January 22, 2025 • 44 mins
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, talks with Dawn Smith Jordan about the tragic loss of her sister, Shari Smith. Sheryl and Dawn discuss Dawn’s journey through unimaginable loss, resilience, and faith. Dawn recounts the horrific events surrounding the tragic abduction and murder of her 17-year-old sister, Shari Smith, in 1985. Ultimately, Dawn gives insight on how her and her family used Shari’s letter to find strength in faith and take each day given as a sign of purpose to live to the fullest, even after the darkest and most unimaginable event.
17-year-old Shari Faye Smith was kidnapped in broad daylight from outside her family's Red Bank home in May 1985. Less than two weeks later, on June 14, the abductor snatched a 9-year-old girl from outside her family's mobile home in Richland County and later killed her.
Dawn Smith Jordan is a speaker, author, singer, and former Miss South Carolina. She is a simple southern woman who is passionate about sharing the message of hope God has written into her life to a world desperate to hear. She considers every opportunity a divine appointment, from the smallest country congregation to the largest auditorium. She uses her platform to share a message of hope and faith, inspiring audiences with her family’s story of resilience.
Learn more about Dawn’s work at her website and on IG @dawndsj
Show Notes:
- (0:00) Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum
- (0:10) Sheryl introduces Dawn Smith Jordan to the show
- (1:00) Dawn's pageant experience
- (3:30) The tragic event - Shari's abduction
- (7:00) Dawn discusses the efforts of law enforcement, the FBI, and profiling pioneer John Douglas
- (16:00) The chilling phone calls
- (20:00) ”We couldn't really even grieve the loss of Shari because we were so afraid of where he was, what was he doing, when we knew he was quite capable of doing this to more people.”
- (24:00) Shari’s last will and testament
- (27:00) The impact of Shari’s last words
- (33:00) The impact of forgiveness
- (35:30) Living beyond the tragedy
- (39:00) “If you ain’t dead, God ain’t done.”
- (42:00) Final thoughts
- (43:44) ”Some good will come of this.” -Shari Smith
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review!
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Y'all tonight, I am so honored. I have a former
Miss South Carolina, second runner up to Miss America. She's
a singer, she's an author, she's a mother. Now this
might not sound like the average Zone seven topic that
just hang on, there's a twist. Tonight We're going to
(00:31):
talk about bravery, overcoming just tremendous heartbreak and forgiveness. It's
a new year, and y'all are about to be uplifted. Honey, y'all,
please welcome down Smith Jordan to Zone seven. Dawn, Thank
(00:51):
you so much. Happy new Year, and welcome to Zone seven.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Thank you, Cheryl, Happy new year, and thank you for
having me.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I could hardly sleep with just the excitement of being
able to talk to you and just you know, tell
your story and again uplift people in this new year.
But first things first, do you still wear your crown?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Not what?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something, child.
I would wear it to waffle house, Walmart, to the
family re union. I'd let people know. I would let
them know every day. I would No.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
I tell you what I do because I have a
private piano and voice studio, and so when I work
with contestants, that are competing. I let them put it
on and take a picture with it. But that crown
has not been on my head since nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well, I will just say for the record, it would
be on my sugar. But that's wonderful, And you know,
there's so much that goes into that. I guess it
was thirty years ago. I went to Columbus Georgia and
watched the Miss Georgia paget. I was k noted out.
I had no idea what really went all into it.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
You know, it's a lot. It was a lot. It
is a lot, but especially in this day and age,
it's so much more. I mean back in nineteen eighty six,
oh my goodness. I mean we were just normal girls
and I really never envisioned I would be Miss South
Carolina and second runner up to Miss America. I was
just a college student. And now girls have they have trainers,
(02:46):
they have hair and makeup, they have interview coaches. I
was just a normal girl who showed up and happened
to win, and it was by the grace of God.
But you know, Miss America is a lot different these days,
and they have platforms and issues and so but yeah,
I mean, and then when I won, I mean, that
(03:08):
was my full time job that year. I did three
hundred I did three hundred and fifty appearances in one year,
and that was incredible, and that was really the platform
by which God opened the doors for me to do
what I do today. So it was just I think,
meant to be obviously, and here I am, all these
(03:28):
years later, so grateful for that opportunity and just that
huge platform to be able to begin the ministry to
which I've been doing all these years later.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Well let's talk about what you're doing now, but I
want to start kind of for me where your ministry
really started. And that's May thirty first, nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I was a rising senior at Columbia College. I was
majoring in vocal performance. My sister, Sherry was seven, our
brother Robert was fifteen, and Sherry was two days from
high school graduation and in the fall she was planning
to come to Columby College to study music as well.
