Her Killer was the Last Person Anyone Suspected 

I used to think if you met a murderer, you’d  know they were a murderer. But criminals that   get away with a crime for 40 plus years, they’re  able to hide the fact [music] that they are this   monster. Sherry Joe Elliot, she’s getting ready  for school. She was just a kid [music] minding her   own business. She was walking to the school bus  and never made it.

 Sherry would never ever ever   get in [music] a car with anybody she didn’t know.  He had her for like 3 to 4 days and raped her.   She was faced down in a watery ditch,  shot in the back of the head. This is   a very violent execution. It was one of those  cases that haunted a lot of people. You see a   guy walking down the street.

 Is that him? Is  he the one that [music] took Sherry? It went   on for years and we didn’t hear anything. I  thought they would never find him. Everybody   liked the guy. He had no criminal history, but  you never know the monsters who live next to you. Jerry Elliot wasn’t too outgoing. [music] When she  was little, she didn’t venture out too much. Um,   Joyce Schultz, I’m her mother.

 When she was  little, she just loved to color when she was   like [music] 2 years old. We got her a great big  thick coloring book and she colored all of that,   sitting color for hours. She was very disciplined.  She was riding my mother-in-law’s three-wheel   bike when she was in Florida [music] when she was  seven. She fell off of that and scraped her nose   all up. And then my brother called me and wanted  her [music] to be a flower girl for his wedding.  

And so hopefully her nose would all healed up. And  so she was had a purple dress and was his flower   girl when he got married. Sherry Joel, she was a  sweetheart. We’re not supposed to have a favorite   niece or nephew. She’s basically the favorite  of most people in the family, [music] but she   was a loving child, very respectful.

 She loved  to visit with her cousins when she went to her   dad’s. She and her and her dad, we divorced in  [music] 72, and so she would go back and forth,   visit her dad, and then come home. And it  was good. She was just a normal teenager.   She wouldn’t go out of the house without having  everything [music] matching and every hair in   place. She was very [music] shy.

 When she lived  with her dad for 2 years, a couple stopped and   wanted directions and her friend went up to  the car, but Sherry wouldn’t go up to the car. That morning, I said, “Sherry, it’s cold. Make  sure and dress warm.” Cuz she had to walk like   two blocks to the bus stop. One morning she was  wanting to leave early and I said, “No, Sherry,   it’s not safe.

” I said, “I don’t want a police  come knocking on my door and tell her that you’re   murdered or raped.” So that morning, she said,  “Okay, love you.” And then I went to work and   my husband Bob went to work. After school, she  always come home and I would make yogurt and mix   cool whip in it and [music] then would freeze it.  So she’d come home and she would do her nails and   and watch Young and the Restless and eat her  yogurt. That was a daily routine.

 About noon,   my husband come to where I was working and he said  that Sherry didn’t come home. And when I got home,   she was still not home. So, it got to be  late and late. I called her dad. I said,   “Have you heard from Sherry?” And he said, “No.”  I said, “Well, I don’t know where she’s at.” So,   we called the police and they said, “Oh, well,  she’s a teenager. She’s run away.

” I said,   “No, she didn’t.” I said, “Because there’s  nothing missing. She would never go with   just the clothes on her back. She would never  do that. And they said, “Oh, well, you know,   we’ll have to wait two days or whatever  it was.” They did. They thought, “Well,   she just treat her as a runaway.” But we knew  she didn’t.

 The original complaint was a missing   person’s complaint taken by Flint PD. My name is  [music] Detective Sergeant William Art. I was a   detective for the Michigan State Police. Sher Joe  was 16 years old at the time. She had left for   school about 6:45 in the morning walking to the  school bus and never made it. And so the police   just took a normal missing person complaint at  that point in time.

 Got a phone call saying that   she was missing [music] and my ex-husband now  said, um, oh, she’s just probably ran off with   her friends. [music] I said, Sherry Joe would  not do that. She would not leave and not tell   anybody. So, I packed up my stuff and came down to  Flint and we got a motel down there and he’ll pass   out flyers. We’d go out to eat and I couldn’t eat.

  [music] I gained I lost 10 lbs that week cuz every   time we’d go into a restaurant, I’d think, “Is  Sherry eating? I wonder if she’s eating.” [snorts] It was just a really [music] bad week. [snorts]  You see a guy walk in the restaurant or just a   guy walking down the street. Is that him? Is he  the [music] one that took Sherry? In the days   that followed, the family set out to looking for  her, contacting family and friends, and you know,   people that she knew, looking diligently for  her.

