Vanyel Anderson-Colbeth
September 24, 2007
- January 9, 2008
On the day she was born, Vanyel
Anderson-Colbeth had already made one
fatal mistake, she had been
born a girl. A nurse said that Shanara Anderson
seemed angry right after
the birth of her daughter:
"When I first came into
the room, (Anderson) was postpartum.
The family was holding
and touching and passing the baby
around and Shanara
was angry, would not look at, would not
hold, would not do
anything with the baby. And I asked her, ‘
Well, how was your
day?' Most new mothers want to talk to
you about their birth
experience and tell you how it was. She
was just mad and she
said, ‘I'm pissed off.' And I asked her
why and she said, ‘It's
a girl, and I really wanted a boy and
so does my significant
other"
That night, Shanara left her
daughter in the nursery at the hospital and left.
She claimed to have a dentist
appointment the next day.
Later in her short life, Vanyel
and her mother would move to town called
Bozeman, with a man Shanara
had not seen in a long time. Jeff Rattey said he
had not seen her in a long
time and even so, he proposed to her over the
phone and then on January
8, 2008, drove from Bozeman to Glendive to pick
up Shanara, her two year
old daughter Elora and her baby daughter Vanyel.
They arrived at his house
the next night. Rattey said that the baby started
crying and that when Shanara
went to check on her, she came back to bed and said that she had thrown
a jacket over the bassinet. When he left for work
at about 7:00am the next
day, he saw that the jacket was still there and he
could hear the baby breathing.
Three hours later, Shanara
called 911 and told them that her daughter was not breathing. Medical personnel
took the baby to Deaconess Hospital where she
was pronounced dead. Shanara
had told police that at she went to check on
the baby at about 6:30am
because she was crying. She claimed she didn't see
the jacket on the bassinet
at that time and suggested that her other daughter
could have put it there.
Dr. Walter Kemp, the Deputy
State Medical Examiner, did an autopsy. His con- conclusion was that Vanyel
died of an undetermined cause and manner. Walter Kemp found that Vanyel
had rib fractures and cerebral edema, excessive fluid
in the substance of the brain.
Detective Any Knight contacted Shanara who said that she did not kill Vanyel
and said that maybe her daughter, Elora, had been
the one responsible. Shanara
told Andy Knight that she had been having some
trouble sleeping and that
she suffers from depression. She said she may have
forgotten to take her medication
and might had suffered from temporary
insanity"
"I just felt like I
had no control over anything in my life"
While she was being interviewed,
Shanara told him that she was going to plead guilty, then awhile later
she requested an attorney, which ended the
interview.
Shanara was charged with the
deliberate homicide of Vanyel. She plead not
guilty in court, before Judge
Holly Brown and was held at the Gallatin County
Detention Center on $500,000.
bond. Chief Deputy County Attorney Todd
Whipple said he was not going
to seek the death penalty against Shanara.
In February of 2009, Shanara
Anderson, who was 22 at the time, was in court with her attorney, Peter
Ohman, to enter a plea of not guilty. Shanara didn't
say anything at all during
her court appearance.
For information about preventing
child abuse in the state of South Montana, click the links below. If they
can't help you, ask for someone who can. NEVER give up looking for
help for an abused child!
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