Thanks for joining us. We begin with the Ohio teenager who was called “literal hell on wheels” by the judge in her murder trial. McKenzie Sherilla intentionally drove her car 100 miles an hour into a brick wall, killing her boyfriend and another friend who was in the back seat. And in recently released body cam video after her arrest, the teen seems more distraught about her jewelry than her victims.
It was supposed to be a fun night out for Mackenzie Sherilla with her boyfriend Dominic Russo and his friend Dave Flanigan in Strongsville, Ohio. But in the overnight hours, with Mackenzie Sherilla behind the wheel of this Toyota Camry, it would all turn tragic.
Everything appeared to be normal as cameras show their vehicle approach the intersection. After the car makes a right turn, it starts to move at full speed. One hundred miles per hour, then slamming into a building.
This is the scene as police arrive. True Crime News obtained hours and hours of body cam video. The front of the car completely smashed in. The three friends are caught in the twisted metal and destruction.
“Oh my god. I don’t even know how to freaking—”
Then a miracle. She’s alive.
“We got to get her out.”
Officers notice McKenzie trapped in the driver’s seat.
“She’s pinned in there.”
They work to get her out of the car, but she’s unable to be moved from the wreckage.
“Oh my god. She’s breathing though.”
But as officers check on her other passengers—
“I don’t feel close on this guy.”
“Oh yeah.”
The crash was just too violent. Dominic Russo and Dave Flanigan were pronounced dead at the scene. And as firefighters use tools to help free McKenzie from the car—
“No one should be here.”
They are finally able to remove her from the wreckage.
“She’s moving a little bit. She can move her leg.”
One look at the photograph of the car and it’s hard to imagine how McKenzie survived the crash. She was treated in the hospital for her injuries. But as investigators start to piece together what happened that night, they find marijuana in the car and tests reveal that McKenzie had a THC level above the legal limit. They start to question what was going on while McKenzie was behind the wheel. Trying to determine whether this was an accident or a deliberate act of murder.
“Like 360. We know you guys have about one crash.”
And friends start showing up at the police station, saying they noticed something on the tracking device, Life360, which can calculate how fast someone is traveling.
“She hit the gas to floor it, and it shows you that they literally hit the gas right when they got into that area.”
“They were driving fine for like 15 minutes, right? How all of a sudden you drive good for 15 minutes, you drive bad for like two minutes?”
They say the data on the app says the car never slowed down before hitting the building. And they tell police about what they call a toxic relationship between McKenzie and Dominic Russo, her boyfriend of several years.
“There’s lots of people that have come up to me and said they’ve always fought, like everybody. Like I can get a lot of witnesses to say that.”
They say Dave only asked for a ride home that night and was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Police learned of a previous incident where McKenzie threatened to crash her car while her boyfriend was a passenger.
“I’m Detective Jesu. I’m the one who’s been investigating the crash.”
Several months after the crash, McKenzie is arrested.
“You’re under arrest for aggravated murder times two.”
“Okay.”
“Nobody’s going to ask you any questions. Nobody’s going to bother you.”
“Can I have your key, please?”
“Could you please be careful taking this one off so it doesn’t break the bracelet, please?”
“You got it. You got it.”
“You’re my— No. Thank you.”
“You got it.”
Police say the Toyota’s event data recorder showed that McKenzie deliberately accelerated into the building and she never once tried using her brakes. Her parents arrived to the police station as she’s being booked.
“Okay. Well, I still need to speak to my daughter so she understands whatever—not saying anything to you guys.”
“He does have a—”
“She is 18 years old and she can speak that.”
“Yeah, but she’s a dumb 18-year-old that just turned 18 and you guys are—”
“No, most all the kids nowadays are dumb and these guys are going to take advantage.”
“She’s not allowed to speak to you guys. I’m telling you that her attorney can call us.”
McKenzie is booked and charged with two counts of murder. She would later be found guilty in a bench trial and despite pleas from her parents in court for leniency, she is sentenced to 15 years to life in prison with the possibility of parole. Dave Flanigan’s father posting this on Facebook, saying that they do not seek vengeance, only justice for their son, who was nothing more than an innocent passenger looking for a ride home.
Welcome back. It is a case that puzzled authorities in Louisiana for years, and they need your help. At first, it appeared that Nanette Krenel, the wife of a local fire chief, had died in a tragic house fire. But investigators would find something much more sinister at play when they sifted through the ashes.
The thick black smoke from the raging fire turns day into night.
“It is fully engulfed from the second we pulled up.”
The heat so intense, all that’s left of the house is a concrete slab.
“There was nothing of the house that had any kind of chance of being salvaged.”
And buried beneath the rubble, the charred bodies of a dog, two cats, and the woman who was so devoted to them. She was, ironically, the wife of the fire chief.
“They made a wall of people standing shoulder-to-shoulder so that I couldn’t see them move her.”
And he’s the first responder who arrives to find his own house on fire.
“Come on. Come on. Let’s go.”
Then realizes he’s lost everything.
“I knew at that moment that they had found her. And they didn’t even have to say a word.”
How did Nanette Krenel die? Did she try to rescue her pets and was overcome by smoke inhalation? Was it suicide by fire? Or was that blaze intentionally set to cover up a murder?
“It just made no sense that in the middle of the day here she would have died in a fire.”
Nanette Krenel grew up along the bayous of New Orleans.
“Nette, she was a very sweet, caring person. She had a little bit of a feisty side to her.”
“Nette and I met our freshman year. We just kind of clicked. She was this fun, kind person who you just loved spending time with.”
But the person who Nette spent the most time with is the one who captured her heart, Steven Krenel. Although he was already married when they met, he soon divorced and married Nanette, who worked as a preschool teacher.
