On the evening of July 4, 1982, Sherry Eyerly, an 18-year-old White/Caucasian female, was working her part-time job as a pizza delivery driver for Domino's in Salem, Oregon. She had recently graduated from high school and was called into work on a day she wasn't originally scheduled. Around 9:30 p.m., she set off to deliver an order to a remote address on Riverhaven Drive S.
This delivery, however, was a setup; the address was fictitious, and the call had been placed from a Salem motel by someone who gave a false name. Not long after she left, a resident discovered Eyerly’s Ford Pinto abandoned. The engine was still running with the lights on, the driver's side door was open, and three boxes of pizza were scattered on the ground nearby. There were no immediate signs of a struggle, but Sherry Eyerly was gone.
The investigation into her disappearance initially focused on a local man named Darrell J. Wilson. A lime-green pickup truck similar to his had been seen in the area where Eyerly vanished. Wilson behaved suspiciously after her disappearance, including painting his truck a different color. He initially denied knowing Eyerly but later admitted he was acquainted with her. Just hours after being questioned by police about a month after the disappearance, Wilson took his own life. For years, he remained the primary suspect, but no physical evidence ever connected him to the crime, and investigators eventually became convinced he was not involved. The case grew cold, leaving Eyerly's family with no answers for over two decades.
After 25 years, a breakthrough finally came in the cold case. In 2007, a man already serving life sentences for the murders of two other women, William Scott Smith, confessed to killing Sherry Eyerly. Smith revealed that he and an accomplice, Roger Noseff, had orchestrated the abduction. Their intended victim was another female Domino's employee they planned to hold for ransom, but Eyerly was working that shift instead. Smith confessed that they flagged her down, and when she got out of her car, they abducted her. He admitted to strangling her to death shortly after.
According to Smith, his accomplice Roger Noseff made a ransom call to Domino's the day after the abduction, but they never followed through with their demands. Smith claimed that he disposed of Eyerly's body in the Pudding River, the same location where he had left his other victims. Despite extensive searches, her remains have never been recovered, a fact complicated by numerous floods in the years since her death. In December 2007, William Scott Smith pleaded guilty to the murder of Sherry Eyerly and received another life sentence. His accomplice, Roger Noseff, was never charged, as he had died of cancer in 2003.
