CINCINNATI, Ohio — Sherry and L.C. Nolan Jr., were cleaning out their daughter’s house when they stumbled upon a shirt box filled with once-folded letters laid out neatly in a stack – about a hundred letters from high school from her then-boyfriend John Broe.
Assuming they were private love letters from her high school sweetheart, they did not want to betray their daughter in that way and closed the lid with plans of sealing it.
“We're not reading love letters and that’s that,” her father told Sherry. “So he put them away.”
Shannon Marie Nolan-Broe, also known to those who loved her as “Shan” or “Shanny,” was sentimental. Along with those letters, they found stacks of birthday, Valentine’s Day, and Christmas cards from over the years that she had kept.
About a month later, Sherry went down to her basement to gather those cards. She figured that she would mail them back to Shannon’s loved ones, to show how much her daughter cherished their kind thoughts.
L.C. grabbed the shirt box and opened it again.
He started sifting through the letters. Sherry glanced over and reminded him that they decided that they were not going to read those handwritten love letters from Broe.
“I just remember he got very quiet,” Sherry said. “He said, ‘Sherry, I think you really need to look at this… I think I see the words ‘I'm sorry’ and ‘hit.’"
What those letters revealed was Shannon's long-kept secet, a message to them; and unraveled a story they never knew about their daughter.
“She left [them] so we would understand,” Sherry surmised. “She needed help but couldn’t ask for it.”
High School Sweethearts
Shannon met Broe in 1991, when she was in the 8th grade and he was a freshman at Walnut Hills High School. But since she was not allowed to date until she was 16, they were just friends first for two years.
Their first date was on Oct. 8, 1993 with his family on a hayride at their church. Shannon was 16 years old and Broe was 17. And she was smitten.
Soon, the love would turn sour, Sherry said, and they broke up with her family’s urging.
"There were good times and there were bad times,” she said. "The relationship wasn't what it should be.”
But they always reconciled.
Sherry vividly recalled one day, Shannon, who graduated in 1995, was looking at her senior picture with her. Wearing an emerald green blouse and gold necklace, the brunette with long flowing hair and dark brown eyes, was looking back at the camera with a big smile.
"When she got her high school photos back, she looked at that particular photo itself, and still not realizing what she was going through, she said, 'for the first time, I see myself and that maybe I might be a little bit pretty.' That's how much he had done to her in a few years of dragging her back and questioning her own looks.”
Sherry looked at her 17-year-old daughter puzzled, "'you're beautiful. Look at your face, you're beautiful. How could you not even think you're pretty?' I never dreamt it was someone saying that to her.”
Eventually, Sherry would understand more than she ever did about her daughter’s relationship from that time period. But not in time to save her.
On Oct. 8, 1999, a 22-year-old Shannon was beaming as she married and took Broe’s last name. It was a large, beautiful wedding, Sherry said.
“She wanted to make sure everything was perfect,” the doting mother remembered. “That was a very special day for Shannon. She believed in marriage; she believed in lifelong marriages. It was so special for her to get married in a church and have all her friends and family there.”
During the newlyweds’ first year of marriage, they lived in an apartment in Westwood. Shannon worked as a unit manager at a retirement village and she was getting ready to go back to school for a nursing degree.
"She loved her job. She loved what she was doing.”
Their second year of marriage started in a new home they purchased together.
It was the house she grew up in and she insisted on having Christmas at her home that year – she wanted to carry on all the holiday traditions she remembered so fondly inside that home. And she wanted to raise her family in the same home she was raised in, Sherry said.
"She felt like that was happiness. She took great pride in that home. She did everything to make sure that the house she purchased became a home for her and her family,” Sherry said.
The family had their last Christmas all together at Shannon's house in 2000.
Not long after, Shannon found out that she was pregnant.
However, it was just after Valentine’s Day and after an argument, when Broe moved out of the house and the couple separated.
Sherry recalled the story her daughter relayed to her about why he left her.
She said that Shannon had sent him a cookie bouquet to his work for Valentine's Day. The next day everything changed and he left.
"Shannon really wanted the marriage to work. That was what she was all about,” Sherry said.
Eventually, he did return home. But the happiness would not last.
Meanwhile, Sherry was over the moon to welcome a second grandchild.
In fact, Shannon was planning on having the doctor who had delivered her 24 years earlier, deliver her own child. And 24 years old seemed to be a tradition in motherhood for her family.
Sherry's mom was 24 years old when she gave birth to her; Sherry was 24 when she gave birth to Shannon; and Shannon was going to give birth to a fourth generation, also at age 24.
Sherry went with Shannon to one of her OB/GYN appointments and heard her grandchild's heartbeat for the first time standing by her daughter's side.
