The Murders of Cynthia Kane-Clark & Dawn Shippee (Rhode Island)

When friends Cynthia Kane-Clark and Dawn Shippee both turned up the victims of homicide, one after the other, in the same two month span, investigators were faced with a complex investigation. It’s now been over 20 years since the two women were killed in neighboring Rhode Island towns, and police are still looking for answers.

Cynthia Kane-Clark

In the fall of 2002, 27-year old Cynthia Kane-Clark, who went by Cyndi, was getting back on her feet. According to reporting by Meaghan Wims for the Providence Journal, Cyndi’s friends said she was a good-hearted, giving person, but she also had a rough life. Her childhood was spent between foster homes and as an adult, her marriage ended in a difficult divorce. Substance-use disorder had played a recurring role in her day to day, but she had recently sought treatment in a rehabilitation program. When she completed the program, Cyndi found a new apartment for herself where her kids could stay, too.

The apartment building sat at the corner of Washington and Nolan Streets in the Arctic area of West Warwick, Rhode Island. The building had three floors plus a walk-out basement level where Cyndi’s unit was located. One of the basement level doors led out to the large parking area behind the building. News reports indicate that this parking lot was often the scene of parties – people hanging out well into the early hours of the morning, kind of thing. West Warwick Police records show that for the roughly six month period that Cyndi lived there, officers occasionally responded to the address to break up a crowd or to tell people to keep the noise down. However, on the morning of Saturday, November 9, 2002, police were called to the building for much more than a noise complaint.

According to reporting by WPRI, it was Cyndi’s young daughter who found her mother’s body in the apartment. When investigators arrived, it was obvious that Cyndi was the victim of a gunshot wound. From that moment, her death was treated as a homicide. Local police said that it was West Warwick’s first murder in about four years.

The investigation into Cyndi’s murder began swiftly but quietly. Police weren’t saying if they had a list of suspects or much else about what the search of the crime scene may have produced for clues as to who was responsible for the murder. And although it had been reported that Cyndi suffered an apparent gunshot wound, that wasn’t immediately ruled her cause of death. Police said that the medical examiner’s office could take as long as six months to determine the precise cause of death pending toxicology results and other information.

Neighbors in the building suggested that whatever happened to Cyndi had actually started the night before. One tenant in the building reported hearing an argument in the parking area outside the apartment on Friday night. The neighbor said he then saw a man with blood on his hands being taken away in handcuffs. Other neighbors described Cyndi and the same man as best friends and that they were often seen on walks together with Cyndi’s kids.

Police did not confirm these stories from neighbors or comment on any police activity at the same building the night before Cyndi was found dead. I requested records from the West Warwick Police Department for any incidents at Cyndi’s address on that Friday night, November 8. The records clerk told me that they don’t have any record of an incident or police responding to the Washington Street building on the night of November 8. So, maybe this story about Cyndi’s male best friend in handcuffs isn’t accurate.

About 5 days later, police were reassuring West Warwick residents that Cyndi’s death was not a random act. Police Chief Peter Brousseau said that it wasn’t like someone was out there on a killing rampage, and yet they also hadn’t yet arrested anybody for the murder. Police were continuing to follow a few leads but appealed to the public for more information about the days and hours before Cyndi was shot.

Meanwhile, police were interviewing possible witnesses as well as those closest to Cyndi, including a friend she reportedly met in the treatment program. Her name was Dawn Shippee.

Dawn Shippee

According to witness statements summarized in an affidavit by Detective Robert DiCarlo, 30-year old Dawn Shippee met Cyndi while they were both at a treatment facility in Providence about 5 or 6 months before Cyndi’s death. They became friends, close enough that when Dawn and her husband separated, she stayed with Cyndi at her apartment in West Warwick.

