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| JANELL SHELTON |
Source: http://www.doc.state.al.us/
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FROM: newsok.com (August 28th 2001)State authorities have arrested a woman and her son in the murder and kidnapping of a Georgia woman
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Janell Shelton, 36, and her son Charles Ingram, 17, were wanted by Georgia authorities for their suspected role in the kidnapping and slaying of Emelie Rainbolt, 58. Georgia officials asked the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to check an Oklahoma City home to see if Shelton's car was there, said Kym Koch, OSBI spokeswoman.
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| Murdered by her "Friend": Emelie Rainbolt |
Shelton and Rainbolt had a dispute between their competing massage parlor businesses, Koch said.
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| Charles Ingram |
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| Darra Glover |
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A fatal friendship?
Emelie Rainbolt's generous nature may have set the stage for her brutal slaying along with her beloved dog
FROM: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (August 18th 2003)
This story about Rainbolt and Shelton was developed with information from court documents and interviews with Rainbolt's husband, family and friends.
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Emelie Rainbolt was always helping people. Friends. Family. Even People she didn't know very well. Once she bought a suit and teeth for a homeless man, said Diane Withers, a friend for 52 years. When the Atlanta businesswoman met Janell(e) Shelton, it was only natural that she would offer help, said her husband, Jim Rainbolt.
Shelton, 38, was raising three children alone, with little money. Over the years, Emelie Rainbolt, 58, gave Shelton often cash, found her jobs, bought food for her children and provided a place for the family to live. When Shelton went to jail on charges of forgery and car theft, Rainbolt bailed her out. When Shelton was in jail, Rainbolt took her children to school.
But after 13 years of friendship and frequent requests for help, Rainbolt wanted to sever ties, her husband said. Police say that when Rainbolt stopped giving and ended the friendship, Shelton ended her life.
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| Mugshot of Darra Adwana Glover |
All three have pleaded not guilty. Shelton's lawyer, William Broome, declined to comment further on the case. Repeated efforts to reach Ingram's lawyer, Debrah Jones, were as well unsuccessful. Glover's lawyer, Randy Brooks, said his client is not guilty and never met Emelie Rainbolt.
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| Glover used a Stun Gun to disable Emelie |
The Background Story
Rainbolt met Shelton when the younger woman answered a help-wanted ad and began working for her massage parlor in DeKalb County, according to police reports.
At first, the women were best friends. But notes scribbled in a notebook Rainbolt kept, to chronicle day-to-day events describe, toward the end of her life, violent encounters between the two women. Pages from the notebook will be used during the trial.
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| The Talledega National Forest, where the Trio finally murdered Emelie, by setting her car on fire as she lay in the Trunk |
When business was good, Rainbolt brought home a half-million dollars a year, Withers said. But she was always looking for ways to make more money and investing in schemes proposed by people she barely knew. Too often, Rainbolt was left with bills or merchandise, Withers said, adding that her friend once loaned a man 125.000 Dollars and never got a cent back. "Her money was always for other people," Withers said.
Instead of going to college, Rainbolt helped a friend run a franchise studio of Merle Norman, a family-owned Los Angeles-based cosmetics company with over 2.000 stores in the United States and Canada. At 26, Rainbolt opened her own Merle Norman salon on Memorial Drive in Atlanta. She later moved the store to Northlake Mall. But she wanted more.
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| North Lake Mall, Atlanta |
In the mid-1980s, she suffered a devastating loss due to a bad investment, said her brother, Bill Carroll. Then Rainbolt found during an audit that she owed Merle Norman 44.118 $ according to court papers. The company took back its credit, and soon landlord, contractors, utilities and tax collectors lined up. Unable to pay her bills, she closed the cosmetics studios in the late 1980s.
After years of helping other people get a new start, she needed one herself. Rainbolt decided to attend a local school to become a masseuse. "We were somewhat apprehensive about her getting in a business that seems somewhat seedy," Carroll said. His wife, Flow, added, "In her mind it was the best way to make an income the quickest." Rainbolt opened Stress Reduction Clinic in a strip mall on Lawrenceville Highway. The shop had two rooms and a hot tub.
Customers received a massage in the tub by masseuses in bathing suits. They paid 65 $ an hour, and 125 an hour if the masseuse went to them. The masseuses split half of what they earned with Rainbolt. But one rule governed: No sex. Rainbolt feared that her business would be labeled a brothel and she'd be forced out of business by DeKalb County.
Fortunes rebound
DeKalb County designated Stress Reduction Clinic a training center for novice masseuses. Anyone without a criminal background who wanted a career in massage could learn the basics there. Rainbolt's personal life was looking up too. She met a divorcé from Tampa, James "Jim" Rainbolt, now 73, and they were married within a week in Ringgold. In the early 1990s, as she started her second career, Rainbolt met Shelton, a friendly woman originally from Oklahoma. Like Rainbolt, she was a professional masseuse trying to make ends meet.
Rainbolt hired her and they quickly became good friends.
When Rainbolt was hospitalized for 30 days in 1995 for infected ovaries, Shelton was there to talk and massage Rainbolt's feet. Shelton's three children were attached to Rainbolt, especially her oldest, Charles, said Diane Garrison, the sister of a man Shelton was married to for a short while. In emergencies, especially when her family needed help, Shelton often turned to her friend Rainbolt. Shelton asked Rainbolt to help pay a phone bill and to help the family when they faced eviction, according to Rainbolt's notebook.
