Our card this week is LaQuandra “Shavonne” Slater, the 4 of Clubs from Michigan.Thirty-eight-year-old, LaQuandra “Shavonne” Slater was known for being independent. Everyone who knew her said she was outspoken, knew how to take care of herself, and wasn’t one to be pushed around. So, it was all the more shocking when, in December of 2016, she disappeared without a trace.If you know anything about the disappearance of LaQuandra “Shavonne” Slater in Flint, Michigan in December of 2016, we urge you to call Flint Township Police Detective Lacey Lopez directly at 810-600-3266 or you can leave an anonymous tip with the Crime Stoppers of Flint & Genesee County by calling 1-800-422-5245.View source material and photos for this episode at: thedeckpodcast.com/laquandra-shavonne-slater Let us deal you in… follow The Deck on social media.Instagram: @thedeckpodcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @thedeckpodcast_ | @audiochuckFacebook: /TheDeckPodcast | /audiochuckllcTo support Season of Justice and learn more, please visit seasonofjustice.org.The Deck is hosted by Ashley Flowers. Instagram: @ashleyflowersTikTok: @ashleyflowerscrimejunkieTwitter: @Ash_FlowersFacebook: /AshleyFlowers.AFText Ashley at 317-733-7485 to talk all things true crime, get behind the scenes updates, and more!
Chapter 1: Who is LaQuandra 'Shavonne' Slater?
Our card this week is LaQuandra Slater, the four of clubs from Michigan. LaQuandra, or Siobhan as most people called her, was known for being tough and independent. Everyone who knew the 38-year-old said she was outspoken, knew how to take care of herself, and wasn't one to be pushed around. Which made it all the more shocking when in December of 2016, she disappeared without a trace.
Chapter 2: What happened to Siobhan before she went missing?
I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck. It was around December 8th, 2016, when Shamonia Wooten went to message her cousin, Siobhan, on Facebook. Siobhan hadn't posted anything for a while, not since, like, Thanksgiving two weeks prior. So, Shimonya wanted to see if everything was okay. So, she first fired off a message, waited to hear back.
But it was five minutes, ten minutes, an hour later, still no response. And that was very unlike Siobhan not to reply. But what was even stranger was after Shimonya sent a bunch more messages, it appeared as though Siobhan... had blocked her.
Now, Siobhan was known to be pretty headstrong and likely to hold a grudge if you had wronged her, but Shimonya couldn't see any reason why she would just block her out of nowhere. So she decided to switch tactics and call Siobhan's phone, except it went straight to voicemail. Shimonya called again, voicemail.
Several attempts later and all of a sudden the calls stopped going to voicemail and instead she got an automated message saying that the number had been disconnected and was no longer accepting calls. None of this was making sense. So Shamonia took the next step. She started reaching out to the people in Siobhan's circles.
And as it turned out, nobody, including Siobhan's maintenance man, had seen her since Thanksgiving. So at this point, Shamonia started to get seriously worried. So she put out a post on Facebook to see if anyone had any information. But no one seemed to know a thing. So it was time to kick things up a notch. That same day, Shamonia drove over to Siobhan's apartment in Flint, Michigan.
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Chapter 3: What did the maintenance man say about Siobhan?
She didn't appear to be home, and her black Chevy wasn't anywhere in the building's parking lot. But Shimonya did run into her maintenance man, and he said that he usually saw Siobhan leave her house every morning at around 10 a.m., but he hadn't seen or heard from her in several days. And she was now late on her rent payment.
Here is Flint Township Police Department Detective Lacey Lopez, who was put on this case around 2020.
He said it was really unusual for her because she typically always paid at end time. So he was also concerned.
Now, her maintenance man said that he'd called the emergency contact on Siobhan's lease multiple times and left multiple messages. But no one ever answered or called him back. We tried to look into who this emergency contact was, but the detectives never got that information.
So with Shamonia there now and all signs pointing to something being wrong, the maintenance man agreed to let her do a welfare check.
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Chapter 4: What were the findings during the police welfare check?
They did go inside. Everything appeared to be normal in her apartment. There was nothing that was alarming or suspicious in the apartment. LaQuandra was a very neat person. The refrigerator still had food items that were fresh. Everything appeared to be pretty undisturbed.
But there was one sign that something wasn't quite right. Siobhan's pets. She had two snakes, which she kept in a glass enclosure, and they appeared to have not been fed for several days by that point.
The snakes not being looked after, it was extremely unlike Laquandra. Those were her babies, and she took care of them.
All of this was enough for Shemonya to know that something was definitely wrong. So that evening, at around 6.30 p.m., she went down to the police station to file a missing persons report. Police immediately did a search of local hospitals and jails, but they didn't find Siobhan in any of them. They did, however, find her Chevy in Impound.
When they ran the plates on her car, they realized that it had been towed just days earlier after it was found abandoned in the parking lot of an apartment complex in Flint, six miles from Siobhan's home. Now, unfortunately, detectives couldn't find any link between Siobhan and anyone in that complex. So the car being there just added to the mystery of her disappearance.
LaToya Brown, another one of Siobhan's cousins, said that she would never have just abandoned her Chevy like that. And here's LaToya recalling this.
So I knew something was wrong when they found her truck and not her. And after that, I actually knew something was right. I know her. She cherished her thing.
That same night, Flint detectives went to search Siobhan's apartment themselves. They hoped that they could find something that Shimonia and the maintenance man hadn't. Something that could help them figure out where in the world Siobhan disappeared to. Here is a voice actor reading what the previous detective's notes said about that search.
