Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Path with Chili. I'm Robin, I'm Jules.
Speaker 2: And I'm Ashley. Let's dive right into this week's case.
Speaker 3: April twenty second, nineteen eighty five, Benita Park, Missouri, twenty
Speaker 3: seven year old wife and mother Linda Sherman does not
Speaker 3: show up for work, and her abandoned car is soon
Speaker 3: discovered in an airport parking garage. Since Linda had recently
Speaker 3: filed for divorce from her controlling husband, Don Sherman, he
Speaker 3: is suspected of being responsible for her disappearance. Five years later,
Speaker 3: a skull is found outside Don's favorite restaurant, and after
Speaker 3: it's kept in an evidence room for fourteen months, least
Speaker 3: receive an anonymous note confirming that the skull belongs to Linda.
Speaker 3: Don maintains his innocence and the rest of Linda's remains
Speaker 3: are never found.
Speaker 1: After that, the Path went Chile. So we've got a
Speaker 1: pretty bizarre case to cover today, the nineteen eighty five
Speaker 1: disappearance and death of Linda Sherman. This story was featured
Speaker 1: in one of the later seasons of Unsolved Mysteries, and
Speaker 1: needless to say, that show had no shortage of cases
Speaker 1: where a woman went missing under suspicious circumstances, and the
Speaker 1: finger was pointed directly at her spouse. In this particular case,
Speaker 1: Linda Sherman had been trapped in an unhappy, tumultuous marriage
Speaker 1: with her controlling husband, Don Sherman, so when Linda vanished
Speaker 1: without a trace shortly after she filed for divorce, it
Speaker 1: wasn't too surprising that Don became the subject of suspicion.
Speaker 1: But this story is a little different from the norm.
Speaker 1: Five years after Linda went missing, a skull was discovered
Speaker 1: outside of a strange husband's favorite restaurant and was eventually
Speaker 1: identified as belonging to her. To this day, the rest
Speaker 1: of Linda's remains have never been found, and no one
Speaker 1: knows who is responsible for placing her skull in a
Speaker 1: public place or why they did it. There is definitely
Speaker 1: good reason to be suspicious of Don Sherman, but if
Speaker 1: he was guilty, you have to wonder what would motivate
Speaker 1: him to take the huge risk of digging up his
Speaker 1: wife's skull five years after he murdered her and turning
Speaker 1: the case into such a public spectacle. This would mean
Speaker 1: that Don is either incredibly brazen or completely innocent, or
Speaker 1: perhaps there was someone else involved in this crime that
Speaker 1: we don't even know about, So we're going to explore
Speaker 1: all the different possible scenarios on today's episode.
Speaker 2: Okay, that is exactly what I was thinking when you
Speaker 2: guys started describing this case. You have a skull that
Speaker 2: turns up in front of the estranged husband's favorite restaurant.
Speaker 2: To me, that just says, look at me, right, I
Speaker 2: killed my wife and I put her skull in front
Speaker 2: of my favorite restaurant, which makes zero sense because it's
Speaker 2: calling attention to Don. In my mind, when you were
Speaker 2: describing the case, I went, who hates Don enough to
Speaker 2: frame him for this case? That's what really comes to
Speaker 2: mind when I think about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as we're going to talk about Don, Sherman is
Speaker 1: definitely not a good husband. It does not seem like
Speaker 1: a nice guy. So it isn't out of the ordinary
Speaker 1: and unbelievable to think that he probably murdered his wife.
Speaker 1: But you do have to wonder he had nothing to
Speaker 1: gain by digging up his wife's skull after it essentially
Speaker 1: gotten away with it and just leaving it out in
Speaker 1: a public place and turning this case like it back
Speaker 1: into the spot like five years after the fact, so
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, there's a lot more ambiguity in
Speaker 1: this case than your average story about missing spouses who
Speaker 1: were getting out of abusive relationships, because you have to wonder,
Speaker 1: even if Don is guilty, is there someone else who
Speaker 1: knew that he killed his wife and was just trying
Speaker 1: to toy with them. They are just so many possibilities.
Speaker 2: Or he's an extreme narcissist. I suppose that wanted the
Speaker 2: attention and wants to be in the limelight, or wants
Speaker 2: his wife's case to be in the limelight, and is
Speaker 2: really kind of cocky that he got away with it.
Speaker 2: And there's that potential too, but it just seems very bizarre.
Speaker 3: Maybe it's like a double bluff where he plants it
Speaker 3: there and he's like, well, then they're going to think
Speaker 3: that someone is framing me, because why would I be
Speaker 3: stupid enough to put the skull outside of my favorite restaurant?
Speaker 3: And then he becomes a victim and gets all the attention.