“She absolutely loved being with the kids and was one of the most sought-after teachers in this area.”
“She has a huge heart. She has tremendous compassion for animals.”
So when Nette finally retired, she spent her days raising animals on their massive 100 acres in Loranger, Louisiana. She also passed the time practicing her hobby, shooting.
“It was something that we could walk out our back door and do on a routine basis.”
“And she didn’t go anywhere without at least one gun with her.”
And Nette had a lot of guns for the house, the car, and her purse. She had everything to live for. Her animals, her guns. Rural life for this loving couple was good until that fateful day.
“I got a phone call from my cousin and he was telling me that my house was on fire.”
“And at that second I hung the phone up, ran out with my chief of training. We jumped in my department vehicle and started driving to the house.”
“I was calling her cell phone. I was calling the house phone and everything was going straight to voicemail.”
In this dramatic footage of the very moment, Steven can be seen rushing to his own home as it was burning to the ground.
“When we got to a point that we could see the home, it was from one end to the other. It was fully involved.”
And then the worst.
“I knew they had found her at that time.”
But when the coroner takes Nanette’s charred body to the morgue, a shocking discovery. The fire didn’t kill Nanette. It was something far more ominous.
“The coroner’s office and our pathologist here discovered a bullet hole in her head.”
Her beloved animals were also shot. But who pulled the trigger? Nette or a cold-blooded killer?
“I knew it. I knew somebody did this. She didn’t just die in that fire.”
And in the charred remains, investigators find a gun next to Nanette’s body.
“Unfortunately, due to the hot temperatures of this fire, we weren’t able to pinpoint whether the ballistics matched.”
The coroner’s office reports the death as a homicide, not a suicide. And then another shocking conclusion. The sheriff says it appears the fire was ignited to cover up Nanette’s murder.
“At this point, yes, the fire was intentionally set.”
The charred scene was shocking enough. The Krenels’ family home and life left in literal ashes. But when investigators learned Nette had actually died from a gunshot wound to the head, suspicion swirled.
“Whoever did this, I believe, knew her, knew the layout of the residence, the location.”
“I don’t see this as a random act of violence.”
And of course, the chief, Steven, was their first person of interest.
“I was never offended or upset when the police were investigating me. I cooperated with everything.”
Steven offered to take a polygraph and the sheriff admits he passed.
“I can go to sleep every night knowing I had nothing to do with this.”
“He has been cleared at this time. Of course, that could change during the course of this investigation, but right now we’re pretty clear he was not involved or there at the time of her death.”
Leaving it all one big mystery. But as the investigation reveals, someone may have had it out for her.
“She didn’t feel safe.”
Turns out 17 days before the horrifying incident, Nanette emailed her father. She said she was being followed. Sadly though, her father has since passed away. At the time, he shared this image of a mystery man lurking outside her front gate. She also said that she had found a knife and cigarette butt on the property.
“And she said, ‘Somebody has come onto the property.’”
In the email, Nanette wrote this caption:
“This was the day I got out to get the mail and looked up and this man was walking towards me. He just looks creepy.”
The man remained unidentified and nothing apparently came of it, but Nanette was prepared. She had one gun in her purse, one gun—a different gun—in her car, another gun in the house, plus she had a Remington 20-gauge home defense shotgun.
“And I know there was an AR-15 because she said, ‘This is my baby.’”
And best friend Lori Rando says Nanette amassed the firepower to protect herself from someone she knew: her brother-in-law, Steven’s brother, Brian Krenel.
“She never felt safe, not even in her own home.”
We asked Steven if he thought his brother would harm Nette.
“I did not believe it. But when something like this happens, you have to think that that’s a possibility because if that’s the case, he or anybody should pay for this.”
Brian has a long rap sheet with 36 arrests for petty crimes that, along with those alleged threats, made him a person of interest.
“He was a second person of interest and his alibi checked out.”
Nanette revealed her fears about Brian in a series of Facebook exchanges to Lori, saying:
“The night he got arrested, he told Steve he was going to get out, kill us, and then himself.”
“He would threaten her because I think he felt that she was kind of sticking her nose in his family business where it didn’t belong.”
Steven says the reaction could be related to an incident a few years before Nanette’s death.
“He was drinking and the police wound up arresting him that evening and he went to jail for about a year.”
“And I know that he felt, because Nette did go with me, he felt that we bared some responsibility for that and he had a hard time forgiving us for that.”
His alibi was as ironclad as the jailhouse ankle bracelet he was wearing. Brian was on house arrest at his mother’s home and security video places him there the day of the murder. The sheriff says Brian cooperated with investigators and he has never been charged with any involvement in Nanette’s death.
With brother Steven’s help, he also took our call to comment on whether he and Nette had any fights.
“Oh, not with Nette. Not my brother. I might have had a fight. I mean, I’ve been fighting with him since I was born, but with Nette, I never had a cross word. She never had a cross word to me.”
We asked Brian if he had any theories about Nanette’s murder.
“I would not have a clue. You know, it’d be like snowing in Louisiana. It’s a one-time thing every now and then.”
Yet investigators stand by the assessment that Nanette’s death was a homicide and everyone still needs answers.
“I don’t know what to think because that’s not where she was found. It does not make sense to anything.”
“I don’t see it as a random act of violence. This fire—whoever set the fire knew what they were doing.”
“It is a homicide that did occur and that’s where we’re going to handle it.”
“I want to know what happened. I can’t wait to look at that person and just know who and why.”
Those are questions police still can’t answer and they need the public’s help. Remember the mystery man seen outside her front gate in an image shared by her late father. He remains unidentified. And for now, Nanette Krenel’s murder remains a true mystery as well.
“We just need that one piece, that one piece of information that we’re still missing.”
