I don't know if drugs were involved but there was one person questioned that swore Sherrill was heavily involved in cocaine... even named the guy she got it from and he was brought in to take a lie detector test, which he passed.
Like many, I always find myself coming back to this case over the years. I lived through the town experience here in Springfield and I still find myself driving around thinking about places they might be.. even still checking wooded areas and such. Like many, I have a lot of personal theories as to what happened from talking to people who were involved and just collecting information over the years. I'm still inspired to figure it out... all the more, every time I see Janice on TV. It genuinely breaks my heart to know the pain she's had to deal for such a long time.
So this if my first post here. One thing I'll mention because I never see it mentioned on forums and I've always felt the answer seemed obvious. How did the perp get in at around 3am?
The light cover was broke on the same night but the light still functional. Obviously, this had to play into what happened. So.. If you're outside the door of these 3 at around 3am trying to figure out how to get in, knocking isn't going to work, right? You need something to make them curious. You can't run to one of their cars and do something there or you risk one of them seeing you run across the yard, since the cars are in view out the window. Knocking both the light and cover out with a big sound would be a bad option because it would have made them instantly scared. I doubt they would have opened the door... probably called 911 right away because "somebody's out there and they've knocked out the light!", but if you unscrew the globe and drop it while ducking down out of sight? You create a sense of curiosity... a little fear too, no doubt.. but the girls are inside asking "what was that? Did something fall?" They try to look out the window and the light is still on which makes them feel a little better. They wait a bit and don't hear/see anything else. Their cars seem undisturbed. "What the heck was that?!"
I don't think the original door had windows (the remodel shows it does) so they couldn't see anything that was happening on the porch (but regardless he could have ducked below out of sight to the side of the door). He waits while their curiosity gets the best of them, probably reassuring each other that something must have fallen off the house or something... and they slowly crack the door to take a look.. and then he (or "they" but I still feel it was a single person) simply pushes it on open, only needing to defeat the strength of one woman who wasn't ready for someone to push their way in. The other 2 are likely standing there in shock while there's now a gun pointed at all 3.
Years ago, I heard the glass was swept from the middle of the porch and people kept talking about how odd that seemed in this case. That makes this scenario even more likely.. and, it gives us a look into the perp. He is calm and cool, comfortable in the shadows of someone's home in the middle of the night, even before committing a crime of this magnitude. I don't know about you but if this is my first time doing something like this, my heart would be beating so fast I couldn't think. I would never be able to take my time and unscrew a globe on a porch to make this happen, or even be calm enough to think up something that clever at that point. He was experienced - maybe even enjoying this a little bit. Sounds a bit psychopathic and like someone who has seen the inside of a prison before because he wasn't scared or very nervous at all. It also means he knew who was in there.. 3 women that he knew he could over-power. He must have either followed one of them or been waiting - but he was fully aware and had no qualms about taking control of the situation.
Anyway.. I'll catch up with the rest of this thread this weekend to see if I've missed anything I haven't heard before. I'm only on page 10 so have some reading to do...