Speaker 3: Our story begins in nineteen eighty five in Benita Park, Missouri,
Speaker 3: a suburb of Saint Louis. Our central figure is twenty
Speaker 3: seven year old Linda Sherman, who's married to her husband,
Speaker 3: Don Sherman, and they have a nine year old daughter
Speaker 3: named Patty. The couple were high school sweethearts when Linda
Speaker 3: became pregnant, so they decided to get married in February
Speaker 3: of nineteen seventy five, when they were both only seventeen
Speaker 3: years old at the time, Linda was a junior and
Speaker 3: Don was a senior, and they moved into a rented
Speaker 3: house located next door to Linda's parents. Linda gave birth
Speaker 3: to Patty in August of that year, but was determined
Speaker 3: to complete her senior year of high school while her
Speaker 3: mother helped her take care of her newborn baby. By
Speaker 3: this point, Donn had graduated, so he took a job
Speaker 3: as an assistant manager at a gas station in order
Speaker 3: to support his new wife and child, but the marriage
Speaker 3: would be fraught with turmoil. The couple often had money
Speaker 3: problems and were usually forced to work opposite shifts of
Speaker 3: their jobs. Don eventually started working in a machine shop
Speaker 3: while Linda got a night job doing data entry at
Speaker 3: the US Government Record Center in Saint Louis. Don was
Speaker 3: known for being jealous and possessive and having a violent temper,
Speaker 3: and he would often get angry whenever he saw Linda
Speaker 3: talking to other guys, including her own brothers. Over the
Speaker 3: course of the next ten years, Linda would take Patty
Speaker 3: and move out multiple times, even going so far as
Speaker 3: to file for divorce from Dawn in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 3: but Linda never followed through with her divorce, and by
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighties she'd reconciled with Down and the family
Speaker 3: moved into a new home in Beanita Park. However, the
Speaker 3: marriage became even more troubled when Linda became pregnant for
Speaker 3: the second time and suffered in miscarriage. She also experienced
Speaker 3: some epileptic seizures, which ultimately made her decide not to
Speaker 3: have any more children. In nineteen eighty two, Linda and
Speaker 3: Patty moved out again and filed an order of protection
Speaker 3: against Don, claiming that he had tambered with her car
Speaker 3: and even threatened to murder suicide in which he would
Speaker 3: kill himself, his wife, and their daughter. Don did admit
Speaker 3: to having disabled Linda's car on one occasion in order
Speaker 3: to prevent it from being driven, but deny that he
Speaker 3: had any intention of harming her. While Linda's order of
Speaker 3: protection was granted, she eventually reconciled with Don again and
Speaker 3: moved back in with him.
Speaker 2: This is a really tough situation, and it's so difficult
Speaker 2: for people to wrap their minds around. If you're in
Speaker 2: a troubled abusive marriage, get out. That's just not how
Speaker 2: it works psychologically, financially, emotionally. They say it takes somebody
Speaker 2: seven or eight times to leave an abusive relationship and
Speaker 2: actually be successful in leaving. And even then, once you
Speaker 2: successfully leave, a lot of times people will eventually go
Speaker 2: back thinking that their spouse has changed or is you're
Speaker 2: going to be a better person. And I think that
Speaker 2: gets so complicated when you have a child at the
Speaker 2: center of it, because as much as you want to
Speaker 2: protect the child, you also, especially back in the seventies,
Speaker 2: we're told that you need the mom and dad together,
Speaker 2: that a complete home is healthier for a child than
Speaker 2: a broken home, And so there's just a lot of
Speaker 2: complicated issues that go in here. Both seem to be
Speaker 2: working really hard, but it seems like no matter how
Speaker 2: hard they're working to get, you know, financially stable, it's
Speaker 2: not good enough to get the emotional and psychological part
Speaker 2: of their marriage in a healthy place. I feel so
Speaker 2: bad for Linda and Patty. You know, Don clearly has
Speaker 2: his own issues and is a sick individual who needs help.
Speaker 2: But back in the seventies it was kind of like
Speaker 2: look away. In the eighties, right, look away. If there's
Speaker 2: domestic violence going on, that's a family issue, not a
Speaker 2: public issue that needs to be handled. And I wish
Speaker 2: it had been. I wish there was more access to resources.
Speaker 2: I wish there was more conversation at the time where
Speaker 2: Linda and Patty could have gotten some help, and maybe
Speaker 2: Don could have gotten help too.
Speaker 3: It's so complex given the time period, because there can
Speaker 3: be societal pressure to work it out. There could be
Speaker 3: people around her, around Linda that are saying, hey, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe he's changed, or work it out. You should for
Speaker 3: your family. You want Patty to have a present father.
Speaker 3: And it becomes such a difficult situation when your self
Speaker 3: confidence and your sense of self work can be so
Speaker 3: eroded when you're in an abusive relationship. So Linda found
Speaker 3: the wherewithal to leave, but then when she's on her own,
Speaker 3: it might have just been this idea that I don't know,
Speaker 3: if I can do this myself, it's easier to just
Speaker 3: go back together and maybe he was pressuring her, maybe
Speaker 3: he wasn't, but it's just so difficult, and it becomes
Speaker 3: a situation where so many people can simplify it when
Speaker 3: it's victims of abuse, saying well, why didn't they just leave?
Speaker 3: But there reasons are manyfold.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and it probably didn't help that Linda was
Speaker 1: married and pregnant by the time she was seventeen, and
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if she had any other serious boyfriends
Speaker 1: before she hooked up with Don, So this has pretty
Speaker 1: much been her whole life, being married to this guy
Speaker 1: and not being alone. So it was probably just a
Speaker 1: big adjustment trying to leave him and trying to ask
Speaker 1: for a divorce, and maybe she just decided that it
Speaker 1: was too much for her and she couldn't handle it
Speaker 1: and went back to down just hoping that things would
Speaker 1: change and work out, but unfortunately they never did. By
Speaker 1: the time nineteen eighty five rolled around, Linda told her
Speaker 1: family she had finally made the decision to end the
Speaker 1: marriage for good. She officially filed for divorce on April
Speaker 1: of the eleventh, and had all of her mail, including
Speaker 1: her paychecks, forwarded to the home of her sister and
Speaker 1: brother in law, Fran and Sam Miller. Since it would
Speaker 1: be weeks before Don was served with divorce papers, Linda
Speaker 1: decided to remain living in their house with him, but
Speaker 1: planned to take Patty and move out soon. At two
Speaker 1: sixteen am on Monday, April to twenty second, Linda signed
Speaker 1: out after her night shift ended at the US Government
Speaker 1: Record Center. According to Don, Linda did not arrive home
Speaker 1: until around three o'clock, and they proceeded to get into
Speaker 1: another argument as Don demanded to know where Linda had
Speaker 1: been and why she was late. Don would claim that
Speaker 1: Linda had developed a habit of not coming home from
Speaker 1: work on multiple occasions, and there were times when he
Speaker 1: would call the house from work and discover Linda was
Speaker 1: not there. At the time, Don suspected that Linda was
Speaker 1: having an affair with a male co worker, as one
Speaker 1: of the truck drivers from his workplace had recently seen
Speaker 1: them together. After the couple's argument came to an end,
Speaker 1: Don said that he finally went to bed at around
Speaker 1: four a m. While Linda fell asleep on the couch.
