[female reporter] There has been another arrest in the Mineola sex ring case.
[male reporter] Today, a total of six men and women have now been arrested.
[female reporter] Smith County police say
they are accused of forcing four children, under the age of seven,
to perform at a swingers' club.
The brainwashing, that starts at a very young age.
I wasn't just the only one that was scared to speak out.
It felt like a cult. The fear that was instilled into us.
Words cannot describe what these children have gone through.
There is no case here.
This is smoke and mirrors bull [bleep].
You know, the defense just don't like the fact
that their client got convicted and got a life sentence.
I mean, let's call it what it is.
I've called it just a plain old Texas frame-up.
They basically took my childhood from me.
They destroyed me and my family.
They were guilty. 100%.
I was told keep your mouth shut in this town.
Don't make any waves.
I made waves.
This is taken in our driveway
at Christmas.
'Cause I love them so much
and they've been so hurt.
My husband John and I moved from California
to Mineola, Texas in 2004.
That town was so adorable.
It was fabulous. We just fell in love.
Mineola is a great little Texas town.
It's quiet, relaxed living.
It's a conservative community.
Most of the people in Mineola are God-fearing people.
I don't go to church every Sunday, but I'm a God-fearing man.
The people here are absolutely wonderful.
Mineola people will do anything
to help their neighbors here in a heartbeat.
It's not.
When we first went there, it was wonderful.
But then I started hearing stories.
Its nickname, by the way, is Sodom and Gomorrah.
Always has been.
One day, I saw an article in the paper.
Oh my gosh, this is just unbelievable.
I didn't know we had a swingers' club in town.
When we heard about the swingers' club it was a shock.
People said, not in our neighborhood.
We just couldn't believe that a swingers' club was here,
'cause that's not us.
There was probably maybe 10 couples, and we played movies on the TV
and they all sit down and got to talking to each other
and then they divided up and whoever wanted to go with whoever,
that's what they did.
We could imagine what was going on in there,
but we weren't part of it.
And it wasn't illegal.
But to put a swingers' club around here
is like rolling a stink bomb into a Baptist church
and expecting everybody to just say, "Oh, that's okay,"
and keep on praying.
For them to put it here was just, ugh. Make you grind your teeth.
[Margie] Because of the article in the newspaper,
as a mom, I'm concerned,
and I'm a praying woman,
and so we drove up to the swingers' club.
And we literally raised our hands toward that building
and we prayed and we prayed and we prayed that it would get shut down.
Right after that, it closed down.
It was like it went boom.
It was here one day and gone the next.
[Margie] I was elated. They don't belong in this town.
My husband, John, and I, we're Baptist.
I accepted Christ when I was 12 years old as my savior.
In California, I went to college.
I got my administration in early childhood development.
And I passed it with flying colors.
And so I became a foster mom.
When I started taking foster children,
they were very troubled.
And I had made a promise, don't give up on them.
And that's what drove me.
At one point, I was the mother of 15 teenagers at one time in the house.
We loved it.
But it was so hard.
And so in 2004, we decided we could retire,
pay off a house, and just start relaxing.
And that's when we bought the house on Lake Brenda in Mineola.
It was right on the lake.
Just fish and retire, that was our goal.
At the time, we had six children
but then my son said, "You know, you're such a good mom."
"Go help at least one or two more kids." And so I did.
And I was given Hunter, Shelby and Carly, to be my kids.
Before Margie's, in the beginning, we were just kids.
It was fun, we were happy.
[singing] Happy birthday to you.
I loved my cap guns.
Used to play Cowboys and Indians with my older sister.
We used to ride bikes with the kids down the street.
There was nothing really that bad about being kids back then.
But then things changed in our life.
As a child, I don't remember my dad.
I only remember my stepdad, Jamie, ever being around.
Jamie and my mom would get into arguments.
And sometimes, my mom would pass out.
As kids, we didn't really understand the things between them.
And then one day, I remember Child Services coming.
[Margie] The reason that we were given by the social worker,
why they were taken away, was that they were neglected.
The parents were on crack cocaine.
And so I took them in because I wanted to help.
I remember the drive to their house.
