BERKELEY COUNTY, S.C.–The Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office is assisting Alabama authorities in solving the 1984 disappearance of a 12-year-old girl.
Sherry Marler, 12, was reported missing from Greenville, Alabama.
She was last seen at approximately 9:30 a.m. on June 6, 1984 in downtown Greenville, according to The Charley Project. She and her stepfather were at the First National Bank and he gave her a dollar to buy a soda. Sherry left the bank and was last seen crossing the street towards the Chevron gas station. When her stepfather returned to his pickup truck fifteen minutes later, Sherry was nowhere to be found.
“He (the stepfather) said he waited about fifteen minutes and was mad at first, but when she didn’t show up within the next ten minutes he started to really worry that something was wrong,” stated Sherry’s mother, Betty Stringfellow. “It wasn’t like Sherry not to do what she was told to do, so he knew something was very wrong. He called me at work hoping she had decided to come over there to get something to eat. I told him I hadn’t seen her and that is when our nightmare began. We haven’t seen or heard from her since that day.”
Berkeley County investigators have information that Sherry was in the St. Stephen area in the summer of 1983 near Betaw Road.
She may have also been seen in the area in June 1984 after she was reported missing from Alabama.
There were other reported sightings of Sherry by three different people after her disappearance. Each time, she was accompanied by a man, described as about 50 years old and 5’8 tall with a husky build, a weathered complexion and crow’s feet around his eyes. One witness who saw her at a truck stop in Conley, Georgia said Sherry called the man B.J.
All three of the witnesses stated that Sherry was noticeably upset, disheveled and appeared dazed. The last sighting was in a mall in New Orleans, Louisiana later in 1984. None of the sightings were confirmed.
“My husband died not knowing what happened to her. When he was in the hospital just a few days before he died, he told me, ‘Betty, I wish I could go get Sherry and bring her home to you, but I can’t, because I don’t know where she is.’ He never could get over Sherry being with him when she went missing,” stated Stringfellow. “I told him all the time it could have happened if she had been with me. It has been a long twenty-five years, but by the grace of the Lord, we made it.”
Sherry is described as a tomboy who enjoyed farm work in 1984 and knew how to drive a tractor. Her mother does not believe she ran away; she had been looking forward to watching her favorite television show and visiting her grandmother on the day of her disappearance, and she didn’t have any significant problems in her life. Her case remains unsolved and is classified as a non-family abduction.
She has a 2-inch scar on her stomach and a wide one-inch scar on her upper back near her shoulder. She was last seen wearing a red shirt, faded jeans, and tennis shoes.
Sherry would be 47-years-old today.
If you have any information on this case, you’re asked to call Detective Derrell Lewis at (843) 719-5065 or Lt. Dean Kokinda at (843) 719-4668. You can also email them at: [email protected].
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