PORTAGEVILLE, Mo. (AP) – A new clue has emerged in the killings of a southeast Missouri woman and her daughter, nearly 20 years after their deaths.
Anthony Scherer returned from farm work to his home near Portageville on March 28, 1998, and found the bodies of his wife, Sherri Scherer, 37, and 12-year-old daughter, Megan. Both had been shot. No arrests were ever made.
Now, a clue from another unsolved case is offering new hope.
New Madrid County Sheriff Terry Stevens said his office was notified this month that DNA from the murder scene matches DNA recovered from an unsolved 1997 rape in Memphis, Tenn. In May 1997, three women and a girl were assaulted by a man who knocked at the door of their home. All four were bound before the man sexually assaulted the girl.
It was the second DNA match to the Missouri case. A 2006 DNA match determined that the same person may have sexually assaulted and killed Genevieve Zitricki in 1990 in her Greenville, South Carolina, apartment. That case also remains unsolved.