I was constantly asking, so y'all live on the lake?
Thinking they live in the middle of this lake that we're going to.
And when we got there, the house was nice.
The door's still broke.
Oh, wow.
This is different.
It is.
Remember that table, there. Long table.
Carly is my little sister.
I have always been protective of her.
When I was at the Cantrells', I was very hyperactive.
I was, like, four.
So I was the baby.
Everyone protected me, including Shelby and Hunter.
I never thought I'd be back in the house.
Shelby and Carly lived in this room here.
It actually looks the exact same.
Margie was fun and bubbly,
kind of the mother type of personality that a kid would want.
John Cantrell's personality was calming and laid back,
but not as bubbly and open like Margie was.
John did teach us how to fish.
We used to watch westerns with him.
Well, I used to wake up about 4:30 in the morning before school
and go out and fish,
just 'cause I liked the peace,
and fishing was also a passion of mine.
[Margie] Well, at the time, life was okay.
But they were very troubled.
One day, Shelby was down in the bedroom
and she had a pole on her bed and she was doing a pole dance.
This is just a little seven-year-old girl.
And she's swinging her hair around and she's doing...
it looked like a rehearsed dance.
Hunter was a handful.
He was so angry and violent.
They were extremely, extremely hard to handle children.
Very young and very, very broken.
But we had promised to stand by these kids.
At that point, I had nine children in the home.
And so, I thought, if we buy a facility,
we can put the kids there and I can run it and have a good group home.
So I called our real estate agent
and told her that I was interested in a property in town.
But this building was in fact the swingers' club.
The lot was really large that it sat on.
So we decided we were going to go up
and see if we could see in the windows.
[Hunter] When Margie took me to the swingers' club,
she told us that she was thinking about buying the place.
Last time I was in this building,
I think I was, like, eight years old.
My sisters were with me,
John and Margie.
It's pretty hard to be in here considering what happened.
[Margie] It was wet and moldy and stunk.
It was nasty.
So I wouldn't let the kids go anywhere.
And Hunter, Shelby and I stayed by the door.
And then all of a sudden, Shelby said, "I know this place."
"You know, if you could see in that room over there,"
"it has big white flowers with green leaves."
So I said, "Hunter, open the door."
She said, "Mom, that's where I had to dance."
"And you see that part that goes like this?"
"There was a curtain on it and Jamie was back there,"
"and I when I danced, I had to go back and give him the money."
I just froze. I just froze.
And then Hunter, when we were leaving, said,
"If you look over by the big tree, my ball is there."
And that baby's ball was there.
I called the social worker.
She said, "Get them to the police department immediately."
When I got to the police department,
I filled out what had just happened.
After I wrote my report out, they talked to the kids.
They told the police that there was a room called Jamie Pittman's room,
that they did dances and acts
and their mother, Shauntel, would be there.
And they said that they were trained in a kindergarten.
My knowledge of a kindergarten is kindergarten, school.
But it wasn't.
It was a grooming place.
I would think that a police department
would go in with all barrels and investigate.
And then I found out that within two days
they closed the case.
To just go to Shauntel and Jamie's trailer
and say, "Well, didn't happen,"
it was like calling the children a liar.
And they heard everything from the kids.
The same outcries.
But the Mineola Police closed it.
How dare them?
That put a million red flags in my mind.
The first time I heard about this case,
I thought, oh my God. This is going on.
This incredible child sex scandal.
These parents had taken these kids to the swingers' club
and they danced on stage for money.
We need to really look into this.
Mineola is in Wood County
and Tyler, which is a large city, is very close,
but it's in Smith County.
There is a real difference in Smith County law enforcement
as opposed to Wood County law enforcement.
All counties in Texas are very conservative
when it comes to law and order,
but no county is more conservative than Smith County.
It has a long-time reputation
for throwing the book at criminals,
for prosecuting hard, for investigating hard,
for having a very high conviction rate.
And so when the Mineola Police Department
didn't pursue the investigation any further,
Margie wanted something done about it.
If the Mineola cops weren't going to listen to her,
she was going to find somebody who would.
So Margie decides to go to Smith County.
