The Mur-der of the Short Family

On the morning of August 15th, 2002, the lifeless bodies of Michael and Mary Short were found in their home. Both had sustained a single gunshot wound to the head. Their killer had cut the phone lines leading to the Short house, indicating that the murders had been premeditated. Missing from the scene was the couple’s nine-year-old daughter, Jennifer.

Friends and family hoped that Jennifer had somehow managed to escape unharmed, but it soon became clear that she had been abducted by the same person responsible for the killing of her parents, suggesting that she was the true target of this attack.

Several weeks later, the skeletal remains of Jennifer would be discovered in a creek approximately 35 miles away from the family home in Oak Level, Virginia. She, too, had been shot in the head.

Decades later, a resolution to this case remains elusive.

Who murdered the Short family?

The Short Family

Michael Wayne Short was born on February 18th, 1952, to parents Billie and Annie. He and his first wife had three sons—Kenny, Tim, and M.J.

One of seven children, Mary Frances Hall was born on April 20th, 1966, in Franklin County, Virginia, to parents George and Margaret.

After Michael’s divorce, he began dating Mary and the two eventually got married. Their only child, Jennifer Renee Short, was born on July 12th, 1993, in Virginia. Jennifer, who was about to enter fourth grade at Fisbro Elementary School, was a sweet and cheerful girl who was close to her parents.

“They were very protective of Jennifer, extremely protective,” said Frank Arrington, Michael’s uncle. “They worshipped the ground she walked on.”

The family resided in quiet Oak Level, where Michael owned and operated a company, M.S. Mobile Home Movers. They were known to be kind people who kept to themselves.

“They were good people, quiet,” a family friend remembered. “They never bothered anybody as far as I know. Just down-to-earth, everyday people.”

Their Last Night

Because Michael’s business was beginning to flounder, the Shorts were struggling financially and had recently put their house up for sale. Their plan was to move into a mobile home temporarily, but they hadn’t done this yet.

The day of August 14th, 2002, played out uneventfully for the Short family. Chris Thompson, one of Michael’s employees, came over and worked on a truck with him until late in the evening. According to Thompson, when he left, the entire family, including nine-year-old Jennifer, was still awake and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

The last reported sighting of the family alive came at around 11 p.m., when they were spotted at Burger King picking up a late meal.

Michael and Mary Found Murdered

At 9 a.m. the following morning, Chris Thompson arrived at the Short home. He and Michael were supposed to go pick up a truck in Christiansburg for Michael’s business. Thompson noticed that the garage door was still open and stepped inside.

Upon entry, he made a shocking discovery: 50-year-old Michael was lying dead on the couch inside the garage (where he often slept so that Mary wouldn’t be disturbed by his snoring). He had been shot in the head once with a .22 caliber weapon.

Thompson frantically went in search of the rest of the family and came across 36-year-old Mary’s lifeless body in bed. She, too, had been killed with a single gunshot to the head.

It appeared that both Michael and Mary had been murdered while they slept—and by someone who perhaps knew the family well enough to be familiar with some of their habits, such as the idiosyncratic fact that Michael usually slept in the garage.

Conversely, it’s possible that the assailant chose to enter the home through the garage, thinking it could be an easier point of access, without necessarily knowing they’d come across Michael in there.

Jennifer was missing from the house. Her bed was unmade and her pillow was on the floor, suggesting that she had been taken from her room. It also looked as if the bed had been moved approximately two inches.

Thompson notified the police of his horrifying discovery and the investigation began in earnest.

Troubling Clues

Investigators arrived on the scene and immediately noticed that the phone lines to the Short home had been cut, hinting at a chilling premeditation to the crime. They also found .22 caliber shell casings near the bodies.

It seemed that nothing had been stolen from the house, including $600 in cash that was still sitting on the kitchen counter, indicating that robbery was unlikely to be a motive for the killings.

