in by Laverne’s prospective father-in-law.
Laverne was reported by his father-in-law to have gone to New Orleans the night of Mickey’s disappearance, returning later with stab wounds he blamed on a mugging at a gas station. According to detectives, the story didn’t add up.
Mankiewicz detailed the exhausting interrogation process that exposed Laverne’s secret life of brutality, sex crimes and addiction to prostitution to his girlfriend at the time.
A deal to remove the death penalty from the negotiation would eventually pry the truth of Mickey’s murder from Laverne, “Dateline” reported.