 Everybody’s looking through dumpsters,   looking the alleys. The police did what  they needed to do as far as they entered   her into the NCIC computer system. So if  any police agency had contact with her,   it would have popped up that she was missing and  we would have reunited her with her parents. I   think it was on the actual local news that  she was missing.

 Crimes Stoppers got involved   and put a reward out for her whereabouts. They  finally realized, you know, that she didn’t run   away. They tried to reenact it, but they didn’t  get any calls at all. On November 20th, 1983,   15 miles maybe something like that, uh, north  of Flint along Mueller Road in Sagena County,   Sherry Joe’s body was found in the ditch by a  local trapper that was just checking his traps.

She was face down initially and then of course  once she was found that initiated the police   response and then police officers, detectives went  out and our lab went out to collect evidence from   the body. There was very little evidence if you  can imagine her body was just off the roadway   into the ditch.

 So it it was I would say a lack  of attempt to hide the body, more of a an attempt   to just get rid of the body. Uh, so pushed down  into the ditch. Her pants [music] were unbuckled.   They guessed that she potentially could have  been sexually assaulted and it was obvious   she was shot. It’s relatively small crime scene,  just the side of the road there. Uh, they didn’t   find a bullet. They didn’t find anything else. So  property as far as evidence goes is very limited.  

She walked away from home. So basically she  just had the clothes that were on her back.   Detective Doug knocking on our door early Sunday  morning and had she wore one of my necklaces to   school and he had the had the necklace  in his hand [snorts] and he said, “Well,   is that Cherries?” I said, “Yeah, this Cherries.”  And she said, “Well, she’s dead.

” And she’d been   shot four times and raped. And um there’s no  easy way to say that. She was my only daughter. Sherry, we ended up face [music] first  in this drainage creek. Her whole head   was born water. So, she’s in water  long enough that she was disfigured. My husband went up and identified her body and  um he told his sister that [laughter] I never   would have survived it. I got a call that they  found her body.

 [laughter] [snorts] Just it’s   just so unbelievable, you know, [laughter]  how how [snorts] could anybody hurt her? I   just can’t even imagine why anybody would want  to hurt her. And so then I called her dad and   um they come right up. [snorts] And so then we  had to go make funeral arrangements and stuff. Once her body goes to autopsy, they found that she  was shot four times, including one to the head.  

She has one to the abdomen, two to the back,  and [music] one to the back of the head. They   believe that Sherry lived while she was in the  ditch and died from lack of [music] uh blood.   Uh she at least lived in the ditch for a while  before she passed away. I think someone wanted to   kill her and hide the body. So, I believe it was  somewhat of an execution.

 The bullet to the back   of the head would be reference to that. Because  her pants were undone, they do a sexual assault   kit like normal. That kit and its contents are  all saved. They collected all of her clothing,   including her undergarments. At that time, they  did [music] uh clipped fingernails and took swabs   of of of their fingernails.

 In the ‘8s, ‘ 83, uh  DNA really wasn’t uh as big [music] as it as it is   now. And so, it was just one of those things  they collected maybe for a potential direct   match later on. her dad and his wife. We went up  and talked to the detective and um then we went   and made funeral arrangements and when we picked  out the casket, my ex-husband come up and said,   “Anyone you want, Joyce? We’ll get that one.

”  Thought my sister was pretty brave through the   funeral. We didn’t at that time, we still didn’t  know, you know, what was going on. And so we had   a good friend watch everybody that came in and  anybody that looked suspicious. At her funeral,   I saw a guy that I asked Choice. [music]  I said, “Do you know him?” And she said,   “No.” And so she found out it was a long lost  cousin that she didn’t know.

 Cuz you always hear   that they sometimes will show up at the funeral  and stuff to show their pride in what they did. In the 80s, Flint was a General Motors town.  Automobile manufacturing was very big in Flint.   So, a lot of the people that surrounded that area  were involved in the manufacturing [music] process   of automobiles. Still kind of that way, but back  in the 80s, it was full strength.

 In that time   frame, it was decent neighborhoods. [music] I  won’t say the height of manufacturing, but pretty   close. So, people were making money. Therefore,  [music] crime wasn’t high. Although it’s one of   the larger cities in Michigan, Flint is absolutely  not immune to the crime problem. And so,   when something like this happens, especially with  a juvenile, for example, Sherry Joe, [music] the   community is outraged. So, initially, Flint  PD asked for tips for this crime.

