Kriti Mehrotra
When a young woman was found heinously murdered in Oakland Park in southwest Atlanta, Georgia, in the early hours of May 31, 2016, it left the entire city perplexed. That’s because 19-year-old Bridget Alley Shiel seemed to have no known enemies or affiliations with the wrong sort of crowd, so no one could have ever even imagined that she’d be murdered. Investigation Discovery’s ‘Lethally Blonde: To Live and Die in Hotlanta’ covers this case in detail, shining a light upon precisely what transpired and how her perpetrator was ultimately apprehended.
Bridget Shiel Was Shot Multiple Times in the Back
Born on April 30, 1997, in Norfolk, Virginia, to Angela Shiel as the apple of her eye, Bridget Shiel reportedly knew the significance of kindness, money, and perseverance at an early age. Therefore, by the time she had graduated high school and was living in Atlanta, Georgia, she knew she wanted to pursue her dreams of making a name for herself in the entertainment industry. She thus began working as a dancer in rap music videos and dabbling in hairstyling and sex work to make ends meet, all the while focusing on growing as a full-time professional model and actor.
The 19-year-old was excited for her future, unaware that everything would be pulled from right underneath her feet in the early morning hours of May 31, 2016. According to records, Bridget had left home on the evening of May 30 to go to the store and pick up some small items before heading to meet her friends for a night out. However, she never makes it back home alive. It is 6:50 am on May 31 when she is found naked, lying in a pool of her own blood in Oakland Park. Her autopsy report later ascertained her cause of death to be from 7 radically invasive bullets to her back. They were deemed “radically invasive” by authorities because they were designed by the manufacturer in such a way that they expanded inside their target.
The Initial Investigations Into Bridget Shiel’s Murder Led Nowhere
Although investigators did not waste a single moment to start looking into Bridget’s case as a homicide, they initially did not have much concrete information to go on. According to her loved ones, she had no known enemies, and they had no idea who would have wanted to harm her in such a way, so officials had no real leads. That’s when their backtracking of her steps and witness statements revealed that she was last seen at a gas station in DeKalb County near Rockbridge Road and Memorial Drive. However, she herself was found in Oakland Park, whereas her vehicle was discovered in the 4900 block of Redan Road the next day.
As per surveillance footage, Bridget was hanging out in her car in the parking lot, and a witness later came forward to claim she was not alone. She alleged the 19-year-old was accompanied by 2 men in her car, was not behind the wheel, and looked “extremely nervous.” Neither she nor the 2 men ever got out of the car, but the video did capture a woman going into the store and buying a Sprite. That’s significant because a bottle of Sprite was also found near a fence not far from where her car was found abandoned.
There were 2 different DNAs in the bottle, and while one matched Bridget, the other remained unidentified. Nevertheless, the surveillance and witness statements enabled officials to establish a timeline for her murder. Bridget’s vehicle drove around the area after leaving the gas station later in the evening of May 30, and it was next seen heading to Oakland Park just after midnight. It was mere minutes later that a 911 call came in to report several gunshots in the park, but investigators did not find anything in the dark.
DNA Evidence Helped Bring Bridget Shiel’s Killer to Justice
It was in 2018 that a conviction in an unrelated matter broke the case of Bridget Shiel’s homicide wide open. According to records, it was less than 5 months after the 19-year-old’s murder that Sylvia Watson and Samuel White were shot execution-style inside their home on Tree Mountain Parkway in Stone Mountain after a robbery. On October 24, 2016, they were forced to drive to multiple ATMS and withdraw money before they were led back to the home they once happily shared and killed. Around November, their killers are arrested.
Vernon “Veto Corleone” Beamon and Christopher “Crisco” Spencer, alleged members of the Rollin’ 20s street gang, are arrested and charged in connection with the October double homicide. Less than 2 years later, in March 2018, Crisco, alongside 8 other alleged gang members, was additionally indicted for the October 22, 2016, murder of an 11-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy in their Jonesboro home during a robbery. The charges against Crisco for this were 6 counts of felony murder, 2 counts of malice murder, 5 counts of aggravated assault, 5 counts of cruelty to children in the first degree, 1 count of home invasion, and 16 counts of gang activity.
Christopher “Crisco” Spencer is Currently Serving 5 Life Terms in Prison
It was when Crisco was convicted of the October 24, 2016, double homicide of the Stone Mountain couple and processed into Macon State Prison that his DNA was submitted to the national database. Almost as soon as that happened, officials got a breakthrough in Bridget’s case as his DNA came to be a match to the evidence found on her remains on the Sprite bottle. As a result, on May 30, 2018, exactly 2 years after Bridget went missing, Crisco was arrested in connection with her murder. He denied being involved in the crime or ever even seeing her, and sadly, the second alleged person in her car at the gas station has never been identified.
In the end, following an extensive trial in 2019, Crisco was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in connection with Bridget’s murder. By this point, he had already been convicted of the Stone Mountain and the Jonesboro double homicide, for which he had received two life terms in prison without the possibility of parole each. He has since appealed his several convictions, but to no avail. In other words, he is currently incarcerated at Macon State Prison, where he is expected to remain for the rest of his natural life.
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