Gone (2017) s01e02 Episode Script

1 - Hey.
- What are you guys up to? Do you know how to get to the gravel pit? Follow us.
Denke: Pam and Sherri were my classmates, and they were my very, very dear friends.
Logterman: It was a simpler time, small town.
We probably had more freedoms than kids do now.
Howe: They didn't pack.
They didn't cash their paychecks.
They didn't call home.
None of it makes any sense.
Young Cheryl: You can't come with me.
I remember breaking down and crying, "Where is my sister, Sherri?" Denke: I collapsed on the floor.
And I said, "They found you.
" Narrator: It's the first day of summer vacation as 17-year-old Cheryl Miller gets ready to go out for the night.
Allen: Sherri was my older sister.
She was 9 years older than I, and she was almost like a second mother to me as well as a sister.
Sherri was a very beautiful girl.
She was tall and had blonde hair, blue eyes and a beautiful smile.
She had ambitions, but there was a lot of difficulty in her life.
Are you going out? Come here.
Sherri lived at my grandparents' house quite a bit, and I lived at my mother's.
We had a very split homelife.
Best view in town.
We came and went a lot.
Our mother wasn't around a lot.
Denke: Rita and Sherri have the same mom, but they each had different fathers that weren't there much.
Alcoholism was predominant with her mom.
Sherri's attitude was to rise above that and not be a part of that.
Walk me out.
Sherri was a total upbeat person.
So it didn't matter what she was doing.
She lived for each day, and she lived for each moment.
[Jovial music plays.]
I was there with my grandpa, and she informed me that she was going roller-skating that night.
She's all yours.
Thanks, pop.
Allen: And I begged to go with her because that was the thing we did.
And she said, "No, honey.
You can't come with me.
" And she gave me a hug and turned me away to go back to Grandpa's house.
Narrator: Cheryl drives off in her grandfather's Studebaker to pick up fellow high school junior Pamella Jackson.
Pam lives on a farm on the outskirts of town, about 15 miles away.
Denke: Pam and Sherri were my very, very dear friends.
- You have fun, sweetie.
- Bye, Dad.
Denke: I would say that Pam was more of the extrovert.
She expressed confidence.
You could pick up on that.
Y'all be careful now.
Let's go.
Denke: Pam's parents were a little bit older, a little more conservative, farm ethics and solid stability.
And they absolutely loved her.
Logterman: Vermillion is a small town.
In the 1970s, the population was probably 5,000 or 6,000 people.
It has a big agriculture industry, a lot of farming.
It was a simpler time.
You would have a curfew, but you weren't escorted around, I think, nearly as much as kids are today.
[Birds chirping.]
Denke: Pam's parents, they had a system where if the light was on, that meant Pam was still out.
When Pam returned back to the farm, she shut the light off to show Mom and let her know she was back home, back in bed.
Pam's mom got up and saw the light was still on which was telling her Pam wasn't there.
She goes to her bedroom and no sign of her.
I think Pam's parents assumed she was with Sherri.
- [Phone ringing.]
- [Birds chirping.]
Allen: That next morning when Sherri failed to come home, I know there was a lot of gathering.
There was phones ringing.
There was just a lot of chaos in the home, at my grandparents' home.
It wasn't uncommon for her not to come home for, perhaps, staying at a friend's house.
So that is kind of what I had in my mind that was happening.
Denke: Cheryl's grandfather loved that Studebaker.
That was his baby, and the fact that he let Sherri drive it was critical.
When it wasn't there, that was very concerning to him.
I think Pam's parents assumed the clunker of the Studebaker probably broke down alongside the road.
They may be waiting for help.
They put a lot of miles on cars trying to find them, and there was nothing.
[Birds caw in distance.]
Narrator: By mid-afternoon, the girls still aren't home.
The families decide to contact police.
Allen: During that time, in the state law, they had to wait 48 hours to declare a missing person.
