DNA investigator to tackle Lady in the Lake case

If you watched the Netflix documentary series, “I Just Killed My Dad,” you know DNA Researcher Shayna Landry. However, you may not know that she lives in Livingston Parish. And this week, she offered to help Bayou Justice evaluate DNA related to the Lady in the Lake case reviewed earlier this summer.

On June 19, 1986, a man fly-fishing east of the Interstate 10 twin spans snagged a woman’s nude body fifty yards from the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain. The victim, seven to 12 weeks pregnant, had a plastic bag duct-taped over her head and a 22-pound weight tied to her neck. In addition, she had breast implants made in California police found untraceable.

Last May, the St. Tammany Parish Coroner’s Office, and the Buffalo New York Police Department assigned specialists to find relatives of 21-year-old Kathryn Grace Knox Zedick, who went missing in Buffalo in 1985. Since she is the only known missing person from that era matching the victim’s description, we hope to compare Kathryn’s DNA to that of a young lady found in Lake Pontchartrain in 1986.

To date, neither agency reports making any progress.

Enter Shayna Easley Landry.

Shayna, a Civil Engineering Designer working in Baton Rouge, refers to the victim the LSU FACES lab calls “The Lady in the Lake” as “Pontchartrain Jane,” but she knows the case and is eager to help.

For readers who do not know Shayna, The New York Post described her as a “supersleuth researcher and budding DNA influencer.” Her research helped keep 17-year-old Anthony Templet out of prison after the Louisiana teenager shot and killed his father.

In the Netflix documentary series, “I Just Killed My Dad,” she helped find Anthony Templet’s biological mother, Teresa Thompson, 12 years after her son’s kidnapping from his Houston home.

Since the documentary series aired earlier this month, viewers have flocked to Shayna’s website, asking for her help with other family mysteries.

According to the website, she has “been a witness for the prosecution, consulted on Forensic Cases in other states, and helped reunify long lost friends.” Leveraging facial recognition software, the site says, she has “helped expose internet scams and helped law enforcement identify criminals and crime victims.”

Before Netflix, Shayna offered services for free. Now her packages start at $300.

“I felt like I was just a blip in the show, but I’ve been getting contacted by phone, text, and hundreds of emails in the last week,” Shayna said.

Shayna told The Post her incredible discovery began by accident. Shayna’s husband knew a woman who mentioned police had charged her coworker with murder and that something did not add up.

Using a research tool called Been Verified, Shayna found Anthony’s biological mother and learned about domestic violence charges against his dad.

“I started pulling records and immediately noticed that Anthony’s father hurt his mom while she was pregnant,” Shayna remembered.

After finding Anthony’s half-sister through social media in June 2019, the sister arranged a telephone conference with Anthony’s mother. From the mother’s perspective, someone kidnapped her son as a child, and the police never found him.

Talking to Shayna, Anthony’s mother recounted the years of abuse her son endured before he disappeared, but she knew nothing of him living with or shooting his father in self-defense in 2019.

After the call, Shayna phoned the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office.

Over the years, Shayna told The Post, she has solved hundreds of what she calls “DNA mysteries” since finding her own biological father in 2016.

Shayna’s mom was unsure of his identity. She gave Shayna the name of a college boyfriend, but he, Shayna confirmed, was not her father. According to a DNA test Shayna took in 2016, her biological father was Italian, and her mom’s boyfriend was not.

With her DNA report in hand, Shayna tracked down her paternal grandmother’s obituary and surmised that one of Angelina Cipriano Segretto’s two sons must be her father. Again, using social media, Shayna discovered that only one of her sons, New Orleans resident John Joseph Segretto, attended Southeastern Louisiana University with her mother in 1985.

“I called my father,” Shayna said, “And I was like, I think you’re my dad.”

John Segretto remembered Shayna’s mom, a track runner at SLU with blond hair and blue eyes, but he did not know about her pregnancy. Shayna and her dad communicated regularly, exchanging photographs until he died of a heart attack in 2019 at 52-years-old.

“My success rate has been 100%,” Shayna told The New York Post, “But I have some outstanding cases I’m still working on.” The 35-year-old said she would never close a case until there was a resolution.

Her aid on the Lady in the Lake case, the Pontchartrain Jane Doe mystery, is more than welcomed.