Speaker 1: A few hours later, Patty woke up, and even though
Speaker 1: her mother was the one who generally drove her to school,
Speaker 1: Don would do so On this particular morning, Patty claimed
Speaker 1: that as she was leading the house, she saw Linda
Speaker 1: lying on the couch with her back turned. Patty did
Speaker 1: not recall seeing any movements from Linda, who did not
Speaker 1: even get up to say goodbye to her, which seemed uncharacteristic,
Speaker 1: and when Patty left the house, this would turn out
Speaker 1: to be the last time she ever saw her mother.
Speaker 2: Poor baby, and she was nine years old at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so she's mature enough to know, like, wait, the routine,
Speaker 2: no matter, Like right now, I'm not sleeping, So sometimes
Speaker 2: I'll go and I'll sleep on the couch or fall
Speaker 2: asleep on the couch. But if they're in there making
Speaker 2: breakfast or making their lunch for school or whatever, I'm like,
Speaker 2: good morning. You know, I love you guys. So that's
Speaker 2: probably what Patty's referring to is that usually my mom
Speaker 2: would at least acknowledge me and loved on me for
Speaker 2: a second, or hugging goodbye for school, or tell me
Speaker 2: to have a good day. In fact, mom was the
Speaker 2: one that traditionally took her to school. That don wasn't
Speaker 2: doing that, So for Patty, she recognized that's quite odd,
Speaker 2: but at nine, just said, well, I guess mom, you
Speaker 2: asleep on the couch and she goes to school and
Speaker 2: that's the last time she even sees her mom. It's
Speaker 2: eerie to wonder was she already deceased and just lying
Speaker 2: there and turned a certain way so that Patty couldn't
Speaker 2: see her face.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Patty never thought that at the time, but as
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about, when she got older, she
Speaker 1: started thinking that her mom might have already been dead
Speaker 1: at that point, and that Don was frantically getting out
Speaker 1: of the house just so to get her to school
Speaker 1: so that he could dispose of her body at a
Speaker 1: later time. We're still not one hundred percent sure if
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happened. It does seem pretty brazen for
Speaker 1: Don to leave his wife's body on the couch. Well,
Speaker 1: his daughter is still at home, but who knows. Maybe
Speaker 1: he had to think in a panic or something and
Speaker 1: was trying to formulate a plan. But if she was
Speaker 1: already dead at that point, that is pretty eerie that
Speaker 1: a nine year old would be subjected to that.
Speaker 3: Don would claim that he returned home at six pm
Speaker 3: that night and was surprised to discover that Linda was
Speaker 3: still there, He said that she was in a frantic
Speaker 3: mood because she was running late for work, and quickly
Speaker 3: drove away. However, Linda never showed up for her shift,
Speaker 3: did not call her employer to let them know that
Speaker 3: she wasn't going to be there, and never returned home.
Speaker 3: At first, Don was not fearful of Linda's safety, as
Speaker 3: he suspected that she was having an affair and figured
Speaker 3: she may have run off with another man. Don would
Speaker 3: later say that he believed an overnight bag and some
Speaker 3: of Linda's personal items appeared to be missing from their house. However,
Speaker 3: when Fred and Sam Miller were unable to reach Linda
Speaker 3: and learned that she had not shown up for work,
Speaker 3: they immediately became concerned. They did not believe Don's story
Speaker 3: about Linda running off with another man because they could
Speaker 3: not imagine Linda abandoning her daughter. In the past, whenever
Speaker 3: Linda separated from Don and moved out, she always took
Speaker 3: Patty with her. The Millers demanded that Don go into
Speaker 3: the police and file a missing person's report, and he
Speaker 3: finally did so on April twenty fourth, two days after
Speaker 3: she was last seen. Fred and Sam again performing their
Speaker 3: own search for Linda, and on a hunch, they decided
Speaker 3: to check out Saint Louis Lambert International Airport on April
Speaker 3: twenty sixth. After pulling into the short term parking garage,
Speaker 3: they were surprised to discover Linda's yellow nineteen seventy one
Speaker 3: Volkswagen in one of the spaces. The car was locked,
Speaker 3: but some of Linda's possessions, including her hat and her
Speaker 3: school books from a computer class she was taking, could
Speaker 3: be seen inside. The Miller's immediately contacted the airport police,
Speaker 3: who noticed that the car's trunk was unlocked and decided
Speaker 3: to open it. While Friend and Sam experienced a brief
Speaker 3: moment of fear that Linda's body might be inside the trunk,
Speaker 3: it turned out to be empty. The airport kept track
Speaker 3: of all the cars which were parked in the short
Speaker 3: term garage longer than twenty four hours, and since Linda's
Speaker 3: Volkswagen was first noted on April twenty fourth, that meant
Speaker 3: it was likely left in the garage sometime on the
Speaker 3: twenty third or earlier. However, there was no listing for
Speaker 3: a Linda's Sherman, not any of the flights which a
Speaker 3: part of the airport during this time period. Once again,
Speaker 3: Linda's family did not believe that she would have flown
Speaker 3: off somewhere and abandoned Patty, so they suspected that her
Speaker 3: car was planted in the garage.
Speaker 2: I think when you look at this case, and you
Speaker 2: have Linda who's being abused by Down and kind of
Speaker 2: questioned by him all the time, she's being controlled by him.