Law enforcement believed that Michael had been murdered first—although the medical examiner couldn’t establish an exact time of death for either—and that both had been killed at close range.

“Being able to get that close would surprise me,” stated Sheriff Frank Cassell. “This is a very unusual, bizarre case.”

Eerily, the words “I’m glad to see” had been written on the garage window, but it’s unclear if this was related in any way to the slayings.

Neighbors came forward to report having seen an unfamiliar man in a red or dark-colored van or pickup truck in the vicinity of the property around 8:30 a.m. A composite sketch of this individual, who was said to be in his forties with a “weathered complexion,” was later released. He has never been identified.

Search for Jennifer

An extensive search for Jennifer was launched. Covering hundreds of miles and utilizing ATVs, dogs, and a helicopter, searchers on foot and horseback looked for the girl. Additionally, a nearby lake was searched, as well as a pond close to the home. No clues as to the whereabouts of Jennifer Short were found, and the anxiety of her surviving family members increased.

Frank, Michael’s uncle, made a public plea for the child’s safe return, even suggesting that her captor drop her off at a Walmart or any other 24-hour store.

“Please put a note with her. ‘My name is Jennifer Short. I am missing. I am from Bassett, VA.’ Please do not harm her.”

At a press briefing, several members of her family wore a yellow ribbon to signify that Jennifer was still missing. They clung to the hope that she was alive and would be located soon.

However, weeks would go by with no sign of the missing child.

Investigation

In an effort to discern the motive for this crime, law enforcement spent two weeks searching the Short home and ultimately removed “hundreds of pieces of evidence,” including tax returns, clothes, a .22 caliber revolver, a 12-gauge shotgun, a cellphone, and unspecified “items of a sexual nature.”

“Anytime you have a child abducted, you’ve got to assume it may have something to do with a sexual nature,” explained Sheriff Cassell.

It’s unclear if any of the items obtained proved helpful to the investigation.

While some wondered if the murders were motivated by a desire for revenge against Michael or Mary, others felt that the circumstances strongly suggested that young Jennifer herself was the main target.

The home didn’t have an internet connection and hadn’t for two years, which minimized the chances of Jennifer having met a predator online. Her friends were interviewed as well, but this didn’t produce any relevant information.

An incident in Mary’s past soon led investigators down another avenue of speculation.

While working as a seamstress for Pluma, Inc. in 1992, Mary was subject to stalking behavior at her workplace. Several times, a man visited the company, angrily demanding to see Mary. He didn’t work there and was escorted out of the building. Interestingly, Mary didn’t want the police to be notified and never attempted to obtain a protective order.

“We don’t know if she was stalked per se; we know that someone at one time or another was angry with her,” said Cassell. “We don’t know who it was or what it was about … The two persons who escorted him out of the plant didn’t know him.”

Because Jennifer was born the following year, law enforcement theorized that this mystery man might have been her real father—not Michael—and that the eventual killing of Michael and Mary was done out of desperation to take his daughter back.

To test this theory, Michael’s body was exhumed for further DNA analysis. As it turned out, Michael was in fact Jennifer’s biological father, so this potential lead ended up being another dead end.

Jennifer Is Found

In October 2002, approximately six weeks after Michael and Mary Short were found murdered, Jennifer’s remains were located in a creek in Stoneville, North Carolina, around 35 miles away from her home. The discovery was made by law enforcement, after a local resident alerted police when his two dogs brought him bones—including a piece of a human skull.

It was concluded that Jennifer had sustained a single gunshot wound to the head, just as her parents had. Due to the advanced state of decomposition of her remains, her time of death could not be determined, nor could any abuse that she might have suffered prior to being killed.

Jennifer’s loss was another devastating blow to her family and the community as a whole.

No Clear Suspects

From early on, investigators had several persons of interest, but no solid evidence that made any of them stand out.

“We have some people that we’re looking real strongly at, but we have no concrete evidence,” noted Cassell. “We’re looking at anyone, but we’re looking more strongly at certain people.”