When was the last time you saw your daughter? Man: She left last night with a friend of hers.
She's a good girl.
She always comes home when she is supposed to come home.
Howe: The sheriff instructed them to go home and wait.
It was different back then.
We all know now that those first moments are critical, and that's why we have the Amber alerts now.
My reaction, initially, it was, like, stunned, shocked.
And it's like, "What?" Officer: Yes, sir.
You're very welcome.
"What's happening? What could be going on?" Narrator: Forty-eight hours after Pam and Sherri disappear, the Vermillion Sheriff's office launches an official missing persons investigation.
Howe: I did learn that the girls stopped to visit Cheryl's grandmother at the hospital.
Hey, Grandma.
Cheryl and her grandmother were very close.
They told their grandmother that they were going to go roller-skating.
We can't stay long.
See you tomorrow.
Narrator: But officers talk to other high school students who say the girls had another plan in mind.
The police find out they were seeking out being included in the popular kids' party.
Logterman: The party was a celebration that the senior class was having out at this gravel pit northeast of Vermillion.
[Chatter.]
Narrator: Mark Logterman was one of three boys believed to be the last to see Sherri and Pam on the way to the party that night.
Police question the other two boys.
Officer: Is this the church where you met the two young ladies? - Yeah.
- All right.
We needed to get some cups.
So we stopped at a church.
Logterman: The church was unlocked, which was normal in those days.
Down in the basement was a kitchen.
The girls pulled up.
They must have recognized the car.
Pam and Cheryl were asking how to get to the party.
Do you know how to get to the gravel pit? So we said, "well, why don't you just follow us?" I remember going up kind of a rise in the road, and as we came down the other side of the road, somebody said, "Oh, we missed the turn.
" So we stopped, and we never saw the girls come over the hill.
I remember, at the time, thinking, "Maybe they saw the turn in and went in.
" Narrator: But when the boys finally got to the party, Sherri and Pam weren't there.
Police couldn't find anyone who had actually seen them at the party.
May 29, 1971, Pam and Sherri never returned home.
There was no explanation.
They were just gone.
Allen: Three days later, Sherri and Pam were declared missing.
I learned that sitting in front of the television and watching this come across the news.
I was blown away.
This can't be.
This is just not something that happens.
Follow us.
Logterman: My first reaction was shock that they were missing.
My second reaction was probably that, "They will come back in a few days.
They probably just decided to go somewhere, and they'll be back.
" Rowe: They talked to the boys and their stories held up.
They were consistent and very believable.
The focus became our grandfather's Studebaker because they thought if they could find the Studebaker, that would lead them to what may have happened to Sherri and Pam.
Narrator: The sheriff has to wonder if the girls got lost that night and drove into danger.
They turn their attention to the Missouri river, 10 miles away.
There are cases where we have had cars go into the Missouri river, and with the current, the sand will just eventually fill it in.
It could certainly bury the car.
Of course, the water itself would cover it up as well.
The Missouri river in this area is dangerous any time.
There are definitely roads that would go right up to the river banks on various points.
It seemed like every year, something would happen to somebody.
Narrator: Officers comb the river's edge, but due to the current and limited visibility, there's no safe way to drag or search the Missouri itself.
If they had lost control while they were still on the road, they would have left marks on the gravel road, and there should have been marks in the grass.
But marks on a gravel road aren't going to stay there very long.
It is not very likely for a heavy car like a 1960 Studebaker just to evaporate into thin air.
Where's where's the tire tracks? Allen: At this time, because they were coming up with nothing, no car, bodies, they possibly were considered a runaway.
Rowe: They just felt that they must have just left.
That is the only thing that the officers believed, anyway.
It was a different time then.
And this was the days of just coming out of the '60s, bucking the establishment and all the things that kids did.
Logterman: The rumor at the time was that Pam and Sherri had somehow hooked up with hippies.
Sherri was very explorative.
She had big dreams of traveling and possibly becoming a model.