“[It was] very, very special. It was beautiful,” she said.
On Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2001, Shannon, who was five months pregnant, went to her parents’ house for dinner with her brother and sister. With everyone’s busy schedules, it was the first time in a long time that the whole family could get together. It was at that dinner where Shannon also gave Sherry a guest list for an upcoming baby shower and her decision that if it was a girl, she would name her Alexandra Jordan.
After dinner and visiting for a bit, Sherry and her kids went Toys ‘R US for some nursery items Shannon had already started putting together. Sherry found two little photo frames with baby names on them. One was “Alexandra” and the other was “Jordan.” With sheer excitement, Sherry bought them for upcoming newborn photos of her grandbaby.
Two days later, on Thursday, Sept. 6, Sherry talked to Shannon on the phone, who was not feeling well following a day of maternity clothes shopping with a friend. Sherry had company and asked if she could call her back.
But Shannon told her, “I'm really tired. I think I'm just going to go to bed. I just really need to lay down.”
Sherry promised to call her back shortly when her friend left. However, her daughter insisted that they would just chat the next day because she was too tired.
The mother and daughter ended their call as they always did.
“I love you, mom.”
“I love you, Shan.”
And Sherry hung up the phone. She did not call Shannon back because she knew she was going to bed and did not want to wake her.
“I always regret… not staying on the phone,” Sherry said.
Daughter Missing
Her husband, L.C. known by most as "Babe" or as “Popi” by the grandkids, has always said that Shannon was his birthday gift because she was born July 29, 1977 and his birthday is Aug. 3.
But just a little of a month after L.C.’s birthday in 2001, everything would change forever.
Sherry vividly recalled the morning of Sept. 7, 2001.
After getting her then-14-year-old son off for school, the phone rang.
It was her uncle in Florida. Her 41-year-old cousin had had an epileptic seizure and died in his sleep. He asked his niece to call her mom and sister and spread the news of their loss.
Along with phone calls, Sherry started preparing a trip to Florida to be with family.
But she was waiting to tell her daughters, Brandy and Shannon, because Brandy was at work and Shannon had a doctor’s appointment scheduled that day.
“I was on the phone with my mom and trying to make arrangements to get flights out to Florida and call waiting buzzed in on me,” Sherry remembered. “And it said it was from Fairfield, Ohio. And I told my mom, ‘I'm going to have to hang up.’ I said, ‘this must be Shannon because her doctor appointment was in Fairfield.’”
But it was not Shannon.
It was the doctor’s office trying to reach Shannon because she did not show up for her appointment.
She figured maybe she just forgot and went to work. So, Sherry called the retirement community where she worked.
But she was not at work. And she was not answering her cell phone or home phone either.
Sherry could not find her eldest daughter.
She called Broe.
“He didn't know where she was, that he unexpectedly was called into work,” Sherry said about her conversation with her son-in-law that morning. “So, he'd been gone all morning very early.”
“I said, ‘well, did you talk to Shannon?’ And he said, well, he said, ‘I was assuming that she was asleep in the other room… her car was, he saw her car.’ Then he just went on to work. And I said, ‘you know, something's got, something's wrong. She was missing. I said, ‘she's gone.’”
Sherry raced upstairs to her bedroom and yelled for L.C. who was sleeping after working a night shift. She told him she would be back and she flew out the door on her way to her daughter’s house, where she told Broe to meet her.
The 30-mile drive was a blur and only took her 15 minutes to arrive at her daughter’s home.
She knocked on the back door, but no one answered. She used her key to go inside and started yelling Shannon’s name. But, still no one answered. The frantic mother moved from room to room, looking and yelling.
But nothing. Just silence.
Once Broe arrived at the house, Sherry called 9-1-1 to report her 24-year-old pregnant daughter missing.
Soon, family and friends flocked to the house and surrounding area – nearly a hundred. They came out in droves to help them look for Shannon.
They made flyers: one with just Shannon’s photo and one with Shannon and Broe from their wedding, because Sherry figured if someone saw Shannon, they may have seen him too and recognize one or both of them. They tacked up flyers up on everything they could affix them to in the neighborhood.
For the next three days, they used Shannon’s home as a meeting place for searching. Time seemed to move slowly with each passing second they could not locate Shannon.
Police spoke to Broe, who, according to court documents, initially told police he did not know where his wife was.
Eventually, detectives were able to get Broe to tell them what happened and where Shannon was located.
She was buried at mile marker 4.8 on Interstate 71, just across from the high school where they met eight years earlier.
Police and clergy showed up at Shannon’s house to deliver the news to her family.
