Editing Mel Ignatow (section)

== Investigation and Trial ==
After Schaefer's disappearance, Ignatow became an immediate suspect. However, police weren't able to locate any witnesses or physical evidence linking him to Schaeffer's disappearance. Police also had no whereabouts of any sort of body. In search for any lead that could let them move forward with the case, police invited Ignatow to clear his name by testifying before a grand jury. There, he mentioned Shore's name, bringing her into the investigation for the first time.

Police interrogated Shore, who eventually confessed to helping plan the murder, and taking pictures of Ignatow as he tortured and raped Schaeffer. Shore also lead the investigators to the gravesite, where Brenda's badly decomposed body had been buried for over a year. The autopsy showed she had been raped and sodiomized. 

The investigators convinced Shore to wear a wire, by promising only to charge her with tampering with evidence. In the surveillance, Shore told Ignatow that the FBI was hounding her and she was afraid the property behind her house was being sold and developed. He was on tape berating her for letting the FBI "rattle" her and told her he didn't care if they dug up the whole property because "that place we dug is not shallow."

With this very blatant piece of evidence,  prosecutors brought Ignatow to trial for the murder in 1991. However, the jury decided that one word on the tape was "safe", not "site", as the police believed, which led them to conclude that the discussion involved a buried safe. The defense argued that Shore, not Ignatow, had killed Schaefer.

The jury acquitted Ignatow. The judge was so embarrassed by the verdict that he took the unusual step of writing a letter of apology to the Schaefer family. Schaefer's parents died before the trial began. According to some family and friends, their deaths were premature due to the heartbreak and stress of Schaefer's murder