We went into the residence and noticed that everything was very well kept, neat and orderly. The cupboards still had food in them. The refrigerator still had food and other items in it. However, the toilets appeared to have been sitting for a while with cleaner in them.
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Chapter 5: What clues were found at Siobhan's apartment?
We were unable to determine if the residence had been cleared by Slater moving items out.
Unfortunately, there wasn't much else of note at Siobhan's apartment, aside from the two reptiles. But detectives did photograph everything and later collect various items laying around for possible DNA sampling, just in case. Then, as they were heading out, they ran into someone who was trying to head in. One of Siobhan's friends, who we'll call Martin.
Martin told detectives that he was one of Siobhan's good friends and that he'd been looking for her for several days and he'd actually come there to check on her just as everyone else had. Like many people, he'd had contact with Siobhan on Thanksgiving. His contact had been in person, though.
The two had gotten dinner together at the Golden Corral, but he'd also had additional contact with her after that, over the phone on December 2nd, which was more recently than anyone else police had spoken to so far.
When he had spoken to her, she kept talking about her mother and was crying, saying she was tired of being by herself and doing the same thing every day. So from a couple different people, we've kind of heard that LaQuandra was kind of like a caretaker for her mom.
Unfortunately, Siobhan's mom had passed away in the year before she went missing. And from what Detective Lopez heard, she was having a really hard time with it.
But he thought it was suspicious that she got emotional because she didn't normally do that. But that was like really the only thing that he could say was odd.
Martin told detectives that he started getting really worried about Siobhan by December 5th, and he'd been driving around every day since looking for her.
They asked him, do you know of anybody else that she would talk to that we could go talk to and see like when they last talked to her? He said no. He knew that she was dating a black male on and off for several years. However, he didn't remember his name.
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Chapter 6: What does Siobhan's cousin reveal about her last days?
This seemed like a pretty good lead to detectives. But without a name, it was going to be difficult to track this man down. It was the next day when LaToya Brown, the cousin we heard from earlier, and another cousin went down to the station to file their own missing person report for Siobhan. They didn't know that Shimonya had already been there the day before.
But still, detectives took the opportunity to learn more from these cousins about who Siobhan was. And LaToya told detectives that the last time she saw Siobhan in person was on Halloween. Here is our reporter Madison speaking with her about this last encounter.
Like, what energy did you get from her that day?
Do you remember the guy's first name that she was kind of having trouble with?
No, that I don't know. Like I said, during that time, I hadn't seen her, so I didn't know, like, who she was dealing with. I can't recall. Even if she called me his name, I wouldn't remember now anyway.
So detectives still had no name to run with. But LaToya did provide some interesting background on Siobhan that was helpful to them. For one, she assured them that Siobhan was not the kind of person to just lose contact with her friends and family. And two, she implied that Siobhan had built a reputation for herself.
She's known for being tough. She's known for carrying herself in a manner like Detectives also learned that Siobhan had a gun license and normally was carrying.
Keep getting the description of like a very strong woman, like we call it gangster. But I mean, she could take care of herself, obviously.
Detectives found out that while Siobhan worked in home health care, she had a second source of income as a large scale cocaine dealer. And she had a second apartment that she dealt out of. So detectives paid a visit to this second apartment on December 19th.
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Chapter 7: How did Siobhan's lifestyle contribute to her disappearance?
It was at that mailbox bank on the second floor where things started to get really strange. Detectives found a note taped to the front of Siobhan's mailbox door and handwritten on it was one word, deceased. Now, detectives had zero evidence at that point that Siobhan was deceased.
So there was no reason anyone would have posted such a sign on her mailbox unless they knew something detectives didn't. So the next day, detectives got a warrant to search inside Siobhan's second apartment, thinking, maybe from the handwritten note, that this was likely a crime scene.
But when they got inside, they found it was almost completely empty, except for a couple of folding chairs and some bottled water. They sprayed the place with luminol, but even that didn't turn up anything interesting or useful. Detectives also sent the deceased note to the state crime lab for testing.
But because this is an ongoing investigation, they wouldn't tell us anything more about what the note looked like or what tests were conducted. So the same day they searched her second apartment, detectives also executed a search warrant for Siobhan's car. Inside, they found some spare shopping bags, clothes, and a purse full of toiletries, but nothing really out of the ordinary.
There was no blood or fingerprints legible enough to put into APHIS. The only thing that stood out to detectives was a styrofoam container of raw chicken breast from a local liquor store that had gone rancid. And actually, it ended up being more helpful than you might think because it had an expiration date on it, December 5th. Here's our reporter Madison and Detective Lopez again.
Does that change your opinion about the timeline? Just my experience with liquor stores, they only have meats like that for a couple days prior to the expiration date. They don't keep meat long at these party stores.
The next morning, detectives went to the liquor store where the chicken had been bought to see if they could find any video of Siobhan or anyone else making the purchase. When they got there, they were surprised to see a missing person poster for Siobhan posted at the counter.
As it turns out, the owner knew her because she was a regular customer and he'd been concerned because he hadn't seen her around recently. When asked about the chicken, the owner said that he didn't remember Siobhan buying it specifically. She was in and out of the store a lot and he didn't always make note of her.
But he said he last remembered seeing her maybe the end of November or beginning of December. Basically says like the latest we would put that out for sale is December 1st.
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