POLICE SAY VETERAN WHO VANISHED IN ARKANSAS WAS KILLED

• Collins vanished the night he returned to Arkansas after visiting his mistress
• He wasn't reported missing for nine months after his 2021 disappearance 
• READ MORE: Army vet swept out to sea 

Cops probing the mystery disappearance of a cheating Army veteran who was not reported missing for nine months now believe he was murdered.

Shannon Collins, 52, vanished in March 2021 after returning to his wife and son, 24, in Pottsville, Arkansas, from a trip to visit his mistress in Tennessee, DailyMail.com can reveal.

His family is now refusing to cooperate with authorities investigating the disappearance, after his wife Tresa told them he walked away from the home after an argument.

‘We’ve done a lot of work on it, and we’re looking at is as maybe he didn’t just walk off,’ Lt. Dain Yarbrough of Pope County Sheriff’s Office said.

‘We are definitely looking at the foul play aspect to it.’

Shannon’s case is being kept alive by his younger brother Blake, who is convinced he will never see him again.

‘My brother's not missing. My brother's dead,’ Blake, 45, bluntly told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

‘Two people, who allegedly watched Shannon leave his own house for the last time, tell police two completely different stories about how he left.

‘Why are they lying? Why are they covering it up? At this point, my family and I have come to our own conclusions as to what happened to Shannon.’

Police have confirmed that Shannon returned home to Pottsville on March 11, 2021.

Tresa, 53, did not report him missing to the police, and failed to tell his extended family that he had not returned home for over a month.

Shannon’s brother Blake told DailyMail.com he was the one who filed a report with police when he returned to Arkansas from living out of state, nine months after Shannon was last seen.

Initially Tresa claimed that he had ‘left the family’ after an argument, and was texting her, their son, and Brittany, 33, her daughter from a previous relationship, from a new number.

However, when Shannon did not respond to messages from his parents or two siblings, they began to get concerned – despite his wife’s claims that he was in contact with her.

Blake said once he involved the police in his brother’s disappearance, Tresa and her children have never spoken to his family again.

He confirmed that Shannon had been having an affair with a woman in Tennessee and that Blake believes that Shannon and Tresa had a dispute when he returned from his lover.

Blake told DailyMail.com that the marriage had been ‘over for some time’ before Shannon vanished, and his brother had described his wife as ‘jealous’ multiple times during their relationship.

‘He was going to divorce her as soon as their son graduated from college’, he said. ‘She knew exactly where he was, and that he was involved with another woman.

‘Then she sat at home all week, and I believe that he came home, and she confronted him.’

Blake added that his brother’s lover has spoken with police. He does not know the woman’s identity, and has urged her to get in touch with the family directly if she has any information.

He also claims that the last message Shannon’s phone ever sent was a Facebook message to the anonymous woman, saying ‘I’m ok’, though he doesn’t believe his brother wrote it.

Blake, who lives in Texas, is begging anyone with information to come forward, and believes that Shannon was killed the night that he went missing.

Speaking to DailyMail.com he said: ‘You don’t immediately assume your brother’s wife and family could’ve done something horrible to him and are making attempts to keep their actions hidden.

‘We have done everything in our power to be helpful and cooperative to the police investigating Shannon’s case.

‘The same cannot be said about anyone involved in Shannon’s immediate family. The people who were supposed to be closest to Shannon know the truth about what happened, but they’ve decided they aren’t talking and are unwilling to help.’

Tresa reportedly told authorities in her only interview that she and Shannon had an argument when he returned but went to bed ‘as normal’ the night before he vanished.

She claims that he simply ‘walked away’ from the house, adding that he was on pain medication and may not have been thinking straight.

Detectives confirmed that witness statements and cell site evidence confirmed both Tresa and her son were home when Shannon arrived back from his trip.

Shannon’s stepdaughter, Brittany, later told police that she saw him get into a vehicle with an unknown driver – contradicting her mother’s prior statement.

During her interview, Tresa also said that she believed Shannon had ‘checked himself into a mental facility’ but would let them know he was okay.

Blake said that Tresa did nothing to stop her husband’s US Army pension payments following his disappearance, and they were only halted after he reported his brother missing.

Police say there were ‘inconsistencies’ in her testimony and served a search warrant on the home she shared with Shannon. Tresa then refused to speak to authorities without a lawyer.

She is currently being represented by attorney Michael Robbins, who successfully defended Kevin Jones after he was accused of murdering his beauty queen girlfriend Nona Dirksmeyer in the ‘Murder in Apartment 12’ case.

Robbins did not respond to requests for comment by DailyMail.com.

Lt. Yarbrough told DailyMail.com that the FBI had now been called in to assist in the three-year-long investigation.

‘We are still looking at any angle we can get to help us further what we have already, we’ll take any help that we can get,’ he said.

Yarbrough added that while he didn’t want to say definitively that Shannon was dead, that is his working theory of the investigation.

In a statement the sheriff’s department confirmed that Shannon’s wife and son told officers that he ‘walked away’ from the home March 12.

‘During the initial, and only, interview the wife participated in, she gave false and misleading statements to investigators,’ they added.

‘Investigators attempted to obtain follow-up information from Shannon’s wife and children but were advised that they had obtained counsel and wished to speak to investigators no further.

‘They have provided no information since to help further the investigation. To this date, there have been no leads from the public, nor family or friends that would suggest to investigators that Shannon is living elsewhere or even left the Pottsville area.’

Shannon, who served as a soldier in the United States Army National guard, took on a delivery job after he was medically discharged from the military at the rank of Sergeant Major SGM after 24 years of service.

He was supposed to make a delivery on the day of his disappearance, but never showed up for the job, which his family say was out of character for the veteran.

The family met with Pope County prosecutor Jeff Phillips this month to discuss movement in the case but were told that they felt there is not enough evidence to bring charges.

Shannon’s family is hopeful that renewed interest in the case will help bring more information to light, and result in charges in his case.

‘Our family is strong, and we have faith,’ said Blake ‘Faith in God. And faith in the fact that the police and legal system will come to their senses and do the right thing to bring justice to Shannon, and peace to my family.’

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2024-07-08T12:59:24Z dg43tfdfdgfd