They sat on the couch trying desperately to comprehend was the police chief was telling them. They moved her son and daughter into the kitchen to tell them separately.
“It was like an out-of-body experience,” Sherry recollected. “I could hear screams. And I don't know if it's coming out of us in our room or screams coming out of the kitchen.”
And while the world changed for everyone on Sept. 11, 2001, the Nolan family’s life was shattered the day before on Sept. 10, when they found out that Shannon and Alexandra Jordan had been killed on Sept. 7 – the morning she went missing.
It was one month shy of her two-year wedding anniversary with Broe.
Seeking Justice
Shannon’s husband, John Broe, eventually confessed to killing his wife and unborn daughter after what he told police was self-defense during an escalated argument inside the couple’s first-floor bedroom.
According to court documents, Broe said that Shannon lunged at him with a knife after finding out that he was having an affair. He told police that he picked up a baseball bat and struck his pregnant wife several times in the head.
Hamilton County’s chief deputy coroner determined in his autopsy report that Shannon had died from “brain injuries due to blunt impacts to the head with open skull fractures. He further opined to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the fetus had died… [from] a lack of oxygen due to the bludgeoning death of the mother.”
Broe was arrested and charged with Shannon’s murder and he went to trial in 2002.
He was convicted on two counts of aggravated murder for both Shannon and their unborn child, Alexandra Jordan – which at that time was considered an “unlawful termination of pregnancy.”
Sherry remembers the moment she heard the word: “guilty” sitting inside that Hamilton County courtroom.
“There is this high that comes, a kind of thank God they saw there his lies and they have said that he is guilty,” she said. “It's that feeling of immediate high of hearing some sort of justice and recognition and validation that this murderer took somebody, we lost lives. [Then an] absolutely immediate low because you realize it didn't change anything. Shannon and Alexandra are still not coming home.”
Sitting next to her that day in the courtroom, was her family, as well as several advocates from different agencies, including from the YWCA and the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, Inc. (POMC).
Based in Cincinnati, POMC is an organization that her friend had told her about and put the phone number on a Post-It note and on her refrigerator just after her daughter was killed. She dialed the number two weeks later.
The woman on the other end of the line explained to the grieving mother that she would be with her throughout the process – and gave some solace that there was someone who was there for her and understood what she was going through.
Broe was sentenced to 20 years to life on both counts to serve consecutively, plus five years for tampering with evidence — which he later appealed and those five years were dropped from his sentence.
Now, 43 years old, Broe is currently serving his sentence at Marion Correctional Facility.
Following his conviction, The Unborn Victims Violence Act of 2004 passed through Congress.
At the time, Sen. Mike DeWine, who sponsored the bill, shared Shannon and Alexandra’s story on the senate floor.
The law states, anyone who may “cause the death of, or bodily injury to, a child who is in utero shall be guilty of a separate offense. Requires the punishment for that separate offense to be the same as provided under Federal law for that conduct had that injury or death occurred to the unborn child's mother.”
It was passed as “Laci and Conner’s Law” for Laci and Conner Peterson who were killed in Modesto, California in 2002. She and her unborn son were killed by her husband, Scott Peterson, who is currently on death row at San Quentin Prison.
It took Sherry a year to break free from the emotional haze that her life had become after losing her daughter and granddaughter, which she called a “vicious tragedy.”
“I think in a lot of us start understanding fear more. So, I think that that feeling of, you know, that bad things happen. But when murder touches your life, now, it goes from bad things happen to evil things happen,” she said. “You're trying to find reason, and no matter what would ever be said to you by the murderer, there will never be a reason that would be even acceptable. Yet as families try to find answers, we try to find a reason why someone would make these choices.”
Broe will be eligible for parole in 2041.
But Sherry’s mission is to ensure that he never lives outside of prison walls again.
“The first chance of him ever coming up for possibility of parole was in 2041, and I'll be in my late eighties and I plan to live long enough to be able to stand in front of a parole board,” she vowed. “I will be here and I will be here to speak my piece and for the reasons why he should never step foot out of prison, and that once you disrespect life, as far as I'm concerned, you don't deserve to have this life outside.”
“My personal goal is that I outlive him. I feel like if I can help with him and see him to his grave… I want my kids to have the rest of their lives without that fear and that fight on their hands. They deserve peace in their lives at some point.”
Light at the End of the Tunnel
Sherry keeps smiling reminders of Shannon front and center on her desk at POMC.
The 66-year-old grandmother of three is the volunteer and chapter development coordinator for the organization that helped her through her darkest days.
These days, Sherry is able to smile back at her – but it took a long time for her to smile again.
