When her parents realized she hadn’t shown up that Saturday, they figured she’d gotten busy. When she didn’t come on Sunday either, they started to feel uneasy. But it was when the call came from her roommate asking if Pamela was with them that real fear set in. Pamela Pittz was nineteen, friendly, and always on time for her job at the restaurant.
She loved her CB radio, where she went by the nickname Dark Angel. She had big plans to go to college and build a career in the beauty industry. But on September 14th, 1988, she visited her parents, talked about plans for the weekend, and promised to bring laundry over to wash. She never came.
Her roommate, Shelley, told her father that Pamela had gone out Friday night to a party in the woods on the edge of town and never came back. Her car was still parked out front. Her purse and driver’s license were still in her room. She hadn’t called her job, hadn’t told anyone where she was going.
That wasn’t like her at all. Police questioned her friends from the party. They said Pamela wandered off into the woods for a few minutes and never returned. They assumed she’d just gone home.
Thirteen days later, a couple walking through the woods saw something sticking out of a pile of trash near a roadside dump. It was a body—badly burned, unidentifiable. The only thing that had survived the fire was a metal bracelet on the victim’s wrist, engraved with the words “Dark Angel. ”
Dental records confirmed it: Pamela Pittz had been murdered, and her body had been set on fire.
The medical examiner couldn’t determine the exact cause of death because of the burning, but it was clear she had been killed before she was burned. And the way the body had been hidden and later dumped made police believe more than one person was involved. The first suspect was Pamela’s boyfriend, Bobby. He said he’d left the party early for his night shift.
His alibi checked out, so he was cleared. Next came her roommates. The first one, Jeremy, was at a football game and then out with friends. His story held up.
But then there was Shelley. She told police she’d finished work late, met up with her boyfriend Raymond, and gotten back to his house after 3:00 a. m. She said she couldn’t sleep, so she drove around the city until 7 in the morning.
Raymond told a different story. He said they got home around 11:30 p. m. , not 3:00 a.
m. When detectives pointed that out, he said it had been over two weeks and he just didn’t remember the exact time. He agreed to a polygraph and passed it, so for a while, they let it go. Then a friend of Pamela’s came forward with something chilling.
A man had been bragging that he killed her. He claimed to be a Satanist and said he’d attacked her with an ice pick as part of a ritual. Police tracked him down, but there was no evidence linking him to the crime. Her body showed no ice pick wounds.
It sounded like he was making it up for attention. Another witness pointed to a girl named Melinda, who had a reputation for fighting. She and Pamela had argued at the party, and the witness said Melinda beat her up. Melinda denied even being at the party.
She claimed she was at a hotel with a local band, but no one could confirm it. Multiple witnesses said they saw her at the party. She was charged with perjury and arrested four months later, but released after ten months because there wasn’t enough evidence to charge her with murder. As soon as she was free, she left the state and never came back.
The case went cold. Then, in May 1991, a group of students exploring an abandoned mine near Prescott found something horrifying: a man’s body. He was wrapped inside the lining of a waterbed. It was Raymond Clerks—Shelley’s boyfriend.
He’d been shot in the head. His family had been trying to reach him for weeks, but Shelley told them he’d left town on business. That explanation fell apart when Raymond missed a close family member’s wedding. When police questioned Shelley about Raymond, she said she had no idea where he was.
But while officers were in her house, they noticed what looked like dried blood stains leading toward the garage. Inside, they found Shelley’s car. The smell of decomposition was overwhelming. The trunk was stained with blood—lab tests confirmed it was Raymond’s.
Under the front seat, they found a handgun. It was the exact caliber used to kill him. Tire tracks near the mine matched a pickup truck Shelley had borrowed from a friend just days before Raymond’s body was found. A flashlight recovered from the bottom of the mine had Shelley’s fingerprints all over it.
She still denied everything. For two years, she held her ground. Then, just before trial, she broke and confessed. She said Raymond had been training to be a commercial pilot.