 And then it   was police job to follow those tips. There were  thousands, thousands, and thousands [music] of   tips, which most of them they had to run down.  One of those tips was about uh her getting into a   white van. There was also another one that someone  saw her get into a yellow Camaro. One person was   telling the police that he seen her getting in a  yellow Camaro. I took her picture over there.

 I   said, “Are you sure this is who you saw getting in  the yellow Camaro?” He said, “Yeah.” investigators   used our intelligence section to narrow that  down and pretty much came up with a spreadsheet   of thousands of Camaros [snorts] in that color or  vans in that color. And then, you [music] know,   at the time they didn’t have all of the technology  we have now.

 And so they ran down almost all of   those tips. Took days and days and days and  unfortunately came up [music] with nothing.   the person telling the police that he seen her  getting in a yellow Camaro, he was lying through   his teeth. So, we’re all every time somebody  seen a yellow Camaro, we’re all going to find the   yellow Camaro. And why he did that, I don’t know,  cuz he had a daughter, too.

 So, why would he lie?   The investigators at the time felt that Robert  Schulz, her stepfather, was a good suspect. And as   you know, in most of these cases, it typically is  someone that the victim knows. [music] And in this   case, Robert was the last person to see Sherry  Joe alive. And so the police focused on him.

 They   tried to set him down for a formal interview. He  had some inconsistencies in his story. He did not   take a polygraph test that was requested. [music]  They were trying to accuse my husband of doing   that because he was a stepfather, you know, and  you always go to family and I tried to tell him,   I said, “There’s no way he would hurt her.  He wouldn’t hurt any child.

” He was always   cautious and he was upset that they were trying  to prove that he did it. It was really hard.   They [music] tried a surreptitious phone call with  him. They allowed Joyce to call him to make a one   party consent phone call and nothing was gained  from that eventually either. The detective kept   asking me questions and he said, “Well, what are  you going to do if you find out he murdered her? How am I supposed to fail?” I know we didn’t do  it, you know, but what a question to ask.

 The   police got his DNA and all that. And then it went  on for years and we didn’t hear anything. In my   opinion, they did what any law enforcement officer  would do. They followed as many leads as they   could. The detectives over the years have taken  about 123 DNA samples. When this happened in ‘ 83,   DNA really wasn’t a thing.

 Then the lab  could do a direct match of one to one,   but it wasn’t like today where we could do  some sort of genetic genealogy and come up   with a suspect. And so they matched or tried  to match. Almost everyone they came in contact   with interviewed uh anyone that would  voluntarily supply and some that didn’t   and they ended up getting search warrants for  their DNA and unfortunately nothing matched.  

There were hundreds and hundreds of people  interviewed and contacted reference this case.   There were thousands and thousands of leads  and they tried to follow up on all those   tips. Eventually the leads just dried up  and the case went cold from there. [music] One day at a time we worked our way through  it.

 I was scared for years that I’d get a   phone call and say that Joyce was gone.  One day she’s condoms. She was laying   in Sherry’s bed. [music] I’d have nightmares  over saying, “Mom, why haven’t you found me?” I had that for a long time. After a period of years, I honestly didn’t  think they were ever going to find who did it. In 2002, the Michigan State Police had a violent  crime task force, primarily in the Flint area,   uh, that used detectives from around the state  that really took another look to try and reopen   this case. The task force reinvestigated a lot of  the leads that came in. They ran down the car, the  

white van, and the yellow Camaro. They reintered  people Sherry Joe’s stepfather was focused on in   the investigation at that time, too. I think there  was like eight detectives that we spoke to over   the years. The last time I was there, I said,  “I can’t do this anymore.” And unless you got   something new to ask me, I said, “I can’t do it.

”  I said, “You put me right back to where I was when   she first died.” I said, “I can’t go back there.”  And she wouldn’t want me to go back there. And so   I said, “If you don’t have anything new to ask  me, please don’t.” In 2002, most of the people   that were talked to provided a voluntary sample.  DNA was kind of in its infancy at that time,   but not genealogy at all. And so our lab did  direct comparisons to well over a hundred samples.  

Unfortunately, nothing matched. The same year, a  DNA sample from Sher Joe’s case was sent to Cotus,   entered into the national database, and never got  a hit or a lead. They had identified DNA. They   knew the DNA belonged to an unknown male. They’ve  already tested the DNA using STR testing.

 They’ve   put that STR profile into [music] Cotus and  there’s no match. And it’s not a surprise because   Sher Joe was murdered in 1983 [music] and COTUS  did not go into full deployment until the mid90s.   So, it was not a certainty that this person would  be [music] in Cotus unless they had continued to   reoffend over the years. So, the case remained  in [music] Cotus, but not tied to a known person.  

