Photo: Netflix
She had to go into witness protection before the trial.
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on Feb 13, 2020
When Dan Schnieder's son Danny was shot in Louisiana's 9th Ward, he wanted to know what happened. He knew the murder was part of a drug deal gone wrong but police couldn't tell him more than that. In the wake of the shooting, Schnieder was so determined to get answers that he pursued the investigation for a year and a half on his own.
The person who finally helped Schneider learn what happened to his son was a woman named Shane Madding who had been an eyewitness to the murder. She had kept silent out of fear of retaliation but after meeting the Schneider family, specificially Danny's sister, she gathered her courage and agreed to speak up. Her testimony helped put the killer behind bars. The new Netflix docu-series The Pharmacist tells the story, prompting viewers to ask: Who is Shane Manning — and where is she today?
1. Dan Schneider took matters into his own hands after the murder.
As we learn in the docu-series, after the death of 22 year old Danny Schneder Jr., Schneider decided to find his son’s killer himself after the police seemed to write it off as just another drug-related crime. Schneider went door to door asking for information and offered a $10,000 reward for information about his son's death. Finally, a teen named Jeffery Hall came forward to say he had information about the case. He said he witnessed the shooting and that the perpetrator was a known drug dealer called Scar Face.
It turns out: Hall was lying. The drug dealer he accused had a credible alibi: he had been in jail that night sand the case remained unsolved. Schneider resumed his investigation, hoping someone else was out there with information.
2. Who is Shane Madding?
For the next stage of his hunt, Schneider started making cold calls to people who lived in the area where the crime had taken place. During that process, he called Shane Madding and she stunned him by saying she had been standing nearby when his son, Danny was killed. She shocked him even further when she said Hall — the man who Schneider has originally spoken to — had been the shooter.
Madding told the cameras that Hall's mother was her best friend and she had known the teen his whole life. In her version of events, Hall simply walked over to Danny's truck, shot him, then came over to her and said: "You see what I did?"
3. She initially didn't want to speak to the cops.
Madding had grown up in the same neighborhood — the Ninth Ward, outside of new Orleans — as Hall and knew his family. She herself had struggled with drug addiction and she was trying to raise her four children at the time of the murder. The prevalence of drug-related crime and the violence visited upon people who turned in their neighbors kept her silent about the murder. Even after she told Schneider what happened, she didn't want to say anything more. She was terrified that someone would retaliate if she spoke up and testified against Hall.
"The fear had really set in after that call," she said in the docu-series. "I knew if [Schneider] could walk the blocks and if he could call me on the phone, they were gonna find out it was me."
4. She finally relented after getting to know the Schneider family.
Despite Madding's reticence, the family didn't give up hope that she might help them. In particular, Kristi Schneider, Danny's younger sister, kept reaching out, begging Madding to speak up. It was her grief that finally moved Madding.
"I felt every pain that she felt. Because I felt like that, too," Madding tearfully explained. "I was 12 when my brother was murdered. We were real close ... and I always thinks about how we never got the truth. And that's a hurtful thing not to know." Madding agreed to speak to the police and eventually to testify in court
5. She was right to worry about her safety.
During the time before the trial, Madding received threats from people in her neighborhood who resented her turning Hall in. She got threatening notes and found her car damaged. She was eventually placed in witness protection and moved to another part of the city. Even there, someone tracked her down, smashed her car window with a brick, slashed her tires and left her a note saying "I found you." She claims she turned to drugs to cope during that time.
6. Madding's testimony was what put Jeffrey Hall in prison.
Madding's testimony was the critical piece of evidence that led to Hall pleading guilty to manslaughter. He took a deal to serve 15 years. The Schneider family was enormously grateful. "In this not-so-perfect world," Schneider told the press at the time, "it's people like our witness - one by one - telling the truth about what they have seen that will truly make a difference."
7. Where is Shane Madding now?
After the trail, Madding took her children and left New Orleans. She didn't tell cameras where she is now but she did say that she took control of her life back in the years since she helped the Schneider family, including quitting drugs. "I cleaned my life up," she said in the docu-series. "I said, 'Today I become a real wife and a real mother.' ... I've been clean since then."
After the trial, Madding received a local Victims and Citizens Against Crime award for her work on bringing a killer to justice.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.