Meet Donielle Showvay, who thought she had a pretty normal life. 17 years of marriage, six kids. A husband who, on the surface, seemed like your typical “family man.” You know, the kind who might forget to take out the trash, not secretly run a basement horror story.
That husband? Chad Schipper.
According to reports, Donielle’s world flipped upside down when she discovered that her husband wasn’t just attending Bible study, he was apparently running his own very illegal, very disturbing side project. And no, not a hobby like woodworking or fantasy football. We’re talking about allegedly keeping a couple captive in a basement.
Let that sink in. Imagine going about your daily routine, packing lunches, managing kids, arguing about bills, while your spouse is out here living in a completely different, criminal reality. That’s not just shocking, that’s “what kind of movie is this?” shocking.
Showvay looks back at the start of their relationship in episode 3 of the eight-part docuseries Betrayal: Secrets & Lies titled “The Bible Study Kidnapper,” which premiered April 12 on ABC. She remembers with a laugh that on their first date, the two watched movies — including So I Married An Axe Murderer — with her sister and the boy her sister was interested in at the time.
“He had a reputation of being very smart, very kind,” Barbie Dangond, a college friend of Showvay and Schipper, recalls in the episode.
Showvay and Schipper went on to tie the knot and settle into a life that Showvay remembers thinking was “too good to be true.” Not long after, Schipper came to his wife with a jarring confession: He’d had a sexual “encounter in a public bathroom with a man.”
Though a marriage counselor advised Showvay to leave Schipper, she was determined to make the relationship work, and a couple months later, she found out they were expecting their first child, a daughter named Grace.
This is what we call love is blindness and here we are with such a terrifying story.
The couple, who would welcome six children together during 17 years of marriage, moved to a larger house in Erie, Ill., as Schipper’s financial advising business continued to grow. In the new house, Schipper had an office on the first floor that he spent many hours in — often working into the night and sleeping downstairs, much to Showvay’s disappointment.
At one point, he tried to forge a business relationship with a couple from their church who had just come into a large sum of money. After several meetings, Larry and Connie Van Oosten declined to work with Schipper, believing he was still too early in his financial career. At this point, Schipper decided to start buying properties to renovate and rent out for additional income.
Schipper was spending more time away from home — always explaining his absences as having to do with one of the rentals. One night in 2017, things took a turn when one of the couple’s children saw a car approaching their home that he didn’t recognize. Around the same time, Schipper had texted their daughter Grace to wrap the handle of a sledge hammer in black electrical tape. While the teen thought it was a weird request, she obliged and was told she’d receive a “special treat for a job well done,” she recalls in the episode.
Never judge a book by its cover. Donielle never knew the monster she had married until his horror secret got exposed.
A few nights later, Showvay awoke to the sound of a loud bang as the house was swarmed with police officers looking for her husband — and asking questions about the Van Oostens.
It turned out that Schipper — using the sledgehammer his daughter prepared — broke into the Van Oosten’s house in the middle of the night and kidnapped the elderly couple using a taser, duct tape to cover their mouths and eyes, and handcuffs. To communicate with them, Schipper used a voice distorter and at one point asked them: “Where is your God now?”
Schipper then drove the couple to a bank and forced Connie to go inside and get a check for $350,000. According to the episode, he told her that if she didn’t, he would kill Larry. While inside the bank, Connie wrote a note on a church flier in her purse and slipped it to the teller. The note, which said she was in trouble, set off a police hunt for the Van Oostens’ whereabouts.
Schipper was ultimately sentenced to 60 years in prison, a result that Showvay’s father Tim Mohs calls “glorious.”
While going through with a divorce conflicted with Showvay’s faith, she knew it was “the only safe option” for her and her children. Schipper tried to contact her through letters from prison, even pretending to be a Southern woman to try and convince her to forgive him — all to no avail. Showvay has not spoken to him since his arrest.
In the end, this story is a reminder that people aren’t always who they seem. Sometimes the biggest secrets are hiding in plain sight. And sometimes, the person you think you know best turns out to be a complete stranger.
