The 2017 murder of Egypt Covington, a 27-year-old aspiring singer in Michigan, sent shockwaves through her community and left her family searching for answers for years. Dateline revisits the killing of Egypt Covington, whose passing in Van Buren Township, Michigan, shocked her community and left her family searching for answers for years.
The two-hour broadcast features the latest developments in the case, including state police detectives speaking out for the first time to reveal clues they uncovered in Egypt’s murder. This article delves into the details of the case, the investigation, and the eventual resolution.
The Discovery and Initial Investigation
Egypt Covington was found dead on the floor of her Belleville home. On June 23, 2017, the 27-year-old local singer was found dead in her duplex. She was shot in the head and bound with lights.
Covington’s boyfriend, Curtis Meadows, knew something was wrong when the singer never responded to his usual morning check-in in late June of 2017. “I always sent her a good morning text,” Meadows said in a chilling preview clip of Friday’s Dateline episode. But after hours went by without any response from Covington, Meadows drove to her home after work to check on her and found the front door ajar.
“She was tied up, blood clearly covering the side of her head,” he said of discovering Covington's body. Egypt, who was 27, had been shot in the back of the head. Her hands were bound behind her back with Christmas lights. “I just showed up at my girlfriend’s house... and I walked inside. She’s there, tied up,” Egypt's boyfriend at the time, Curtis Meadows, said in a haunting 911 call that was obtained by Dateline: Secrets Uncovered’ and played on the “A Girl Named Egypt" episode. "She’s dead. There’s blood around her head... she’s dead.”
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Meadows can be heard sobbing as he waited for members of the Van Buren Police Department to arrive. Egypt, once considered the life of the party, was gone. Her June 2017 death sent shockwaves through the quiet lakeside community where she and her brother D’Wayne Turner worked side-by-side as beloved bartenders.
Meadows walked into Egypt's home and found her dog Ruby, who he said seemed to want to lead him somewhere. After taking a few more steps inside, Meadows discovered his girlfriend dead on the living room floor. “She was tied up, hands behind her back in, like, a fetal position on the ground. Blood clearly covering the side of her head,” Meadows said. “So, I ran out. I was in shock. My phone was in the center console of my truck and I called 911.”
When Van Buren Police arrived minutes later, they confirmed that Egypt had been killed with one fatal bullet to the head. “I just dropped and all I can remember is screaming and crying... ’Not my baby’ and ‘How could that happen?’” Egypt's mom, Tina Covington, said of getting the devastating news. “It was like, mommy wasn’t there for you, you know? How could I have protected you? What could I have done better? But to know that she was scared to death and she knew she was gonna die, just - it just makes me feel like, why?”
As the years stretched on without any answers, the investigation into Egypt's murder tore her family apart and drew suspicion to those closest to her.As with most investigations, police began by taking a look at those closest to the victim, including Meadows.
But Meadows was fully cooperative with authorities, passed a polygraph test and was eventually ruled out as a suspect. Police also questioned Egypt’s ex-boyfriend, mechanic Kenny Michalak - even going as far as to name him as a “person of interest” at one point in the investigation. Just five days before Egypt’s death, Egypt and Michalak had gotten into an argument at a local strawberry festival.
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Her stepmom, Kristin Covington, said Egypt had planned to tell Michalak - who friends and family said wasn’t taking their breakup well - at the festival that she could no longer have him in her life as she had moved on with Meadows. According to police, Michalak also failed a polygraph test.
Michalak told authorities and a private investigator hired by Egypt’s family that on the night Egypt was killed, he had been out bar-hopping with friends before returning home alone and streaming shows on his phone. Michalak - who said he handed his phone over to authorities to confirm his alibi - denied having anything to do with Egypt's death and described her as being like “family” to him.
Egypt’s mother was convinced Michalak wasn't involved in Egypt's murder and publicly stood by him, even sitting next to him at a memorial concert for Egypt, while her father, Chuck Covington, supported the direction the police were taking. “It divided our family. It divided our entire community,” Tina recalled. Tensions within the family only grew after Turner’s new girlfriend, Lindsay Brink - who had never known Egypt - launched her own investigation, questioning suspects, forcing police to answer tough questions, and calling for the Michigan State Police to step in to take over the case after no arrests were made.
The Turning Point: Michigan State Police Involvement
But when the case was handed over to the Michigan State Police in 2020, Egypt’s killers were finally revealed. Canning told NBC Insider that the most surprising element of covering the case was “how quickly the Michigan police solved the case after the local police couldn’t for years.” She spoke to Michigan State Police Detectives James Plummer and Sean Street for the episode, to find out what clues finally brought the case to its resolution.
All of Brink's efforts finally paid off in 2020, when Michigan State Police assumed control of the case. The turning point in the Egypt Covington case occurred when Michigan State Police detectives shifted the focus of the stalled investigation and began piecing together overlooked details. Once they took charge in 2020, they utilized digital tools that local investigators had not previously employed.
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They quickly ruled Michalak out as a suspect, but found other evidence in the case file that pointed them in a shocking new direction. One of the most significant steps was a geofence search that enabled them to gather data from devices near Egypt’s duplex on the night she died.
A “geofence” conducted by police at the time identified phones in the area at the time of Egypt’s murder. Michigan State Police Detective James Plummer was able to link one of the phones that was “in her house” at the time police believe that Egypt was killed to Shandon Groom, an Ohio man with no apparent connection to Egypt. Surveillance footage also captured his blue truck pulling into a convenience store near her duplex around the time of the killing.
In 2017, when authorities sent the Christmas lights used to bind Egypt’s hands out to labs, three genetic profiles were found, one from Egypt and two from unknown sources. But the samples weren't strong enough to create a complete DNA profile to run through the national CODIS database at the time.