My understanding is that Cheryl had a relative in California.
And they thought that they might have gone out to see that relative.
Narrator: Since Pam was Cheryl's good friend, some assumed she followed Sherri's lead.
They did reach out to the family out there and law enforcement in that area to try to locate them out there.
Narrator: But there is no sign the girls made it to California.
While some are hopeful the girls took off on a whim, a darker possibility surfaces when a neighbor of Pam's reports a conversation he overheard on a party line months earlier.
A party line is when multiple households will share the same phone line.
They would be able to hear it ring, and most of the people would know their own ring.
There is nothing stopping anyone from on that party line from picking up and listening in on those other calls.
There was a woman.
Her name was Pam.
A neighbor of Pam's had picked up the phone and heard this conversation between Pam and a David.
He had mentioned that he wanted to take pictures of her, and the neighbor just, at the time, dismissed this.
But then later, when he came to find that Pam was missing, he thought that might be relevant and reported it to law enforcement.
David, of course, is one of the most common names we have, and police would have no idea who David would be.
Narrator: With no obvious suspects or leads to follow, officers type up a report and file it away.
At the time, my grandmother, her health was declining very rapidly.
And I do recall my mother discussing that, "We dare not to tell Grandma that Sherri is missing," because she was so close to Sherri.
Narrator: Less than a month after Cheryl goes missing, her beloved grandmother passes away without the chance to say, "Goodbye.
" They put obituaries in more newspapers than just the local newspaper stating that Cheryl's grandmother had died.
The hope would have been that Cheryl would see this and realize that she needs to get home.
The word was out there, and, unfortunately, it didn't bring her home.
We have go to go.
I think, in her mother's heart, she knew there was something more wrong because that would have been the last thing Sherri would have ever missed.
There would have been nothing that would have stopped Sherri, unless something was stopping her.
For Pam and Sherri, that night that should have been an awesome night, you know, the end of the school year, the start of the summer.
But after their disappearance, it just makes you aware that there is no guarantee of tomorrow.
[Birds honking.]
Narrator: After a month-long search for Cheryl Miller and Pam Jackson, Vermillion investigators have no evidence of any accident or foul play.
Denke: The police accepted the theory that they're runaways in California.
They're in hippie camps.
They are touring around the country doing drugs.
Logterman: I think that, emotionally, running away meant it is just a matter of time that they are going to show up.
Yeah.
I think everybody was hoping for that.
Narrator: But while they hang onto hope, the families of both girls have reason to believe they may not have left willingly.
They received their paychecks on the same day that they went missing.
So that would have been the first thing to be considered as a runaway, that they would have made sure their paychecks were cashed.
But there was no transactions done, so no money.
They're not going to get very far.
Denke: Maybe they got out of the car and were kidnapped.
You knew something had to have happened, but there was no answers.
Narrator: A year goes by, and the roller coaster of hope and despair takes a toll on everyone, especially Pam's father, Oscar Jackson.
Denke: The pain of her disappearing did age him and wear him down, but he wouldn't give up.
He was on it every day, every hour.
He was determined, and he did do everything he possibly could do to find his daughter.
Allen: We had to continue, keep searching, keep looking because this was a big thing for our mother, was what she endured and the pain she went through.
But she remained hopeful that Sherri would come through, or the phone would ring.
And she said, "I don't care if I'm cooking a meal on the stove.
I would run out that door if I heard her voice.
I would let the house burn down just to know my daughter was on the other end.
" Narrator: Three years after Sherri and Pam go missing, Sherri's mother and new husband welcome a baby girl.
Sherri disappeared in 1971.
I was born in 1974.
I didn't get to know her.
I just get to hear stories.
Having a sister that you don't know, it's difficult because you just got part of your life ripped away.
You could see the toll on everybody, and it was hard for myself to watch them go through that.
Narrator: By now, their friends have graduated from high school and moved on with their lives.
