Dig on Scott County farm for Cheryl Scherer's body unsuccessful

Federal, state and Scott County law enforcement officers dug for evidence Monday in the 40-year-old disappearance of Cheryl Ann Scherer, but turned up nothing.

It was another dead end in a cold case that has baffled law enforcement and left Scherer’s family struggling to find closure.

Cheryl Scherer in 1977, two years before her disappearance.Southeast Missourian File

Law enforcement officials remained tight-lipped about the investigation, which, the sheriff’s department said, focused on a field near Scott County Road 329.

“Unfortunately, nothing was located during the search,” the sheriff’s department said in a brief news release Tuesday.

The sheriff’s department, FBI and the Missouri State Highway Patrol participated in the search, the release stated.

Sheriff Wes Drury said in the news release anyone with any information on the case should contact the department.

Sheriff’s department officials did not disclose what led them to search the field, south of Scott City.

Former Sheriff Bill Ferrell said several families named Scherer live near County Road 329, an area of corn and soybean fields.

But according to Diane Scherer-Morris, Scherer’s sister, the investigation did not occur on “our family farm or any relative’s farm.”

Scott County chief deputy Ryan Dennis said Monday no body was found.

Members of the Scott County Sheriffs Department and FBI agents investigate a property along County Road 329 on Monday near Benton, Missouri.BEN MATTHEWS

Capt. Ron Merideth of the Scott County Sheriff’s Department confirmed Tuesday morning the search at the site has ended.

Asked what it was that led authorities to believe there might be evidence or human remains at the site, Merideth said, “No, sir, I cannot go into any more detail.”

Scherer-Morris wrote in a text to the Southeast Missourian the family is “so thankful” for the efforts of the sheriff’s department and Drury.

“He (Drury) has been in constant contact with us in Cheryl’s case,” she wrote. “We also appreciate all the thoughts and prayers and concern shown to us.”

Monday’s investigative effort occurred just over four months after family and friends held a remembrance ceremony for Scherer at St. Denis Parish Center in Benton, Missouri.

Members of the Scott County Sheriffs Department and FBI agents investigate a property along County Road 329 on Monday near Benton, Missouri.BEN MATTHEWS

The disappearance

Scherer disappeared from her job at the Rhodes Pump-Ur-Own gas station on Main Street in Scott City the morning of April 17, 1979. She was 19 years old at the time of her disappearance.

Authorities believe Scherer may have been kidnapped during a station robbery. During the initial investigation, one of Scherer’s co-workers, Debbie Hamilton, said she drove by the station at about 11:30 that morning and saw her on duty. When Hamilton returned a few minutes later, she found Scherer’s purse inside and her car parked outside, but she was gone. So was about $480 from a bank bag in a desk drawer.

Thomas Smith, a cousin of the missing girl, told authorities he, too, saw someone on duty as he drove past the station at about 11:40 a.m., but he couldn’t tell whether it was his cousin.

Authorities at the time were unable to find any witnesses to anything unusual at the station that could have been connected with the case, although two people said they saw a white Ford compact car at the station’s pumps at around the time of Scherer’s disappearance. One man was inside the vehicle and two others were standing outside. Scherer, they said, could be seen just outside the station’s office door.

They may have been the last people to see Scherer before she vanished.

The investigation

In the years since, the Scott County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI have received and followed up on hundreds of leads, few of which had any credibility. At one point, authorities even called in a psychic from Paducah, Kentucky, to assist in the case.

One of the more promising leads surfaced in 1984 when authorities in Florida and Texas arrested Otis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas who were subsequently convicted of traveling across the country randomly killing people. They were known to be in Southeast Missouri when Scherer disappeared and at one point confessed to killing more than 200 people.

Ferrell interviewed both men, but the results were inconclusive.

“They were in this area,” the former sheriff said in a 2004 interview shortly before he retired as Scott County sheriff. “Henry Lee Lucas said they kidnapped a girl off I-55 between St. Louis and Memphis.”

Ferrell said he showed Lucas a photo of Scherer, who had bright red hair, but Lucas said she wasn’t the girl they kidnapped because that victim did not have red hair.

Although suspicion against Toole and Lucas was strong, it wasn’t strong enough to charge them in connection with Scherer’s disappearance. Both Lucas and Toole have since died in prison.

But Ferrell said Tuesday he believes Lucas likely was the killer.

Ferrell interviewed Lucas in a Texas jail in 1983 after Lucas was arrested on a weapons charge, according to Southeast Missourian archives.

“He gave us a lot of information which led us to believe he was probably the one, but we didn’t have any way of proving it,” the former sheriff recalled.

Lucas, he said, “remembered taking someone off the interstate (I-55),” Ferrell said.

Ferrell recalled Lucas said he knew where Crystal City, Missouri, was located, but not Scott City.

However, the former sheriff said, “there was no lady missing along I-55” at the time, except for Scherer.

According to the Southeast Missourian archives, Lucas admitted to being in the Scott County area about the time of the abduction of Scherer.

He described where he left a body.

“We went to the place where he said he left the body, but we didn’t find anything,” Ferrell said in 1989.

In 1979, crime-scene investigators dusted the gas station’s cash register for fingerprints, but DNA testing would not exist as an investigative tool for several more years.

In 2009, the Scott County Sheriff’s Department sent the empty bank bag found at the gas station to a forensic lab in the Netherlands in hopes of recovering DNA from the bag.

Rick Walter, who was sheriff at that time, said Tuesday that DNA was recovered on the bag. The DNA did not match Scherer’s DNA, but Walter said it’s unclear whether the DNA was that of a possible suspect.

“We never got anything to compare it to,” he said.

Ferrell, Walter’s predecessor as sheriff, said the family needs closure. For now, the family can only hope, he said.