MISSING GIRL ON MIND OF SCOTT COUNTY SHERIFF

It's hard to spend much time around the Scott County Sheriff's Department and not see Cheryl Ann Scherer.

Although she has never walked in the door, photographs of the 19-year-old girl who would be 39 this year are taped to the glass at the reception area, hanging in Sheriff Bill Ferrell's office and available at any computer that can access the sheriff's new Internet site.

These are the few signs of Scherer, who has been missing since April 17, 1979. "We have checked out all the dead bodies and bones that we've been made aware of," Ferrell said, "but they have always taken us into dead ends."After 23 years as Scott County sheriff, Ferrell said Scherer is the only missing person or murder victim whose case Ferrell has not solved. Regardless of the crime being nearly as old as his tenure as sheriff, Ferrell approaches Scherer's apparent abduction the same as other serious crimes. Investigators must follow up on every possible lead, he said.

Besides Scherer's disappearance and a five-month murder investigation between 1992 and 1993, all Scott County homicides have been solved within a couple weeks, Ferrell said.

Luck, skill and experience all play parts in solving crimes, but the number of hours put into an investigation is most important, he said.

This has become a problem in recent years with the rise of methamphetamine."They used to be cases that we just didn't have," Ferrell said.

Meth crimes take time, and deputies can't investigate burglaries and less serious crimes as thoroughly, he said.

Burglaries will always be solved less often than major crimes for several reasons, the sheriff said: Victims can't identify their property, property never turns up; witnesses to the crime don't exist.

In a murder, the first 24 hours are the most important for law enforcement, Ferrell said."A homicide isn't something where you can quit after working a 24-hour shift," he said. "Everyone in our department gets called in and works on it until significant leads develop or until leads run out. You don't have information being passed on from shift to shift that way."Months went by after the murder of Michelle Lawless, who was shot in her car at the top of the Interstate 55 exit ramp near Benton, about 1:25 a.m. on Nov. 8, 1992. Deputies recovered three shell casings from a .380-caliber handgun, fingerprints and not much else. At one point, investigators from the sheriff's department and state Highway Patrol considered the murder a random act by a person unknown to Lawless, which would have made the crime nearly unsolvable. But the position of the car on the ramp and an open driver's side window on a chilly night were signals to investigators that Lawless might have known her killer.

If a Cape Girardeau County jailer hadn't come forward with a conversation he overheard among prisoners, Lawless' murder might still be unsolved, Ferrell said.

They were talking about how Joshua C. Kezer, then 18, had told them about the murder. The jailer could have ignored the comments, but he didn't, the sheriff said.

Although the information wasn't enough to get a confession from Kezer, his jury trial was an exception for the county. Most murderers, when confronted with evidence, have confessed, Ferrell said."This saves the taxpayers thousands of dollars by the time you get to prosecution," he said. "You don't need a long trial, you cut down on jail time."As a smaller department, Scott County often lacks the manpower for complicated investigations. Other law enforcement agencies are usually willing to help, Ferrell said."Most understand that they have areas of expertise that a small department like ours wouldn't have," he said.

When Scherer disappeared from the Rhodes gas station on Main Street in Scott City, Ferrell's deputies came to the aid of Scott City police, which was then operating with a part-time chief.

The station's cash register, missing $480, was dusted for fingerprints. "The cash register was about the only thing we had to work with," Ferrell said.

With a lack of conclusive fingerprints or other physical evidence at the scene, investigators were stumped.

During the roughly 10-minute period when a co-worker saw Scherer at Rhodes by herself, and then drove back to find the station unattended, no one was around to see what happened. Scherer's most current dental record, which comes from an exam when she was 13, would provide limited help if remains were found, Ferrell said."She had peculiarities in a couple of teeth, but they weren't even permanent," he said.

The most recent lead that Ferrell is following is skeletal remains discovered last month in Perry County. Over 20 years, the most promising lead was an interview with mass murderer Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed after his arrest in 1983 to killing more than 200 people in travels across the United States. When Ferrell went to Texas to question Lucas, the killer was able to recall picking up a girl somewhere along the interstate between St. Louis and Memphis at the approximate time Scherer vanished, but when Ferrell showed Lucas a photo of Scherer, he couldn't identify her.

Ferrell remains perplexed by Lucas' response."The funny thing is, there has never been another girl reported missing during that time along Interstate 55," the sheriff said.

Ferrell still follows every tip that comes into the sheriff's office diligently. Last year, a woman called in offering a possible killer."It appeared logical as the facts go, but after two months of follow up with interviews and going places, it ended up that someone was mad at someone else and wanted to get him in trouble," he said.

The countless hours spent on the job over 23 years are still Ferrell's best investigative tool. He remembers playing in and around the jail when his father was Scott County's sheriff in the late 1950s, so he has had plenty of time around the job."There's something about knowing these people, knowing the prisoners, knowing who their daddies are that makes a difference," the sheriff said.