Amid the framed photos of Shannon, Sherry keeps a circle of eight pennies on her desk. Each time she sees a penny on the ground, she picks it up for what she calls “pennies in heaven,” like a message from Shannon and Alexandra, she said.
“I do pick it up and I say, ‘thank you;’ say ‘I love you too.’ And I put in my pocket.”
She said there is significance to the number eight for her.
It was Oct. 8 when Shannon went on her first date with Broe and again, it was Oct. 8 when they married. Her volleyball jersey was No. 8. And she was buried at mile marker No. 4.8, across the street where the two had met eight years earlier.
Now, with her work through POMC, Sherry helps others going through similar tragedies with her story about Shannon and Alexandra and the abuse that her daughter suffered at the hands of someone she loved.
"I hope that our conversation will not only share our children’s story of love, loss, and grief, but will also enlighten those who are being abused of some of the ‘words’ and ‘control’ that their abusers are using and that they will find a way to leave the relationship safely… that they will realize that they are deserving of a safe life free from the control and abuse of others,” Sherry said.
“And for the multitude of surviving family and friends of murder victims that they become aware of POMC and the survivors waiting to offer them unconditional support and understanding of their personal journey of grief,” she continued.
Helping others now, helps her in her own journey that continues every single day even 19 years later.
“They don’t walk with me, they walk within me,” Sherry said of her daughter and granddaughter. “They are my guiding force to keep me moving forward.”
“I have moved forward in so many ways and so many things that I am proud of myself for doing and that I hope that I am showing to my children and grandchildren the strength that has come to me after such a tragedy. But I just want that to be able to be something to give to other survivors who are in contact with me. I just want them to know that there is down the road, whenever they choose to find it; that there is hope; there is trust to be gained back again.”
But also, she said, she helps others to understand that the grieving process will last a lifetime.
“You need to learn how to be very gentle with yourself and know that you're going to be grieving for a lifetime, that it'll be a different grief. You know, some people say you'll have better days. I say your days will be different. I can go today and enjoy [time] with my kids, my grandkids, my husband, my sister, brother, and all the people that are closest to here, I can go enjoy time with them, knowing that we're still missing two people we want with us,” Sherry said.
“But I feel like they're still with us at that time. And I know that they would want us to be together. So I feel that moving forward is allowing everyone to know that you can bring joy and hope and everything back into your life again.”
Shannon’s Message, Not Love Letters
After her death, Shannon’s family cleaned out her house and took everything to their house in Milford. That is where they discovered the box of letters that Shannon had kept all of those years.
It started to give them a glimpse into Shannon’s life behind closed doors. One that they never knew about.
What they did not know at the time, was that Shannon’s relationship with Broe in high school was actually considered, what she now understands as, "teen abuse,” Sherry said.
While the grieving parents read through the heaping pile of letters, L.C. handed over one to Sherry that concerned him. And things started to come into focus after Shannon was gone.
“He passed me the letter and I started looking at it. And I realize that was John Broe speaking to Shannon in the letter and talking about violence and things he was doing to her,” Sherry remembered.
From those letters, they were able to deduce that the abuse likely started within the first year of them dating.
There are no dates on the letters, so it is unclear when they were written, however, Sherry and her husband were able to piece together time periods based off of school events that were occurring at those times and mentioned within the letters.
"We could tell through those letters that he actually had a lot of control over Shannon throughout high school, throughout their dating lifetime, and including their two years of marriage,” Sherry said.
“At the beginning of the letters he would say to her, he didn't understand how he was ‘so lucky to have someone like Shannon’ would want to be with him, that he was ‘not deserving of Shannon.’ Those changed through the path of the letters that we found. So, they escalate from he's not worthy of Shannon to Shannon not being worthy of him.”
"He refers to her beauty... from being ‘beautiful’ to 'you're not that pretty person I met and fell in love with. You're not that person anymore. You're not as smart as me.' He'd put emphasis on anything to demean her,” Sherry said after painstakingly reading through the letters one by one.
“He would tell her things like, 'when I tell you not to dance with someone, you will not... you will be there for me and only for me, and you will dance with me.’”
She said Broe threatened her in the letters and then apologized for what he had done to her.
“He would say that any injuries that he may place on her, whether it be hitting her, smacking her, kicking her, choking her, they were her fault. He didn't mean to do them, but they were her fault because she didn't stop him.”
In one letter, he wrote: “I’m sorry for hitting you. Damnit. I am, it’s tearing me up inside.”
And in that same letter: “I don’t want you to listen to anything else that anybody else says… I love you and I’m so sorry for hitting you – just tell me not to do it.”
In another letter Broe wrote: “I am truly sorry for hitting you this morning. You don’t deserve to be hit (at least not with fists).”