But something happened during their few months of friendship. There’s a record of at least one argument breaking out, loud enough for the police to show up. On October 13, 2002, a West Warwick police officer responded to Cyndi’s apartment building around 2 a.m. for a noise disturbance call. A brief narrative of the incident by the officer states that Cyndi was in an argument with her friend Dawn. Both were intoxicated and Cyndi wasn’t letting Dawn get behind the wheel of a car. The officer asked the women to keep it down and both went back inside for the night. A few hours later, West Warwick Police responded to a second noise complaint at the building, but this time for reports of a loud party in the backyard. Neither Cyndi nor Dawn’s name is referenced in the report of the incident.

It’s around this time, in the weeks leading up to Cyndi’s death, that a witness says Dawn had started seeing the father of one of Cyndi’s children. Cyndi wasn’t happy about it and reportedly told the man that if he didn’t end things with Dawn, she wasn’t going to let him see their child anymore. And it sounds like the guy did try to break up with Dawn, which triggered an argument between Dawn and the man. He told her to never come back. A witness – who happened to be a different man Dawn had previously dated – said the argument and breakup left Dawn extremely upset and convinced nobody liked her.

The same witness also told police that the night before Cyndi was found dead in her apartment, he spent the night with Dawn. The witness stated to police that at several points during that night, he woke up to find Dawn fully clothed and standing over the bed, unable to sleep. The man went back to bed after Dawn said she was going to find a sleeping pill. When he woke up a few hours later at 6 a.m. he sensed something was off.

He said that his car keys were on the floor, not in his jeans where he left them, and the front seat of his car was moved up closer to the steering wheel. He asked Dawn if she had driven his car somewhere but she said no. He also noticed that someone used his cell phone while he was sleeping.

Court documents state that when a West Warwick police detective interviewed Dawn a few days into the investigation, she confirmed that this man, the witness, had spent the night at her house the night of Cyndi’s murder. Dawn also stated that she’d been getting some strange prank phone calls ever since Cyndi was murdered, and she thought they were coming from the father of Cyndi’s child. She also told them that the father of Cyndi’s child was at a friend’s house on the night Cyndi was killed.

Within hours of that interview, Dawn called police to report that she just got a phone call from an unknown woman, who said the father of Cyndi’s child just called and asked that she call Dawn because he wanted her to go find a gun that he’d thrown into some bushes at the place he was staying on the night Cyndi was shot.

It was quite the game of telephone, but police followed up on Dawn’s story. An extensive three-hour search for the gun the next day at the precise location Dawn reported was unsuccessful. No gun. Meanwhile, police had encountered another potential problem with Dawn’s story. They knew that the father of Cyndi’s child was with intake at the Adult Correctional Institutions at the time he supposedly called the unknown woman, so he wouldn’t have actually been able to make that call.

Interestingly, a few hours after police searched the bushes and surrounding area for a firearm allegedly connected to Cyndi’s murder, a kid getting off the school bus nearby managed to stumble upon a .32 caliber gun in the very spot that had been scoured by investigators earlier that day. Police stated in court documents that if the gun had been there all along, they would’ve found it.

The alleged love triangle between Dawn and Cyndi and the father of Cyndi’s child, the bizarre/possibly false reports about a phone call and a gun in the bushes by Dawn, it was all part of mounting suspicion that Dawn may have had something to do with Cyndi’s death. So two and a half weeks after Cyndi was killed, police searched Dawn’s residence at Fairview Avenue in Coventry, Rhode Island.

The search warrant indicates investigators were looking for firearms, ammo, spent casings and bullet fragments as well as metal grinding tools. As a result of the search, they found and seized a single spent round of ball ammunition, two vises, a pair of gardening gloves, and Dawn’s father’s truck.

What investigators learned from that evidence, what it told them about Cyndi’s murder and Dawn’s possible involvement in the case is unclear, because a month after that search of her home, Dawn was murdered, too.

Dawn Shippee and Cyndi Kane-Clark’s stories continue on Dark Downeast. Press play to hear the full episode wherever you get your podcasts.