HOW TO GET AWAY WITH MURD3R IN NEW ORLEANS: THE CACHE SHELTON STORY

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]It's the perfect place to com, you know, to commit a murder. Just come to New Orleans. They don't have the manpower.

[00:00:06]>> I'm not going to stop until justice is served for Nicholas.

[00:00:10]>> A grieving mother learns her son's 2022 shooting death is finally going to a grand jury.

[00:00:15]>> Back here in Orleans Parish, the fate of Cashache Shelton will soon be in the hands of 12 jurors. A few minutes ago, prosecutors began their closing arguments, saying the family of Nicholas Harrison has waited too long for justice. Shelton first told police Harrison shot himself, then she said they struggled and the gun went off.

[00:00:33]>> The question they're faced with, did Shelton kill her boyfriend, Nicholas Harrison, or did he shoot himself inside of a warehouse district hotel room 3 and 1/2 years ago?

[00:00:41]>> Where is the suspect now, ma'am?

[00:00:43]>> He's laying on the floor and I'm This is crazy. He shot himself, ma'am.

[00:00:49]>> Yes. Yes.

[00:01:04]Cashache Shelton was born on March 17th, 1996 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Some say she grew up in the city and built her life in Slidell, a city on the northshore of Lake Punter Train in St. Tam Parish about 30 miles from the city where her name would eventually be attached to every headline. She worked as a hair stylist. He was 26 years old when Nicholas Harrison died.

[00:01:27]>> My son, I've lost my son, 29 years old.

[00:01:30]>> Back in January, I sat down with Sher Bell, the mother of 29-year-old Nicholas Harrison, as she hoped the person responsible for her son's murder would be behind bars.

[00:01:39]>> Nicholas Lee Harrison was 29. He was a native of New Orleans who began his education at St. Augustine High School, one of the city's most respected historically black Catholic schools.

[00:01:50]When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in August 2005, Harrison was around 12 years old. His family relocated to the Dallas area in the aftermath. He finished high school at Ranch View High School in Iran, Texas, and attended Richland College in Dallas on a baseball scholarship. He was an athlete, a hard worker, someone his father described as having come out of the wound shooting a basketball and throwing a football. Fashion and image became his career. He made his living as an image consultant and personal shopper. He eventually found his way back to New Orleans and was enrolled at Delgato Community College. At the time of his death, building toward the next chapter of his life by late 2022, Harrison was in a period of transition.

[00:02:32]He had been living with Cashier Shelton in Atlanta, but he decided to come home.

[00:02:36]He put his belongings in storage and was preparing to move into a house in New Orleans East. He booked room 303 at the courtyard by Marriott on Julia Street in the warehouse district for December the 26th, a temporary landing spot while he got settled.

[00:02:56]Cashache Shelton was his girlfriend of three years. He was with him in Atlanta.

[00:03:00]She was with him in New Orleans the night he died. On December 19th, 2022, 8 days before Harrison was shot, Cashache Shelton recorded a video on her phone.

[00:03:10]In the video, Harrison pointed his own gun at her with a direct and unmistakable threat. Delton recorded it.

[00:03:16]She responded in the video with a laugh.

[00:03:18]In a statement of her own that whatever happened to her, this video was documentation of who was responsible for it. That footage set on her phone when NOPD arrested her the following January.

[00:03:29]Investigators seized the phone, but never accessed its content. They didn't have her passcode and never downloaded the video. It did not reach the courtroom until May of 2026, more than 3 years after Harrison was buried, when a judge ruled it could be shown to the jury, only if Shelton testified in her own defense. 8 days before he died, Nicholas Harrison was on camera pointing his gun at the woman who would be charged with killing him. That video became the centerpiece of a defense that the prosecution spent 4 days trying to dismantle and couldn't.

[00:04:06]Harrison and Shelton had spent the night of December 26 out in New Orleans with a mutual friend, bar hopping, partying, a night that didn't end until the early hours of the morning. They returned to room 303 at 7:33 a.m. on December the 27th. The mutual friend left roughly 1 hour later. From that point, the only two people in that room were Nicholas Harrison and Cashier Shelton. At approximately 8:28 in the morning, a hotel front desk employee heard a single gunshot. Shelton did not come downstairs for 12 minutes. When she appeared in the lobby at 8:40, she was covered in blood.

