‘Dr Phil’ sees wife allegedly impersonate husband in emails for 2 years after she murdered him, leaving his son devastated
Friday’s episode of 'Dr. Phil' deals with a murder case that enters the realm of the bizarre. The dead body of a man called Shannon Ivey was found in a storage facility in La Porte, Texas in 2018. According to the police, Shannon was murdered sometime in 2016.
His family members now believe that for almost two years, his now-dead second wife Toni Ivey wrote them emails and texts pretending to be him so as not to raise any suspicion. “My son, Lance, was receiving emails for approximately two years, emails that he thought were coming from his father,” said Melanie, Shannon’s ex-wife on the show. “When his stepmom, Toni, died, the emails suddenly stopped.”
“I believe Toni shot Shannon in the back of the head, put him in her storage facility, and left him there for two years. As soon as they found the body, we knew the emails were fake, that there was foul play involved,” added Melanie.
According to news reports, in January 2018, while cleaning out Toni Ivey's storage unit, a body was discovered, wrapped in blankets and tarps. But how did the family never suspect a thing for over 18 months?
“Shannon worked out of the country. He would be gone for maybe two months at a time. Sometimes longer. He (Lance) started getting emails from (Shannon) saying he had met somebody over there and he wasn’t interested in his wife anymore -- he had made a life over there. Lance got an email in August that same year saying ‘I’m not coming home at all’ and that devastated him,” said Melanie.
She added she had always been suspicious of the tone of the emails, something she had confided to Lance as well. Dr. Phil McGraw, along with Melanie and Shannon’s sister Heather tried to isolate the differences in the emails written by Shannon from what they believe was written by Toni.
With Toni dead (she died of natural causes in 2017), what hope could the family now have for any kind of justice? The family believes there was probably another person involved, and that there were forgeries made to documents by Toni, giving her power of attorney and Shannon’s money.
On the show, they examined different instances of Shannon and Toni’s signatures, trying to verify if there were discrepancies. Heather said on ‘Dr. Phil’, she was haunted by the image of her brother lying dead for two years in a cold, dark storage unit.
Lance, Shannon’s son, has had a hard time dealing with the case. He blames himself for Shannon’s death. He said on the show, “My stepmom, Toni, pretended to be my dad through email, and it was, honestly, believable. I’m still confused when she took over, because some emails, they sounded so much like him.”
Lance said Toni even showed up at his boot camp graduation. “It seemed like she was being supportive, even though she had already murdered my dad. I’ve been pretty trapped, recently, trying to figure out everything and why Toni would do what she did,” he said.
The host offered him some advice. “I’m not here to tell you to get over this,” said Dr. McGraw. “But I think there are some things you are doing that aren’t constructive. And I think you owe your dad a different approach to this.”
He explained that Lance or anyone else in the family should not blame themselves for this just because they had not recognized it wasn’t Shannon writing the mails. He said the reason they could have never seen through this was that they, being good people, could not conceive of such a thing, to begin with.
'Dr. Phil' airs weekdays on various stations at 3 p.m. ET.