Speaker 2: She's being scrutinized everywhere she is, for every minute she's
Speaker 2: not at the house, and you do see that pattern
Speaker 2: where she says, I'm done, I'm going to take my
Speaker 2: daughter and have a better life. Could there be a
Speaker 2: situation where she said, I'm going to just try it
Speaker 2: on my own and see if I can get somewhere
Speaker 2: and be stable and then go get Patty. It's possible,
Speaker 2: but I don't see it being likely given herm And
Speaker 2: you've got to remember that Patty's nine years old, so
Speaker 2: it's not like this little infant that she's like, I
Speaker 2: can go back and get her and she won't remember
Speaker 2: or anything like that. I just don't see Linda leaving
Speaker 2: Patty with a man she knows is abusive, with a
Speaker 2: man she's claimed threatened a murder suicide against she and
Speaker 2: her daughter and himself. It doesn't make a whole lot
Speaker 2: of sense, and especially not for an affair, right. I
Speaker 2: could see if she was desperate and scared for her life,
Speaker 2: and that she had expressed I've got to try and
Speaker 2: run and then I'll get Patty later. But he's claiming
Speaker 2: it's all after a man. I don't see her prioritizing
Speaker 2: a man over Patty.
Speaker 1: And not to mention, she has just recently filed for
Speaker 1: divorce and is waiting for the papers to be served
Speaker 1: to Don. And if she just made a spontaneous decision
Speaker 1: to just take off on her own, go off with
Speaker 1: a man without telling her husband or her children or
Speaker 1: her family where she was going, that's going to look
Speaker 1: really bad in the divorce proceedings and the child custody battle.
Speaker 1: So of course, it just seems very very unlikely that
Speaker 1: she would choose this particular time in order to just
Speaker 1: take off for a while. Of course, suspicion immediately turned
Speaker 1: towards down, as there were no other witnesses to verify
Speaker 1: his claim that Linda had left her house at six
Speaker 1: pm on April to twenty second. Other than Don. The
Speaker 1: last firm sighting of Linda was when Patty had seen
Speaker 1: her lying on the couch when she left for school,
Speaker 1: but since she never saw her mother make any movements,
Speaker 1: there was genuine fear that Linda may have already been
Speaker 1: dead by that point, but Don would soon tell police
Speaker 1: that he saw Linda in the passenger seat of a
Speaker 1: van being driven by an unidentified mail a few days
Speaker 1: after she originally went missing. Don claimed that as the
Speaker 1: van was driving past him, he called out to them,
Speaker 1: prompting Linda to dug out of sight. Don said he
Speaker 1: made an attempt to follow the van, but quickly lost
Speaker 1: it and was unable to get the license number. Investigators
Speaker 1: did check into the male coworker whom DoD had alleged
Speaker 1: was having an affair with Linda, but he had a
Speaker 1: solid alibi and was ruled out as a suspect. Don
Speaker 1: eventually filed a cross petition for a divorce on the
Speaker 1: grounds that Linda had a band in both him and
Speaker 1: their daughter, but since she could not be found, a
Speaker 1: judge dismissed Don's divorce filing in June of nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: The investigation remained at a complete standstill until the case
Speaker 1: took a very unexpected turn one year later. So to me,
Speaker 1: when you.
Speaker 2: Look at this, you're right, Robin, you just said this
Speaker 2: that if she was going to leave and try to
Speaker 2: get a better life, this was not the time to
Speaker 2: do it. She had already filed for divorce, she was
Speaker 2: already on the way to getting freedom from Dawn, and
Speaker 2: right there, Don used her disappearance against her, saying she
Speaker 2: abandoned her baby and that was her priority. That's probably
Speaker 2: one of the only reasons she had the strength to
Speaker 2: fight to try to get away from him. It's also
Speaker 2: really interesting when you think about could she have been
Speaker 2: dead on the couch that morning Patty was nine, Like,
Speaker 2: I feel that Reagan would come over and kiss me
Speaker 2: or say love you mom, or by mom, you know,
Speaker 2: if she was going to school and it was kind
Speaker 2: of I wasn't driving her. It's not like she's three
Speaker 2: and dad can just kind of like pick her up
Speaker 2: and move her around and say, oh, mommy sleeping, leave
Speaker 2: her alone. I just feel like Reagan independently would have
Speaker 2: come up and kissed me goodbye or something. And if
Speaker 2: she was deceased at that time, thank god Patty didn't
Speaker 2: go up to her. But don't you think that Don
Speaker 2: would be taking quite the risks that he really can't
Speaker 2: control a nine year old the whole time she's getting
Speaker 2: ready for school, and if she touched her mom and
Speaker 2: she was cold or blue or something like that, it
Speaker 2: would have foiled the whole thing.
Speaker 3: I guess it depends on the dynamic of the relationship
Speaker 3: if he's going to like physically block her from kissing
Speaker 3: her mom or say, you know, you've got to leave
Speaker 3: her alone, if he's that type of controlling father. We
Speaker 3: know that he was a very very awful husband in
Speaker 3: the sense that she left multiple times and unfortunately had returned,
Speaker 3: but he was abusive, so we don't really know what
Speaker 3: he was like with Patty. There could have been a
Speaker 3: lot of fear there and what he said went and
Speaker 3: it was like, you don't go close to your mother.
Speaker 3: Then maybe she just listened or cowered out of fear,
Speaker 3: and that was the type of dynamic in that household.
Speaker 3: But I do agree it's a huge risk to have
Speaker 3: her body be there and to trust that her daughter,
Speaker 3: Patty isn't going to discover that her mother is deceased.
Speaker 3: But maybe he was emboldened by the fact that he
Speaker 3: felt that he could control her.
