Sharrey Lynn Case was a vibrant and outgoing 17-year-old woman with a budding passion for photography. In the fall of 1977, the Belleville, Illinois, resident had recently started her studies at Belleville Area College and held down two jobs, one as a cashier and another at a local swimming pool and skating rink. Her niece, Melissa Winnie, who was just a baby when her aunt was killed, remembers Sharrey through a cherished photograph of her aunt holding her. Melissa says her family always preserved Sharrey’s room just as she had left it, a silent testament to a life cut tragically short.
On Friday, October 28, 1977, Sharrey’s mother dropped her off at her boyfriend’s mobile home in Belleville, handing her a $20 bill. The rest of the family was leaving for a weekend camping trip, but Sharrey, a female, stayed behind to work. When her family returned, she was gone. They waited, hoping she would return, but on November 1, 1977, they officially reported her missing to the St.
Clair County Sheriff's Department. For weeks, her loved ones waited with no news, their hope dwindling as the days turned colder.
The search came to a devastating end nearly two months later. On December 19, 1977, a jogger running along a dirt road discovered Sharrey's body hidden beneath a pile of construction debris. Her remains were badly decomposed, but dental records confirmed her identity. She was found fully clothed, and robbery did not appear to be a motive; she still had her jewelry, car keys, and the $20 bill her mother had given her. The cause of death was strangulation. A wire was still wrapped tightly around her neck, and a brown wool sock had been stuffed into her mouth.
The initial investigation by the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department was extensive. Detectives interviewed Sharrey’s boyfriend, with whom she had been staying, but he was never considered a suspect in her disappearance. They also spoke with his neighbors in the mobile home park, but those interviews yielded no significant leads. Investigators took the wire used in the murder to local farm stores, hoping to trace its origin, but were told that the specific style of wire had not been produced for several years. Despite their efforts, the case went cold.
Over the decades, investigators revisited Sharrey’s case. In November 2005, authorities received permission from her family to exhume her body, hoping that advances in technology could uncover new DNA evidence. The traumatic process yielded a hair, but testing confirmed it belonged to Sharrey. At one point, investigators looked into Gregory Bowman, a man with a history of violent crimes, including convictions for the murders of other young women in 1977 and 1978. Bowman was interviewed multiple times about Sharrey's death, as recently as 2015, but he denied any involvement. He died in prison in 2016, and investigators do not believe he was responsible.
Sharrey’s family has never stopped seeking justice. Her niece, Melissa Winnie, has taken on the role of family advocate, pushing for publicity and researching the case herself after her own mother passed away without seeing her sister’s killer identified. "Over the years, it’s like, ‘Why?’ Because they’re gonna be 75, 80 years old," Melissa told Dateline. "We just really are focused on who did it, why they did it, and at least with those answers, we can fully accept it and let her rest."
As of March 2026, the case remains unsolved but is actively being reviewed by the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department. Senior Detective Ben Vise, who began looking into the files after a media inquiry, believes that with modern technology, the case is solvable. "My goal is to just try to bring some closure to some people at this point," he said. The department does not have a dedicated cold case unit, but Detective Vise works on such cases in his spare time.
Investigators are hopeful that someone in the community holds the key to finally closing this case after more than four decades of unanswered questions. Anyone with information about the murder of Sharrey Lynn Case is urged to contact Detective Ben Vise at the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Department at 618-825-5309 or via email at [email protected].