But no one has forgotten the night Pam and Sherri disappeared.
This is the road.
It was Highway 77 at the time.
We had driven up this road, north from the church, where we had met the girls, and they were following us.
I never went back down that road to look for myself until I was in college.
Here is the turn into the gravel pit that we missed.
There were no buildings or a house here at that time.
It was just a turn in there.
I distinctly remember coming up this hill and going down the other side, and we stopped here and did a turnaround.
We never saw the lights of the car that Pam and Sherri were driving.
The pain and suffering, the not knowing, it's just I have two daughters that I love dearly.
If one of them had disappeared, that's the only way I can even touch, I think, on what they had to go through.
Narrator: As the years pass, the sheriff's department still believes the girls ran away while their families cling to the hope that the two are still alive.
Denke: Oscar Jackson, he refused to move from the farm.
The reason, he said, "Pam's going to come home, and I don't want her to get lost.
I want her to know where her home is.
And I'm still here waiting for her.
" My mother passed away in 1989, and she was 55 years old.
It made us feel that, for our mother, we had to do what we could do to close Sherri's case.
My mother's last dying wish was, "Never give up.
" Narrator: Another decade goes by, and with the passage of time, the families still carry the weight of their missing loved ones.
Allen: We had many moments in our life when I realized that my sister wasn't coming home.
And she should be sharing with me and our family the moments of weddings, my wedding, what it would have been like for her wedding, but we still had to keep our hearts going forward because we knew, deep within, that we've got to get to the bottom of it.
Narrator: Then in 1993, the sheriff asks investigator Ray Hoffman to tackle the decades old mystery.
Hoffman: I started my investigation shortly after the article in "South Dakota Magazine" came out about the missing girls gone for 20 years.
It seemed like, to me, that it was a case that we could maybe solve.
My focus was pretty much the gravel pits because I figured they were deep enough to hold a car.
Ground-penetrating radar is one of the options I decided to use because we thought that if a car went into the water and then backfilled over the top of it, we could probably see where that car was at.
Narrator: But an extensive search of the gravel pit areas with this new technology fails to deliver any clues.
Hoffman: I really felt that I gave the girls, both Pam Jackson and Cheryl Miller, the best look that I could do.
Allen: And time goes on.
It is like a record that just continues to keep playing over and over.
Narrator: In 2004, more than 10 years after the underground radar revealed no new information, the South Dakota Attorney General's office establishes a cold case unit.
Man: We are going to be reopening this case for Pamella Ann Jackson.
Solving the disappearance of Pam and Sherri is one of its first tasks.
Let's do whatever we can to find these young ladies.
The perception at that time among everyone is that something bad had happened.
I don't think that the runaway theory persisted beyond that first generation of law enforcement.
After some time went by, it just didn't make any sense anymore.
So then that left us with the theories of what happened.
Were they underwater or underground somewhere? Was it foul play? Narrator: As the cold case unit digs into the files, one report taken in 1971 catches their eye.
It's from the Jacksons' neighbor who overheard Pam and someone named David speaking on the phone shortly before the girls disappeared.
You got a last name? Howe: They started following up on that to try to figure out who David might be.
Let's get one.
There was speculation that the David from the party line call might be David Lykken.
David grew up on a farm a bit northeast of where the Jackson farm was.
He was of the same age group as Pam and Cheryl.
The police officers felt it was entirely reasonable that he would have known them.
I believe they did find that David and Pam were acquainted.
They did go to the same church.
Narrator: But it's what David Lykken did later, as an adult, that spikes everyone's concern.
In 1990, David Lykken was convicted of rape and several crimes of violence.
The prospects that there was maybe a horrific encounter with a sexual predator, my heart dropped.
I felt terrible about what potentially could have happened.
Narrator: Three decades after Cheryl Miller and Pam Jackson vanished in a 1960 Studebaker, a cold case team finally has a possible suspect in their sights.