Speaker 2: That's true, that's super true. If dad said do not
Speaker 2: go over to your mother and he was abusive, she'd go,
Speaker 2: I can't go over to mom, or I'm gonna get
Speaker 2: in big trouble before school.
Speaker 1: I think that might be a possibility, because I haven't
Speaker 1: read anything about Don being physically abusive towards Patty. But
Speaker 1: we've seen a lot of these cases involving missing spouses
Speaker 1: where the mother will go missing and the children are
Speaker 1: so young at the time that they will stick with
Speaker 1: their father no matter what, even if there is overwhelming
Speaker 1: evidence to suggest itrre responsible because it's a difficult situation
Speaker 1: because if you turn against your father, you're technically losing
Speaker 1: both parents. But in this particular case, as Patty got older,
Speaker 1: she was very outspoken about her dad and did not
Speaker 1: hesitate to express her belief that Don killed Linda. So
Speaker 1: it could be a thing where if he just did
Speaker 1: not raise her that well and she was able to
Speaker 1: break free from a spell and maybe just kind of
Speaker 1: had like a culture of fear when she was young,
Speaker 1: aware she knew that if I break ranks and decided
Speaker 1: to go over and say hi to my mother, attempt
Speaker 1: to kiss her, my father is going to get angry.
Speaker 3: On June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety, a pair of flight
Speaker 3: attendants were having lunch at Casagayardo, a Mexican restaurant in
Speaker 3: the Saint Louis suburb of Bridgeton. When they looked out
Speaker 3: the window, they noticed what appeared to be a human
Speaker 3: skull underneath a yucca plant in the bushes outside. The
Speaker 3: skull was directly facing the window, which seemed to suggest
Speaker 3: that whoever placed it there wanted someone to find it.
Speaker 3: The Bridgeton Police Department were notified, and the skull was
Speaker 3: sent to the Saint Louis County Medical Examiner's Office, who
Speaker 3: determined that it likely belonged to an adult female and
Speaker 3: was of recent origin.
Speaker 1: However, the police did not initially suspect foul play. At
Speaker 1: the time, a cemetery in the area was being relocated,
Speaker 1: which involved the exhumation and transport of numerous bodies, so
Speaker 1: they theorized that perhaps someone had taken the skull from
Speaker 1: one of the grays and left it outside the restaurant
Speaker 1: as a prank. Since the skull cannot be identified, he
Speaker 1: was placed inside the County morg's evidence room and remained
Speaker 1: there for over a year. On September sixth, nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: the Venda Park Police Department received an unsealed envelope with
Speaker 1: no return address containing a flyer for the Casa Guillardo restaurant.
Speaker 1: The flyer had a message stamped on it in purple
Speaker 1: ink which read quote the Bridgton Police have l Sherman's skull.
Speaker 1: While the Venda Park PD contacted the Bridgeton PD and
Speaker 1: sure enough they learned that they had a skull in
Speaker 1: their possession which had been found outside Casa Guillardo. This
Speaker 1: anonymous message now made the Venida Park PD suspect that
Speaker 1: the call might belong to Linda Sherman, who had been
Speaker 1: missing for the past six years. After checking dental records,
Speaker 1: investigators were able to officially confirm that it was Linda.
Speaker 1: It would also turn out that Casa Guillardo happened to
Speaker 1: be Don Sherman's favorite restaurant, as he was known for
Speaker 1: hanging out and drinking at their bar two or three
Speaker 1: times per week. In fact, Don even remembered coming into
Speaker 1: the restaurant on the very same day the skull was found,
Speaker 1: and learning about its discovery, Dow believed that the reappearance
Speaker 1: of Linda's skull was proof that he was not responsible
Speaker 1: for what happened to her, as he theorized that someone
Speaker 1: else intentionally left it there in order to send him
Speaker 1: some sort of message. However, some people suspected that Don
Speaker 1: could have retrieved the skull and planted it outside the
Speaker 1: restaurant in order to draw suspicion away from himself. But
Speaker 1: if so, what will compel Don to do something like
Speaker 1: that five years after the fact.
Speaker 2: Whoever's leaving these messages in the skull? It is very
Speaker 2: like BTK esque, or you know some of these serial
Speaker 2: killers who write letters to the media and want attention
Speaker 2: and like, why isn't anyone talking about this case anymore?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And they fuel something that's been put to rest, which
Speaker 2: makes no sense because if you got away with it,
Speaker 2: keep your mouth shut. So Don is either this narcissist
Speaker 2: stick individual who needs power and control and needs to
Speaker 2: be recognized for this work that he did and then
Speaker 2: he wants to play the victim, or he is being
Speaker 2: framed by somebody.
Speaker 1: Do we know?
Speaker 2: You know, Don's constantly accusing Linda of having an affair. Historically,
Speaker 2: if you look at cases, you can oftentimes see whoever's
Speaker 2: the abuser, the insecurities and the things that they're thrusting
Speaker 2: onto their victim is actually things they're doing to the victim.
Speaker 3: That is often the case.
Speaker 2: Yes, So I'm wondering, could Down have been having an
Speaker 2: affair and that woman wanted to get rid of Linda
Speaker 2: and be the mom to Patty or wanted to have
Speaker 2: Don to herself or something like that. Is it possible
Speaker 2: that they were in cahoots together and then this woman's
Speaker 2: like scorning him by bringing the skull to his favorite restaurant.
Speaker 1: Well, interestingly, enow, we're going to talk about this momentarily,
Speaker 1: But it was reported that Don was planning to get
Speaker 1: married around the time the skull was discovered, and it
Speaker 1: was theorized that maybe he wanted proof that Linda was dead.
