By Bob Allen
A former children’s minister at Southern Baptist churches has been indicted for the murder of his wife 15 months ago in Homewood, Ala., local media reported Oct. 23.
The reports cited court documents showing that Richard Shahan, 53, former children and families pastor and facilities director at First Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., was indicted in August but the information wasn’t made public until Oct. 22.
Karen Louise Shahan, 52, was found dead July 23, 2013, in the home the couple rented from First Baptist Church, where Richard Shahan had served since 2009. Shahan told police he was out of town visiting the couple’s adult children.
In August police held Shahan for 48 hours for questioning, the maximum allowed without making an arrest. Shahan resigned his church job in December, announcing plans to move overseas to serve three years as a missionary.
He was arrested New Year’s Day at an airport in Nashville, Tenn., after a computer flagged his passport as a flight risk. Shahan’s lawyers denied he was trying to flee and said he did not know a warrant had been issued for his arrest. They said prosecutors staged the whole thing to bolster a weak case.
A district attorney said at a bond hearing Jan. 16 that e-mails confiscated from Shahan’s computer indicate that once out of the country he planned to move to the United Kingdom and marry his boyfriend, had said goodbye to his family and planned never to return to the United States.
Shahan was released on $100,000 bond but remained under house arrest with electronic monitoring. He waived a preliminary hearing in February, because in Alabama all felony prosecutions must begin with an indictment by a grand jury.
Shahan is a 1985 graduate of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. He was licensed as a minister by South Del Baptist Church in Del City, Okla., in 1980 and ordained in 1983 by Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
Shahan worked six years as minister of childhood education and then business administrator at Wedgwood, which became famous a decade later on Sept. 15, 1999, when gunman Larry Gene Ashbrook opened fire during a See You at the Pole youth rally, killing seven youth and wounding seven others before ending his own life.
Shahan worked three years as associate pastor in education and family development at First Baptist Church in Bryan, Texas, before moving to Birmingham in 1989 as associate pastor in childhood education and family growth at Shades Mountain Baptist Church.
He stayed 10 years before moving to Hickory Grove Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C., where as associate pastor in education and administration he oversaw an $11 million budget. He taught one year as an adjunct professor at the M. Christopher White School of Divinity at Gardner-Webb University in Boiling Springs, N.C.
Shahan left North Carolina in 2006 to become event/travel planner at Franklin Classical School, a private Christian K-12 school in Franklin, Tenn. He worked briefly as a consultant with Kimble Knight Ministries in Brentwood, Tenn., and for his own business, OneVine Inc., an Internet-based curriculum company, before joing the staff of First Baptist in Birmingham.
He wrote books, curriculum and articles over 30 years for publishers including Zondervan and LifeWay Christian Resources of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Late last year Shahan began raising funds for a planned three years of missionary work in Germany with plans to work with Bible Mission International, an organization formed to evangelize in the former Soviet Union with which he had worked in the past in short-term missions trips.
Newsletters and prayer cards obtained by a local television station said Shahan told potential supporters he believed his wife would have wanted him to continue his ministry.
On Thursday NBC affiliate WVTM Alabama’s 13 in Birmingham quoted the grand jury indictment alleging that Shahan killed his wife by “stabbing her and cutting her throat with an unknown object.”
Previous stories:
Shahan murder case headed to grand jury
Richard Shahan released on bond
State says murder suspect planned to wed boyfriend
Richard Shahan seeks $30,000 bond
Pastor: Church heartbroken by murder, arrest
Arrest affidavit says minister cut, stabbed his wife
Pastor charged with murder is on way to Alabama
Pastor murder suspect waives extradition
Interim pastor supports arrested minister
Attorney: Minister wasn’t trying to flee
Baptist minister arrested in wife’s murder
Minister held in wife’s death leaving U.S.
Minister in custody in Ala. murder
Interim pastor consoles grieving church
Doubt not a sin, says pastor to church hit by murder