Post Mortem | Facing a Monster at Trial

**Natalie Morales** (0:09)
Welcome back to Post Mortem, I'm CBS News correspondent Natalie Morales, stepping in as host today to speak to 48 Hours correspondent, Anne-Marie Green, about her report on Shawn Doyle, who we know assaulted at least two known victims before murdering Lori Leonard back in 2005
One of the survivors, CC. Opanowski, has broken her decades-long silence, and she is telling her story publicly for the first time to 48 Hours. Anne-Marie, thanks so much for talking with us today.

**Anne-Marie Green** (0:43)
It's interesting to be on this other side of the microphone right now.

**Natalie Morales** (0:47)
You're in the hot seat today, yes. I just want to remind you to all of our listeners, if you haven't listened to the 48 Hours episode yet, you can find the full audio just below this episode in your podcast feed. Go take a listen, then come back and join us for our conversation.
So Anne-Marie, this story is a little bit unusual in that we start with a survivor's story instead of a murderer. Can you tell us a little bit about that decision of starting with CC. Opanowski's story and how she survived that frightening attack by Doyle back in 1996 when she was just 18 years old?

**Anne-Marie Green** (1:24)
Natalie, I don't know about you, but one of the questions that I always have when I watch True Crime is I always want to know, well, how did we get here? How did this person end up like this? So here we had an opportunity to start from the very beginning and a huge part of the story has to do with Shawn Doyle's history of domestic violence. And we were lucky enough to have CC be willing to talk to us. She was his high school girlfriend and we were able to paint this picture of how his pattern of violence got worse and worse and worse over the years.
The challenge, I think, a little bit is that normally we have, you know, one victim and the people who are impacted by them.
In this case, we had three different victims with two victims who survived with different approaches to the trauma. And for CC., it took decades for her to feel strong enough to talk publicly about what happened to her. And having her come forward, I think, was part of the reason why we thought we need to start with her. It seemed like the best way to tell this story was from the very beginning, which was with CC.

**Natalie Morales** (2:38)
Speaking of, you know, how that attack took place, let's talk about her friend, Shannon, who was so instrumental. I mean, truly, perhaps, saved her life. So Shannon was calling CC over and over again. And when CC wasn't picking up, the alarm bells were going off with her. Something wasn't right. And so then she finally gets through, CC answers the phone, and she hears CC putting away the dishes and the dishwasher, but they're having this somewhat stilted conversation, it sounds like. And she got to the point where she said, is Shawn there with you now? And CC was able to tell her, yes, he is here now.
I just wanted to know about their relationship now. I mean, are CC and Shannon still friends? Are they in touch?

**Anne-Marie Green** (3:32)
They are in touch again now.
You've probably seen this before with some of the hours that you've worked on, that sometimes actually getting involved with the 48-hour story brings people back together.
But they hadn't been talking for a while. I found Shannon so fascinating and I could not understand how a teenager was so intuitive. Because when she tells the story of that phone call, I mean, the cues are so subtle. I couldn't understand if she could pick this up. But I asked her over and over again, but how did you know? How did you know? How did you know something was going wrong? And then finally she said, well, I've seen this sort of thing in a family member. And I was like, there you go. That's why it makes sense. If anyone else had been hanging out with CC that day, they might not have picked up on it. She was clued in on it because she knew the signs to look for.

**Natalie Morales** (4:29)
So in the hour CC talked about when the police did arrive at her house, she thought that she would then be protected from Doyle.
Instead, she said she didn't feel safe because she said they put her in the backseat of that same squad car with Doyle. And then later she said they questioned them together in the same room. I mean, how unusual was that back in 1996?