Speaker 1: But I'm not entirely sure if he was in a
Speaker 1: relationship with this same woman back in nineteen eighty five
Speaker 1: when Linda went missing, they did write an extensive article
Speaker 1: in the Riverfront Times about Don and Linda's background, and
Speaker 1: they didn't report anything about Don ever having any extramarital
Speaker 1: affairs during their marriage. And also they never found any
Speaker 1: conclusive evidence that Linda was having any affairs either, even
Speaker 1: though Don was accusing her. So I'm just not entirely
Speaker 1: sure if Don was involved with someone when Linda originally
Speaker 1: went missing, But how.
Speaker 3: Much digging did they actually do, Like this is nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty two, right, so they did nineteen eighty five, nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty five, So they don't have cell phones to go through,
Speaker 3: and they don't have that type of history like now
Speaker 3: you can figure out if someone's having an affair so easily.
Speaker 3: And do we know if they went and talked to
Speaker 3: like all of his coworkers, all the women in his
Speaker 3: social circle. Do you know any of that, Robin.
Speaker 1: I'm not entirely sure how extensive the investigation was, but
Speaker 1: I do know that Linda had hired the services of
Speaker 1: a divorce lawyer at that point, and I'd like to
Speaker 1: think that even if the police didn't take her disappearance
Speaker 1: that seriously, at least her lawyer would and her family
Speaker 1: would and try to find everything they could about Don's
Speaker 1: background they could for the upcoming divorce proceedings. But no,
Speaker 1: just as far as I can tell, they just cannot
Speaker 1: find any evidence that he had another woman at the time.
Speaker 3: Has actually made great points that that is typically the
Speaker 3: pattern when you see an abuser who is accusing their
Speaker 3: victim of doing all these things. They're typically just projecting
Speaker 3: things that they themselves are doing. I wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 3: if he was having an affair, but I find it
Speaker 3: interesting that they didn't find any evidence of that. But
Speaker 3: what you bring up about the skull being discovered, if
Speaker 3: he was indeed going to get married and he needed
Speaker 3: to actually be granted a divorce and he hasn't been
Speaker 3: granted one in absentia yet, then having the skull turn
Speaker 3: up might be enough for them to go, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: she clearly is gone and deceased, so now we can
Speaker 3: move along this marriage that Don was planning to potentially have.
Speaker 1: The only hole in that theory is the fact that
Speaker 1: the skull was not identified for over a year and
Speaker 1: not until the received and anonymous letter. So I would
Speaker 1: think that if Don was desperate to get married, that
Speaker 1: he would have sent the anonymous letter a lot earlier
Speaker 1: than that, because he was just kind of sitting around thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: they haven't identified or yet, I should send something anonymous,
Speaker 1: and it is kind of weird that he would wait
Speaker 1: so long.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 1: Well, like we just said, the most prevalent theory was
Speaker 1: that Don may have been planning to get married, but
Speaker 1: since he had no luck legally divorcing Linda in absentia,
Speaker 1: he decided to retrieve her skull, providing concrete evidence to
Speaker 1: have her declared legally dead. Don denied these allegations, but
Speaker 1: in spite of this new development, there was no additional
Speaker 1: evidence to prove or disprove that he was involved in
Speaker 1: Linda's death. The envelope and flyer which had been sent
Speaker 1: to police were given a forensic analysis, but they contained
Speaker 1: no fingerprints, and since the omens velope was unsealed, there
Speaker 1: was no saliva for DNA testing. Since the rubber stamp,
Speaker 1: which was used to write out the message on the
Speaker 1: flyer could easily be purchased at an office supply store,
Speaker 1: investigators had no luck tracing it. In nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 1: linda skull was exhumed and shipped to the Archaeological Institute
Speaker 1: of Mercyhurst College in Erie, Pennsylvania. One of the professors
Speaker 1: from the college had actually been called upon to assist
Speaker 1: the federal government with prosecuting archaeological theft cases, so their
Speaker 1: soil analysis techniques could successfully link soil samples found on
Speaker 1: items to the locations where they originated from investigators hoped
Speaker 1: that by performing soil analysis on some dirt attached to
Speaker 1: linda skull, they might be able to determine where the
Speaker 1: rest of her remains were buried. While I have no
Speaker 1: idea if this decision was related to the soil analysis
Speaker 1: or not. Police sent a search team and cadaver sniffing
Speaker 1: dogs to an area near the town of Perryville, located
Speaker 1: seventy five miles south of Saint Louis, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like they tri up anything. The case would be
Speaker 1: profiled on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries which aired in
Speaker 1: July of two thousand and one, and their segment featured
Speaker 1: an interview with the sherman's daughter, Patty, who was now
Speaker 1: twenty five years old and living in Indiana with a
Speaker 1: husband and daughter of her own. She did not hesitate
Speaker 1: to express her suspicions about her father's potential complability in
Speaker 1: her mother's death, stating quote, in my heart, I think
Speaker 1: he might have done it. You know, I can't think
Speaker 1: of anyone else who would have end quote. For his part,
Speaker 1: Don never stopped maintaining his innocence. Had always suspected that
Speaker 1: Linda ran off with another man. Who subsequently murdered her.
Speaker 1: He got remarried in nineteen ninety four and had a
Speaker 1: daughter with his second wife, along with two step children. However,
Speaker 1: in July of twenty fifteen, Don would pass away at
Speaker 1: the age of fifty eight, So after nearly forty years,
Speaker 1: the exact circumstances of Linda Sherman's death remain unclear. So
Speaker 1: I guess you could say the path went chilly.