And the Smith County DA's office had an assistant district attorney
who handled nothing but child cases
and her name was Tiffany Wickel.
She had been part of the team
that had taken Hunter and Shelby away from their mother.
So when she heard about what Margie was saying, she became very alarmed.
[Margie] She came to the Mineola police department and basically tore them up.
Listen to these outcries of these children
and what is going on.
[Michael] And within two weeks,
Tiffany Wickel had brought in Texas Ranger Phillip Kemp.
[Margie] Tiffany called me and said,
"You need to bring the children to Smith County"
"because the Texas Ranger wants to come and meet the children."
Ranger Kemp was very nice.
He was very good with the children.
And he said, "And all I want you to do is just be there,"
"comfort them, you know,"
"walk them through it, you know, it's okay." That's what mommies do.
When I first met Ranger Kemp,
he came in with a cowboy hat and a gun.
Cowboy looking dude. Sheriff looking guy from a Western or something.
It was a little more exciting than I'd probably like to admit.
It's a bit confusing, the folks involved in this.
And let me start at the top with the eldest of all the people involved,
which is Shelia Sones.
And Shelia is Carly's grandmother.
[Michael] Carly's grandmother, Shelia, was married to Jimmy.
[Michael] Booger Red was the nickname of Patrick Kelly.
He was friends with Shauntel and Jamie
and they'd hang out together at his trailer in Tyler.
And it was in this trailer where, apparently,
the sex kindergarten had taken place.
Ranger Kemp's investigation uncovered a sex kindergarten
in Tyler
run by Shelia, Jimmy, Jamie Pittman, Booger Red
and Shauntel.
These kids had been indoctrinated
into this sex kindergarten
and then they had come up to Mineola
and they had danced onstage for money.
In these interviews,
these kids increasingly told more and more things
about what happened.
[Gabby] This was one of the last times
I actually ever saw my parents
before I went into foster care.
My parents were Shelia Sones and Jimmy Sones.
Shauntel is my sister.
And Jamie Pittman was Shauntel's boyfriend.
Shauntel has three children, the oldest being Shelby,
the middle being Hunter
and then the youngest is Carly.
I considered them my siblings.
We were the same age.
We didn't have the relationship of
"Oh, that's my niece."
It was more than that. We were raised together.
And we called each other brother and sister all the time,
but they got to live together
and I didn't get to be with them.
And I never understood that.
[school bell ringing]
I was seven years old.
I was in gym class
and I remember them calling me over the intercom
to come to the principal's office.
So, you know, I'm sittin' here thinking I did something wrong.
So, I went to the principal's office
and that's when a CPS worker came to pick me up.
She took me to the Child Advocacy Center.
That's when all of the questioning with Ranger Kemp started.
[Gabby] My first impression of Ranger Kemp
was a little intimidated.
He was a big man with a gun and a badge.
And he had a presence about him
that, yeah, he was soft and easygoing,
but it was also like...
demanded respect.
Shortly thereafter, Kemp brings the first indictment
to a Smith County grand Jury on Shelia Sones.
And in short order,
Shelia is arrested,
Gabby's put into foster care
and then, not long after that,
Jimmy,
Booger Red,
Jamie Pittman
and Shauntel
are also arrested.
And the another man, Dennis Pittman.
He wasn't related to Jamie Pittman,
but he was friends with Shauntel and Jamie.
This was huge news right away.
[Tamara] Mineola was such a big part of my childhood.
So I was assigned that case.
It was a huge story.
You know, as a reporter, you try to remain impartial,
but the personal side of me,
I was really upset about it.
It blew our minds.
It was just insanity, the things that we heard.
So I was very thankful that Smith County
actually stepped up to the plate.
They did something that Wood County wouldn't do.
The public was outraged.
People in the community thought these parents
were the lowest-type people on the earth.
What they did was unforgivable.
We heard they were grooming the underage kids.
We were really, really shocked
about what was happening in that town.
And they kept it such a secret
that no one in town knew anything about it.
I first learned about it in Iraq.
It was published in the Stars and Stripes there.
And in bold, "Mineola Swinger's Club"
and described a big criminal case
about people molesting children,
having them perform on a pole
and perform sex acts.