(04:12):
So we were so excited, and I was thinking I
was on Broadway. I was a singer dancer at a
theme park, Cara Wins in Charlotte. So I had hit
the big time and that was my summer job, and
so the show was going to open on June the first.
(04:32):
So May thirty first, I had gone out shopping for
Sherry's graduation present. And we are a big animal loving family.
My dog is sleeping at my feet right now, My
cat's rooming around on the kitchen calendars. And we I
had hamsters in college because I wanted a pet. So
I had gotten Erry a hamster for her graduation gift
(04:54):
to take to the dorm. And I came in from
shopping and my roommate said, dog, you need to call
your mom back. She said Sheery has been abducted. And
in that instant I couldn't even understand, like it just didn't.
I couldn't rep I couldn't comprehend abducted. What has abducted me?
(05:15):
I don't even I can't compute that. And of course
I knew what that word meant, but at the time
I was like, wait, what you didn't say abducted. And
so sure enough I called my mom and she said,
a patrolman is coming to your apartment. He'll be there
in a few minutes. Pack a bag, you're coming home.
(05:37):
And at twenty one years of age, I just remember
thinking this is ridiculous. Sheery has not been taken, She's
just gone off somewhere with her friends. I mean this,
I'm going to miss the opening of my show and
get home and everything's going to be normal. And at
twenty one, you just don't even begin to imagine your
sister has actually been kidnapped.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Well, I think again. I mean, obviously you knew what
the word meant, but trying to tag that word with
your sister, there's no way that you could let your
mind go there. No.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And I remember saying my roommate's name was Jody. I said, Jody,
what are you even talking about? What are you saying?
And she said, just call your mom. And you know,
especially back in nineteen eighty five, that just did not happen.
And we lived out in the country in Lexington, South Carolina.
(06:36):
We were in the middle of a field was where
our house was of twenty acres. We had no neighbors.
We were surrounded by woods. My dad had moved us
out to the country because he wanted us to have
a simpler life. And your dad was home, Yeah, Dad,
Mom were home because Dad's office was in our house.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
This was a Friday afternoon Broad daylight, y'all family home, and.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Dad looked out the window and here, Mom, I think
Mom saw Cherry's car at the top of the driveway
and she just yelled, Cherry's home. And then it was
just strange because she didn't come down the driveway. Her
car just sat there. And so something in my dad's
gut just said, something is wrong. And so when your
(07:26):
driveway is seven hundred and fifty feet from the road,
you don't walk to the mailbox in an emergency. So
he grabbed his keys and he raced up the driveway
and when he got there, Cherry's car door was open,
the engine was still running, her purse was in the
(07:47):
passenger seat, and there was no sign of sha So.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
By the time you get home, there's a full man hunt.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yes, yes, we pulled you know. That was That was
the most odd, uncomfortable ride from Charlotte, North Carolina to Lexington,
South Carolina. And I just, I mean, I just remember it.
It's almost like it was another lifetime. But then it's
almost like it was just yesterday, and I just remember
(08:18):
being in the back seat going this is so stupid.
Cherry is shopping. Cherry's at her friend's house, Cherry is
somewhere else. There's no way she's been taken. And I'll
never forget the minute we turned into my driveway and
I saw the yard and the field full of sheriff
(08:45):
Department cars, police, and then in that instant, I knew,
oh my gosh, this is not a mistake. This is real.
This is really happening. And I remember walking in the door,
and the minute I saw my mom's face, I knew.
I just knew, oh my gosh, this is real because
(09:05):
I'd never seen an expression on her face like the
one that she had, just horror, disbelief, pain like you've
never I'd never seen. And there were my family members,
my aunts had come, people from our church were in
our house, and it was it was just so surreal, Cheryl,
(09:27):
because I just remember going, I don't even know what's happening.
This is like a bad dream. I'm gonna wake up.
This cannot be real. And of course it was real.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
To law enforcement's credit, there's so many things that I
admire that they did. Number one, going and picking you up.
Number Two, immediately believing that there was something wrong, not
just oh she'll show back up, she's with a friend,
you know, whatever, and then the amount of people they
(10:00):
put on it immediately from different agencies. So the scene
that you're painting for me is just their action with
stellar in that moment.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
They were amazing. Law enforcement was amazing from the beginning.