[00:04:39]Hotel employees immediately began calling 911. Shelton made her own 911 call at 8:45, 17 minutes after the shot was fired. When officers arrived, they found Harrison on the floor wearing nothing but his underwear, a single gunshot wound through the forehead just above his left eye. Chelton was beside him pressing a tower against the wound.

[00:04:59]EMS transported him to a local hospital.

[00:05:02]He did not survive. The gun that killed him was his own. A Glock folded caliber handgun found in the room. The story Shelton told police that morning was not the last story she would tell. He told hotel workers the first responding officer in the 911 operator that Harrison had shot himself. Under interrogation 90 minutes later that virgin collapsed. The two of them had been in bed wrestling over the gun and when it went off accidentally, she wasn't sure who was holding it when it fired. Body camera footage captured Shelton telling officer she was not injured. 3 days later, she sought medical treatment and described injury.

[00:05:36]He said Harrison inflicted with the gun before the shooting. Injury she had not mentioned to police the night it happened. Before her hands were tested for gunshot residue, OPD officers allowed Shelton to wash her hand. then still at the station and before testing she removed her long fake fingernails.

[00:05:52]Her DNA was found on the trigger Harris's Glock. No gunshot residue was found on Harrison's hand. Harrison's DNA was not on the trigger.

[00:06:00]>> Guerreri also talked about how the evidence showed Shelton removed her long fingernails after she was brought in for questioning. And another thing Guerreri testified to is that the defendant's DNA, uh, Cashache Shelton's DNA was found on the trigger and the trigger well of the gun.

[00:06:22]NOPD homicide detectives identified Shelton as the perpetrator and obtain a secondderee murder arrest warrant. On January the 22nd, 2023, a Crimes Stoppers tip led to her arrest in St. Tammy Parish. She was booked as a fugitive, extradited to Orleans Parish and bonded out at $150,000. 5 months later, DA Jason Williams and his office declined to prosecute. It determined the evidence was insufficient and never took the case to a grand jury. Cashier Shelton walked free.

[00:06:52]>> After the DA faced tough questions from WWL chief investigative reporter David Hammer. David spent the last 5 months gathering records from the December 2022 shooting death of Nicholas Harrison. The DA's office refused to press murder charges against Harrison's girlfriend in June of 2023, but David questioned DA Jason Williams about the evidence. And now this cold case has been reopened.

[00:07:14]For nearly two years, the case set closed. Shelton was free. Abison's family was left with nothing. In late 2024, WWL investigative reporter David Hammer obtained the police closed files through a public records request. I was a body camera footage, interrogation video, ballistic report, and autopsy findings. Hammer reviewed them all. He then confronted DA Jason Williams publicly about why the case had been dropped despite what the evidence showed. Within days, Williams reviewed the material himself and reversed the course. The case was reopened. A grand jury indicted Shelton on January the 30th of 2025. 2 days later, he was charged with seconddegree murder and obstruction of justice. Her bond was reset at $300,000. Her arraignment on February the 10th of 2025 after two families confronted each other outside the courthouse. The grief and anger that had been building for 2 years had nowhere else to go.

[00:08:14]is before jury selection was set to begin on January the 12th of 20126.

[00:08:19]Shelton changed her plea to not guilty by region of insanity, forcing another delay while psychiatric evaluations were arranged.

[00:08:28]>> With jury selection just a week away, a woman charged with murdering her boyfriend in a New Orleans hotel is dramatically shifting her defense strategy.

[00:08:37]911. It's location emergency.