Speaker 2: It is so difficult because given the timeframe that she
Speaker 2: did disappear and how long it's been since her death,
Speaker 2: it's really difficult. Like Jules said, if this happened in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four, you could go through emails, you could
Speaker 2: go through text messages, you could go through other kinds
Speaker 2: of records where she would not only document the abuse,
Speaker 2: but things that were outside the marriage threats. A lot
Speaker 2: of that could have been documented, but back in the
Speaker 2: seventies and eighties it wouldn't have been. And the culture
Speaker 2: around domestic violence was so different at the time too,
Speaker 2: that it's likely Linda didn't share everything that was going
Speaker 2: on and was trying to figure out can I make
Speaker 2: this work? Can I tolerate the abuse long enough to
Speaker 2: have a quote intact family. It's really hard too, because
Speaker 2: when you have the skull, I'm assuming there's not really
Speaker 2: much to go on other than identifying her, because there's
Speaker 2: no report of weapon marks or any kind of injury
Speaker 2: to the skull that could indicate even what happened to her.
Speaker 2: Is that correct.
Speaker 1: Yes, they didn't find any like blunt force trauma or
Speaker 1: any gunshot wounds or anything, so exact cause of death
Speaker 1: is still unknown.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it didn't do anything other than cause an
Speaker 2: emotional kind of chaotic reaction where the skull's even looking
Speaker 2: towards the restaurant like wanting to be found. And what's
Speaker 2: very very scary is that you know somebody placed it there,
Speaker 2: because if it was so visible that people could see
Speaker 2: it that day under the tree right or out of
Speaker 2: the plant, then it wasn't there for five years. It
Speaker 2: was placed there, which means someone was brazen enough to
Speaker 2: either relocate the skull and retrieve it, or had held
Speaker 2: on to the skull and then placed it at that scene,
Speaker 2: which really gives you chills up your spine of who's
Speaker 2: that evil and dark to once the corpse is already deceased,
Speaker 2: right and it's a body you can't even leave it
Speaker 2: at rest. At that point, you mess with her body again.
Speaker 1: And that's what's so weird about Don is that we
Speaker 1: know he's a domestic viewser he's not a good guy,
Speaker 1: but some of the actions here seem to point towards
Speaker 1: like some sort of serial killer who has experience doing
Speaker 1: this sort of thing. And one of the most interesting
Speaker 1: details is that the anonymous note was sent in an
Speaker 1: unsealed envelope and that whoever sent it went to the
Speaker 1: trouble of not licking the envelope to leave any saliva
Speaker 1: for DNA testing. They're actually using forensic countermeasures. And while
Speaker 1: I could see someone doing that in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: this was back in nineteen ninety one, when DNA testing
Speaker 1: was still in its infancy. So would someone like Don
Speaker 1: just have the wherewithal to do that to realize, I
Speaker 1: better not lick the envelope because I don't want my
Speaker 1: saliva and my DNA going on there. So that's one
Speaker 1: of those details that makes you wonder, could this crime
Speaker 1: have been committed by someone who knew a lot about
Speaker 1: forensics and evidence and had a lot of experience of
Speaker 1: this sort of thing, And.
Speaker 3: You wonder if he chose a victim like Linda because
Speaker 3: she had an abusive partner. Maybe he's like a dexter
Speaker 3: like killer, not in the sense that his code is
Speaker 3: that you kill killers, is more than his code is
Speaker 3: like kill people where there's somebody in their life that
Speaker 3: will very easily be suspected of the murder. And then
Speaker 3: going back and taunting with the skull is maybe, like
Speaker 3: Ash mentioned earlier, it was down it would be a
Speaker 3: BTK level type thing where it's like, hey, give me
Speaker 3: the attention. But it would also be if it was
Speaker 3: another person who was framing Don because it's like, hey,
Speaker 3: let's inject some more interest into the case and like
Speaker 3: push this forward because maybe I'm not getting the attention
Speaker 3: that I want right now, and this will put it
Speaker 3: back into the spotlight and I'll get to have that,
Speaker 3: you know, duper's delight.
Speaker 1: That is true because I know that Linda's disappearance did
Speaker 1: not get much publicity at all when it originally happened
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five. But when the skull was left out,
Speaker 1: of course it made a lot of news and it
Speaker 1: was featured on on Solve Mysteries. So technically whoever did
Speaker 1: it got the attention they desired.
Speaker 2: The fact that, like Jules and Robin, you both pointed out,
Speaker 2: at the time, there wasn't a lot of knowledge or
Speaker 2: accessibility to information like DNA testing. We didn't have Internet,
Speaker 2: We didn't have streaming shows where you could go pick
Speaker 2: true crime shows, right, we just didn't have all of
Speaker 2: that immediacy and access to information. If you were trying to, like,
Speaker 2: I can't google how to kill someone or how to
Speaker 2: get away with you know, not having my DNA cod well,
Speaker 2: don't like the envelope, don't you know, kiss the body,
Speaker 2: don't do any of this stuff that wasn't possible at
Speaker 2: the time. So, like you all pointed out, it almost
Speaker 2: lends itself to a career criminal who is very skilled
Speaker 2: and intelligent. For a husband who is just tired of
Speaker 2: his wife and wants to make sure he doesn't have
Speaker 2: to pay alimony or doesn't have to share patty or
Speaker 2: whatever the case might be, would he be that sophisticated?
Speaker 1: Now, this is definitely one of the more bizarre spousal
Speaker 1: disappearances I've ever come across. I mentioned earlier that Unsolved
Speaker 1: Mystery had its fair share of cases where women went
Speaker 1: missing well in the midst of a troubled marriage, and
Speaker 1: their husband became the prime suspect. A surprising number of
Speaker 1: these spouses agreed to be interviewed on camera on the show,
Speaker 1: and most of the time they did not come across
Speaker 1: very well. Don Sherman did not seem like an overly
Speaker 1: likable person during his Unsolved Mysteries interview, though to be fair,
Speaker 1: it was filmed over fifteen years after he lost his wife,
Speaker 1: so that might explain why there wasn't much emotion on display.
