Years later, witness still questions Shepard crash

NEW LONDON TWP. — Amid an effort to reopen a years-old Huron County crash death investigation, a man who lives in the area agreed that certain aspects of the wreck are unusual. That man, who spoke with investigators after the 2018 crash that killed 21-year-old local corrections officer Katelynn Shepard, said the scene never made sense to him and believes it should be re-examined by Ohio's Bureau of Criminal Investigation. It's a move that members of Shepard's family are asking the original investigating agency — the Huron County Sheriff's Office — to sign off on. "They should have someone from BCI investigate this," Larry Bettinger said. "The whole thing just seems wrong from the get-go." Bettinger, who has lived along Townline Road 187 — where the crash occurred — since 1982, said he was at the scene the day of the crash and later spoke with the Ohio State Highway Patrol, which also reviewed the crash. Decades of living in the area, he said, have given him a baseline for how crashes typically happen there. "I've never seen one like that," he said. Bettinger described a stretch of road where vehicles that lose control, which is not an uncommon sight, usually follow predictable patterns. "When they come this way, you tend to get thrown to the right ditch," he said. "Some go up into the field, some shoot back across. Normally, it's younger kids. They overcorrect, and the car shoots back across the road." "You see the tracks, how the back end slid," he added. "Some go down over the hill, some don't make it, depending on whether they hit a tree." But he said the Shepard crash did not match those patterns. "I've never seen one go into the embankment at a 90-degree angle ,and the road wasn't torn up at all," Bettinger said. "I have never in over 35 years living on this road seen a car go in there like that." Bettinger also questioned how the vehicle came to rest and said it seemed as if the vehicle could have been "set right down" there by a tow truck. He recalled what he was told about the vehicle's direction of travel. "As I recall, the state patrol told me the truck was heading east," Bettinger said. "I've never seen one wreck going east that I know about." Bettinger estimated he sees three or four crashes a year along the road but said none resembled what he saw in this case. He also said he did not observe any fire the night of the crash, despite the extent of the damage later described. Investigators said Shepard's body and her vehicle were found burned. "I didn't notice a fire," he said. Because of the layout of his home, Bettinger said he would have had a view in that direction during the night. "When you go in during the night, you're looking right out that way," he said. "I get up two or three times during the night… but I didn't notice a fire." He acknowledged crops, corn specifically, may have limited visibility at the time. "I remember we had corn out in that field that year, it was at least six feet high by July, when the wreck happened," he said. He said his contact with investigators was brief and largely limited to the initial response. "The state patrol came out and talked to me," Bettinger said. "But that's been a long time. "I haven't seen anyone out here investigating this since the day it happened," he added. "Then a couple weeks ago, I saw you guys over there with the drone and looking through the woods." Bettinger was referring to an April 7, 2026, visit to the area by a reporter and a detective with the Huron County Sheriff's Office, who returned to the scene to document the location, take photographs, examine the terrain and collect evidence. Bettinger said that activity stood out because, in his view, there had been little visible follow-up over the years. As time has passed, he said some of the details he once found suspicious have faded. "I don't remember all the things that I thought were suspicious then," he said. "Because it's been so long." Still, he said, questions about the case have persisted among people familiar with it. "People thought from the beginning that there was something weird about the whole wreck," Bettinger said. "That was a beautiful little 21-year-old girl just starting out in life," he said, his words trailing off.