I think I got something.
Thirty-six-year-old David Lykken of nearby Union County, South Dakota, was arrested for kidnapping and rape in 1990.
He received a 225-year sentence.
Allen: We learned that David Lykken's criminal past was very astonishing and very sickening.
And to think that he could have possibly been involved with our sister was more than a stomach could take.
Narrator: While cold case detectives talk to as many witnesses from Lykken's case as they can, a family member claims seeing something horrifying on his farm soon after the girls disappeared.
Allen: The witness claimed that she had seen the Studebaker with two females inside the Studebaker, and one of them being humped over the steering wheel, and one lying in the other seat.
She believed that it was Sherri and Pam, at that time.
The information the cold case unit got from the witness was so specific, so vivid, and so detailed, it led the cold case unit to believe that the girls were there.
Allen: They decided to get a search warrant and do some digging upon the property because it was a big piece of property that anything was possible.
There could be a car on this property.
There could be two bodies on this property.
Narrator: In August of 2004, a search of the Lykken farm uncovers some disturbing evidence.
They did dig up a hubcap, and it was an old hub cap.
Cars don't have hub caps anymore.
So it was from an older car.
It certainly could have come from a car like the Studebaker, but they never found the car.
They did find a purse, jewelry, some women's clothes and things like that.
As a sibling, your thoughts are going through your head, you know? "Did they get shot? Bury them in the ground alive?" All kinds of things will go running through your head.
Narrator: But as unsettling as the evidence appears, none of it connects to either girl.
Howe: The clothing that was found, while they were women's clothes, they were not Pamella's clothes and not Cheryl's clothes.
Allen: This is the man that had the criminal history, but it was circumstantial evidence for us.
You experience the pain again, the hurt, the emotion, the psychological.
You're going through it again.
Narrator: Two more years go by before cold case investigators finally get the break they need.
Once again, the name in question is David Lykken.
Rowe: There was a cellmate of David Lykken's who had reported that David had confessed to him about this disappearance of Pam and Cheryl.
Allen: The informant was asked to see if he could get David's voice on tape Are you willing to wear a wire? Man: I can do that.
to get him to admit that he had had involvement with the girls.
I can get what you need.
Rowe: He brought back to them a tape confession that he said was David Lykken.
And it was a detailed confession of how he had kidnapped and murdered Pam and Cheryl, and how he disposes their bodies.
Taking that confession together with the items found at the farm as well as the witness statements, that was very compelling.
Attorney General charged Dave Lykken with the kidnap and murder of Pamella Jackson and Cheryl Miller.
Narrator: But when they question Lykken in hopes of locating the girls' remains, he insists he's innocent.
He denied the charges.
He denied confessing.
Throughout that investigation, he persisted in his denial of his involvement.
Narrator: David Lykken's trial is set to begin in march of 2008, 37 years after the girls disappeared.
I thought, "David Lykken is going to be convicted of murder of Sherri Miller and Pamella Jackson.
" And it was a big day for our family that after all these years, we have everything we need to have.
Narrator: But just weeks before the trial, the case suddenly comes to a standstill.
It's a fake.
His in-house confession? All fabricated.
Rowe: They found out that the informant had fabricated the recording.
His statement was that David Lykken actually did tell him this information, but he didn't.
We learned that our informant had another inmate give the confession.
Our informant had perjured himself.
Narrator: Investigators believe the informant lied to help his own situation.
The whole case was riding on this.
Of course, that made the recording completely useless to the trial.
The charges were dismissed.
Allen: It turned our world upside down.
It's very devastating to realize that we're back at square one.
[Birds honking.]
Narrator: Another 5 years pass, and it seems no one will ever know what happened to Sherri Miller and Pam Jackson so many years ago, until a call comes in on a warm fall afternoon in 2013.
[Sobbing.]
It's a day I'll never forget.