[00:08:40]>> Court records show Cashache Shelton is changing her plea from not guilty to not guilty by reason of insanity. The investigation into the shooting death of Shelton's boyfriend, Nicholas Harrison, inside the Courtyard Marriott in December 2022 was once closed. Shelton first told police Harrison shot himself, then she said they struggled and the gun went off. Her defense later explained the insanity plea had been entered as part of a legal mechanism to allow evidence of alleged domestic violence into the courtroom. Without that plea, the history would be largely inadmissible. Judge Kim Holmes gave the defense a choice. Proceed with the insanity defense and face incarceration for missing a court ordered mental evaluation that Shelton had already failed to appeal for or withdraw the plea and go to trial without the ability to formally raise the claims of past domestic violence. That insanity plea was withdrawn immediately. Shelton remained free on bond. Trial was set from May 18th of 2026, but the defense gained was the December 19th video now admissible provider Shelton took the stand.

[00:09:50]First, the gun could have not been fired from within reach of Harrison's fully outreach arm. A crime scene reconstruction expert found no tattooing, no stifling, and no soot on the entry room, placing the muzzle in a minimum of 24 to 30 in from Harrison's forehead when the trigger was pulled.

[00:10:07]Second, Harrison's position at the moment of the shot. Blood splatter, bullet trajectory in the layout of the room placed him at or near the bed between the gun and the wall. Shot from an upward angle. A close contact struggle on that bed would have left forensic evidence. There was none.

[00:10:23]Third, Harrison's hands at autopsy, no gunshot residue. Nearly impossible to reconcile with him having fired the gun.

[00:10:30]Shelton's DNA was on the trigger.

[00:10:32]Harrison's was not. The prosecution walked into that courtroom believing those three pillars would be enough to convict. They were wrong.

[00:10:45]Trial began May 18th, 2026. Eight women and five men. Chelton faced an automatic life sentence if convicted of seconddegree murder. The prosecution built this case methodically. The science, the change of stories, the 17-minute time gap, the fingernails, the DNA. The defense attacked the investigation itself. NOPD allowed Shelton to wash her hands before GSR testing, permanently compromising the critical piece of evidence. The forensic expert had been retained by the prosecution after the grand jury had already indicted. The defense pressed hard on whether the signs conclusively ruled out a struggle rather than simply failing to support one. And then the defense played the December 19th video.

[00:11:26]The jurist saw Harrison pointing his gun at Sheldon a day before he was dead.

[00:11:30]They were asked to hold that image alongside everything else the prosecution had presented. Shelton took the stand and testified for two and a half hours across two days. He admitted her story had changed. He attributed every shift to panic, trauma, and confusion. She described injuries Harrison inflicted with the gun before the shooting that she never told police about the night it happened. On the evening of May 21st, 2026, after 6 and 1/2 hours of deliberation, the jury returned its verdict. Not guilty.

[00:11:59]>> About a 6 and 1/2 hours of debate deliberations, a jury has returned a verdict and the trial of Cashache Shelton. We're going to go live to David Hammer at the criminal courthouse for the very latest. Uh David, I know that it was probably an emotional end to the day. Merice, it was so emotional, intense, in fact, that the judge pointed out that it's been an intense four days in this trial before she read the jury's unanimous verdict, not guilty for Cashache Shelton. The jury unanimously decided that the state had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Cashachier Shelton shot Nicholas Harrison from a distance. Shelton's family erupted in the courtroom. For Harrison's family, it was the second time the system had failed to produce an answer for what happened to their son in room 303. Cashachier Shelton walked out of all Parish Criminal District Court. A free woman, not innocent, not exonerated, not guilty, which in a court of law means only that the state cannot meet the burden. It means nothing about what actually happened in that hotel room. Guardians has not treated this verdict as a resolution. The case was controversial from the moment Shelton was arrested. Controversial when the DA declined to prosecute. controversial when a television reporter posted back open and controversial. Still, a significant portion of New Orleans believes Cashier Shelton killed Nicholas Harrison. That belief does not go away because the jury reached a different conclusion after 6 and 1/2 hours.

[00:13:20]Nicholas Harrison left New Orleans as a child, displaced by a hurricane, built himself in Texas, earned a scholarship, built a career, and came home. He was 29 years old. He was in bed. He was in his underwear. He was shot through his forehead. The jury did not convict the woman who was in that room with him.

[00:13:37]Nicholas Harrison is dead. SJ Shelton is still free. And New Orleans still has questions that a not-uilty verdict does not answer.