Video Allegedly Shows Florida Man Dragging Body Of Woman, Later Found Dead, Around His Home

A Florida man has been charged with abuse of a corpse and related charges after investigators reviewed surveillance footage from his home that allegedly showed him dragging a body of a woman out of the residence.

Stephanie Shenefield, 38, was missing for a week before citizens walking their dogs found her "badly decomposed body in a drainage ditch,"on June 9 in Palmetto, Florida, according to the Manatee Sheriff’s Department. 

During the course of their investigation, investigators discovered that, before her death, Shenefield had taken an Uber to the home of 51-year-old William Redden, an alleged drug dealer and eight-time convicted felon, WTSP reports.

Manatee County Sheriff Rick Wells stated at a Friday press conference that Redden told investigators “they hung out for a while and that Stephanie left the residence that next morning,” according to WTSP.

Redden then gave consent for the deputies to look through his home, which is when they found cameras designed to record footage from both inside and outside the house. Redden let investigators take the DVRs from the cameras; Wells noted that the suspect didn’t believe that they had been recording.

"He tells them they do not record inside the residence. He was wrong," Wells said, according to Fox 13 in Tampa. "Thankfully he's ignorant and didn't know that. Because it worked for us."

Investigators who reviewed the footage claim it shows Shenefield arriving at the residence at 1:20 a.m. on June 3, according to Albia News. Later, the footage allegedly shows Redden dragging Shenefield’s lifeless body through the house, Fox 13 reports, as well as him dragging a body wrapped in a sheet from the home to the back seat of his car the following day.

“He doesn't call 911, he doesn't call authorities, he doesn't call anyone,” Wells said of Redden.

It is not yet clear how Shenefield, a mother of two from Bradenton, died. An autopsy showed no signs of trauma, WWSB reports, but they are awaiting the results of a toxicology test. Investigators believe that she died inside Redden's home.

"William Redden is a piece of crap, that's what he is," Wells stated on Friday. "He had the opportunity to call law enforcement. He's an eight-time convicted felon. He's still refusing to talk to us. He could have done a lot of things, but that's not his character. The only thing he thought of was getting rid of the evidence that was in his car — that was a human being."

In addition to the abuse of a corpse charge, Wells faces charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of an altered firearm, He is being held on a $208,000 bond. It’s not clear if he has an attorney.