Ryan Riggs: Church Member Confesses to Killing Rhonda Blankinship After DNA Composite Identifies Him
He had walked among the volunteers, attended memorial services in her honor, and hidden in plain sight the entire time.
Chantay was 25 years old when she vanished on the evening of Friday, May 13, 2016. She had gone for her regular walk around the neighborhood, and right around sunset she called her grandfather to let him know she was on her way home.
That call was the last time her family heard her voice.
Growing up, Chantay had developed a little more slowly than other children, taking extra time with walking and talking.
“It was like she aged to a certain point, and she stopped,” said her sister Destinee Jarvis.
As an adult, she was known around town for a huge, sparkling smile and a deep love for anything that glittered.
Her neighbors and her church family at North Lake Community Church looked out for her like she was everybody’s daughter.
When she didn’t come home, law enforcement organized a search that drew in church members, friends, and townsfolk.
About 48 hours later, two volunteers named Charlie Radle and Jackie Neal were checking an abandoned farmhouse that locals had long called haunted.
Roughly five miles from Chantay’s home, they spotted a clump of hair, some bracelets, and fresh tire tracks near the storm cellar. Inside, they found her body and called the police, as seen in the documentary below.
According go police reports, the scene was brutal. “It was a very brutal assault. There were cuts and bruises around her face and head,” said Brown County Sheriff’s Office Captain Scott Bird.
An autopsy revealed she had been beaten to death with a bloody lawnmower blade found at the scene, and she had also been sexually assaulted.
Investigators noted strange marks around her throat that they couldn’t immediately explain, and DNA evidence was carefully collected and sent off for testing.
Because the murder took place on Friday the 13th at a location people called the “Haunted House,” detectives briefly looked into whether cult activity was involved, as per Oxygen News.
That theory didn’t lead anywhere, so they refocused on the men in Chantay’s life.
The list included her boyfriend John Adams, a neighbor named Bobby Soza, a local man named Colin Smith who had been in a relationship with her, and her pastor.
They also examined Charlie Radle, one of the volunteers who had discovered her body.
Over the course of the investigation, DNA samples were collected from at least two dozen men, including Chantay’s own grandfather, however, every comparison came back negative.
The national DNA database CODIS had no matches either, leaving the case at a standstill for more than a year.
Captain Bird admitted how stuck they felt. “I was trying anything I could,” he said. “We were lost.”
Then he learned about a DNA tool called phenotyping, which uses genetic material from a crime scene to predict what a suspect likely looks like—eye color, hair color, skin tone, and face shape.
In 2017, it was still an emerging technology, and many in law enforcement were skeptical.
But despite the doubt, Brown County District Attorney Michael Murray believed it was worth a shot, so the team gathered a $3,600 processing fee and sent the DNA to a Virginia company called Parabon.
About five months later, the results came back in the form of a composite image: a young white man with sandy hair and blue eyes.
At first, nobody in the family or the community recognized the face. However, that changed when Chantay’s half-brother Cutter took a closer look and saw someone he had known since childhood.
It was the face of 21-year-old Ryan Riggs, a fellow church member who had bullied Cutter in school. Even more disturbing, Riggs had joined the search party when Chantay went missing and had attended services held in her honor.
Authorities moved quickly to locate Riggs, who briefly ran before returning and confessing to members of the church congregation.
The pastor then took him to the sheriff’s office, where Riggs gave a recorded interview and laid out exactly what had happened that evening.
He told detectives that he spotted Chantay walking and offered her a ride in his truck.
As they sat together listening to music, something inside him snapped without warning.
“Out of nowhere, I just put my left arm around her and began to strangle her. When she had passed out, I took her clothes off and I raped her,” Riggs said.
After the assault, he drove her to the abandoned farmhouse and beat her to death with a lawnmower blade that had been in his vehicle.
He then stomped on her chest, which finally explained the marks around her throat that had puzzled investigators from the start.
Riggs was charged with capital murder, putting the death penalty on the table.
In 2019, he accepted a plea deal before 35th District Court Judge Stephen Ellis, receiving a life sentence with no possibility of parole. As part of the agreement, he waived any right to appeal his conviction, according to online reports.
Years later, Chantay’s mother still carries her daughter close.
When asked what comes to mind first when she thinks of her, Michelle McDaniel said, “Her smile. It doesn’t ever go away. I see her all the time.”
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