by Ann Rule
There was a suitcase and the jury would see "items in the suitcase that are all that is left of the life of Jami Sherer."
Sherer, Brenneman pointed out, didn't participate in the search for his missing wife, began dating other women two weeks after she vanished, cashed in her stock options, and spent her vacation and sick-leave pay.
"Jami Sherer vanished without a trace," Brenneman said. "She left behind a loving family. She left behind her friends. She left behind all her worldly possessions. And she left behind her most precious possession of all, her two-year-old son, Chris."
Steve Sherer rested his head on his hand, and shook his head from time to time as Brenneman spoke. Other than that, he showed no emotion at all.
Pete Mair, a onetime football star, rose to give the defense's opening statement, favoring knees damaged by his gridiron days. His attitude was deprecating, and he stopped just short of being amused that the state would bring such a "flimsy" case into court.
Mair didn't deny that his client's marriage had been stormy and that he had once pulled out a clump of Jami Sherer's hair during an argument. "You may not like him," Mair told the jurors, "but proving a first-degree murder case is a big jump. At the end of this case, we'll be where we were in 1990— with an unsolved mystery, as unpleasant as it is."
Mair said there was not even conclusive evidence that Jami was dead, although he allowed that she probably was. "Proof," he reminded the jurors, "has to be beyond a reasonable doubt."
Mair characterized Steve Sherer as an innocent widower being falsely accused, even badgered, by detectives whose investigation was based on the recent memories of a cast of shady characters, one of whom might even be the real killer.
And it was certainly true enough that the prosecution's roster of witnesses contained characters whose own histories were not stellar. Brenneman, Corscadden, and Richardson knew that. But Steve Sherer was a man whose life revolved around drugs and sex, and he interacted with people with similar interests.
The previous Halloween, Steve had sent his son Chris a card from jail, perhaps the most honest communication he ever had with his son: "You have my bad blood in you. Don't do drugs and alcohol. They've ruined my life.… But you have your mother's blood, too. I'll be watching you."
Lew Adams took the stand on May 11. He was one of the witnesses the gallery was most curious about, the man who had spent the last night of Jami Sherer's life with her on that Saturday, September 29, 1990, at the Crest Motel. He was thin and tightly wired, wearing a long-sleeved silk shirt with a bright pattern. He had dark circles under his eyes.
As Marilyn Brenneman questioned him, Adams almost vibrated with tension.
"When did you learn that Jami Sherer was missing?"
"Early on Monday morning. I was sleeping, and my mother woke me up and said Jami was missing, and then she said, 'What's going on? Who is this Jami?' "
Lew Adams admitted that he had spent Saturday, September 29, with Jami. "I had no intentions toward her. She was beautiful— a special lady. We both had problems in our marriages."
Tears streamed down Adams's face and choked his voice as he berated himself, still, for letting Jami go home to an angry husband.
Mair grilled Adams hard, but the witness insisted he would never hurt a woman. Yes, he'd fought once with his wife, and they'd thrown food at each other. Yes, he had dealt drugs and used drugs.
Lew Adams's ex-wife took the stand. She recalled that fight. It was in September 1997. Lew had kicked at her and pushed her down, even smeared his lunch in her face, but she had spit in it, she admitted.
The defense maintained that Dru Adams had told police that Lew told her during that fight, "I've killed before. I can kill again." Dru, who had known Lew longer than anybody, said that "he wouldn't have the guts to hurt anyone. If he did have the guts to hurt anyone, he would have hurt me— and I'm still here."
It was obvious that Dru Adams no longer cared for Lew, but just as obvious that she hadn't left him because he was violent or abusive. She was embarrassed to have been dragged into the trial, and she left the courtroom hurriedly.
The prosecution called a number of tiny, attractive young blondes who had been involved with Steve and had left the relationships after being abused. Bettina Rauschberg hadn't seen Steve in years, but her fear of him was palpable as she entered the courtroom and took the stand, a position that forced her to face him. She described in detail her hospitalizations and the injuries she had suffered at Steve Sherer's hands.
One witness came as a complete surprise to the prosecution and the Redmond investigators. Her name was Connie Duncan.* In May 2000 she was twenty-five years old, but when she met Steve in 1991, she had been sixteen. She had called Marilyn Brenneman when Steve Sherer's trial was well under way.
"I happened to be home that day," Connie said. "My daughter was sick, so I had to stay home with her. The news was on and I wasn't even paying that close attention. And then I saw the courtroom, and I saw Steve. I didn't get to hear exactly what was going on because my daughter wouldn't stop talking to me. [But] I knew he was on trial for murder."
Connie worked for the state of Washington as a financial service specialist. She coached small children in gymnastics and soccer in her spare time.
Connie Duncan explained to Marilyn Brenneman that she had once dated Steve Sherer and remembered a long-ago nightmare trip to California with him. As she listened, Brenneman realized that this was the witness who would fill in a very important chink in the prosecution's case.
It was May 15 when Connie Duncan walked forward to be sworn in. It must have been a shock for Steve to see her again, but he maintained his compo sure as he had done for most of the trial, his usual expression half-bland and half-glowering. Only rarely had jurors seen the icy threat in his eyes as he stared hard at a prosecution witness.
Connie Duncan fit the pattern; she was slender and softly pretty with dark blond hair. She looked remarkably like the huge Missing poster of Jami Sherer that had been propped up against the court clerk's desk during the prosecution's case.
Brenneman stood far back from her witness, near the alternate jurors' box, as she often did. She was not a prosecutor who got in witnesses' faces. "Could you tell us when you first met Mr. Sherer?" Marilyn Brenneman asked.
"I met him at Lake Chelan in August of 1991."
"How old were you?"
"Sixteen, seventeen years old."
The witness explained that she and her girlfriend had met Steve at a hamburger stand in the small town. He would have been thirty at that time, and he had charmed the teenagers. "We ended up staying at his mother's cabin.… We had planned on camping."
"How long do you think you stayed at the house with Mr. Sherer and his friends?" Brenneman asked.
"A couple of days."
"What was your relationship with Mr. Sherer in that couple of days?"
"It was an intimate relationship." Connie explained that she had dated Steve Sherer for a few months after that.
"Do you recall meeting Mr. Sherer in Seattle during those few months?"
"I went up to his house in Redmond that he had bought with Jami."
"When did you first hear about Jami Sherer?"
"It was after some time. It could have been a few weeks. At first I heard a different story than what I heard later."
"Tell me what you first heard."
"He was telling me about a situation where Jami was having sex with another guy, and he was watching. And he told me that a bigger, more powerful man had taken Jami away from him."
Connie explained that she had been spending the weekend with Steve at the time.
"Did he provide alcohol for you?"
"He always did."
"How about drugs?"
"Not at that point. I think that came later."
Connie testified that she had opened Steve's glove compartment and found a stack of flyers with a picture of Jami and her son on it. "One thing I remember is that he made the comment that it was a dum
b picture because people thought that his son was missing also."
"Did you have further conversation?"
"He did fill me in a little bit on the disappearance. He said she went to Taco Bell or Taco Time and she disappeared, no trace after that. He stated they found her car later, abandoned."
Connie said that Steve drove past the Taco Time and showed it to her.
"In your conversations with the defendant about his ex-wife, did he ever show you any items of hers?" Brenneman asked.
"He had me try on a black skirt. At the time, I was very small. Obviously, after having a child, I am not anymore. But I remember it was snug."
"What size were you wearing then?"
"Between a three and a five. I would bounce back and forth between a hundred pounds to a hundred and five."
"And how tall are you?"
"Five-four."
Marilyn Brenneman showed Connie Jami's tiny black leather miniskirt, which they had found in the blue suitcase. "Do you recognize this?"
"Yes, I do. He actually bought me one that was very similar. Mine was suede." Connie Duncan testified that Steve kept the blue suitcase under his bed and that he pulled it out to get the skirt.
"Were there any other items in there?"
"I remember a dress that he said Jami had worn on some special occasion. I thought he also had me try on a jean shirt."
Connie recalled also that he had put a necklace around her neck. "He pulled it out of his closet. He had a safe in the closet."
"What was your response to putting these items on?"
"At first, I didn't think much about it. I was sixteen. I thought I was invincible. I did have a friend with me. She was sitting in the living room and I remember her remarks were something along the line of 'That's gross that you have got her clothes on.' I went and took them off."
"Did you have any further conversations with the defendant in the house about things that happened between him and Jami?"
"There is a spot by the stairs at the very top of the stairs where the kitchen is. There is a wall right here" —Connie pointed to the floor plan of the house on Education Hill— "and then a little wall right there, and the walkway. He told me he had gotten into an argument, fight, with Jami. And I don't know how he did it, but he had given her a bloody nose. I don't know if he punched her or if he was trying to restrain her or elbowed her. He said he didn't mean to do it, but that he was sorry he did it, but that it had happened."
From her testimony, it was clear that Steve had confided many things to Connie Duncan, a thirty-year-old man telling secrets to a high school junior. He told her about the insurance scam in California and how he had taken things from his house and pretended they were stolen.
"I think he did it while [Jami] was at work. But anyway, one of the things he said was that with the [insurance] money he got her a boob job."
"Did you ever go on a trip with the defendant?" Marilyn Brenneman asked.
"There was one to Canada, and then there was one to California where he drove his truck down.… We stayed at a motel.
"He asked if he could go out with some of his friends because I wasn't twenty-one at the time. And I said, 'Sure.' And he was supposed to be back that night. And he never showed up. He never showed up. He finally showed up late the next afternoon, and he had been up the whole night. He was higher than a kite. He was very agitated, yelling at me. He wanted to go to sleep.
"When his mom came in, his attitude changed. He was totally nice, cordial. And we went to Disneyland with his mother and his son. And as we were getting on the little trolly train to go to Disneyland, Chris called me Mommy."
Marilyn Brennaman had asked Connie Duncan to bring a photograph of herself as she looked in 1991. Brenneman offered it as evidence that Connie had been a dead ringer for Jami. Little Chris Sherer had been confused. He continued to call Connie Mommy throughout their Disneyland trip. Steve didn't correct him, but Sherri Schielke was upset. "Steve's mom jumped in right away," Connie testified, "to say, 'No, she is just a nice young lady.' "
By the end of the day, Steve had finally said, "No, Chris, she is not your mom."
Connie told the jurors that Steve had suggested some bizarre sexual arrangements. "He asked if one of my fantasies was to have two guys. He said that he had a friend that could fulfill it. I shot that down. I was sixteen, seventeen— that was inconceivable to me. And then he suggested about having sex with another woman while he watched. And I shot that one down too."
The trip to California only got worse. Steve was so "agitated," Connie testified, that she had to drive his truck home.
"When you got back, what was your state of mind as far as being with the defendant any longer?"
"I never wanted to see the man ever again. This is probably the first time I have seen him since."
Pete Mair cross-examined Connie. She admitted that she could have been off on the year of the California trip. It could have happened in 1993 rather than 1992. She also admitted that she drank alcohol before she met Steve; he hadn't introduced her to drinking.
But Connie Duncan was positive about her memory of Steve's telling her that Jami got a bloody nose at the top of the stairs in the Redmond house while she was fighting with Steve. The prosecution team and the Redmond detectives had believed all along that Jami Sherer died in her own home as she attempted to leave Steve for good. Connie Duncan wasn't the only witness who had heard that version of an injury to Jami.
"When did that statement occur?" Mair asked. "What year?"
"Well, it must have been 1991."
"What month?"
"I had on shorts. It must have been August— September, perhaps."
* * *
Steve had joined a number of dating services. A representative of Great Expectations explained that their company simply allowed "members to date more successfully." Jana Cheney testified that people came into their offices for a free consultation. If they could prove they were single and ready to date, they paid a fee.
"Steve Sherer was one of our lifetime members," she explained. When he joined in July 1991, he filled out the standard application form and put his marital status down as "separated." In January 1995 he changed that to "widowed" and wrote "widowed" again in August of the same year. Steve had no paucity of women. His trouble appeared to be holding on to them.
* * *
Ron Coates met Steve Sherer in a Bellevue nightclub in 1991, less than a year after Jami vanished. They drank together and seemed to hit it off, Coates testified. Coates and his girlfriend, Victoria, ended the evening by following Steve and his date to his home after the bar closed. Steve showed Ron his photo album, and Coates commented how attractive Jami was. Steve told him she had simply disappeared the year before.
"Do you miss her?" Coates asked.
"No, she was going to leave me anyway," Steve answered.
As the liquor flowed, the group settled in for the night at Steve's house. His tongue loosened as he talked with Ron Coates. As Victoria had told police, Coates began to suspect that Steve had something to do with his wife's disappearance. Staring into his glass, Steve talked on and on.
"He told me that he flew off the handle just before his wife disappeared," Coates testified. "He told me they'd gotten into an argument and that things got out of hand. He said he was sorry and that he shouldn't have done that. She lashed out at him, and he gave her a bloody nose."
Standing to demonstrate for the jury, Coates drew back his fist and feigned a blow to within an inch of Marilyn Brenneman's face. "He went 'Boom' and caused her nose to be hit, and it proceeded to bleed.
"It was kind of like a weight lifted off his shoulders, like he wanted me to know," Coates testified. "He indicated he was the prime suspect."
But Steve Sherer also said that the Redmond police were "dumb. He said they could never prove anything, basically."
To the prosecution's frustration, Ron Coates had not asked for many details. "I really didn't want to know much more than that, to tell you
the truth."
Despite what was tantamount to a confession to the murder of his wife, Steve was apparently such good company that he and Coates had kept a friendship going. They went water-skiing on Lake Washington in Steve's boat the next day. Steve's mind had still been on dark subjects. He remarked to Coates that if anyone drowned in Lake Sammamish, "they would never find her body because the water was too murky."
And then Steve had crumpled his beer can and tossed it into the lake and said, " 'That's a good place for your trash,' " Coates testified.
The jurors looked interested in Coates; his story of a bloody fight between Jami and Steve was remarkably like the testimony given by Connie Duncan.
