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An Illinois high school teacher who left one of his students to die in the woods is now a free man.

Sam Shelton, 44, was released from the Illinois Correctional Center on Monday, 17 years after he pled guilty to attempted murder.

His victim, 17-year-old Ashley Reeves, somehow managed to survive not only the barrage of attempts that Shelton said he made to end her life but also the over 30 hours she spent alone in the woods after the attack.

Shelton told investigators that he killed Reeves; police thought she was dead when they discovered her body; paramedics said Reeves would not make it out of the woods alive, and doctors put her in a medically induced coma after she arrived at the hospital.

Reeves somehow defied all odds and did survive, then slowly relearned how to speak and move her body over the next year.

Shelton meanwhile went on to serve 20 years in prison, and on Monday, April 22, he walked free three years before completing the full sentence, with the board granting him the earliest possible release allowed by law in his case.

Ashley Reeves Missing

Reeves told her parents that she had a job interview on the afternoon of April 27, 2006, and driving her boyfriend’s car, she left home and headed for a neighboring town, her boyfriend, Jeremy Smith, told investigators while being questioned by police the day after Reeves’ disappearance.

Her parents reached out to the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office hours after Reeves left, reporting that she had not returned home and was not answering calls and texts from friends, according to investigators.

Concern grew tenfold when authorities discovered Smith’s abandoned car with the outfit Reeves planned to wear on her interview and the workout gear she planned to change into after the interview so she could go play basketball with friends.

Investigators said the clothing had not been worn.

Soon, Reeves’ friends and family were being called in to answer questions about the missing girl’s final days and whom she had been spending time with, according to investigators.

Back at home, Reeves’ mother started calling numbers from her daughter’s phone bill in an attempt to get any information on her daughter, according to investigators, Michelle Reeves noticed that her daughter called one number more than most of the others and reaches out to that person — Shelton.

Investigators say that Shelton tells Reeves’ mother he has no idea where she might be and then goes back to dancing at a local club.

Things start to come into focus when friends of Reeves tell investigators that she had been seeing an older man and planned to meet him on the night she went missing, according to investigators.

That is enough for detectives to call in Shelton for questioning.

Sam Shelton Confession

Shelton appears cool and collected as he arrives at the sheriff’s office after coaching high school baseball practice on April 28, 2006.

Over the course of the next 12 hours, he is seen changing his story and eventually confessing to murder but never losing his cool in footage obtained by Inside Edition Digital.

He starts off by telling investigators that Reeves is a persistent young woman who had long been pursuing him and making constant calls.

Then, he admits to having an inappropriate relationship with the student, saying: “I will say this: we never kissed. We never kissed. Yes, we did have sex in the back of the vehicle, and after that day I felt absolutely terrible about that.”

A few hours later, Shelton says that he and Reeves were together on the day she disappeared and that there had been an incident, but swears he did not do anything to hurt the teenager.

“She was screaming and kicking and everything. So I got her [out of the car], shut the door, ran the car, I took off. I left her,” said Shelton. “I left her there is what I did. I left her out there … I left her right out there.”

Finally, after a few more hours, Shelton tells investigators what really happened the previous day.

Shelton says that he put Reeves in a wrestling chokehold that caused her to stop breathing and that he feared he had killed the young woman.

So, Shelton says he decided to drag her into the woods at a local park to die.

“I dragged her to a wooded area, I tied this thing around her neck to make it look like someone choked her out there,” Shelton tells investigators.

“I was a nervous wreck, thinking, ‘What do I do? What do I do? I wanted to make it look like she had gotten, she got strangled there in the woods,” he says.

Shelton says that he then took a belt and repeatedly strangled Reeves, pulling so tight that he broke the belt at one point.

“All of a sudden I heard like a gurgle. And when I heard the gurgle, I let go. And when I let go, she had like spit, foam, coming out of her mouth. And then I had seen that she was the sickest color I had ever seen,” Shelton says.

He then fled like a “bat out of hell” he says, and left the scene.

Shelton then tells investigators he will take them to where he left Reeves.

Ashley Reeves Alive

It takes over 39 minutes of searching in the dark and rain for police to find Reeves, who they assume is dead.

Then, they see the young girl breathe.

She is rushed to the hospital and put in a medically induced coma while Shelton returns to the sheriff’s office and shares his concerns.

“Am I gonna be able to get like, my contact solution, and take my contacts out? And my toothbrush?” Shelton asks at one point, expressing his disbelief when he is told he will not get those things.

Later he says: “Am I gonna get like, a little private toilet? Because I can’t pee when there is people around because of my urinary stress disorder,” Shelton says in the recording.

The man who left a teenager alone in the woods to die for 30 hours after a brutal attack tells investigators: “Because I’ll be miserable if I can’t pee.”

The case does not go to trial because Shelton agrees to enter a guilty plea to a charge of attempted murder.

Reeves is still recovering when he is sentenced so she fif not speak in court during the sentencing. 

It would be years before Reeves finally broke her silence, first with the release of her memoir “Left for Dead” and then by appearing on Crime Watch Daily in an interview with Elizabeth Smart.

In that interview, Reeves said that she still cannot recall what happened in the days leading up to and after the attack.

Reeves also told Smart that she does not want to remember that night.

“Part of me wants to try and remember, and then part of me is like ‘Oh, that might not be a good idea,'” Reeves said in that interview.

She also said that she had to learn how to eat and drink 

“They had to retrain me how to eat and how to drink,” said Ashley. “But I remember my first drink of water, and it was amazing.”

Four years after that interview, a production company adapted Reeves’ memoir for the small screen. “Left for Dead: The Ashley Reeves Story” aired on Lifetime in 2021 and starred “Beverly Hills 90210” alum Jennie Garth as Ashley Reeves’ mother Michelle Reeves.

Inside Edition Digital reached out to the Reeves family, but she did not respond to a request for comment. Shelton and his lawyer also did not respond to requests for comment.

Shelton will be on parole for the next three years and is banned from having any contact with Reeves.

 

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