After 25 years, search for woman continues

It's been 25 years since Cheryl Ann Scherer was abducted from the Rhodes Pump-Ur-Own Station in Scott City during a robbery.

Scott County Sheriff Bill Ferrell was three years into his job on April 17, 1979, when 19-year-old Scherer was reported missing from her workplace around noon that day. Whoever kidnapped her also robbed the store of $480. Scherer's purse was found in the office, and her car was parked next to the office with the keys inside. But no one has seen Cheryl Scherer since.

Ferrell said he revisits the case frequently every year. This year, he said, he got Scherer's DNA from her family hoping that will lead to a conclusion. Cheryl Scherer is never far from Ferrell's mind.

"Her file is here by my desk all the time," he said.

There were no witnesses the day she was kidnapped. Although it happened in the middle of the day, there was little traffic in and out of the Scott City Plaza where the service station was located. The major store in the plaza, an IGA grocery, was closed because of the funeral of the store owner's mother.

The FBI was called in, even a psychic from Paducah, Ky., was called, but no one could find Scherer.

Ferrell got a break in the case five years after it happened when authorities in Texas and Florida arrested Otis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas, who were convicted of traveling across the country randomly killing people. They were known to be in Southeast Missouri at the time Scherer was kidnapped. The two confessed to killing more than 200 people. Ferrell interviewed both but the results were inconclusive.

"They were in this area, the two of them together, with Toole's niece and nephew," Ferrell said. "Henry Lee Lucas said they kidnapped a girl off I-55 between St. Louis and Memphis."

Ferrell showed him a photo of Scherer, who had bright red hair, but Lucas said she wasn't the girl they kidnapped. He said the girl they kidnapped did not have red hair.

"He didn't confess to taking her, but he did confess to taking someone," Ferrell said. "She was the only girl missing on I-55 during that period."

Suspicion against the two was strong, but not strong enough to charge them with Scherer's kidnapping. Both Lucas and Toole died in prison.

Ferrell is leaving office at the end of this year. Jerry Bledsoe, one of the department's investigators, is running for sheriff. Ferrell said Bledsoe will continue the case if he wins the election.

Bledsoe has been handling much of the Scherer investigation this year and is the one who got the DNA and put Scherer's photo on the sheriff's Web site. Ferrell said he knows of no reason why any of Bledsoe's opponents would not keep the case open.

"Hopefully the case will stay open until there is a conclusion to it," Ferrell said.

Ferrell contacts Scherer's family regularly. But he remains frustrated that he hasn't been able to find their daughter. He's not sure having Scherer's DNA will be of much help. Bodies of unidentified women who were found when Scherer disappeared have long been buried. DNA technology was not available then, so nothing was saved that would link any unidentified bodies to Scherer.

"That's our biggest fear, that we may never find out," Ferrell said.

lredeffer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 160