By 2020, there had been DNA advances that allowed authorities to develop a more complete profile. One of the DNA samples matched to Tim Moore, an Ohio man with a criminal record who knew Groom. Using Moore’s cell phone data, investigators discovered that on the night of the killing, the men had stopped by the home of Shane Evans, Moore’s half-brother. Evans lived down the street from Egypt and worked for the company that cut her lawn.
“During the day prior to Egypt’s murder, he had actually been there cutting her grass.” Plummer said. Evans knew that the residents who lived on the other side of the duplex had a business growing medical marijuana - and were heading out of town for a music festival. Egypt had been concerned about the clientele that the business attracted before her death and told her mother she planned to move. But she’d never get the chance to.
Evans would later confess to authorities that he agreed to drive by the house and “point” to the home so that Moore and Groom - who were following behind in the truck - could rob Egypt's neighbors' home while they were away, hoping to make off with a large stockpile of drugs.
But, confused, Moore and Groom went into the left side of the duplex where Egypt lived, rather than the right side. There, they found Egypt inside, tied her up and shot her. “They could have easily gone to the right door, took the stuff out of there and nobody would have been harmed,” Egypt's brother Turner said. “It didn’t have to happen.”
But Moore was on parole for another crime in which a female witness had identified him and he didn't want to leave another witness behind this time.
The Arrests and Convictions
The arrests in late 2020 finally provided her family with the answers they had sought. All three men - Moore, Groom, and Evans - were arrested and later agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder. Detectives developed a theory that the three went to Egypt’s neighborhood intending to rob a neighboring unit. That duplex was believed to house a marijuana operation, which was common in the area at the time.
Court testimony later showed that Evans had directed the others to the location, believing the target was next to Egypt’s residence. Moore and Groom entered, unaware they had entered the wrong unit. Egypt confronted them, and the confrontation turned violent. She was restrained with string lights and fatally shot.
“My daughter’s life was reduced to an oops,” Chuck said in court, in a powerful victim impact statement. Evans received a sentence of 15 to 25 years in prison, while Groom received 17 to 26 years behind bars. Moore, considered the one who pulled the trigger, received the harshest sentence of 20 to 55 years. For Egypt’s family, the outcomes highlighted both the failures of the original investigation and the relief of seeing accountability.
Canning hopes viewers are inspired by Covington's family’s persistence to get the murder solved. “Families shouldn’t give up in their pursuit of justice,” Canning said. “This family was relentless in getting Egypt’s case in the right hands and getting people to care.” But the tireless pursuit also had some sad consequences for the family. “The most difficult aspect to this story was dealing with a family divided,” Canning told NBC Insider.
In conclusion, the tragic story of Egypt Covington serves as a reminder of the importance of perseverance in the pursuit of justice. The relentless efforts of her family, combined with the fresh perspective and advanced techniques of the Michigan State Police, ultimately led to the capture and conviction of her killers.
Sentences for the Killers
| Killer | Sentence |
|---|---|
| Shane Lamar Evans | 15 to 25 years |
| Shandon Ray Groom | 17 to 26 years |
| Timothy Eugene Moore | 20 to 55 years |
Canning hopes viewers are inspired by Covington's family’s persistence to get the murder solved. “Families shouldn’t give up in their pursuit of justice,” Canning said. “This family was relentless in getting Egypt’s case in the right hands and getting people to care.”
The 27-year-old’s death came as a shock to those closest to her. The police investigation that would follow “divided the entire community,” according to one of Dateline's interview subjects, and left Covington’s loved ones struggling with who could have wanted her dead. “There was a gut punch coming and it wasn’t just who, but rather why,” Dateline correspondent Andrea Canning said in the preview video about the case’s outcome.
Who was Egypt Covington?
Those who knew Egypt couldn’t imagine who would have wanted the social bartender dead. "She had this amazing canny talent of seeing you, right into... your heart,” Meadows remembered of his girlfriend. “When you met Egypt, you walked away better, feeling better about your day, yourself.”
At the bar they worked at, Egypt and her brother Turner were a popular duo, even performing “little routines” with flaming bottles of alcohol to entertain customers. “We had a lot of regulars that would come in, mostly to see her ‘cause she was like a shining light, but I was somewhat funny too,” Turner recalled.
Egypt had also recently landed a job with a craft beer distributor as a beer sales rep and was still pursuing her dream of becoming a singer. She’d even won Eastern Michigan’s regional "Country Idol" competition in 2014 and had once auditioned for NBC’s The Voice. “It was all coming together,” Turner said of Egypt's life at the time.
Egypt had also found love, and after five years of an “on and off” relationship with Meadows, the couple were more committed than ever and planning to move in together. The couple first met when Egypt was 20 years old and Meadows was 28, but the timing hadn’t been right early in their relationship. As Meadows explained, he had a young daughter and was working a 9 to 5 job, while Egypt often returned home from her job as a bartender just as he was getting up to start his day.
“Life got in the way,” he said, describing himself as “young and dumb.” But before Egypt was murdered, the couple were more in sync than ever.
The fact that Egypt and Meadows were closer than ever made it even more unusual when, on the morning of June 23, 2017, Meadows got no response to his usual good morning text to his girlfriend. “Usually she always responds within like 15 to 20 minutes, and nothing,” he recalled.
Meadows wasn't initially too worried, but as the hours passed by and there was still no response to his text messages and phone calls, he grew increasingly concerned and decided to stop by Egypt's duplex after work. When he arrived, he found Egypt’s car in the driveway and the external door to the duplex ajar. Once inside the door, Egypt’s apartment was on the left, while her neighbor’s portion of the home was on the right.
Families shouldn’t give up in their pursuit of justice,” Canning said. “This family was relentless in getting Egypt’s case in the right hands and getting people to care.”
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