The apologies spanned through letter after letter.
“I love you Shannon. I’m sorry that I head-butted you again and again and again,” Broe wrote.
“I’m sorry for choking you. I wasn’t trying to, all I wanted to do was get your attention.”
It’s a message that Shannon was finally able to give to her parents.
“I feel like it's Shannon's message, but there's a reason why those were left,” Sherry said. “I think they were left so that we do understand what she went through and that she was not in control of her life and she never had a real normal teenage life or married life, and that it was for her letting us know that she forgives us for not seeing through her and knowing that she needed help.”
Now, Sherry, along with help from Shannon and her letters, educates others about abuse and the signs to look for.
For example, she said when someone you're dating tells you "'maybe you should wear your hair in this way,' or 'maybe you should dress this way, I like this better on you…'”
Sherry advised, “Rather than taking it as a compliment, look at it as someone telling you what to do and taking control over different things in your lifestyle.”
In 2013, the family participated in a video produced by the YWCA of Greater Cincinnati, called “Batterers Will Kill.”
After watching that video, Dr. Scott Bresler, an associate professor of clinical psychiatry and the clinical director of the Division of Forensic Psychology for the University of Cincinnati, reached out to the family, and Sherry shared Shannon’s letters with him.
From those letters, he wrote a report called, “Intimate Partner Violence: Tracking the Development of a Killer through Love Letters” and presented it in Washington, D.C.
Shannon’s parents attended.
“It was such an emotional ride for us because he took on the kind of personification of John Broe… and he would speak some of the words that he pulled from the letters to show the violence. And he would portray them as if it was John Broe speaking. And it was very powerful, hard for us the very first time, but so powerful,” Sherry remembered.
Because of everything her family has accomplished with her letters, Shannon’s message lives on.
Moving Forward, Not On
Sherry believes wholeheartedly that her daughter would be proud of her and the work she and her family have been doing since she has been gone.
“She was a very giving person, and because she was that traditionalist, I think she would be so proud of her entire family and her circle of friends who still work towards making a difference. I think she's proud of me and her dad for her choosing to move forward,” Sherry said.
“I never say, ‘move on.’ We move forward because we take them with us. I think she would be very proud of what we do.”
Her sister, Brandy – who was 20 years old at the time of her death – is a teacher and autism intervention specialist, and her brother, who was 14, is now a firefighter and EMT/paramedic.
“I truly believe that both of her siblings took this devastation that touched their lives and changed them forever as well, that they found the direction that they could go in to make a difference in other people's lives in a positive way. So, I feel like they are choosing to save lives as well,” Sherry said.
And for Sherry, helping others keeps her moving forward as well.
“To me, that is my inspiration, to live another day every day, just knowing that those who came before me, who inspired me to know that I can rejoin society in a positive way, that I can make a difference the way they did for me, that I can make a difference for others. That's why I'm here every day. It helps you listening to others at the beginning. It helped me to understand that I did have choices to make. Even though he made a choice to change my journey, I still had choices to make on how I would proceed moving forward in my journey. And I just always felt like my daughter and granddaughter don't walk beside me that they walk within me.”
And other than keeping track on her calendar of his parole date, she tries not to think about the man that ripped her daughter and granddaughter away from her nearly 20 years ago.
“Nobody can even imagine losing a child, whether it's from illness, something that you may or may not have control over. But to know that you're burying your child and your grandchild because someone else thought that they had the right to choose whether they live or die, and then to know the violence that was there because he not only took and murdered my daughter, he murdered his own daughter,” Sherry said. “There's such an evilness there."
“I know that my daughter would want me to leave the guilt that we were feeling at the time… for not knowing, for not being able to save them, I put the guilt where it belonged and it's on that person, who was the evilness behind all this, the murderer. And that guilt stays there where it belongs.”
But even though she has moved forward, for Sherry, there is no such thing as closure.
“That is a dirty word, that there is no such thing as closure,” she said with conviction. “The only thing that closes is the lid of the coffin and that there is no closure after [that].”
Shannon would have turned 43 years old on July 29.
Each year on her birthday, they celebrate her life graveside with the family.
Sherry takes a colorful bouquet of daisies and a bottle of Windex with her to clean the headstone, donning an etching of her daughter’s face next to a circle of eight “pennies from heaven” and a picture of a child angel in memory of her granddaughter, Alexandra Jordan, whom she never had the chance to meet.
National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children, Inc. (POMC) is located at 635 West 7th St., Ste. 104, in Cincinnati.
For more information and resources offered by POMC, visit their website at http://www.pomc.org or call (513) 721-5683 or (888) 818-7662.