In Vermillion, especially among the law enforcement, in the '80s, '90s and into the 2000s, if you talked about the girls, everybody knew who you were talking about.
Every year, we've had a reunion put an ad in the paper and said, Let us all remember these two girls.
" It brought us together.
I have lost most of my family, and I have my sister and I that are left of our family.
I felt desperate need because I was Sherri's last living sibling to share a part of her life and a part of my life with.
Narrator: Four decades after Cheryl Miller and Pamella Jackson vanished into the night, Pam's father, Oscar, dies without finding his little girl.
Denke: He was adamant.
"My last breath I take will be to find my daughter.
" Bye, Dad.
Denke: Oscar Jackson lived to be 102 years old.
Be careful, now.
But you have spent 42 years just in agony.
Where is the answer? There has got to be an answer.
Hewlett: I believe that he knew that something was going to happen.
So I believe that he knew it was okay to move on to his next journey.
Narrator: Five days after his death, as the family gathers for Oscar's funeral, a local man out fishing spots something unusual.
Rowe: He reported that he saw tires sticking up from the water in Brule Creek and took a closer look and saw the underbody of a car.
At that time, the water level in that creek had gone down quite a bit over a series of years.
So he reported that to the sheriff, and they went out there.
Hoffman: They got the license plate number off it, and they realized it was the Studebaker that was missing.
Howe: I was out of town at a conference, and the sheriff from Union County called me on my cell phone.
I recall, he just said, "We found the car.
" And I knew exactly what he was talking about.
He didn't have to tell me which car.
And I said, "Where did you find it?" And he said, "Brule Creek.
" I said, "Right by the gravel pit?" And he said, "Yeah.
" And I called Rita.
[Sobbing.]
The happiest moment in my life, to know that we actually have the car.
We have something.
And then right shortly after that, we learned there were remains in the car.
I collapsed on the floor, and I said, "They found you.
" Narrator: DNA tests confirm that inside the car are the skeletal remains of Pam Jackson and Cheryl Miller.
After extensive examination, investigators find no evidence of foul play.
DCI did forensic work on the car, and it was discovered that the car was still in gear and the headlights were still on when it went in.
The only logical explanation is that they were following the boys.
They lost control of the car.
- [Tires squeal.]
- [Thunk.]
The car vaulted.
It landed on its front end and tipped over upside down into the creek.
Denke: How bizarre, in 42 years of time, nobody saw any clue of that car being there.
Narrator: Brule Creek is less than a mile from the gravel pit where the teens were headed.
Howe: I don't know if the sheriff at that time ever went and looked in that creek.
That, or they looked and didn't see it because it is possible the water level was high enough in that creek that the car could have been fully submerged.
Narrator: The mystery that had loomed so large in this town for over four decades has finally been solved.
It was a huge relief to think that They didn't die in the hands of David Lykken.
Narrator: Police return the items found in the car to Cheryl and Pam's families.
Here I have Sherri's original driver's license.
Woman: It's in great condition.
Very much so, hard to believe after 42 1/2 years underwater.
They had found a purse.
They found two class pictures.
They found the old fashioned bobby pin that you would use for a curler, the transistor radio that rode in the backseat of our grandfather's car.
Here is her Timex watch that she had on.
The time says 10:20.
We feel that this is probably when they entered the water.
[Sobbing.]
I love her.
It has been a long journey.
It has been a very troubled journey.
Best view in town.
But we kept the chapters going.
We kept the puzzle going until we got all the pieces to fit.
Logterman: All these years later, the picture that you would always see was their junior class pictures, those same two pictures.
That's who they were, and that's who they'll always be.
Narrator: On march 18, 2017, Rita, Dawn, and Luann return to the creek where Sherri and Pam were finally found.
I can celebrate the life they had, the short time they were here, and what I knew of them in our lives together.
Allen: I'm glad that we are able to close this last chapter.
It was almost 10 years that I was able to have with her, but it was 10 very good years, and I know she's safe and sound.