Mr. Reed’s Introduction
In order to gain access to Mr. Paul Driver, Private Investigator; Driver & Associates, Boston, Mass. and conduct an interview, I had to guarantee a few things up front. Regardless of it being nearly thirty years since the incident Mr. Driver covers in this interview, I had to swear in writing, with a witness present—a lawyer of his choosing—that no further action involving any current living relatives would occur, that the case would remain closed, and no new charges be brought against any person(s) involved therein. Mr. Driver maintained that all things in this interview are true and that he would deny ever having done this interview should I break the terms of our agreement. Mr. Driver had one additional demand: That I ask no questions; Mr. Driver spoke and I listened.
I conducted this interview on August 5th, 2007, five months before Mr. Driver died of natural causes at Memorial Hospital in Melbourne, Florida. According to Mr. Driver, I am the only living person who holds this information. I have since honored our agreement and, until now, have remained silent.
These are the interview’s transcripts; they are Mr. Driver’s words entirely.
For those of you who’ve read about, researched, or just heard about the details surrounding Mr. Shannon Reed’s death, rest easy. This isn’t another morbid look into the grim findings. That said, his death woulda been ordinary, like, I mean no one woulda cared. However, since the authorities recovered Mr. Reed from four different geographic areas over the course of a long, hot Independence Day weekend in July of 1982, everyone decided to make it a big deal. You gotta bear with me though, I’m no writer, neither…I’m just tellin’ a story. I’m old now, age has taken its toll on my body, but I remember these things like it all happened yesterday. I can still picture the thick Bostonian accent of the Crime Scene Investigator from Essex…
“Finding a bahhdy is nevah great, finding pahts of a bahhdy is wahse, finding pahts of a bahhdy in sweltrahring heat is just ahhful. Nahh, finding pahts of a bahhdy that have been sittin in the heat of a fuckin sealed cah—that’s shit yah dahhn’t wish ahhn yahr wahst enemy.”
Yeah, sir, I met with the CSI just days after the police discovered Mr. Reed’s bowels and lower extremities in a maroon 1979 Ford Fiesta parked outside some off-market fashion store called Chadwick’s. Authorities found the rest of Mr. Reed in seemingly random areas throughout the greater Boston metropolitan area—all similar scenarios, except his head, which some poor homeless guy found sitting by a dumpster down near Boston Common.
But before I get ahead of myself, there is some preliminary information you need to know. I guess what I am tryin to say is I need to go to the very beginning, so that this whole things makes sense.
I remember it was an early afternoon in April of ’80. I could get the exact date if you let me look through my records, but I remember it was in the beginning of the month. I know that because I hadn’t filed my taxes yet, and of course I owed the government… Fucking nightmare living with the Jimmy Carter mess back then. Of course it isn’t much better now. Anyways, I met with a gentleman named Mr. Jonathan Levingston from a law firm called Rhineman and Levingston. Pretty normal stuff; nothing out of the ordinary about it. Most of our business came from lawyers looking for extra information to beef up their case against, or their defense of somebody somewhere. Believe me; I spent a lot of time looking through bank records trying to find hidden assets or links to anything unusual. Anything that I could give these lawyers to help win them a case. We can’t do illegal things, but let’s just say we got ways to find things out that the state people don’t do or can’t do.
So, going into this thing, I didn’t have any weird feelings or apprehensions. Nothing like that. Mr. Levingston was pretty clear about what he wanted me to do—even if he wasn’t clear about what he needed me to find.
“I need you to get to know this man.” Levingston said as he passed me a picture of who I’d learn was Mr. Shannon Reed, “Anything; everything you can find out—his routines, his family, his financial connections, his girlfriends, his illegitimate kids—how many illegitimate kids, where he vacations, who he goes to lunch with, is he a closet gay, whatever you can find. I want you to really get to know him.”
Mr. Levingston even went as far as to say, “I don’t even know what you’re looking for yet, but you’ll know it when you find it. You’re a P.I.; do your thing.”
The meeting was quick. Mr. Levingston gave me some more information on where to start, told me I would report to him monthly unless something extraordinary happened, and that the period of investigation, at that point, was indefinite. That was the first weird part. P.I.’s don’t come to you and say, “I have found all that there is, I am wasting your money. Please stop paying me…” We work until the money dries up, and that’s what I planned to do for Mr. Levingston.
I was working other cases; we always were. You had to be able to manage a bunch at once, and in my office, there were only two of us. If you wanted to bring home any money at all, you had to balance the work across as many clients as you possibly could while still doing good business—quality investigating, but you had to stretch ‘em out, these things—we’re capitalists right? But with Mr. Reed, I didn’t have to; the thing just kept going. Like I said, for two years nobody was pressuring me to tie anything up. The money didn’t dry up. It was always the same. “Keep on him,” Mr. Levingston’d say, and I’d keep on him. I followed the man; I learned the man. In many ways he was like family to me. Hell, I was with him more than my own, and my wife reminded me of this a thousand times. I’ll tell you, God rest her soul, she’d kill me if she found out that while she was alive I took her out a few times to joints where I knew Mr. Reed would be just so I could get some extra time watching him. I would sit so I could stare over my wife’s shoulder and see Mr. Reed’s table. Just watch him. Just keep an eye on him, ya know?
So that’s how it started. That’s how I came to know Mr. Shannon Reed, a man who to this day I consider one of the most genuinely good people I never actually met.
More.. https://heathwrites.wordpress.com/2015/02/03/mr-reed-in-the-end-part-i/
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