In the late summer of 1990, a 26-year-old woman named Jami Sherer vanished from Redmond, Washington, initiating a mystery that would trouble her family and investigators for years. On September 30, 1990, Jami, a mother to a young son and an employee at Microsoft, was last in contact with her mother. At the time of her disappearance, Jami was navigating a troubled and abusive marriage with her husband, Steven Sherer.
She had decided to leave him and had spent the night before her disappearance at her parents' home with her son. On the morning she went missing, she had agreed to meet Steven one last time after he pleaded with her to reconsider the divorce. She made a final call to her mother around 11:45 a.m., stating she was at their shared home to retrieve her belongings and planned to grab lunch before returning to her parents' house. She was never heard from again.
Days after Jami was last heard from, her gray 1980 Mazda RX7 was discovered abandoned in a church parking lot in Shoreline, Washington, miles from her home. Inside the vehicle was a suitcase with some of her clothing, but her purse and underwear were missing. The driver's seat was pushed back to a position that would have made it impossible for the petite Jami to drive, suggesting someone else had last operated the car. In the days and weeks following her disappearance, her husband Steven's behavior became increasingly erratic and suspicious. He began dating other women almost immediately, was seen wearing Jami's underwear tied around his arm, and told conflicting stories about her whereabouts, including that she had died in a car accident or was a victim of the Green River Killer. His sister reported seeing a large red stain on the carpet of his home, which was later found to have been professionally cleaned shortly after Jami vanished.
The investigation into Jami's disappearance spanned nearly a decade, with Steven Sherer remaining the primary suspect. In 1997, Jami was declared legally dead. Finally, in March of 2000, based on a collection of circumstantial evidence, Steven Sherer was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Despite the absence of Jami's body, a jury found him guilty in June 2000, and he was sentenced to 60 years in prison. This conviction was one of the few in Washington state history secured without the victim's remains. While incarcerated, his sentence was extended after he was convicted of attempting to hire someone to burn down the house of Jami's parents, where his son was living. The case of Jami Sherer is a somber narrative of domestic abuse culminating in a presumed homicide. Even with a conviction, the full truth of what happened on that September day remains obscured, as Jami's body has never been recovered, leaving her loved ones without a final sense of closure.Last Seen: Sep 30, 1990
