Ic northwest,
A beautiful young woman goes missing.
She had this abundant energy, and was always smiling.
Men really loved sherry [chuckling],
And there was never a point
Where she wasn't in a relationship.
[narrator] but her apartment reveals a harrowing tale.
[rebecca] they find the carpet torn up,
And the linoleum, and the smell of bleach.
What they don't find is sherry.
There was a lotta evidence in that bedroom
That a serious assault took place.
[narrator] the investigation leads detectives somewhere
They weren't expecting...
[belladonna] witches try to live in harmony with the earth,
But witchcraft draws people who want to have power over others.
He tried to use that as a tool to control her.
[narrator] but they soon discover a terrifying truth:
Black magic does exist.
He wanted to break off and start his own coven.
It was his sick, demented, twisted ideology.
To cut up people and discard their parts like garbage,
It's not common that people go to that extreme.
[music]
[narrator] new years day, 2010.
It's a misty day in the town of everett, washington,
And julie roberts is waiting fo her friend, sherry harlan,
To meet her after work.
[julie] I was going on ten years clean and sober,
And sherry and I had made plans to go to my meeting,
So I could get my ten-year chip.
I was so happy. She was happy for me.
But she didn't show up.
[music]
She just didn't show up, and that wasn't like sherry.
I called, I must've called 13, 14 times and left messages.
"call me!" and there was nothing.
There was just no return,
And I, I started getting worrie about it.
[music]
[narrator] julie isn't the only one who's concerned.
A co-worker of hers was worried
Because sherry had missed several shifts.
She didn't show up Saturday,
And she didn't show up again on Tuesday.
[rebecca] on Tuesday, January 5th,
One of sherry's co-workers called 911.
She was really worried about
If something was going on with sherry.
Sherry, her dog, and her car are missing.
And so, the police prepared to go to sherry's apartment.
[kelly] the deputies that were working,
They went to the location,
And they were able to get in touch with a maintenance man
Who had a key to the apartment.
And they went into the apartment,
Which is normal, they do a welfare check.
You know, they're lookin' for her.
[music]
[narrator] the moment officers step inside,
They know something's wrong.
[craig] there was an obvious odor of bleach.
Someone had made some efforts
To clean the interior of the apartment.
But as they went in further,
There were portions of both tile from the flooring
And carpet that had been cut out on the, in, in the back bedroom.
On all four walls, there was blood spatter.
So, it was pretty evident that
Violence had occurred in the bedroom.
What they don't find is sherry and her dog.
[music]
[narrator] sherry harlan was born on January 21st, 1974,
In the suburbs of portland, oregon.
[music]
[rebecca] sherry lived with her brother and mother and father
Outside of hillsboro.
They were there until she was a teenager,
And then her parents divorced,
And she moved with her mother and stepfather and brother
To washington state.
A lot of her friends,
They described her as sweet, and very kind, and caring.
A little naive.
[music]
[elizabeth] I met sherry when we went to rose hill junior high.
Throughout her entire life, she never walked into the room.
She, like, bounced into a room.
She had this abundant energy,
And was always smiling
And tryin' to make other people happy.
Sherry finished high school in washington state
And then she went to the community college
For a couple of years.
But she wasn't really into academics.
[music]
[elizabeth] she mostly pursued relationships.
Most of them were not great choices, so...
She had somebody that she was engaged to in oregon
Who had kids that were older than she was.
We were...
17 at that time, I think.
[narrator] the engagement fell apart,
But sherry kept looking for mr. Right.
Unfortunately, her bad luck wit relationships
Would continue into her 30s.
[elizabeth] men really loved sherry [chuckling],
And there was never a point
Where she wasn't in a relationship.
There was always somebody there waiting to catch her
If a relationship didn't work out.
I met sherry about nine and a half months before.
We just clicked.
She had just gotten back from hawaii.
She was there thinking things would work out with somebody
And it didn't,
So she was kind of in a, in a low life spot,
And she just wanted to get her life back.
[music]
[narrator] by 2009, sherry was struggling to get by,
Living out of her car and looking for work.
Instead, she found two more chances at love.
In the spring of 2009, she met eric christensen.
They were both doing some online dating
And going to some dating sites.
And they must have liked
What they heard from the other in a conversation
Or a first meeting,
Because they got together fairly quickly.
[music]
[elizabeth] sherry was always positive.
So, she came in, and like any other relationship,
She's excited about it.
And at the time, she wasn't working.
She was just kinda involved in the relationship.
