Nearly three decades after Shelly Schantz and Allen Ripka were found shot to death in their Henrico home, police are asking the public to take another look at a case that has remained unsolved since 1998.

Schantz, 36, and Ripka, 33, were roommates at a home in the 300 block of Sleepy Duck Road in Henrico’s Tuckahoe District.

On Feb. 11, 1998, officers went to the home for a welfare check after a suspicious situation was reported. They found both victims dead inside. A toddler was also found in the home unharmed.

Henrico Police’s Cold Case Review Team continues to investigate the killings. The Virginia State Police Cold Case Database lists the case as active and identifies both victims as having died from gunshot wounds.

For investigators who worked the case, however, the memory of that morning has never been only about the two bodies found inside the house.

It also is about a little boy who was upstairs.

A child left behind
Schantz was the mother of a 3-year-old boy, Ryan.

In a 2013 NBC12 report, former Henrico police Capt. Jan Stem recalled that officers heard a child crying after discovering the victims. Ryan was in his crib.

Mary Cox, who operated the child’s day care at the time, had called police after Ryan failed to arrive that morning. She later went to the house with an officer.

Cox told NBC12 that when Ryan saw her, he grabbed her around the neck and held on.

“It was just heartbreaking,” Cox recalled in the report.

The case stayed with the officers who investigated it, too. Stem said the discovery of the child had a lasting impact on those at the scene.

By 2013, Ryan was preparing to graduate from high school and attend college, according to family members who spoke with NBC12. They told the station they wished his mother had been there to see how he had grown up.

Two lives interrupted
Schantz worked as a legal secretary for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, according to contemporary reports cited in later accounts of the case.

Her failure to show up for work helped lead investigators to the house. Her employer contacted the child’s day care, which discovered that Ryan had not arrived.

Ripka was also working at the time. Public accounts of the case say he was a service technician and had served in the U.S. Navy.

Beyond those details, relatively little of Ripka’s life has remained in the public record.

What is clear from police records is that his life ended alongside Schantz’s. Henrico’s current list of unsolved homicides identifies both as victims of gunshot wounds at the Sleepy Duck Road residence.

Investigation continues
The case has taken several turns over the years.

Henrico Police said the original investigation considered the possibility that the killings were part of a murder-for-hire plot. Cold Case Review Team detectives have since ruled out that possibility.

Police now believe the two were shot in what investigators describe as an “execution style” killing by a person or people who may have been known to them. The Virginia State Police database uses the same description.

No suspect has been publicly identified and no charges have been filed in the killings.

In 2013, investigators told NBC12 they believed Schantz may have been the intended target. Detectives also were looking into threats that had reportedly been made against her, although investigators did not disclose all of their theories.

Those earlier investigative theories have not resulted in an arrest.

Henrico Police spokesperson Karina Bolster said detectives remain hopeful that someone with information will come forward.

A case that has not been forgotten
Henrico Police maintains a list of unsolved homicides and says its cold-case investigators review old cases by re-examining evidence and interviewing or re-interviewing witnesses when possible. The Schantz-Ripka case remains on that list.

For Schantz’s family, the passage of time has meant watching the child who survived that morning grow into adulthood without his mother.

For Ripka’s family, it has meant years without an explanation for why he was killed inside his home.

And for investigators, it means the possibility remains that someone who knew something in 1998 may still have information that could help solve the case.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the Henrico Police Cold Case Review Team at (804) 501-5848 or HPDColdCase@henrico.gov. Anonymous tips can be submitted to Crime Stoppers at (804) 780-1000 or through P3 Tips. Henrico Police says anonymous tips may be eligible for a cash reward.