Huey: The decades long mystery of the disappearance of two teenage girls

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It was a mystery that frustrated the city of Vermillion, S.D., for decades. Teenagers Sherri Miller and Pam Jackson were on their way to a teen gathering party in 1971 but never arrived, and no one knew what happened to them for the next 42 years. They left no evidence that they were leaving town, didn’t take any clothes with them nor call anybody, and they hadn’t even cashed their paychecks. The teens vanished without a trace.

The two Vermillion High School students were on their way to a high school graduation suds party at a gravel pit somewhere in the backwoods of Union County and driving Sherri’s grandfather’s Studebaker, but they never arrived, and their disappearance haunted Vermillion since that day. Friends provided the girls with directions to the party, but just to be sure they arrived safely, classmates Pat Gale, Steve Glass and Mark Logterman were in the car ahead of Sherri and Pam who were following them at a distance.

The boys said that while driving north, they missed the turnoff for the gravel pit, so after they crossed the bridge over Brule Creek, they turned around and headed back to the turn but didn’t see the headlights of the Studebaker anymore.

The disappearance of Pam and Sherri kept their families on edge with what became the biggest mystery of all time in that South Dakota village. In 2004, the Attorney General’s Office created a cold case unit that began an investigation into their disappearance and pursued it as a homicide because investigators were sure that career criminal David Lykken was the one who’d murdered the girls. Although they never had enough evidence to prove it, they were determined to get it.

Further investigation produced an inmate at the state prison in Sioux City who told police that David Lykken had confessed to the murders, leading the state to charge Lykken in 2007. A local judge issued a search warrant for his property in connection with the girls’ disappearance, and for several days investigators searched his family farm for anything that would prove his guilt, but came up with nothing.

Lykken was already in prison for kidnapping and seeing that the farm was so close to where the girls disappeared, the investigation showed a man who fit the profile. All they had to do was get the evidence to make a case. They soon learned to their dismay that everything the informant had told them was a lie. The clown was only trying to lighten his sentence. David Lykken remains in prison where he’s scheduled for release in 2217.

So once again the case went cold―until 2013. After 42 years with nothing, the families of the missing girls were finally given the answers they’d been waiting for since the spring of 1971. A recent drought had lowered the water level in Brule Creek to a point where the underside of a rusty car began to show itself, so officials took down the number from the license plate and matched it to the Studebaker the girls were traveling in.

Inside the car they found mostly skeletons that DNA confirmed were the remains of Sherri and Pam. An autopsy showed no evidence of foul play, indicating that it was an accident that took place at night, in the fog, and the girls didn’t really know where they were.

Something as common as a drought brought the Studebaker to the surface, and with it came answers that had long eluded police as well as the families of the teens. The bodies were still in the front seat, the gear shift was in third, the headlights and ignition switch were on. Directly beside Sherri lay a purse that held her driver’s license and school ID.

It was reasoned that when Sherri rounded the curve just before Brule Creek, she missed the bridge and went into the water. That’s all there was to it. They crashed into the creek, the car flipped over and they couldn’t get out, so they drowned.

It’s a closed case now, one that frustrated Vermillion for ages and for the families of Sherri and Pam it meant that they finally knew a sad truth that brought them little comfort. Sherri’s grandfather died a week before they were found, and never knew what happened to his precious granddaughter. All journeys of hope had come to a hopeless end.