[narrator] sherry had only been dating eric for a few months
When another man came into her life.
She met a man named dan young, who was going through a divorce.
He had a motorcycle,
And he and sherry enjoyed takin off on that
And doing some trips,
And she was having a really good time.
[craig] he was a general contractor,
And he was working on a project locally,
And that he and sherry had met on some sorta dating platform.
He had money,
And he wasn't shy about spendin it on sherry.
[kelly] he was a little bit older than her .
He knew that she was seeing eric.
So, he was aware of eric.
[rebecca] he bought her a laptop,
And eventually, he helped with the down payment
On a new apartment
So she could have a new start again.
[julie] we'd had a lot of talks about him.
I hadn't met him yet.
He helped get the furniture for her,
Things that she couldn't get right away,
And she was so happy.
[music]
[narrator] sherry's new romantic prospects
Weren't the only changes in her life.
That fall, while dating both men,
She also landed a job at a department store.
Sherry really liked her job at jc penney.
She loved the customers, she loved the friends she made,
And she was very well-liked.
[music]
[narrator] with a steady income,
Sherry adopted a dog she named roscoe.
Just a little, a little mutt. Just a, a mangey mutt!
Dumb as a box of rocks, but she loved that dog.
[music]
[narrator] 2010 was shaping up
To be the best year of sherry's life.
Which is why her friends and coworkers
Have grown increasingly concerned
When no one has seen or heard from her in four days.
[music]
[narrator] after finding evidence of
An attack inside sherry's apartment,
Officers immediately call for backup.
Snohomish county detectives quickly respond to the scene.
[kelly] when we did the walk-through,
There was blood visible on a, a master bedroom,
In the bedroom, on a wall, by the closet.
There was blood on a glove, there was blood on a shirt.
There was knife marks in the mattress
With tissue at the bottom.
There was a lotta evidence in that bedroom
That a serious assault took place.
There was spatter, you know, on all four walls up high,
Indicating, you know, some velocity
Of the various blows.
And the working assumption at that point
Was that a knife had been used.
[music]
[narrator] one thing is clear:
Whoever attacked sherry tried t get rid of the evidence.
[kelly] one of the things inside the apartment that we found was
Box of these white trash bags with red ties on 'em.
And there was some blood on the box.
[music]
You see this kind of evidence, reeking of bleach;
We know bleach is used to clean and to cover,
And sometimes to destroy dna.
[narrator] but one important clue
Survived the cleaning.
There was a bloody footprint,
Actually found on a t-shirt inside of the apartment.
It was in detail enough that they ever found a,
A shoe that they thought might have made it,
They would be able to compare the tread on the shoe
To the, the bloody shoeprint.
[kelly] upon looking at the apartment
And what we were finding in there,
I didn't have a good feeling about it at all.
I felt like she was either assaulted and hurt,
Or that she was a homicide victim.
[music]
[narrator] coming up.
Investigators dig into sherry's complicated love life.
One the last text messages was, "this is what," you know,
"being with two men at the same time will do to ya."
[narrator] but the truth is more bizarre than
Anyone can imagine.
[music]
[narrator] police in everett, washington
Are investigating the disappearance of
35-year-old sherry harlan.
From the evidence in her apartment,
It appears she was the victim of a violent attack.
When somebody has taken the time to tear up the flooring,
That's very concerning.
Which means that we need to start doing the victimology
On the person who's missing.
Who are the people closest to her?
[music]
[narrator] sherry's neighbors tell detectives
She was usually quiet and kept to herself.
The only time they saw her was when she was walking her dog.
But several days ago, there was a disturbance.
[kelly] one of 'em reported that the Saturday prior,
She had heard arguing.
A male voice using expletives; "shut up."
Things being thrown around,
And what she believed was coming from sherry's apartment.
[narrator] a few minutes later,
The witness saw a strange man lurking near sherry's car.
[kelly] it was parked by the dumpsters,
The trunk was ajar.
Her dog was tied to the inside on the driver's side,
And she saw a male crouching down in front of the vehicle.
[tedd] this neighbor saw him in front of the car dry-heaving,
And then he sneezed.
And, I'm thinking, "what causes a person to dry-heave?"
I'm thinking, "well, we have an apartment where,
Heavy bleach smell, the floors are torn up."
All these things are kinda adding up,
And, you know, my concern was,
Had he killed her and dismembered her?
Because that can be a very gruesome process.
[music]
[narrator] investigators prioritize
Identifying the suspicious male
And finding sherry's missing car.
To find out more,
They ask the building manager for sherry's apartment records.
[rebecca] while the police are looking at the crime scene
And looking for sherry,
They learn from the manager of the apartment house
That dan young had helped sherry with the down payment.
So, he's also somebody they nee to check into.
[music]
[narrator] sherry's friends and coworkers confirm
That dan is one of her boyfriends.
[music]
She loved him so much.
But he was married,
And he was leaving her and was gonna be with sherry.
But she was worried about the husband/wife thing
And when he was going to leave his wife.
[music]
[narrator] to seasoned detectives,
It's an immediate red flag.
Sherry seemed convinced dan loved her,
But could he have been having
Second thoughts about leaving his wife
And looking for a way out?
[kelly] we discovered some text messages on her cell phone
That coincided with the same weekend
That she disappeared.
She had texted dan young,
And she said, "hey, I'm not feeling well."
[craig] they were going back and forth,
And one the last text messages that mr. Young sent her was,
"lol, this is what," you know,
"being with two men at the same time will do to ya."
[music]
[narrator] sherry's friends say dan was probably referring to
Her other boyfriend, eric christensen.
Before sherry moved into her new apartment,
She was living with eric 30 miles away.
[craig] christensen lived out at a home out in gold bar,
Which is a very rural area in, in east county.
It was small, but it was owned by the parents
Of a friend of, of christensen's,
And he gave it to him for nominal rent.
It was fairly apparent that
Sherry was seeing both dan youn and christensen
At the same time.
[music]
[narrator] both men are a few years older than sherry,
But the similarities end there.
[music]
[narrator] dan acted like sherry's benefactor,
While she and eric shared a more spiritual connection.
[music]
[narrator] according to sherry's friends,
They bonded over an interest in
The pagan religion known as wicca.
[music]
[narrator] its practitioners
Sometimes refer to themselves as witches.
[craig] eric christensen had been a fairly steady goer
To the wicca church.
He had introduced sherry to that.
Some of their mutual friends were also involved in wicca,
And this was something that he had some interest in.
[julie] when I lived in snohomish,
I was going to the wiccan church.
It was mindset community;
Easy-going, friendly, no hostilities.
It was just a place to meet up and find other people
That were interested in the same beliefs.
[music]
[narrator] the wiccan church eric and sherry belonged to
Is in the neighboring town of index, washington,
In the foothills of the cascade mountains.
[music]
I am the most reverend belladonna laveau
Of the aquarian tabernacle church.
I replaced the archpriest
Who was in charge of the church at that time.
The religion of wicca is an earth-based religion.
We see mother nature as a deity a force.
We see the different aspects of nature as spiritual,
And we believe that all things are in balance.
[music]
People tie Halloween to wicca and witchcraft
Because it's our most sacred day.
We honor our ancestors.
We put an extra plate at the table.
So, it's evolved over the year,
And Halloween and trick-or-trea and all of that kinda stuff
Is, is the children's side of it.
You dress up like the dead,
And you go around and you ask for alms,
That's the lore behind it.
[music]
[narrator] while sherry embraced the religion's tenets of
Harmony and non-violence,
Friends say eric was more interested in its occult side.
[music]
[belladonna] she was a very beloved member of the church.
She was there all the time,
She worked on the gardens and the property.
[rodney] I knew eric for like, a year.
Eric was very strange, had a lotta weird ideas.
Didn't like a lot of people at the church;
Wanted to break off and start his own coven.
[belladonna] he was tryin' to recruit people into that.
He had these other ideas that are not really wiccan
That he wanted to incorporate into that coven culture.
[narrator] and law enforcement learn from church members
Many of those ideas involved rituals to control others,
Including sherry.
[belladonna] you know, witches try to live in harmony
With the earth,
But witchcraft draws people who want to have power over others.
Just like in any kind of group,
You have to figure out where the predators are
And what the red flags are.
[julie] there was somethin' odd about him.
He was quick to anger.
He was always just right on that edge of dangerous type,
And I didn't like it.
He scared me.
[music]
[narrator] after learning about the two men
Sherry harlan was dating at the time of her disappearance,
Investigators take a closer loo at their histories.
Of the two, eric christensen's record and reputation
Draws investigators' suspicion.
And police records show that isn't
The only unsettling thing about him.
[craig] christensen had to register as a sex offender
'cause he had a, a conviction for statutory rape
Out of oregon, you know, some 15, 20 years previous.
[music]
[narrator] a few years later,
Eric was imprisoned for another offense.
An ex-girlfriend had, had broken up with him,
And he had got his rifle and had attempted to snipe her,
And had indicated to law enforcement
When they arrested him
That the only reason that they were alive
Because his, his sights were off on the rifle.
There is a certain portion of the population
That's not mentally ill,
But is driven towards more psychopathic behavior.
They don't empathize like the rest of us do.
They can only see it from the perspective of,
"what does that mean for me?"
And, "how have I been wronged?"
[music]
[narrator] detectives learn sherry met eric
Not long after his release,
But she didn't know about his violent past.
[music]
[julie] she seemed happy with eric at first,
But within maybe six weeks,
She could see what she was involved with.
His whole face would change when he was angry.
They found a place to live, but she was miserable.
She wanted nothin' more than to get the hell away from him.
[music]
[narrator] sherry got her chance in November, 2009.
[tedd] their relationship started to get strained,
And then when he was picked up in November for warrants,
While he was in jail,
She took that opportunity to leave.
[kelly] she was going on with her life for that month,
And dan young helped her get an apartment
And helped her buying things to set up the apartment.
She had gotten a job.
[music]
[narrator] but according to sherry's friends,
She knew eric wouldn't let her go that easily.
[dr. Stanfill] there's research that shows
People that engage in acts of domestic violence,
If they engage in one,
They're much more likely to engage in multiple.
[elizabeth] I ran into her in jc penney's,
And she tells me that her boyfriend was in jail.
I asked her what she's gonna do next and she's like,
"well, I have to go back to him."
I'm like, "okay, well, you know, there's places you can go,
There's things we can do to help you.
You don't have to go back."
And she just very nonchalantly said,
"no, he'll kill me if I leave."
[music]
[kelly] eric wasn't aware of dan until he got out of jail.
When he got home, he realized sherry had left.
All of her stuff was gone.
And he started asking friends of hers, "where is she?"
And one of her friends made the mistake of
Giving him the address of where she had moved to.
[music]
[narrator] sherry's phone records show
Eric was the last person to call her
Before she disappeared.
A fact which makes police even more interested
In tracking him down.
[music]
[narrator] they find him less than 24 hours
After sherry was reported missing.
They find him at a nearby medical center
Where he's been treated for a wound to one hand.
And they can tell he's been roughed up a bit.
He had some scratches and some bruises and some cuts.
[tedd] I figured, "I'm going to just
Record a statement with him, he's just standing here."
And that turned out to be gold.
[narrator] detectives believe there's a simpler explanation.
[tedd] when a person is stabbing another person,
It's a bloody affair.
It is a messy, slippery event,
And it is very consistent to se injuries on the stabbing hand.
Eric did not present himself as a sophisticated liar.
We talk about it in our circle, in the police circle,
As somebody who's thinking abou one layer deep.
They have that initial lie,
And if you try to go any deeper than that,
They're, they stumble.
And that's the way eric was.
[narrator] when they ask about sherry,
Eric admits that he became enraged when he learned
She was seeing another man.
[narrator] on December 18th, 2009,
He went to her apartment to 'purify their relationship'.
That involved what eric refers to as a wiccan blood oath.
[narrator] according to eric,
The penalty for breaking such an oath is severe.
[music]
[narrator] two weeks after their December blood oath,
On January 2nd, eric found out sherry was lying
[tedd] he said that he ended up going through her phone
And he saw that she had been texting daniel young,
And this infuriated him.
[rebecca] eric admits to police that they had a fight.
[tedd] the more he shared,
The, the more I believed this man's definitely involved.
[narrator] investigators officially rule out
Sherry's other boyfriend, dan, as a suspect.
[music]
[narrator] but now, they still need evidence tying eric
To the crime scene.
Two days after sherry was reported missing,
They take eric into custody
And conduct a search warrant at his home.
[music]
[craig] when they're going through where eric lived,
They found some blue jeans that had some blood spatter on it.
They found what appeared to be a bloody sock
That efforts had been to burn it.
And they found a flat-screen tv that matched in all measurables,
The flat screen that had been a sherry's apartment.
And in the house is where we recovered the shoe
That matched the print on the t-shirt
That we found in sherry's home.
[rebecca] everything points to the fact
This was a homicide that took place.
But there is no body,
And they don't know where she is.
[music]
[elizabeth] we live in a smaller community out there,
And, you know, it's definitely the talk of the town.
There was no question in my mind what had happened.
[music]
[narrator] coming up.
Detectives make a disturbing discovery.
We found a skull on the front seat of the vehicle.
[narrator] and sherry's friends question her killer's motives.
This had nothing to do with a blood oath.
That's all he wanted, was control.
[music]
[narrator] after finding incriminating evidence
In eric christensen's home in gold bar, washington,
Snohomish county police arrest him for the murder of
His girlfriend, sherry harlan.
[music]
[narrator] but they still face a problem.
They certainly had suspicions about what had occurred,
But no body had been located yet.
[music]
[narrator] later that night on January 7th, 2010,
Investigators catch a lucky break.
Police were tipped that somebody'd come across
An abandoned vehicle
Out in the middle of nowhere on a gravel road.
It is indeed sherry's nissan sentra.
[kelly] the car had been burnt out.
We're always gonna match it to the vin.
Even if a vehicle is burnt,
We can still figure out what the vin is.
We realized it was her car.
[music]
And in the car, we found a skull.
On the front seat.
[music]
And there were also knives found in the vehicle front compartment
As well as the vehicle trunk.
It was as if, you know,
Somebody had posed the head and the knife in the front seat.
[music]
[kelly] the medical examiner
Came out and recovered the skull,
And it later was found to be sherry's skull.
There was a knife tip that they found embedded in the skull.
And we were later able to determine that the knife set
Had come from sherry's apartment.
The case is now a, a homicide
And no longer a missing persons case.
[music]
[narrator] four days after finding her skull,
Police get a tip about
Where to find the rest of sherry's remains.
[rebecca] on January 11th,
A man named ryan comes forward to share some information about
His friend, eric, with the police.
[kelly] there was somethin' bothering him.
And basically, ryan couldn't live with himself.
He was, he was involved to a certain degree.
[julie] ryan is very, very gullible,
And very easily to be manipulated.
[belladonna] ryan would come and help around the church,
And he was always there to help if you needed him.
[craig] he had indicated to law enforcement
That he had been part of the blood oath via telephone.
[music]
[narrator] ryan tells detectives eric used him as a witness
For sherry's blood oath.
Then, on January 3rd, eric called him again.
Christensen wanted ryan to meet him at a park-and-ride
Where he supposedly locked his keys in his vehicle.
So, ryan goes there.
And he realizes it's sherry's vehicle.
Ryan sees this rolled-up carpet and rolled-up vinyl.
And as they were driving in the car,
Eric said he had sherry's body in the trunk.
[music]
Christensen indicated that he had, in fact, killed sherry
And that he needed help getting rid of
The various portions of her body.
And for two days, that's what ryan did.
[music]
[kelly] he had driven to these locations
Around east county, up off reiter road.
And eric would tell him, "okay, stop here."
Eric would throw something,
And ryan could hear it hitting the water or hitting the ground
Or eric would get a bag from the back of the trunk
And would head into the woods with a shovel.
So, he knew exactly what was going on.
[music]
[narrator] ryan agrees to show investigators
Where eric dumped the body parts.
We drove to all of these locations.
That way we could document the exact locations via gps
Where items were and where we needed to bring cadaver dogs
So that we could find them.
[music]
[kelly] there were some parts that were never found.
But her torso was found in one location,
Just laying out in the open.
I know we found a thigh and we found arms,
And I believe the medical examiner did
Find evidence that they were cut with a knife.
[music]
There's not anything that you could do
That would justify you killing somebody.
He was trying to say these things about wicca
That just were not true.
We just don't, for the most part,
Believe in violence, dominating other people,
Makin' people do things they don't wanna do.
[tedd] this is not what wiccan practices.
This leans towards the satanic end of things.
[music]
[narrator] an autopsy confirms police suspicions
About the ritualistic attack.
What the doctor was able to tell us that she had
Several stab wounds to her torso and a stab wound to her head.
The stab wounds to her body,
Assuming that she'd been alive when those had occurred,
Could have been fatal,
But he was unable to determine with certainty
That those, in fact, were the cause of death.
[music]
This is a really ugly, heinous, heinous crime.
Eric has cut off her limbs.
He's also cut out her sexual organs
And really decimated the body.
They thought he even tried to cut out her heart,
But didn't manage to do it.
But it says a lot about this crime, and about him,
And about how, the rage that he must've had towards her.
[music]
You have to be able to overcome a certain psychological barrier
To go through the process of dismemberment.
But to be able to develop a plan and then act on that plan...
[music]
[dr. Stanfill] creates a significant amount of,
Call it emotional repression in being able to do that.