Chris Thompson, the employee who discovered the bodies of Michael and Mary, was ruled out as a suspect.

Michael had numerous employees over the years, many of whom were transients looking for short-term work. These laborers often stayed at a hotel down the road from the Short residence during their time working for him.

Could one of these men have been the perpetrator? Someone who’d had access to the family for a time, perhaps got to know them just well enough to learn some of their habits?

Because these workers came and went with regularity, authorities found it challenging to locate some of them for questioning.

“He had more occasional employees than we realized,” noted Cassell.

Suspect: Garrison Bowman

Investigators would get their first break in the case when a promising lead materialized. According to a tip, a carpenter named Garrison Bowman, 66, allegedly harbored a grudge against Michael Short and had told someone that he might “have to kill” a man in Virginia who had failed to move his mobile home, even after Bowman had paid him to do so.

Notably, Jennifer’s remains had turned up approximately one mile away from the property of a friend of Bowman’s, where his mobile home was located at the time. His landlord also claimed to have witnessed Bowman with a pistol on August 15th.

Bowman, who fled to Canada, was eventually extradited to the United States, where he was held on charges related to a violation of immigration laws and drunk driving. He appeared before a grand jury in Roanoke, Virginia, on November 12th, but no indictment was returned.

There was nothing concrete to tie Bowman, who reportedly had an alibi, to the murder of the Short family. In 2007, authorities revealed that he was no longer considered a person of interest in the investigation and that the men who had implicated him had fabricated a story, hoping to collect the reward money.

According to U.S. Attorney John Brownlee, these individuals told law enforcement that they’d spotted Bowman leaving the Short home on the night of the killings, carrying a young girl. This was apparently the story around which investigators had attempted to build a case against Garrison Bowman.

These men would go on to be convicted of perjury and providing false information to law enforcement, leading to their incarceration.

To date, Bowman has been the only suspect ever officially named in a case that continues to evade resolution.Subscribe

Annual Motorcycle Ride

The Oak Level community has never forgotten the Short family and continues to host an annual motorcycle ride to raise awareness about the case. The route takes the motorcyclists across the North Carolina bridge—since renamed the “Jennifer Renee Short Memorial Bridge,” beneath which Jennifer’s skeletal remains were discovered.

“The loss of Jennifer Short is just one of those things that I’ll never forget,” said one of the organizers of the event. “It’s just as vivid today as it was 20 years ago.”

New tips pour in each year after the annual event, but so far no substantial leads have been forthcoming.

Other Developments

Garrison Bowman passed away in 2014.

The Short residence was auctioned off on December 7th, 2002, but had been vacant for months when it mysteriously burned down in 2019.

“How does a house catch on fire?” inquired Michael’s sister Carolyn. “We didn’t have a storm. There was no electricity in the house for months … They’ve cleaned it up quickly, so it seems to me that something is trying to be hid.”

The exact cause of the fire has never been conclusively determined—or if it has, that information has never been released to the public. Notably, though, a gas can was recovered at the scene, indicating that arson is a plausible explanation.

However, investigators stated that they didn’t believe the blaze had any connection to the murders that occurred there nearly two decades earlier.

The case was officially reopened in 2021.

“We believe there is someone out there who has information that may solve this case,” announced Sheriff Lane Perry. “We encourage people to come forward with that information, no matter how small it may seem.”

Perry continued:

“Across the country, we’ve gotten more inquiries about this particular case than I’ve seen in my whole career in law enforcement. I can’t imagine what the Short family and their relatives had to go through. But we’ve been in contact and we will stay in contact. I consider y’all family because you’ve helped keep the dream alive about this investigation and solving this case.”

With the case still being actively investigated, there is a renewed hope that the murders of Michael, Mary, and Jennifer Short will one day be solved.

If you have any information regarding their case, you are encouraged to contact the Henry County Sheriff’s Office at (276) 656-4200.