More than a year after she was beaten nearly to death, Crystal Shannon is breathing a sigh of relief knowing the man allegedly responsible is finally behind bars.
“I feel a lot safer knowing that he has been caught,” the Tennessee woman tells Digital.
Jesse Suggs, 37, had allegedly been on the run since the April 2022, one month after the attempted murder of Crystal. He was finally arrested in DeFuniak Springs, Florida, earlier this month, according to the local sheriff’s department.
After her hospitalization over a year earlier, he was arrested for attempted murder. The hospital admitted her with a fractured skull and a bleeding brain.
Crystal was admitted to hospital 68 days after her arrival and underwent several operations on her skull and brain. In a medically inducing coma, Crystal spent more than one month hospitalized. She suffered from two strokes as well as a cerebral aneurysm.
“They said from the blunt force trauma that my skull had endured, he couldn’t have done it with his bare hands,” she says.
Crystal, who survived the violent beatings, tried to make the most out of her life. The 34-year-old mother moved to Alabama to live with her sister and began attending a rehabilitation program for sobriety. All the while, her attacker was out there, and she believed he would stop at nothing to finish the job he started.
Jesse Suggs meets Crystal Shannon, but their infatuation turns into abuse
Crystal and Suggs met in 2020 through mutual friends shortly after Suggs was released from prison after being convicted of multiple counts of burglary and violating his previous parole. Suggs was also on parole at the time he met Crystal. Crystal was well aware of his prison record, but she and Suggs did not discuss the circumstances that led him to jail.
She says, “He did not speak much about his history.”
It was an instant connection. She says he was a charming man who spoke with ease. Relationships moved fast.
“I really thought he was the one. We seemed to be madly in love,” she says. “We were talking about getting married and I mean, I genuinely thought he was the one.”
Their relationship had a very shaky basis. At the time, Crystal was battling an addiction to methamphetamine and claims Suggs was as well. “I was using with my fiancé,” she says.
“Me and him both was abusing drugs,” she says. We both struggled with addiction.
Suggs’ attorney told Digital he was unable to respond to allegations about his client’s addiction. Booking RecordsLincoln County, Tennessee, show that between 2014 and 2018, Suggs was charged twice for simple possession, twice for possessing drug paraphernalia and once for the manufacturing, delivery, sale or possession of methamphetamines. According to records, he also was charged three times for driving under the influence.
In total, Suggs had been charged with 25 crimes in Lincoln County before he met Crystal, booking records show. It was not clear what happened to each charge Suggs had been charged with. Digital asked the District Attorney for information regarding Suggs’ past criminal record. The District Attorney did not reply.
Crystal says she and Suggs became engaged around Christmas 2021. Suggs is alleged to have abused Crystal not long after. She says that “right after we were engaged, things started to go downhill.”
Crystal believes that his drug addiction exacerbated his anger. She says, “I’m not sure if the drugs were what made him think I was cheating, but I always stayed home with him.” “I think he realized that I was not going to be leaving and could do whatever he liked.”
Suggs’ attorney declined to comment on allegations of his client’s alleged abusive behavior toward Crystal.
She says that on more than one occasion, he had given her a black-eye. She forgave him each time.
“I always knew in the back of my mind that it wasn’t right, and he would always promise that he would change,” Crystal says. “He would always say the right things and I would give him the benefit of the doubt because he was good with his words. He was a smooth talker, so I always believed what he would say.”
Crystal claims that she only introduced Miracle to him for an hour. They did not have further interaction. Crystal had sent Miracle to live with her mother because she didn’t think that the living conditions at Crystal’s house were suitable for a young child. “I truthfully didn’t really want her around him because he was kind of abusive to me … so I really didn’t want him interacting with her,” she says. She says, “I did not want her to be around at all.”
Crystal was then rushed on the 25th of March 2022 to a hospital in her locality. Tabitha Shannon says that authorities told her Crystal had to be airlifted to another hospital due to her severe injuries. Tabitha says that was the first meeting she had with Suggs.
“Jesse (Suggs) actually contacted my cell phone and said she had been hurt,” Tabitha says. “I had assumed, when I got there, that he had done it just by the panic in his voice. When I talked to him, it didn’t sound like somebody who was genuinely concerned.”
Crystal Shannon spends 68 days in hospital
Tabitha’s goodbyes were to be prepared a day after Crystal had been admitted to hospital.
“I got a call that I needed to get to the hospital because they didn’t think she was going to make it,” she says. “They said she had coded, she had to be put on a ventilator.”
From then on, Tabitha was at her sister’s bedside every day.
Crystal underwent surgery in the weeks that followed to remove half her skull to relieve the pressure caused by the bleeding and swelling of the brain. She also had several holes drilled in her skull in order to drain fluid. A few years later, her head was cut to allow for treatment of an infection.
“It was well over a month before she finally came to and was able to start communicating a little bit with us,” Tabitha says.