After he got his license, he told her he was moving to California—and he wasn’t taking her. He wanted to break up, and he was taking their dogs with him. Shelley said they were lying on the roof of a car watching planes when he told her. Heartbroken and furious, she pulled out a gun and shot him in the head.
The detectives didn’t believe her version completely. The evidence suggested Raymond was shot in the house, kept in her trunk for nearly two weeks, then dumped. And they suspected she had help. She refused to name anyone.
Shelley was sentenced to twenty years in prison without parole. Pamela’s case went cold again. Raymond’s father offered a $10,000 reward for information about Pamela’s murder. Detectives offered immunity to anyone who had helped cover it up.
No one came forward. Twenty years passed. Shelley was released in 2011. She moved to a small town in Nevada, got a job as an accountant, married, and lived quietly.
Neighbors described her as kind and upbeat. But investigators still believed she had gotten away with murder. A new detective took over Pamela’s case and went back to square one. He found overlooked details.
Multiple people from that night recalled Shelley driving around town looking for Pamela, telling friends she was going to kill her. Others said Shelley bragged that the key to getting away with murder was making someone disappear for a few weeks, then burning the body or dumping it in a mine shaft. But it still wasn’t enough for court. So detectives requested every recorded phone call Shelley had made while in prison.
In one call, her father asked if she was worried about getting arrested once she got out. He was clearly talking about the night Pamela disappeared. Shelley paused, then admitted there was one big thing that could land her back in prison. She didn’t give details.
It was enough. In June 2017, at age fifty, Shelley was arrested again—this time for the murder of Pamela Pittz. The case was weak. The judge ruled the jury couldn’t be told that Shelley had been convicted of killing her boyfriend.
Many key witnesses had died or forgotten details. The medical examiner never determined Pamela’s exact cause of death. Shelley’s attorneys argued Pamela could have died from natural causes or an accident. After four years of preparation, prosecutors made a controversial decision.
They offered Shelley a plea deal: plead guilty to Pamela’s murder, and the time she’d already served for killing Raymond would count toward her sentence. She would walk out of the courtroom a free woman. Pamela’s parents didn’t like it, but they agreed. After decades of waiting, they just wanted the truth.
If the case went to trial, a jury might find her not guilty, and the case might never be solved. In March 2021, Shelley took the deal and finally told investigators what happened that night. Pamela and Shelley had been best friends, living together. Both worked, but they were barely getting by.
They brought in a third roommate to split the rent, but even that wasn’t enough. After a few months, Pamela told Shelley she was planning to move out and live with her family again. She couldn’t afford it anymore. That news hit Shelley hard.
She didn’t get along with her own parents and had no backup plan. Without Pamela, she couldn’t pay the rent. On the night Pamela vanished, Shelley found out Pamela had emptied their shared bank account. She panicked.
She lost it. She jumped in her car and drove around looking for Pamela, thinking that if she found her, she might just kill her. She found Pamela at a party in the woods. The two stepped away from the crowd to talk.
Shelley punched her. When Pamela fell, Shelley kept hitting her until she stopped breathing. People were only a few dozen feet away. So Shelley pretended they were goofing around.
Every time she heard footsteps nearby, she laughed and made fake conversation. She couldn’t handle the betrayal from the person she considered her closest friend. Pamela was leaving. She was taking all the money.
The anger, the hurt, the sense of being abandoned—it all exploded in that one moment. Her confession ended there. She wasn’t required to say anything more. She was released from court and returned to Nevada, back to her job, back to her husband.
Pamela’s case was officially closed. But detectives still believe she didn’t act alone. Someone helped her move the body out of the woods and burn it. Possibly Melinda, the woman who clashed with Pamela that night.
Without a confession, it’s nearly impossible to prove. And there’s still a question: did Pamela really empty the account, or did she just withdraw her own share? Detectives suspect Shelley twisted the truth about Pamela, just like she twisted the details about Raymond. Pamela’s parents agreed to the deal, but it left a bitter taste.
They would have preferred to see Shelley behind bars for life. Her father later told reporters, “This woman has been convicted of murder twice. If I were her husband, I’d sleep with one eye open.
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