In 2022, I got a call from a border patrol agent  at an airport in Utah. There was a neighbor of   Sher Joe’s. He got caught using a fictitious  name. He’d been living like 16 years under this   false name. He had been interviewed in this case  originally and he had left the state of Michigan   shortly after Sher Joe’s homicide. And so I sought  out a search warrant.

 We got a a DNA sample from   him. Unfortunately, it didn’t match. But that was  the beginning for me in this case that I thought   maybe this case could be not that it was closed,  but reinvestigated or at least taking another look   at given the technology that we have nowadays.  We tried to be as surreptitious as possible. I   didn’t really want Joyce to know or the family to  know we were again reopening this wound for them.  

You know, over the years, these files just got put  in boxes, tens of thousands of pages from 20 prior   detectives, and it would take me years to sort  that out. We started a relationship with Western   Michigan University.

 We took this case down there,  [music] and the students were able to organize   this case for us. The students are cleared and  background checks through Michigan State Police.   We worked with the students [music] to determine  what was useful and not useful to get everything   on a digital platform and they did a phenomenal  job. In the late fall of 2025, Michigan State   Police reached out to ask if we could examine  the DNA [music] to see if it’s suitable for a   different kind of testing.

 We started off working  with local agencies to [music] help them work   through unidentified remains and cases involving  unidentified suspects. And so several years ago,   the Michigan [music] State Police entered  into contract with ARAM to examine all the   cold cases that they had. I felt that Aram  could be beneficial by sending this to them,   at least trying. We had nothing to lose  at this point.

 We had what 40 years of   nothing really. And so I know there’s other  companies, but we felt that Aram was the best.   February 2025, a piece of evidence from this  case was sent to Aram. It contained seaman DNA   that was found on a sanitary napkin that Sher  Joe was wearing that day. We examine the DNA   evidence using the typical metrics that we look  at, which are generally the quantity of DNA,   the quality of the DNA.

 You could imagine in the  decades since 1983, the DNA is probably not in   the pristine shape it was when it was originally  deposited at the crime scene. So quality always   plays a factor in these older cases. There’s  also the consideration of whether there is   one contributor or multiple contributors. And  we’re always cognizant of nonhuman sources,   you know, bacteria, other things that have  DNA that could have also deposited onto   that evidence.

 [music] And looking at all these  factors, we came to the conclusion that this DNA   evidence would be suitable. So we take on the case  and we immediately get to work. I think that’s   something people don’t understand. They say, you  know, if a case was cold for 40 years, why are   you rushing now? In fact, that’s when you should  be rushing to get an answer because the people   that are the most affected by those answers are  often gone.

 When a case is that old, the late 70s,   early 80s, that’s that edge where where people  don’t live forever and and and you don’t want   to solve a case and deliver those answers when  everyone’s passed. Sherry’s dad, he is dealing   with dementia at this point. Her stepfather is  no longer around. It is a rush. It’s it’s a rush   against time to give people the truth.

 Here at  Aram, we use forensic grade genome sequencing,   which is our forensic [music] process to translate  that physical DNA evidence into a DNA profile. Our   profile consists of hundreds of thousands [music]  of markers called single nucleotide polymorphisms.   These hundreds of thousands of markers can tell  us a lot about the person we’re looking for,   the unknown suspect in this terrible crime.

 It can  tell us, for example, where in the world they’re   from, their biogeographical ancestry. And so we  took all that information and we then execute a   genetic genealogy search and discover a number of  relatives. [music] And so this is very exciting   because we’re a few generations away from the  person we’re looking for. Aram produces a lead   to a lady in Witchaw, Kansas who potentially  is a relative of our suspect.

 Unfortunately,   our lead had 79 grandchildren. At the time,  I felt that I wasn’t sure we were going to   get anywhere with that many, if you want to call  them, suspects. There are dozens of grandchildren   that we need to consider as we look to see if  any can be excluded and we can further narrow   the search for the likely suspect who’s left the  unknown DNA at the crime scene.

 My partner and I   flew to Kansas and when we talked with her,  sweet old lady, we did ask for a DNA sample,   which she provided. She called her son over. He  provided a voluntary sample, too. So, we were able   to send those two samples to Aram. From there,  we begin to do the genetic genealogy work. It’s   not done in isolation. It’s done with Bill at the  Michigan State Police. It took us months.