[Michael] I had never been to Mineola before I worked on this story.
You feel like you are going back in time.
You see the two sides of the tracks
where you literally cross the railroad tracks
and you are on the poor side of town.
Trailer parks are everywhere. They're communities.
They're like little villages, little hamlets
on the outskirts of town.
However, John and Margie lived in a house
on that little lake just north of town.
From what I've seen,
they were, at first, welcomed with open arms.
They were conservative Christians.
They were career foster parents back in California.
They were career foster parents here in Texas.
They had their hearts in the right place.
When I met Margie, the first ten seconds,
she comes across as very personable.
And somewhere around the 15-minute mark,
you begin to understand
you're never gonna get a word in edgewise.
And then, uh, at the 30-minute mark,
you've heard about all you wanna hear.
That was kind of my introduction to Margie.
One day, my news director really pushed me
to go and talk to Margie Cantrell.
And I thought there's no way
that this woman is actually going to talk.
But we went out to Lake Brenda.
Lake Brenda is one of the nicest areas in East Texas.
And I went up to Margie's door and knocked,
and to my surprise,
she opened the door
and she welcomed us in.
I remember their house was so beautiful.
I mean, it was huge.
These children had lived in a trailer
and now they had this beautiful house.
And it felt like it was just
this perfect portrait of a home.
I sit down on the couch and John was there,
but he was just quietly in the background.
He just didn't say a lot.
I did try to talk to him a few times,
but you just couldn't get anything out of him.
He was pretty much like a wall in a lot of ways.
Whereas Margie was so engaging and personable.
All of times, in those kinds of situations,
you do everything you can to pull something out
and gain trust
and want somebody to open up to you,
but she was so open
about everything the children had been through
and how terrible this was.
I became thankful
that this woman was helping these children.
And leading up to the trial,
I remember it feeling almost like a Super Bowl
because there was just so much tension.
The heartbeat of the town
was that finally these children
were going to get justice,
and finally these defendants
were gonna be put away forever.
The 36-year-old Pittman
is accused of forcing young children
under the age of seven
to have sex with each other and adults.
[Michael] Jack Skeen is the judge.
You did not mess around with crime in Smith County
because Jack Skeen would go after you.
Matt Bingham is the elected district attorney of Smith County.
Am I an aggressive prosecutor of crimes against children?
You better believe it.
[Michael] And he gave one of his trusted guys, Joe Murphy,
the lead on this case.
Words cannot describe
what these children have gone through.
Uh, words cannot describe
the actions of not only Jamie Pittman,
but all the other people that are involved in this case.
I sat in the courtroom every single day
and the mood was very tense.
Margie was in the courtroom.
You know, she was a big part of--
I say the word "spectacle" and I hate to even say that,
but that's what it was in a lot of ways.
Exhibit number 20.
What is this?
[Michael] During the trial,
Ranger Kemp came in and testified.
And do all these outcries match?
Yes, they do.
Not only do you have that,
do you have the existence of a swingers club?
Yes, you do.
[Michael] He was entirely unflappable.
He was very calm and very cool.
And they showed the interviews with the children.
[Michael] The prosecution's case was the testimony of the children.
So they all testified.
[Tamara] They would open the doors
and the kids would just come out
and they were just so adorable.
You just couldn't imagine what they went through.
The girl worked here.
On the stand, she testified of what it looked like,
describing the flowers on the wall,
saying it's what she would look at
while being raped night after night.
They said, in return, they got to eat dinner.
[Gabby] During the first trial,
I was maybe seven, maybe eight.
I was stressed out.
I was full of anxiety.
I'm looking around and I'm seeing all of these people,
the man in the big black robe,
the news media was there, there was cameras.
It was just an overwhelming experience.
When I saw Jamie Pittman sitting there,
I remember he looked sad.
And I remember testifying and I...
had no remorse.
[Michael] The trial of Jamie Pittman only lasted three days.
And the jury came to its decision very quickly.
When we went into the courtroom
to hear the verdicts,
the kids were saying,
"It just has to be, it has to be, it has to be."
They wanted this with all their heart and soul.
