Dateline: Cold case spotlight: What happened to Cheryl Scherer? Disturbing details of the 1979 missing case

It’s been an entirety of 46 whole years ever since Cheryl Scherer suddenly disappeared from a gas station in Scott City, Missouri — and Dateline on NBC tries to shine some amount of spotlight on the frightening obscurity that has troubled her family as well as perplexed investigators for years on end.

With no officially confirmed detections or physical evidence being found, Cheryl’s true crime case to this day is one of the most puzzling unsolved disappearances in Missouri.

As Dateline goes back in time and revisits this cold case, the disturbing details are attached to it, as well as the heartbreaking cries of Cheryl's family.

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The morning Cheryl disappeared: A day like any other, covered on Dateline, NBC.

April 17, 1979, began as just another ordinary early morning in the Scherer house. Cheryl, who was 19 at the time, shared a room with her younger sister Diane and was getting ready to clock in for her 6 a.m. shift at the Rhodes Pump-Ur-Own station.

Diane recalls that specific haunting day in her Dateline interview.

“We always told each other that we loved each other… She said, ‘Love you, Doon,’ as she walked down the steps and turned the light out.”

Cheryl was clothed in a light blue sweater, some corduroy pants, and her usual set of jewellery that she always wore— nothing out of the blue…just a normal day…or so they thought.

What made the day concerning later on was what followed after. Cheryl never found her way back home. Diane says;

“We’re thinking maybe something’s happened to Mom or Dad… and that Cheryl’s coming to pick us up…”

But rather, a deputy brought Diane back home from school, and the severity reality-check began to sink deep in — Cheryl had gone missing.

Her purse, chequebook, and even the gas station’s money sack (with some cash gone AWOL) were found, but Cheryl had, in basic terms, disappeared in what the authorities investigating then acknowledged as a mere 10-minute window.

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Clues, cash, and the vanishing of a 19-year-old: The crime scene details

The Rhodes gas station was explained by Cheryl’s brother Anthony as being “not like a convenience store,” a small and secluded station, just a tiny booth where merely one person worked all alone.

That isolation and seclusion of her workplace may have made Cheryl a susceptible scapegoat. Sergeant Michael Williams tells Dateline.

“We have reports of multiple people driving by and seeing her there.”

This is something that is confirmed by eyewitness proof that Cheryl was indeed present at the gas station, merely sometime before she went missing in broad daylight.

A co-worker first realised that Cheryl was missing from the booth and immediately notified authorities. The investigators found all of her possessions completely untouched, with one obvious exception — the authorities realised some cash was missing from the work money bag. Sergeant Michael Williams notes;

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

Yet, there was absolutely no recorded sign of any forced entry into the shop, nor were struggle marks located, which only deepened the mystery behind the disappearance of this 19-year-old.

With no CCTV cameras around and no witnesses at large wanting to step forward, the investigation had little to hold on to. As Williams puts it;

“They did everything they could…”

Nevertheless, in 1979, this meant that the family could only rely heavily on door-to-door leads and flyers to search even for an ounce of justice for their loved one.

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The long road of grief, hope, and theories

The Scherer family never stopped yearning for peace, some help, or closure. While too young in age to get involved with search parties, Diane and Anthony became the face of help and power in their own homes for the sake and love they shared for their sister. Diane told Dateline.

“We had flyers and addresses and we would just stuff the envelopes…”

The community and the support received from people around were strong too, but the leads and the info all turned into frozen ice.

Theories whirled over for decades, as well as possibilities that link Cheryl to serial killers, especially the infamous Ted Bundy.

In the 1980s, two people named Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole also turned out to be persons of interest for this case. Sergeant Williams says;

“They admitted to taking a female off what they thought was Interstate 55… that matched the description…”

Yet, regardless of pointing authorities to a particular location, “nothing was located…”

Diane, on the other hand, refuses to live her life only dwelling on the possibilities of what might have happened. Diane says;

“Unless there’s something concrete…Everything is a possibility.”

A number of suspects, both from within the community as well as from outside the area, have been looked at — but no one has ever been arrested for the crime.

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Dateline and its commitment to cold cases

As part of its continuing effort to shed light on long-gone and overlooked disappearances, Dateline continues to study Cheryl’s cold case with much focus.

The Scott County Sheriff’s Office, in conjunction with Dateline, has digitized and restructured the old files from this case. Williams says;

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

Every tiny detail weighs and matters — from Cheryl’s phone calls to obtaining leads neat the brief time frame from where and when she disappeared.

By going back in time and revisiting the entirety of the timeline, looking up at angles that may have been overlooked at initial stages, and by publicly talking about Cheryl’s story, Dateline makes sure that her name won’t fade away into oblivion.

“We know someone out there knows something…”

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Through years of heartbreak and questions that have been left unanswered, one thing has never changed — the Scherer family’s affection for their child, Cheryl.

With Dateline aiming to maintain her case in the public eye, there is still hope that the truth will one day surface.