Jury selection began this week in Broward County for the second-degree murder trial of Shannon Demar Ryan, a self-described “witch doctor” and “chakra master” accused in the 2020 disappearance and killing of 21-year-old Leila Cavett, a young mother whose toddler son was found wandering alone in a Miramar parking lot. Ryan faces charges of second-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and child neglect without great bodily harm. Cavett's body has not been recovered, and prosecutors are presenting the case without remains.
Jury selection officially began on Monday, according to NBC 6 South Florida, marking the start of a trial years in the making. Ryan operated a Facebook business page centered on occult practices before his arrest, and he publicly branded himself online as a “witch doctor” and “chakra master,” according to CBS News. Cavett, a mother living in Georgia with family in Jasper, Alabama, had traveled to South Florida in July 2020 to sell her pickup truck to Ryan and to learn tarot card reading as his apprentice, according to Local 10 News.
A Toddler Found Alone Sparked the Investigation
The case began when Cavett's 2-year-old son, Kamdyn, was discovered wandering alone barefoot in a soiled diaper in a Miramar apartment complex parking lot on July 26, 2020, according to WSB-TV. The child was found roughly two miles from where his mother was last seen alive, per the same account. That discovery set off a missing person investigation that would eventually stretch into a six-year legal saga.
FBI investigators used surveillance footage to trace Cavett to a RaceTrac gas station on Hollywood Boulevard on July 25, 2020, where she was seen entering Ryan's gold Lexus, as reported by 11Alive. Cell tower data placed Ryan's phone and vehicle near the Miramar apartment complex minutes before her son was found abandoned nearby, the station's report states. That gas station footage captured the last known video of Cavett alive.
Digital Searches and Discarded Evidence
Forensic extraction of Ryan's iPhone turned up internet searches conducted the morning of Cavett's disappearance, including queries asking what day commercial garbage pickup ran in Hollywood, Florida, and whether bleach and alcohol make chloroform, according to 11Alive. Retail and gas station surveillance records separately captured Ryan purchasing carpet deodorizer, duct tape, and trash bags at a Walmart, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. He was also seen dumping women's clothing, children's toys, and bloody towels into a gas station dumpster, per Law & Crime, and gas station employees later reported seeing children's items in the trash bin.
Federal Charges Were Dropped After a State Indictment
Cavett's remains have never been recovered. FBI agents searched the Monarch Hill Landfill in Pompano Beach for multiple weeks in October 2020, examining areas connected to local waste routes, according to Local 10 News. The search did not recover remains, leaving prosecutors to rely on a circumstantial case in the state trial.
What Florida Law and Data Show
Florida's highest court changed how appellate courts review cases based entirely on circumstantial evidence. In Sean Alonzo Bush v. State, decided May 14, 2020, the Supreme Court of Florida said courts should no longer apply a special heightened appellate-review standard solely because a case rests on circumstantial evidence. Statewide figures provide broader context but do not establish what happened to Cavett. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement reported that Florida's 2021 statistics included approximately 25,262 missing-children cases and 12,020 missing-adult cases opened through the Florida Crime Information Center. The agency said most missing-person cases were resolved within one month and that less than 1% had not been recovered by the one-year mark. In a separate Georgia case, the FBI Atlanta reported that authorities ended operations at a landfill on Nov. 28, 2022, during the search for missing 20-month-old Quinton Simon—an example of a landfill search as an investigative effort, not proof of what occurred in any particular case.
Federal authorities initially arrested Ryan on federal kidnapping charges in August 2020, but those charges were dropped once Broward County prosecutors formally indicted him on second-degree murder and child neglect charges in May 2021, per CBS News. Ryan has remained held without bond in Broward County Jail throughout the proceedings that followed.
Ryan's Denials and Conflicting Accounts
Before his arrest, Ryan posted an hour-long video on Facebook denying he killed Cavett, and he repeated the denial in a later jailhouse interview, according to Local 10 News. He claimed he paid Cavett $3,000 in cash for her truck and said she left the gas station with her son in a dark sedan driven by unknown men around 2:30 a.m. Investigators, however, reported that gas station surveillance footage showed no dark sedan picking up Cavett that night, according to CBS News.
The trial's start followed years of pre-trial continuances, with defense requests for continuances and deposition scheduling delaying proceedings from earlier dates, according to FOX 5 Atlanta. With jury selection now underway, the case moves into its next phase more than six years after Cavett was last seen alive.