Speaker 1: I definitely don't doubt the allegations that he was a jealous, possessive,
Speaker 1: and abusive husband and Linda would have been much better
Speaker 1: off not being married to him. And it also looked
Speaker 1: pretty damning that Don's own daughter, Patty, did not seem
Speaker 1: reluctant to express her suspicions about him. It's unclear when
Speaker 1: or if Patty became completely estrange from her father, but
Speaker 1: I find it interesting that when you look up Don
Speaker 1: Sherman's obituary online, his daughter and two stepchildren from his
Speaker 1: second marriage are listed as next of kin, but there
Speaker 1: is no mention of Patty at all. Given that Linda
Speaker 1: split up with Don and moved out multiple times while
Speaker 1: Patty was growing up I have no doubt that she
Speaker 1: may have witnessed some things which made her think that
Speaker 1: her father was capable of murder. I will say that
Speaker 1: if Linda simply vanished in nineteen eighty five and was
Speaker 1: still a missing person today, I would have no trouble
Speaker 1: believing that Don was responsible for her death. However, the
Speaker 1: appearance of linda skull throws a complete monkey wrench into
Speaker 1: the whole thing, as I honestly cannot think of another
Speaker 1: missing person's case where something like this happened. How many
Speaker 1: other cold cases are there where a victim's skull popped
Speaker 1: up in a public place years after they went missing,
Speaker 1: while the rest of the remains have never been recovered.
Speaker 1: If Don was guilty, then it's hard to imagine why
Speaker 1: he would do something like this and what he was
Speaker 1: trying to accomplish. But if Don is innocent and somebody
Speaker 1: else on earth Linda's skull and left it out in
Speaker 1: the open, what were they trying to accomplish?
Speaker 2: And what's really sad here is Patty and all of this. Patty, Yes,
Speaker 2: her dad was abusive, but at nine years old, her
Speaker 2: mother leaves. God only knows what stories Don told her
Speaker 2: to manipulate her and get her to be complicit and
Speaker 2: compliant with whatever he wanted. I'm sure he talked about
Speaker 2: her having an affair, running off, not loving her enough
Speaker 2: to stay. And Patty's not dumb. She knows her mom.
Speaker 2: She knows that Mom took me when she was trying
Speaker 2: to be safer. Mom tried to get out of this.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of confusion that would have happened
Speaker 2: for her. And then when you look at these details
Speaker 2: like she wasn't part of the obituary, it's just really
Speaker 2: sad to think of how a strange she became. I
Speaker 2: think when she stood up just like her mom did
Speaker 2: and said, I don't believe you, Dad, I don't want
Speaker 2: to hear any more about my mom being this terrible person.
Speaker 2: I don't think my mom would have left me. I
Speaker 2: think don needed to distance himself from her because she
Speaker 2: wasn't as easily manipulated or controlled. And that's his imo.
Speaker 2: He has to have people that he can control. So
Speaker 2: whether or not he killed her or not, he has
Speaker 2: a daughter who lost her mother, lost whatever a little
Speaker 2: bit of a father she had, and grew up really
Speaker 2: as an orphan who's trying to seek ways to redeem
Speaker 2: her wife and have quality relationships around her because it
Speaker 2: sure didn't happen with her dad. That is one of
Speaker 2: the most heartbreaking things in this case. And to think
Speaker 2: that Linda was fighting so hard to get her a
Speaker 2: better life and that's what Patty got. It's just very,
Speaker 2: very depressing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I mentioned earlier, in a lot of these
Speaker 1: cases where a spouse goes missing and their surviving spouse
Speaker 1: is under suspicion, often the time when they get custody
Speaker 1: of the children and raise them, they successfully brainwash them.
Speaker 1: They say bad things about the missing spouse, try to
Speaker 1: make the child think that they ran away on their own,
Speaker 1: and as a result, they wind up supporting their surviving
Speaker 1: spouse no matter what, even if the evidence does show
Speaker 1: they were responsible. So I do think it says a
Speaker 1: lot that Patty did not believe Don and became completely
Speaker 1: estrange for them. And I've always wondered what relationship Don
Speaker 1: had with his two step children and his second daughter
Speaker 1: from his second marriage, because you have to wonder what
Speaker 1: it's like being that situation where you know that this
Speaker 1: man in your life has been suspected of killing his
Speaker 1: previous life. But since they stayed together for about over
Speaker 1: twenty years after until Dawn passed away. I guess they
Speaker 1: believed that he was innocent.
Speaker 2: And she had kids with him too, right, she had
Speaker 2: kids and let him raise her own baby. So I
Speaker 2: think that does say that either he was pretty darn
Speaker 2: convincing and was able to bad mouth Linda enough to say,
Speaker 2: like she left us, she abandoned her babies. I want
Speaker 2: a family so badly, that's all I ever wanted. Or
Speaker 2: she's just as manipulated and abused as Linda was. Who knows, So.
Speaker 1: I think this would be a good time to bring
Speaker 1: it into Part one, Boyd, but join us next week
Speaker 1: as we present part two of our series about the
Speaker 1: unexplained death of Linda Sherman.
Speaker 4: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 4: about the Trail Went Cold?
Speaker 3: Patreon?
Speaker 1: Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
Speaker 1: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
Speaker 1: with us on Patreon if you join our five dollars
Speaker 1: tier Tier two. We also offer monthly bonus episodes in
Speaker 1: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
Speaker 1: the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to
Speaker 1: Patreon and if you join our highest tier, Tier three,
Speaker 1: the ten dollar Tier. One of the features we offer
Speaker 1: is a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved Mysteries,
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then boot
Speaker 1: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
Speaker 1: the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
Speaker 1: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
Speaker 1: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
Speaker 1: download a commentary track in which I make more smart
Speaker 1: ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
Speaker 1: Tier three.
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Speaker 3: We'll link them in the show notes.
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Speaker 3: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy