Empty Promises

by Ann Rule

  One woman contacted the Redmond police with a rather bizarre story. "I went on one date with him— that Steve Sherer," she said.

  "When?"

  "In 1990— in November, I believe."

  The woman, Margaret Ryan,* had an amazingly precise memory. She recalled that she had taken her car, a red Corvette, to be washed on a Wednesday. She knew it was a Wednesday because it was two days after that when she had her one and only date with Steve Sherer. He had been driving an S-10 Blazer two-tone, blue-and-white. Margaret knew cars, and her own car was a classic. Paradoxically, she was a woman who looked more like a spinster librarian than a car buff. Nevertheless, Steve smiled at her as she stood at the car wash desk waiting for her key.

  "It was pretty busy, and he just came up and started talking to me— said hi and introduced himself. And we talked— you know, small talk," she said. "But he asked me if I wanted to go on a date sometime, and he seemed nice. So I said yes."

  They exchanged phone numbers, and although they had spoken for only ten or fifteen minutes, Steve called Margaret that very evening. She could not remember the spot, but she arranged to met him someplace on Friday night. She got in his Blazer and he headed toward a residential neighborhood in Redmond. He was taking her to his house. As they drove, he told her that he was a recent widower and that he had lost his wife in a car accident.

  Steve's voice faltered, and she supposed that the death of his wife was a very emotional subject so she didn't pursue it.

  He pulled into a driveway of a home, but it was very dark outside, so she didn't think she could identify the house again.

  "It was a split-level," she said. "I don't remember what color it was, and it had a driveway that was sort of elevated. The living room was on the left and then the dining room right after that and then the kitchen was like right in front." Margaret closed her eyes to remember. "And then we went left. There was a bedroom on the right side that was full of kids' stuff. It was very clean."

  She had the floor plan right; that fit the house Steve and Jami had lived in.

  She recalled that Steve showed her around, pointing things out, and then led her into the master bedroom. "We just sat on the bed and we were talking."

  Steve explained that his child or children— she wasn't sure how many— were at their grandmother's house. He soon began to talk about his wife. "I was wearing a pearl necklace at the time, and he told me that it wasn't real, after he rubbed a pearl on his tooth. And he said he would show me a real pearl necklace. So he went into a closet. He pulled out a pearl necklace and told me that was real and he had bought that for his wife."

  At that point, she said, Steve teared up and began to sob. "He was talking about his ex-wife or dead wife or whatever," Margaret said. "And then he brought up the subject of a heart, a diamond heart necklace that he had bought her and went to the closet and took it out and showed it to me, and he got very emotional."

  It wasn't the best first date Margaret Ryan had ever had. Steve seemed to her to be not only grief-stricken but somehow guilty. That was the only way she could explain it.

  After he showed her the diamond pendant and stopped sobbing, Steve surprised Margaret by lunging at her as she sat on the bed. He pushed her backward and kissed her hard on the lips. "I got bad vibes," she said, "because of the forcefulness of it. I decided that this was not a comfortable situation for me."

  When she stood up from the bed and said, "Let's go," Steve stopped trying to force himself on her. They left his house and went out to eat at Azteca, a Mexican restaurant.

  Steve never called her for another date, which was fine with Margaret. She didn't think about him again for years, until she saw his face on television in connection with the reopening of the investigation into his wife's disappearance.

  Since he had told her several times that his wife had died in a car crash, she was surprised that he was being investigated for the possibility that he had murdered his wife. She was also troubled, of course. Margaret Ryan suffered from agoraphobia, from the Greek for "fear of the marketplace" or, in modern terms, fear of leaving home. Margaret had taken a chance by accepting a date with Steve Sherer, and that had done nothing at all to alleviate her panic attacks.

  Over the years since Jamie was gone, Steve became so consumed with meeting women that he almost seemed to suffer from satyriasis, an obsessive and often uncontrollable sexual desire in men, similar to nymphomania in women. Greg Mains and Mike Faddis learned that Steve was a member of several singles clubs on the east side. He also spent a lot of time on his computer making contacts with women all over the world.

  He had leaped upon Margaret Ryan only moments after he sobbed at the sight of Jami's diamond heart pendant. Apparently he used any line that he thought would work to add to his roster of women. Was he really grieving for Jami? Or was he posing as a bereaved widower just to soften women up?

  Grieving widowers are lonely, but most of them wait a respectful length of time before they seek out female companionship. Steve Sherer had never shown grief, sadness, or loneliness about losing Jami. The only mourning anyone had noted was for Steve himself, as he asked why such a tragedy should have happened to him. Never once had he voiced sorrow or concern for Jami, or for Chris over the loss of his mother. Jami's friend Lisa Cryder had seen Steve out partying with a girl only weeks after Jami's disappearance.

  It was abundantly clear that Steve had used the disappearance of his wife in an attempt to turn himself into a "babe magnet," the forlorn widower who needed love. He attracted women all right, but in doing so, he had made some significant mistakes.

  12

  There was another aspect of the Sherer case that the Redmond investigators found disturbing. Within a month of Jami's disappearance, Steve, who was unemployed, as he often was, applied for Jami's last paychecks, her accumulated vacation pay and her sick pay at Microsoft. He received a check for the full amount. One of the perks at Microsoft was the stock offered to its employees. Jami had taken advantage of that and had begun buying company stock on December 12, 1987. Records showed she had bought more whenever she could: June 16, 1988; December 7, 1988; December 12, 1989; and June 30, 1990. Up through 1989 it had been possible to change ownership or add payees by e-mail. At one time Jami had asked to have Steve's name removed from the stock certificates, but she later put him back on.

  So Steve was able to cash in a number of Microsoft stock certificates within a month or so of Jami's disappearance.

  In November 1990, Sherri Schielke moved Jami's Microsoft stock— the collateral Jami had put up for their house loan the previous spring— into her own stock account. At that point, Microsoft was trading stock at under three dollars a share, and Jami had many, many shares. Sherri explained that Steve was out of work and that she had been making the mortgage payments on his house, since Jami was no longer around to pay them. Steve retained some of Jami's Microsoft stock.

  Without the wife who had supported him for four years, Steve was having financial trouble. In early December he asked Judy Hagel if she would loan him $15,000 to "clear up Jami's credit." It was an outrageous request. Judy knew that Jami always kept current on her bills and that she also saved receipts, bills, and all manner of documents that would validate her yearly IRS forms. Judy had co-signed with Jami so she could buy her Mazda RX7 because Steve's credit was worth nothing. There was simply no way Judy would lend Steve $15,000.

  Evidently, he went to his mother too. Sherri suggested that he rent out part of the house to help him make the mortgage payments. He rented one bedroom to a man who soon moved out. Next, a couple named Troy and Pam moved in. They told the Redmond detectives that they remembered a tanning bed in the garage, and also several boxes stored there. Troy never went through the boxes, but Pam was curious. She found they were full of women's clothing and other feminine items. Steve told her she could take anything she wanted. She took a few pieces of clothing, but most of them were far too small for her. The couple didn't stay in Steve's house for long.


  Seven months after Jami vanished, Sherri Schielke retained an attorney so that she could be named trustee and manage Jami's estate. The Hagels were looking after Chris, and spending as much as they could afford to pay to the private investigators who were, shockingly, taking cruel advantage of them. They assumed that whatever Jami had owned would come to her son, to pay for his education and for the things he needed as he grew up. Still, they hoped that Jami was alive somewhere, and that was what mattered the most to them. They were unsophisticated about financial matters.

  Sherri Schielke published an announcement in several small newspapers that she intended to take over Jami's assets as her trustee. The probate matter was filed in King County Superior Court, which noted that "the Court being fully advised in these premises: the Court finding that notice having been published and the whereabouts of the absentee remain unknown and cannot be ascertained."

  Responding to Sherri's attorney's motion, "In the matter of the estate of Jami Sue Sherer, Absentee," Sherri's request was granted: "(1) It is hereby ordered that Sharon Schielke be appointed trustee of the Absentee Estate of Jami Sue Sherer; (2) That trustee shall file an oath for faithful performance of duties and shall prepare an inventory of the estate and file such within sixty days of the date of this order."

  The date was May 17, 1991.

  Both Steve and Sherri were anxious to retrieve the diamond ring and watch that had been found taped on the console in Jami's car. The police had had the ring appraised and knew that it was now worth $13,500. The watch, worth $1,700, and Jami's Mazda were being held in evidence by the Redmond Police Department, which galled Steve and his mother.

  On June 10, Sherri wrote to inform the Redmond Police Department that she was now the trustee of Jami's estate. "It is my understanding that you are still holding her wedding ring and also her car, which is a Mazda RX7. In order to have these appraised, I will need to have them released. Could you get back to me as soon as possible regarding this matter? Thanks for your cooperation."

  To Steve's chagrin, the police were not very cooperative and the items of value were not returned to him or his mother. Nor was the Department of Social and Human Services eager to decide on permanent placement of Chris Sherer. Legally, Chris's mother was not dead. He was being well cared for by his maternal grandparents. It was far too soon to grant custody of Chris to anyone.

  By 1992, Sherri decided that she and Steve should sell the Education Hill house, and it was purchased by Russian immigrants. Part of the proceeds of the sale went to Sherri, to pay off the mortgage and Steve's bills. When he never paid his mother back for her loss on the house, she sued him in civil court for $32,000. It was a business matter. Sherri had a good head for business, and Steve apparently took no offense at the suit.

  When Jim Taylor, Mike Faddis, and Greg Mains came aboard the Sherer case, one of the things that bothered them the most was how soon Jami had been virtually swept under the rug. Her assets were under her mother-in-law's supervision, Steve was giving her clothing away to anyone who wanted it, and her child's permanent placement was under contention long before it was time. For Steve and some members of his family, it was like "Jami's gone, let's get on with our lives with as little fuss as possible."

  Sherri had apparently always had a very tight mother-child bond with her oldest child. Whatever Steve did, she backed him up, although she didn't count on him to take care of her house in Mill Creek. Despite his protestations that he had been there on September 30, 1990, to mail packages, leave a mortgage check and generally oversee things, Faddis and Mains learned that it was invariably her daughters, Saundra and Laura, who were given keys to their mother's house in Mill Creek.

  There had apparently been two incidents where Steve got inside the Schielkes' home when they were out of town, but it hadn't been with a key. The front door of the Mill Creek house was flanked by narrow panels of glass. Once Sherri came home to find shards and sprinkles of glass in the foyer, although the window itself had been repaired. The detectives learned there had also been a second broken window, one that was repaired so neatly that even Sherri never realized it.

  Mains and Faddis discovered that on the Sunday Jami disappeared, Steve did not have a key to Sherri and Wally's house in Mill Creek. The only way he could have gotten in was to shatter the glass panels again. The Redmond detectives didn't hear this from Sherri; she was very defensive about Steve.

  Lieutenant Jim Taylor suggested that Mike Faddis and Greg Mains look into David Sherer's alleged sui cide in Palm Desert. At first, the Riverside County Sheriff's Office couldn't locate any records of the incident. Officially, it might never have happened; there was no file on it in the sheriff's office. Finally, they found a death certificate and a two-page report from a Riverside County coroner's deputy. It said, of course, that the elder Sherer had been alone and depressed on that Thanksgiving Day, and that Sherri Sherer had flown down there and discovered her estranged husband's body.

  Judy Hagel told the two detectives that she had always wondered about David Sherer's death, although it had happened a few years before Jami met Steve. She said that Steve had explained it to Jami, who in turn told Judy: "She said Steve told her he was living down there with his dad— to help cheer him up," Judy recalled. "The night David Sherer died, Steve said he told his father he was going out for the evening. And when he came home, he was the one who found the body. The only reason I know that is because Steve confided in Jami. I don't believe he ever thought she would tell me."

  When Jami told her mother about this entirely different version of the elder Sherer's death, Judy wondered why on earth Steve would have been down there living with David. She knew from a number of sources that Steve had never gotten along with his father, and Steve had never been the type to rush to anyone's rescue to cheer them up.

  Indeed, the detectives learned that Steve told as many versions of how his father had committed suicide as he did about Jami's disappearance. Maybe he was simply a pathological liar; maybe he had other reasons for clouding the details of both incidents.

  Mains and Faddis learned that Sherri Sherer had re married in 1984, less than a year after her first husband died. Her second marriage— to Jack Johnson— lasted only until 1985, but they remained good friends. Greg Mains found that Johnson still lived in Mill Creek, not far from Sherri. Johnson told Mains that David Sherer had been a difficult man to live with— "with a very bad temper, a drunk." He said flatly that Steve and his father had never gotten along. "Steve had a bad temper just like his dad, David, did," Johnson said. "David Sherer was an animal when he was drunk, and Steve is just like him."

  Johnson characterized his ex-wife, Sherri, as a "very moral and upstanding person," and told Mains he was friendly with her third husband, Wally Schielke. The men even occasionally golfed together.

  Johnson was well acquainted with Jami Sherer, and he was adamant that he knew of no reason why she would disappear.

  "Would she ever abandon her son or quit her job and leave without a trace?" Mains asked.

  "Jamie would never leave Chris."

  "Would she have committed suicide?"

  "No way!"

  "Why do you think Jami Sherer disappeared?"

  "Oh, I believe Steve killed her," Johnson said, almost casually, as if it was a foregone conclusion. He said he suspected that Wally Schielke felt the same way.

  Anyone who had seen an example of Steve's temper had come to suspect him in Jami's disappearance.

  * * *

  Although Steve took various jobs from time to time, he seemed to expect a fortune to drop into his lap one day, if not from his gambling then from one of his scams. "He was always on the phone or the computer," Judy Hagel commented. "He always had some big deal going."

  But in the early nineties, none of Steve's scams seemed to net him much. He sold posters from a sports company he worked for— but he kept the money. One co-worker said, "He was basically scamming under the books. And there was something with snowboards. He was just a scamming ki
nd of a person. Mostly scamming in, like, money and drugs and stuff, because I'd do my share of drugs with him. He did his share of drugs with me. And at the same time, what he was doing was trying to get me involved in it so he didn't have to pay for all of it. You know what I mean?"

  After the house on Education Hill was sold, Steve lived in a number of places. He still traveled between Seattle, California, and Arizona, almost always staying in property that his mother owned. Sherri Schielke had sold the country club house where her first husband had died and had bought a more secluded ranch near Palm Springs.

  She also had a luxurious condominium in Scottsdale, Arizona, where Steve lived much of the time. Neighbors there didn't see much of Steve, but some of them told Mains and Faddis how chagrined they were when their morning papers began to disappear. Getting up early to play detective, one woman discovered that Steve was tiptoeing out each morning to steal a morning paper before his neighbor could pick it up. She laughed as she told them that the paper thief was always careful to vary his pattern, so that he didn't steal the same condo's paper too many times in a week.