Dateline: Cold case spotlight: 5 harrowing details of Cheryl Scherer's 1979 missing case explored

A recent Dateline: Cold Case spotlight shed light on the missing case of Cheryl Scherer. Cheryl has been missing since 17th April 1979, for forty-six years. She was nineteen when she went missing from the Rhodes Pump-Ur-Own gas station in Scott City, Missouri, where she was working on the 6 am to 2 pm shift. Authorities have looked for her relentlessly, but have found no concrete information about her whereabouts.

As this Dateline: Cold case spotlight reports, Sergeant Michael Williams has been working on the case, and he is dedicated to finding Cheryl. The Scherer family has accepted that they might never see her alive. Cheryl's parents passed away before they could find her, and now her siblings, Diane and Anthony, just want her back, even if it is just her remains.

5 harrowing details of Dateline: Cold Case Spotlight: Cheryl Scherer's 1979 missing case

Cases go cold more often than one likes, but this particular Dateline: Cold Case spotlight is quite different. Sergeant Michael Williams, who took up the case, told Dateline,

“I’ve been in law enforcement for a long time and had worked cold cases, not quite this cold,”

“The reports that we have on that are very limited,''

''They did everything they could.”

He also said that the police department has updated the case details with the changing times.

“We digitized it, reorganized it the best that we can,”

He continued,

“We’re trying to make it as modern as possible.”

As Williams says, everyone, including the police, believes it to be a kidnapping. He said,

“They got right after it,''

''It’s been listed as a kidnapping, I think, ever since it started.”

Irrespective of the case's status, Dateline: Cold Case Spotlight has highlighted the harrowing details of it that still haunt the Scherer family.

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Cheryl vanished almost into thin air

According to this Dateline: Cold case spotlight, Cheryl Scherer was the eldest of three siblings. She had a younger brother and sister. Cheryl and her family lived on a farm, and she loved animals. She was like any other teenager of the 70s, and there are no reports of a troubled home life. She was the prom queen at her high school, Thomas W. Kelly High School. After graduating, she had been working at the gas station.

Her initial shift at work was from 2 pm. to 10 pm, which worried her parents. However, nothing happened on that shift. On 17th April 1979, when Cheryl went missing, she had been working on the 6 am to 2 pm. shift. There was no sign of struggle or witnesses who had seen an abduction. The police concluded that she had been taken sometime between 11:40 and 11:50 am. Cheryl went missing, almost into thin air, in broad daylight.

Cheryl did not run away

Many thought she had just run away from home. However, the evidence says otherwise. According to this Dateline: Cold case spotlight, witnesses had seen Cheryl at the gas station that morning. Cheryl had called and talked to her mother at approximately 11:30 am. She had asked about supper, and nothing about that conversation was suspicious to her mother. An employee of the gas station had passed by the place twice after 11:30 am and had not seen Cheryl there. That made her suspicious, and she called the authorities.

On searching the premises, the police found all of Cheryl's belongings in her locker. As Diane told Dateline,

“Her purse and her checkbook, all of that was left,”

Diane continues,

“Her car was left, and the keys were there.”

Besides, Sergeant Williams confirmed the same,

“There were several belongings left behind,”

“There was a ring left behind.”

Cheryl definitely did not leave of her own volition. This Dateline: Cold case spotlight pointed out that she was most likely abducted, and the abductor might have also stolen money. As Williams says,

“There was cash in the register, but money missing out of the money bag,”

No arrests made

It has been over four decades since Cheryl went missing. However, no arrests have been made yet. Police had suspected some locals and even looked into serial killers Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole. A conversation with Lucas and Toole led them to a lead, but that turned out to be a dead end. Police had looked into other serial killers of the time, but they could not track it down to anybody. This Dateline: Cold case spotlight is different from many others as there have been no concrete suspects and, hence, no concrete arrests.

Cheryl might have been abducted because of her red hair

People had reported that several redheaded women in the late '70s and '80s

“were found dumped along major highways in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia.”

As Dateline: Cold Case Spotlight reports, the department had considered the possibility that Cheryl was abducted because of her red hair. They had even suspected someone, but no arrests have been made. There are theories, but not enough evidence.

Cheryl is most likely no longer alive

While the police are doing their best to find Cheryl, there is a big chance that she is no longer alive. It has been too long, and the chances of her abductor keeping her alive for all these years are slim. She might have escaped and forgotten about her past life, but that's very unlikely. According to Dateline: Cold Case Spotlight, the Scherer family just wants Cheryl back. As NBC News reports, Diane said to Dateline,

“We would like her alive. We’ve accepted the fact that that’s probably not what’s going to happen. We just want her. We want her — it’s taken me years to say the word remains, but we just want her remains,”

Sergeant Williams and his team are doing everything in their power to find Cheryl, and hopefully, this Dateline: Cold Case spotlight will be solved soon. If anyone has any information about Cheryl Scherer, they are asked to contact the Scott County Sheriff’s Office at the given number: 573-545-3525.