 In fact,   uh we utilized the Western students doing open-  source searches and us, my partner and I working   diligently trying to figure out if there was  a Michigan connection. At the conclusion of   this process, we narrow to a candidate that makes  sense to us based on the genealogical and genetic   analysis [music] and makes sense to Bill based  on the investigative analysis.

 In October 2025,   we got more information from Aram with a viable  what I felt was a viable suspect from Michigan.   The forens of genetic genealogy led to  Ronnie Collins as the possible perpetrator. Law enforcement went [music] to find him and  talk to him. He was 75. He would have been   in his early 30s at the time of the crime.

 So  that fit and he was definitely in the area at   the time of the crime. [music] I just simply  wanted to talk to him at that point. We spoke   over the phone a couple of times. He kind of  put me off over the holidays [music] and then   we agreed to meet in early January of 2026. I had  no intention of arresting [music] Mr. Collins. It   was just simply an interview. Uh I waited set up  for the interview, waited around.

 He never showed   up. Early February, I got a search warrant for  his DNA. I tried to call him multiple times and   he would never call me back or answer. I sought  a search warrant through the court for his DNA.   My partner and I went to his house and once we  [music] contacted his current wife, uh, she told   us that the day the interview was supposed [music]  to happen, Ronnie Collins committed suicide.

In my opinion, I felt he was a good suspect and  he was trying to get out of a prison sentence.   That is an outcome that [music] used to shock me.  People will refuse to confess. People would want   to plead not guilty and go to trial. [music] But  now there are hundreds of arrests that are built   around these technologies in the United States,  if [music] not thousands.

 I think people like   Ronnie decided that it’s going to be hard to  fight this. By all accounts, Ronnie was a good   citizen. [music] He had no significant criminal  history, good family man, had a good job. He   worked at uh Michigan prison. He was a dental  hygienist, so he knew what was going to happen   if he went to prison. We learned that he was in a  band, traveled around Michigan.

 He did at the time   have a white van that he utilized for [music] his  bandmates and and equipment. When this happened in   in ‘ 83, one of [music] the tips was about uh her  getting into a white van. So, he in all accounts   is our suspect for [music] this crime.

 Criminals  that get away with a crime for 40 plus years are   smart. They’re able to hide the fact that they are  this monster. [music] These perpetrators are right   next to us in plain sight as respected members of  our society. I used to [music] think that if you   met a murderer, you you’d kind of know something  was off. You’d know they were a murderer.

 That   is such a naive thought. By all accounts, his  family and friends had no idea this had occurred.   Unfortunately for him, they collected his [music]  DNA, had his autopsy, and did that COTUS test in   the state lab, [music] confirmed beyond a shadow  of a doubt that Ronnie Collins was the perpetrator   that raped Sherry Joe in November of 1983.

 Joyce  [music] and the family have been through multiple   investigators over the years. And so I wanted  to see what the results were from Aram before   I reached out to the family and to Joyce. And so  if we had nothing, Joyce would have never known   that I even touched this case. [music] Detective  Art called me. He said, “It’s confirmed he did do   it.

” He says, “Knowing this, how is that going to  affect [music] you?” I said, “It’s not going to   nothing’s changed. I still can’t hog her. I still  can’t tell her I love her.” I said, “So nothing’s   changed. It’s still the same.” And he filled us  in on some of the information I didn’t know. He   said that she uh bled to death in the ditch. And  she I just assumed that she had already passed,   but he threw in the ditch and she was still alive.  What a terrible way to go.

 She’s laying in a ditch   by herself. It’s cold winter time, half covered  in water. And who knows, maybe it was 3 or 4 hours   before she bled to death and died. Like, that’s  terrible. He had her for like 3 to 4 days. So,   I don’t know what she went through in that those  days. And that’s going to haunt me because I   couldn’t find her. I was angry when I found out he  was 75. He got a marriage.

 We don’t [music] know   if she would have got married. We don’t know if  she would had kids. My sister really got robbed   there. It was unbelievable. Totally unbelievable.  I said, “You [music] got to be kidding me. They   finally got somebody.” Joyce was in in between  being happy. They found him and it [music] coming   right back.

 They had it on the obituaries and they  were saying, you know, all the people that he knew   was around and he was in a band and everyone  saying what a good guy he was. I put on there,   no he didn’t. He murdered my daughter. And then  got so many responses of that they had to take it   down because everyone say no he’s not. When we  did find out who did it, I told Detective Art,   I said, “I wish Bob was here just to see because  they put him through hell cuz my husband passed   away in January 2025.

