Vanished in Vermillion- The Real Story of South Dakota's Most Infamous Cold Case by Lou Raguse
Product details
Web ID: 16836547The Truth Finally Surfaces . . . .
It's hard not to see how ironic it was for two 17-year-old girls to disappear on the way to a late spring gravel pit keg party, when they had never been to a keg party before that night. These weren't party girls or girls living in a dangerous big city. Yet the local sheriff who starts the investigation tells everyone that Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller were wild girls who obviously ran off, and would eventually come back home. (Years later, this sheriff would be convicted of raping a 7-year-old child, after leaving law enforcement.) When Pam and Sherri remain missing, some others in their community start to accept the idea they ran away, even though the idea seemed preposterous, because it was less horrible than believing they were victims of a crime. If they ran away, there was not a killer in their midst. If they ran away, they were still alive and well . . . somewhere. So starts the story of a missing persons case that would not be solved until decades later. So starts a case with some shoddy law enforcement investigations, the persecution of the family of the criminal suspected of killing the girls, a lying jail house informer, "evidence" acquired from hypnotism, and the hopes of some law enforcement officers and prosecutors of closing the case by pinning it on a violent local man already locked up. Even after the case was finally solved, some refused to believe what happened was what happened. It's more than ironic, too, that the evidence needed to solve the case was discovered the day of the funeral of Pam Jackson's father, a man who would search for his daughter for years and years, never giving up hope. An excellent investigative job by Lou Raguse, that bogs down in details at times, but clearly shows how the truth can surface when everyone doesn't give up searching for it. (Note: I received a free ARC of this book from NetGalley and the publisher or author.)
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Compelling true crime story
As someone with a disturbingly-high level of interest in true crime, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I had never come across this case before, but I felt that the author did a great job of taking information and testimony from the different characters in the case and distilling it all down into a coherent chronological storyline that read almost more like a work of fiction at times than a real event. The book also provided an interesting insight into police attitudes in the early 70s US, and the somewhat limited (by today’s standards at least) arsenal of forensic tools and techniques available to them to solve missing person cases such as this one. I felt compelled to do some more online reading on the case myself after finishing this book but, apart from some additional photos of places of interest and items recovered during the investigation, I was unable to learn anything new, which is a testament to the amount of meticulous research the author must have done in putting it all together.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Jaw dropping, without the gore
Even though I lived through this tragic story, there were twists and turns about the investigations that I never knew about. It will make you sad and mad. It will keep you interested until the end.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
very highly recommended account of a cold case
Vanished in Vermillion: The Real Story of South Dakota's Most Infamous Cold Case by Lou Raguse is a very highly recommended account of a cold case being solved after over forty years but only after a series of unbelievable investigative deficiencies. In May 1971, Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller were two seventeen-year-olds who disappeared when driving to an end-of-the-school-year kegger being held at a gravel pit out in rural, south eastern South Dakota. The girls, who were in Sherri's grandfather's rundown Studebaker Lark, didn't know exactly where the party was but they ran into some boys they knew from school and were following them down a dirt road when they disappeared. The boys assumed they went back to Vermillion to another party by the Missouri River. It is at this point, right at the start, that the investigative failures began with a sheriff who treated the search very lightly, assuming, with no evidence, that the girls just ran away so he didn't bother to seriously look into their disappearance. The families all suffered, the girls were never heard from, and the case went cold. Thirty years later it was reopened by the cold case unit took and the twists, turns, and incredible incompetence that followed was unbelievable and went on for over a decade. Raguse, an investigative journalist, does an excellent job thoroughly presenting the many details of this case from the start to the conclusion. The entire narrative follows the timeline of the events as they occurred so it reads like a procedural while it also clearly reveals the facts, failures, and foibles swirling around all of the official investigative attempts from start to finish. The actual closure of the case is found in such a careful, logical way it will dumbfound readers that no one thought to undertake that particular search. The descriptions were true to life. Knowing the area well due to the presence of the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, it was easy for me visualize and place the local small towns and distances between them. It also gave me a clear understanding of the layout of the land while following the revelations in the cold case. Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of Post Hill Press via Edelweiss.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
An old case solved
An interesting old true crime story about two 17 year old girls who went missing back in 1971 on their way to a party at a gravel pit. It details the story over 40+ years of issues with the case, and the surprising ending when it did come decades later. Good investigative journalism bringing out the real truth.
Recommends this product
Customer review from barnesandnoble.com