Crystal said that Tabitha had been her rock throughout. Tabitha became her sister’s medical proxy, and when it was not clear whether she would survive, Tabitha took custody of Crystal’s daughter, who was just 2 years old at the time.
“My sister has been my backbone throughout all of this and without her and her husband, I don’t know what I would have done,” Crystal says. “She had to decide whether to pull the plug or not.”
Crystal Shannon Accepts the Abuses She Underwent
Crystal was still in love with Suggs, even though she spent time at the hospital and was close to death. She believed Suggs couldn’t have hurt her. “I still didn’t want to believe it had happened, and I definitely didn’t want to believe that he did it,” she says.
Crystal was left with severe memory problems after being beaten, but over time, she began to believe that it was her beloved man who had nearly killed her.
“Slowly things started coming back to my mind, where I was in the kitchen and how he had hit me,” Crystal says. “Little pieces started coming back to my mind, and the argument that we were having and it all fell into place. And I knew he had done it.”
Crystal remembered the argument that resulted in the beating. They had always been fighting about it, says Crystal. He would find some excuse to accuse of me cheating.
Crystal’s sister supported her on her journey to recover after she was discharged. “If it wasn’t for her and her husband, Don, I don’t know what I would have done because they stepped up and took my daughter in,” she says.
The journey had not ended yet.
Tabitha, her sister says: “We were on the department from day one.” We figured it was him because he was alone at the home.
Crystal had told the authorities, when she first went to hospital and was aware, that Suggs wasn’t responsible for Crystal’s injuries. Crystal had initially claimed that someone else was responsible, but after realizing it had all been Suggs, her memories began to return.
Tabitha claims that they could not charge Crystal with any crime until her memory returned and she told them that he did it.
Lincoln County Sheriff’s Department has issued an arrest warrant in April 2022.
A year later, on April 13, Crystal received a threatening message on Facebook. Suggs allegedly sent the message, threatening to kill Crystal and her daughter. He also provided specifics proving that he knew where they lived. It appeared that her nightmare was not over.
“I No where U and Ur Little Girl lives now” I’ll kill U and Her Both
Crystal, after being discharged from the Hospital in Alabama, moved in to Tabitha’s house with Tabitha’s husband. There, she joined her daughter, who had already been living there since Tabitha gained custody of the little girl while Crystal fought to survive her devastating injuries. Tabitha’s 16-year-old daughter and two other children, 9 and 10, also under Tabitha’s guardianship were living at the home when a threatening message landed in Crystal’s Facebook inbox.
Suggs’ account on Facebook is said to have sent the message. It contained threats against Crystal and her daughter and specific details that showed whoever sent it knew exactly where they were living. The message said, “Your daughter had fun yesterday on the trampoline wasn’t it?” Just think that the next time she steps outside, it could be your last chance to see her.
Suggs also made sure that Crystal knew he was aware of their new address, which he detailed in the message.
The message concluded with “I will kill you and her before I return to prison.”
After receiving the bone-chilling messages, Crystal forbade her young daughter from riding her bicycle outside. Tabitha’s husband and other family members were also told to remain inside by Tabitha.
“It had our whole family living in fear,” Tabitha says. “Every time the dogs would bark, our kids were thinking that he was here to kill them. They couldn’t go outside and play after he made the threats. In the past few weeks, it changed our entire lives. We were now jumping every time we heard a noise.
Crystal and Tabitha notified the authorities. As it appeared Suggs was no longer in Lincoln County, authorities stepped up the manhunt and involved U.S. Marshals, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and several other police departments and sheriff’s offices from Tennessee, Alabama and Florida in their search.
Suggs was finally arrested weeks after Crystal received the message. The multi-agency taskforce tracked him to DeFuniak Springs, Florida. He was initially arrested by the Walton County Sheriff’s Department, and later extradited to Lincoln County, Tennessee.
He appeared in court on May 16 for a first appearance and is due to enter a plea at his next court date on June 20. Suggs’ public defender declined to make any comments on the matter.
“I’m glad that he’s finally caught,” Crystal says. “I’m glad that he’ll have to serve his time, and that he don’t have nothing but time on his hands so [he can] think about what he did.”
Crystal Shannon’s New Lease of Life, Her Sobriety and What’s Next
Crystal continues to live with the aftermath of the attack. Crystal suffers from headaches, memory loss and permanent damage to one eye. Her balance is also affected and she now has a limp.
“I’ve recovered about as much as I’m going to,” she says.
Crystal is completely free of drugs. “I haven’t even touched cigarettes. I quit smoking,” she laughed. She finished a three month rehab program. Through the courts, she also won custody of daughter.
Though Crystal and Tabitha believe that closure can only come with Suggs’ conviction, they say their whole family is breathing a sigh of relief. The family hopes that things will return to normal soon.
“When the Marshals called and informed everybody he was caught, [the kids] were up and getting ready for school and they jumped up and down, screaming, ‘Now we can go outside and play,'” Tabitha says.