The body of a missing Texas woman, Shana DiMambro was possibly discovered by a search party last week. Shanna had been missing for a week and a half.
Her husband, Chris Antos, reported her missing to the police on Tuesday, 19th of July. He then gave an interview to local TV, which you can watch here:
What can we learn when we analyse his statement?
Let’s break it down
Interviewer: So, walk me through what happened last Tuesday.
Antos: So, when I left I noticed, erm, you know, we had… I noticed some sadness the night before with Shana and then eh Tuesday morning the kind of the same thing but we kind of got up..eh.. pretty much a normal morning. We woke up, we started moving around. She asked me what time it was, I told her 6.20. She got up she made coffee. She uh.. she asked me if I wanted iced coffee and I said no, just regular coffee will be fine.
The interviewer asks Chris “what happened”, this is a nice open-ended question which allows Chris to show what he considers happened and crucially when it happened.
Chris begins his answers with “when I left” but quickly goes back to the previous evening. So in Chris’ view what happened appears to have started on the Monday night before Shanna was reported missing. Why is this?
Given the story Chris is telling, I would expect him to answer “what happened?” by talking about the most significant thing that happened, which is coming home and finding his wife is missing.
And the first thing he mentions is the “sadness” he noticed. So, In Antos’ words, whatever happened started with the sadness the previous evening. Explicitly, he is asked “what happened?” and he says it revolves around the sadness, and it started the previous evening.
He says it was “pretty much a normal morning” Two observations on this. People who are trying to hide something will often say how normal things were. That could be the case here. However, he does only say it was “pretty much” a normal morning, which means something wasn’t normal.
Back to the question again, and he is asked what happened. At the time, his wife is missing. So, why does he feel the need to tell us about the time they got up, that they were “moving around” and the coffee options? Why does he feel the need to tell us his wife was moving in the morning?
In his story his wife gets up twice “we woke up, started moving around” and “she got up and made coffee”
Antos: And then eh.. I just walking out the door to go to work and I just asked her if she would do laundry that morning and I walked out the door and noticed, you know, a look of sadness in her eyes, you know, and then I went to work.
This section features the first mention of laundry, he will mention this more times.
I’m interested in the description, “I walked out the door and noticed… a look of sadness in her eyes”.
Firstly, he has already mentioned he had seen sadness in her eyes twice previously. So, why is he only “noticing” it as he walks out the door. I’d expect him to say “it was still there” or “the sadness in her eyes hadn’t gone”.
The interview continues and Antos then mentions his work and the fact Shanna does not work.
Time to kill
Interviewer: OK, so she’ll typically stay here?
Antos: Yeah, she's stays here. You know she likes it. She goes back and forth from the laundromat to here and that's usually about, you know, the most she gets out during the day, you know, whether you know..
Interviewer: How far is the laundromat?
Antos: eh… 100 yards
Another mention for the laundry and how much time she spends on laundry. It’s important for him to get this across to us. Why?
Interviewer: And then when did you realise that she wasn’t here?
Antos: Eh.. I came back, I had a job down the road that had an install crew working on installing an air conditioner, and then I had another sales call at 12.. or at two o'clock in New Braunfels. So, I had some time in between, so I came by here just to check on her and just because I had time to kill.
Antos is asked when he realised his wife wasn’t at home, and he gives us his schedule for the day and his job description instead. He doesn’t directly answer the question and goes for some story telling here to let us know why he discovered her missing at the time he did.
And using “I had time to kill” when his wife is missing, potentially dead. I didn’t like that.
The search
Interviewer: And then when you arrived home…
Antos: She was not here.
Interviewer: And what did you do next?
Antos: I looked around, obviously. And then I said, well, she's not in here.
Logically, this doesn’t follow. He has already said he had concluded she is not at home by saying “she was not there” and then once he’s decided she’s not there he looks around. And then, again, he concludes that she’s not there.
Antos: Everything was normal, her cigarettes were outside, cup ‘o water was outside full. So I said well, maybe she's doing laundry and I went to the l… first I went to the bedroom, she weren’t in bed. So I went… I looked around I was like well laundry baskets are still here, but I still went to the laundry room and looked around up there, came back here and was like, this isn't normal.
Chris is now doing “and…so” he’s selling us a story, he's telling us why he did things as much as he’s telling us what he did. It jumps in time, he was going to tell us he went to the laundry but goes back to searching the bedroom.
And more mentions for the laundry.
Antos: You know, I was like it's not normal. Just… it isn't. So I hung around for a few minutes, and then I got in my truck and I drove to the Biggs station which is if you pull out here and take a ride on 46. There's a shopping centre there.
So I drove through there just to see, you know, if she was just wandering around, didn't see anything came back here and I was like, okay, things aren't right. I gotta call the cops. So I called the cops, and then I called her father and started the process.
Chris continues his “and..so” story selling here. He doesn’t explain why he went to the shopping centre, what good he thought that would do, and I’d suggest that he’s concealing the real reason for his trip there. He says he went there “just to see”, the word “just” is often used as a concealer. Chris wasn’t going there “just to see.. if she was wandering around”, he had some other reason to go there.
Conclusion
There are numerous indicators of deception here. The main points of importance I pick up are
- When asked “what happened?”, he starts with the Monday night
- His descriptions of the Tuesday morning and his search for Shanna are full of deception
- He mentions “the sadness in her eyes” and “laundry” too many times for them to be insignificant
Based on his words, I believe:
Something happened between Chris and Shanna on the Monday night
Shanna was not present on the Tuesday morning
Chris would like us to believe that Shanna was suicidal
Further, if something happened that involved Chris having to wash some clothes or bedding in a hurry, it would not surprise me.
There is more of concern in this interview which I’ve written about here.
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What do you spot? Let me know, in the comments below. And are there any words I should talk a look at? Feel free to suggest some.
I'm not even paying much attention to his words. The audio could be off and I could watch the video and tell he was ONE lying kook. Look at ALL the unnecessary arm and hand gestures. If I was really a listener, then all his unnecessary extra descriptions, and being OVERLY DETAILED of his and her actions during that morning is a BIG TELL-TALE SIGN of someone trying TOO hard because of a guilty conscience.. Like they say, let a rambling liar have the "floor" and they will hang their own self. To me, I think that's what he did in that interview...and then, when they found her body, he doesn't wanna talk to anybody. Ummm....yep, something is definitely fishy with him. Seems to me, by now, these peeps who murder their spouses and close fam members, SHOULD KNOW that the NERVOUS UNNECESSARY EXTRA PHYSICAL GESTURES SCREAM YOU'RE A LYING POS!! Now, maybe by a small percent chance, I'm wrong...I will then apologize to him....but I doubt I will have to. Poor lady.
He doesn't mention why she was sad, or go into any detail other than abruptly she was sad Monday evening and Tuesday morning, so therefore, she's gone? Also, he answered the question that he realized she was missing when he "came back". Then proceeds to backtrack so that he can go into detail about his alibi. Kinda odd the way he talks about calling the cops, and then calling her dad after, and starting the process... wouldn't the process start when the cops were called?