[Tamara reporting] It took less than ten minutes
for a Smith County jury to find Jamie Pittman guilty.
And the kids went, "Yes!"
They felt very vindicated.
[reporter] On Monday, Pittman's girlfriend
will be the second defendant to face a Smith County jury.
29-year-old Shauntel Loraine Mayo
is charged with child sexual abuse.
[Tamara] Shauntel was gonna be the big case,
because this was the mother.
People wanted to understand how in the world
this woman could have these precious children
and do something like this.
My name is Ellen Gayle Burress.
I have a Bachelor of Arts,
a Master's of Science
and a PhD.
And until I stopped practicing,
I was a licensed professional counselor
and expert witness.
Everything I saw about those kids
talked to me about damage,
about fear,
and a couple of 'em,
there was real...
shame.
[prosecutor] Were you able to determine whether or not
there was any type of grooming that was involved
with these children?
Well, obviously, kindergarten was the grooming spot,
in terms of getting them ready to do in front of others
what they wanted them to do.
They had to teach them to dance.
They had to teach them to touch each other
and masturbate
and take off their clothes
and act sexy,
because 5-year-olds don't act sexy.
[Gabby] By the time that it had gotten to my sister
Shauntel's trial,
I had already been questioned a million times.
I had already gone over the testimony a million times.
I was tired of it.
I was-- I was ready to quit.
I didn't wanna do it anymore.
But, you know, I still kept being hounded with
"Well, you have to do this. You have to do this.
You have to get justice for the others."
[Tamara] When Gabby took the stand,
she admitted that, yes,
that she had been to the Mineola swingers club.
And she said that she took "silly pills" there,
she went to kindergarten, that she performed
and she identified her own sister, Shauntel,
as being someone that took her there.
[Gabby] I remember my sister sitting there
by her lawyer and she was just bawling.
She was just--
[voice breaking]
She was just crying.
And I still remember...
not caring.
[Hunter] Seeing my mom in the courtroom,
I'm not even sure I recognized her.
I ask you to find her guilty of what she's guilty of,
engaging in organized criminal activity for profit
with her own children.
The jury deliberated for two hours.
[foreperson] We, the jury,
find the defendant, Shauntel Mayo,
guilty of the offence.
It was guilty right away.
[Hunter] When the verdicts were read out,
we had absolutely no emotion, you know.
It wasn't as if they were really a family to us anymore.
[Tamara] When Shauntel Mayo was found guilty,
it was a relief for a lot of people.
I think a lot of people were thankful
and that these bad people
who did these horrible things to kids
were gonna be locked away.
[reporter] News from the Mineola Swingers Club case.
Jury selection for the trial of Patrick "Booger Red" Kelly,
a friend of Shauntel Mayo and Jamie Pittman,
is due to begin early next week.
[Michael] Booger Red, Patrick Kelly,
was the one who had the trailer where, apparently,
the sex kindergarten had taken place.
So what they said is they would first go to kindergarten
and get these dolls
and learn how to touch themselves in different ways.
They would put on costumes and doctor costumes
and would go out and perform.
[Tamara] The things that the kids had said about Patrick Kelly
were sensational
and dominated the headlines before the trial.
But during jury selection,
there was a massive bombshell.
[Margie] The Wood County Sheriffs came in the front door
and barraged on my husband John,
grabbed him up,
ran him out of the house.
We're like, "What is going on?
What is going on?"
[Tamara reporting] John Cantrell,
a man awarded custody of three young siblings
who allegedly performed at the swingers club
was arrested in Wood County.
They were arresting him for molesting his daughter
20 years ago back in California.
[producer] How would you describe John Cantrell's personality?
[Jenna] There's a phrase. "A wolf in sheep's clothing."
He likes videos about people being raped,
and stuff like that.
He likes little girls.
He would make me watch it with him.
And when I would close my eyes,
"No, you need to open your eyes.
You need to see this."
I would tell Margie what had happened
and she would say I was a little slut.
"It's all your fault. It's all your fault."
This is not true.
It didn't happen.
[Jenna] Margie is a great manipulator.
She can make herself and make you believe
she's right.
And you just get brainwashed.
She's straight evil.