[music]
[narrator] two weeks after sherry's disappearance,
News spreads quickly about eric's hand in
Her gruesome death,
Leaving the residents of everett desperate for justice.
[julie] I caught the news, and there's sherry's picture.
I said, "oh my god, he did it.
Oh my god. He did, he killed sherry."
[kelly] he was already in the snohomish county jail,
And that's when I went ahead and added the murder charge.
[craig] the defense in this particular case
Made the strategic decision
To try to get this to trial as quickly as possible.
We didn't have all of our forensic results in yet.
We still needed to prove all the elements of the crime.
[music]
[narrator] after a week-long investigation,
40-year-old eric christensen has been charged with
The first-degree murder of sherry harlan.
But police suspect there is another victim.
[kelly] I know that sherry really loved her dog,
And I did make attempts, you know, to try to locate him.
But unfortunately, he was never found.
[music]
[narrator] after learning of eric's actions,
The wiccan church distances itself from
His twisted beliefs.
The idea that you would have a blood oath is,
It's just not heard of any relationship in wicca.
Eric christensen was an evil, demented, manipulative man
That wanted to control.
That's all he wanted.
[music]
[narrator] in may 2010,
The story comes under even greater scrutiny
When eric's murder trial begin.
[music]
[craig] what was presented to the jury was
This is a jealous, controlling man,
Was losing control of his, his woman,
And that when he realized
That she was gonna continue doing these things
That he did not want her to do,
He took action.
We believe that he murdered her in her bedroom.
And the dismemberment, I believe,
Happened in the kitchen,
Which would follow with
Why he would rip up the linoleum.
[craig] there were nine various portions
That the body was cut into,
And I think ultimately
Law enforcement located six of 'em.
[music]
[narrator] the prosecution's star witness
Is eric's friend, ryan.
We ultimately gave him immunity if he was willing to
Testify truthfully at trial
In regards to what christensen had told him
And how he had aided christense
In gettin' rid of the various body parts.
I think ryan is an incredibly important witness in this case.
There is no eyewitness to the actual murder,
But you have a witness to someone saying,
"eric had me drive her body around and dispose of it."
[music]
[narrator] faced with the evidence,
Eric's attorneys try to explain his attack
Instead of arguing his innocence.
[craig] the defense in this particular case was that
They admitted that christensen killed sherry harlan,
But it wasn't premeditated.
The argument was that he had come upon the text messages
Between sherry and dan young,
And just lost it.
[music]
[narrator] although eric never speaks in his own defense,
The jury still gets a chance to hear from him.
[tedd] my entire man-on-the-street interview
That was recorded was played for the jury.
[music]
[tedd] when you look at the jurors
And the looks on their faces,
They are following, they are tracking,
And they are coming up with the same responses
I had to what eric was saying.
[narrator] on June 28th, 2010,
The jury finds eric guilty of first-degree murder.
He's sentenced to 37 and a half years in prison.
What sticks out the most is that he just laughed about it.
He was bein' led away and he just smirkin',
And it's like he didn't even care.
[music]
[elizabeth] he was allowed to make a statement,
And his statement was,
"I don't understand why this is such a big deal.
It was an accident."
[music]
[elizabeth] he just didn't care. He didn't care what happened.
People get life in prison for killing somebody,
And they didn't even go to the extreme of
Dismembering the person.
So, I never really understood why he wasn't sentenced to more.
[elizabeth] there's no justice in 37 and a half years,
But I don't know that 99 years or the death penalty
Would be justice, either.
He had zero remorse.
And if you aren't sorry for what you've done,
There's nothing to stop you from doing it again.
[music]
[narrator] in the years since sherry's death,
Her friends and those who worke to solve her murder
Are still haunted by it.
[tedd] eric always tried to paint the picture
That either it was her fault...
That their actions were guided by his view of the wiccan faith.
He tried to use that as a tool to control her.
[julie] what he did was not wicca.
It was demonic, demented, sick.
A criminal with criminal mind and criminal behavior.
And she suffered for it, and so did all of us.
[music]
[kelly] when you have homicide cases,
It's not common that people go to that extreme to cut up people
And discard their parts like garbage.
That's what bothered me most about this case.
[music]
[elizabeth] she was just...
A special person that
Always made everybody else around her smile.
[julie] even after 13 years...
I still love her.
She'll always have been my bestest friend.
She was just sherry;
A beautiful, beautiful woman
That got caught up with a very, very bad man.
And she didn't deserve this.
[music]