 So, he’s not here to to  hear all of this, but I tell him every day,   we got him.” I can’t imagine [music] losing my  only child and the person that I loved most in   the world being accused of the crime. It goes  [music] to show you again that bringing certainty   to these investigations as quickly as possible  is necessary for people to move forward with   their lives.

 [music] Now I know who murdered her  and I know he’s not going to hurt anybody else,   but who knows what he did before that. You  know how many other people? At least [music] in   my experience, you don’t just go abduct,  rape, and kill on your very first occasion.   It starts with some type of an assault maybe and  progresses into a homicide. Typically that doesn’t   just happen on the very first account.

  It it may and it may have in this case,   but it’s unlikely. I think he’s [music] still  got bodies out there. Like there was two girls   that come up missing in [music] ‘ 69 with  Ronnie. We suspect him in another cold case   that happened to two girls that lived in Oscot.  Hobley Spencer is their [music] last names.   similar situation where it was Halloween.

 They had  left school early and the last accounts were they   were picked up by a person in a white van. The  fact of the white van and Ronnie Collins played   in a band on that weekend in Oscot makes him  a viable suspect. Unfortunately, we don’t have   the girls bodies to be able to continue the  investigation. We don’t know what transpired   between that case and 1983 in the case of Sher  Joe Elliott.

 I just think there’s some unanswered   questions in my mind. You know, suicide is the  easy way out. He didn’t have to sit and answer   any questions from myself and other investigators  or the family. Did he sexually assault her? Yes,   absolutely. We can prove that. Does it also mean  that Ronnie killed her? My assumption, and I think   probably 12 jurors would agree, that if he’s  sexually assaulted her, he probably killed her.  

Some of the things that revolve around my brain  are, was there someone else involved? You know,   if we get more tips, we’ll keep investigating.  It’s a disappointing dead end in the sense that   it will not be possible obviously to investigate  further [music] the crime, why it happened, how   it happened, and so on. Sherry would not go near  anybody that she didn’t know.

 So, that guy had   to chase her or whatever. Joyce said they didn’t  [music] know him, never heard of him before. So he   just picked her out of random, I guess. Somehow  he got her and and the detectives first said,   you know, because her fingernails weren’t broken  [music] as if she put up a fight. And I said,   if she had a gun pointing at her, I said she  would froze. She wouldn’t have done anything.  

We’ll never know what the connection was uh  with Sher Joe. Through the years in this case,   there have been many tips, many, many tips  that that have came in. One of those tips   uh was someone saw her get into a yellow Camaro.  Took days and days and days, months to run down   those and unfortunately came up with nothing.

 When  you’re investigating [music] and you don’t choose   to put DNA in the forefront of an investigation  and [music] you choose to go by eyewitness   statements, they’re often unreliable. This does  occur in contemporary cases [music] today as   well. We need to use this technology right away.  And because of the way the technology works now,   not relying on necessarily a chance match or  a lead.

 For the first time ever, you can work   these cases immediately. [music] DNA can lead  the investigation. You can read the genetic   information and from there directly determine who  left the DNA at the crime scene. And that’s not   just important for families that are grieving and  hurting. It’s [music] important for anyone else   that might be wrongfully accused of the crime.  Genetic genealogy is just the start of this.

 Like   I think that ARM is on the right path. Genealogy  is going to change for the better over the next   10, 20 years for sure and it’s going to solve  lots of other cases. I [music] just want people   to know to never give up hope just because [music]  it’s been 40 years. Technology is so much better.   they will get them with the stuff that they’re  doing in their technology with DNA and so forth.  

We’ll be one of the last of the few that has to  wait 43 years. Michigan State Police have taken   Prostep on the cold cases. They need our senators  and our congressmen to back up more on this.   I had [music] the privilege to be able to  meet Sherry’s mom, her aunt, and her uncle. It   truly [music] shows you the ripple effects and the  deep impact that each one of these cold cases has   on somebody, on a family, on a community. It makes  you realize how necessary this is.

 [music] It also   makes me realize that our family grows every time  a case solves. and were able to look [music] the   people that are our why in the eyes and tell  them how honored we were [music] to get to be   a part of their case. Sherry deserved a life. She  deserved children. [music] That was all taken away   from her. She was a phenomenal child. God had an  angel when he got her. She was a sweetheart.

 She   was my one and only daughter. I just ripped  my heart out. Detective Art asked me if I   would do this and I said yes. So if it gives  anybody some hope then I hope that helps them.