Shelby Hughes

Shelby L. Hughes (1981 – ca. June 21, 2014) was an American artist and designer.

Early life and career Shelby Hughes was born in Maine and lived there until moving to Beverly, Massachusetts at the age of ten. There, she graduated from Beverly High School in 1998. Showing a talent for art from an early age, Hughes pursued art studies at Cooper Union in New York City with a full scholarship. After completing her BFA in 2003, she exhibited her work internationally in New York, Miami, Berlin, and Tokyo and Village Voice. Six of her works were included in the Judith Rothschild Foundation at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. Due to her background in fine art, Hughes' original interest was in the stamp art and branding of heroin; however, each entry was also accompanied by a review of the product contained in the bag, with a rating for “count” (the amount in each baggie), “legs,” (the duration of the high), and “rush” (the overall quality). Hughes also opened the blog to entries from readers, seeing it as a form of harm-reduction, as contributors could share their experiences with particularly dangerous brands. New York Magazine described Jynxies Natural Habitat as being "like Yelp, but for heroin" and published an interview with Dequincey Jynxie. and The Brooklyn Paper.

Death On June 21, 2014, the bodies of Shelby Hughes and her partner Bryan VanAssche were found by firefighters after the couple's house in Midwest City, Oklahoma had been set on fire. The police stated that the couple had been murdered several days prior to the fire, with Hughes dying from blunt force trauma to the head, and suspected that the deaths had been drug-related. The couple had entered a rehabilitation program shortly before.

The murderer was never found. In 2015, a friend of the couple's pleaded guilty of breaking into their house before the fire and stealing heroin, but was not implicated in the murder.