Assistance adds up
At some point, Rainbolt began jotting down things she did for Shelton and money she spent on her family. In the notebook, Rainbolt noted: 31 $ for pork chops, 38 for Popeye's Chicken and 222 to rent a van to help the Sheltons to move. Shelton and her children moved a lot, usually staying no longer than three months in one place, Jim Rainbolt said. According to Rainbolt's notebook, they lived in a house in Alpharetta, an apartment in Tucker, then Roswell, Fayetteville and Douglasville. The Sheltons would stay rent-free until evicted. Janelle Shelton still owes the Roswell landlord 2.129 Dollars, according to Fulton County Magistrate Court.
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| Dodge Durango |
While in jail, she again turned to Rainbolt, who bailed her out, using her Tucker home as collateral, Jim Rainbolt said. Then Emelie took the family into the home. But Rainbolt was starting to get problems on her own. She lost her business license in DeKalb County when officials cracked down on massage parlors. DeKalb officials said the business was no longer used for training in therapeutic massage and ruled all massage parlors illegal.
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| Roswell Road in Sandy Springs |
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| Rusty |
Friction grows
Due to Rainbolt's mounting financial problems, Rainbolt asked Shelton to pay weekly rent of 300 $. And rather than providing use of a car, Rainbolt sold her 1987 Mazda to Shelton's son's girlfriend for 1.000 USD. Neither arrangement sat well with Shelton, Jim Rainbolt said, but what drove a wedge between the women was when Rainbolt heard Shelton was planning to leave town. Rainbolt revoked her bond and Shelton was arrested and put back to jail.
Meanwhile Rainbolt continued to be involved with Shelton's family. With Shelton in jail, Rainbolt drove Charles and his girlfriend Antoinette to Ringgold, where they were married without Shelton's approval. "She thought it was the right thing to do," said Bill Carroll, Rainbolt's brother. "When you have a family, you've got to get married. It was values, morals and ethics. Emelie dove into all aspects of her life (Sheltons), personal and financial."
Shelton was released after two weeks in jail. No payments were made on rent or the car, Jim Rainbolt said. Emelie Rainbolt wanted the family off her property, and the couple asked that the Sheltons return a pool table they had loaned the kids. The Rainbolts also took back the Mazda.
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| Waffle House in Tucker, GA |
On April 8th, 2001, Jim Rainbolt, escorted by police, evicted the family from the couple's house. Emelie wrote in her notebook that an argument followed. "She (Shelton) grabbed my stomach and then my shirt around the neck. She said she would kill me within a year then she ran her finger across her neck while saying she would kill me several times."
After his evening shift on August 8th, 2001, James "Jim" Rainbolt phoned the Sandy Springs apartment his wife used as a business. There was no answer. He went to the apartment and found the lights and Television on, but still could not find his wife.
The next day, he called Fulton County Police to file a missing person report, but he was told to wait 24 hours. He called again the next day and told them the couple's Cadillac was gone. Around 7 a.m. on August 10th, 2001, a Park Ranger in the Talledega National Forest, about an hour west of Atlanta, noticed smoke coming from a wooded embankment. It was a badly burned car.
When fire officials popped open the trunk, they found two badly burned skeletons, one of an adult human, the other one that of a dog. In late August 2001, the bodies were identified as those of Emelie Rainbolt and her dog, Rusty.
Police arrested Shelton and her son Charles Ingram in Oklahoma City. Glover was arrested in Atlanta. All pleaded not guilty. Shelton pleaded not guilty by "reason of mental disease or defect." Shelton reported hallucinations and visions and said she was "taunted" by "nameless demons," according to documents filed in Cleburne County Court by a psychologist at Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She said she has suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and manic depressive disorder for 25 years.
Shelton, although, was found competent to stand trial.
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Woman pleads guilty in killing of friend
FROM: The Tuscaloosa News (August 17th 2003)
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Rainbolt's skeleton, along with her dog's (Rusty), was found in the trunk of a burned car two years ago. Shelton, a former (Wannebe) masseuse, said she pleaded guilty to help her eldest son, Charles Ingram, to get a lighter punishment if he (she) is found guilty. Charles Ingram is facing murder charges along with an acquaintance, Darra Glover. They have pleaded innocent and will be tried separately later. Authorities allege that in August 2001, Shelton, Ingram and Glover used a stun gun to disable Rainbolt and her dog, Rusty. Prosecutors say the bodies were then thrown into the back of Rainbolt's Cadillac and driven to the Talladega National Forest, just inside the Alabama-Georgia line on Interstate 20, where the car was set on fire.
Rainbolt and Shelton had worked together at massage parlor that Rainbolt owned. Authorities said Rainbolt had helped Shelton and her family by providing money, jobs, food and other assistance. Prosecutors said Shelton took her friend's life when that help ended.
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Georgia woman receives life sentence for slaying
FROM: The Tuscaloosa News (August 26th 2003)
Direct Source Link
A Georgia woman has received a life sentence in prison for the 2001 slaying of a longtime friend. Janelle Shelton was sentenced Friday to life in prison without the possibility of parole, said Barbara Jordan, Clerk of the Cleburne County, Alabama Circuit Court. Last week, a jury found Shelton guilty of murdering Emelie Rainbolt 58, of Norcross. Authorities alleged Shelton had disabled Rainbolt with a stun gun, locked her in the trunk of her Cadillac and burned her and her Dog "Rusty" alive.
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Additional Information Links:
2002
- https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/deathpenaltynews/conversations/messages/5013
- http://old.chronicle.augusta.com/stories/2003/08/20/met_385249.shtml
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