And I never really realized it until I became an
adult and had children of my own and a family
of my own and realized those people literally put their
lives on hold for my family and families like my family.
(10:36):
They basically stayed with us. Sheriff Mets of Lexington stayed
with us his deputies. So yes, they really were incredible
to my family.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Well, then the other thing he did that I thought
was remarkable is he called John Douglas. I am certain
everybody knows who he is. That's listening to his own seven.
But John Douglas original mind hunter. He established the behavioral
unit at the FBI. So he came to lexingon South
Carolina to develop the profile of this killer.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yes, and profiling was a brand new science, and he
came and he had this whole profile put together of
this person that he believed to have taken Cherry. And
it was remarkable at how exact he was.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
He was, He was on the money spot on.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Thank God for that, for that man, for that brand
new science, for my family's sake, and for all those
following and.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
In nineteen eighty five, I mean, he was unknown. This
ability was not something that people utilized. They didn't know
about it. In Atlanta, we used it with the miss
and Murdered Children, which was seventy nine to eighty one.
But even then we didn't really understand it. We didn't
understand how we could do it. So when your case
(12:10):
in eighty five, when you're talking about, oh, he'll probably
live with his parents, he's a white male, he's going
to be in his thirties, he's going to probably have
a blue collar job. I mean, party, y'all might have
been like, Okay, this is kind of hocus pocus John,
right right, but he was spot on. Now I want
to talk about your mama for a minute again, because
(12:33):
I cannot, as a mama ever think about what happened
next in this case without thinking to her. Because here
you have a child that has been kidnapped. John Douglas
shows up at your house and wants your other baby
to do something. Tell everybody what John Douglas asked you
(12:56):
to do.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Well, first of all, my mother was amazing because when
this person called our home for the very first time,
it was a man, and he asked to speak to
my mother. And so it was in the wee hours
of the morning and we were all groggy. We're all
in mom and Dad's bed, Robert, Dad, Mom, and me.
(13:18):
I'm trying to get some rest. And this phone call
comes in the middle of the night and this person says,
I want to speak to miss Smith. And so Mom
answered the phone and he began to say, this is
what Sherry was wearing. She was at the mailbox. I
took her at gunpoint and Mom hung up the phone
(13:40):
and she said, oh my god, that man has Sherry.
And so he didn't. And the profile so panned out
because he would not speak to a man. He wanted
to speak to Mom. He wanted to be in control,
and so Mom took that call. She took another call,
and then of course she became so upset and she
(14:03):
screamed into the phone, please do not kill my daughter.
And so at that point, John Douglas said, I'm gonna
need Dawn to take the phone calls. Now, I was
twenty one years old, and I remember the lady that
took me up in my bedroom. Her name was Lydia Glover.
(14:24):
I still see her face to this day. And she said,
we're going to need to ask you to do something.
She said, this man needs to feel like he's in control,
and he needs to feel like you care about him.
And she told me all these things, and she said,
we're going to need you to answer the phone. Your
mom is too upset. She really doesn't need to be
(14:46):
doing this. Can you do it? And I remember that
day I didn't bad an. I I said absolutely, because
the point was we want you to keep him on
the phone as long as possible. You need to be paid,
you need to be kind, You need to keep them
on the phone. You need to lead the conversation and
hopefully the calls will be traced and we will get
(15:09):
Sherry back. And so at that point I didn't think
with my emotions. I thought with my Okay, this is
something I can do to help get my sister back,
because it's the most helpless feeling to be sitting there
knowing your sister is somewhere and there's nothing you can
do to find her. But all of a sudden I
(15:32):
could at least take these phone calls. And so I did.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That love that you had for your sister was beyond bravery,
It was beyond anything. I don't even know why. I
can't put into words what I'm feeling, but you know
what I'm saying. You would do anything for her, even
if it meant you were the lure of this killer.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Well, at that point, you know, everything stopped, Our lives
completely stopped. And I'm not one to just sit around.
I'm always busy doing something, and that just made, you know,
it just made me feel like, if this is the
one thing I can do, I don't even see myself
as brave. We were desperate, We were so intent on
(16:22):
finding Sherry that it was just what I could do
one thing.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So you did take that call and he said something
to you so horrifying. It just it gives me chills
right now down my spine that you would be on
this call and this killer would say to you, God
wants you to join Cherry.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yes. So he had called our home eight different times
during a month long investigation that is still to this
day the largest man hunt South Carolina has ever seen,
and so eight different phone calls where Mom answered the
first few, then I answered with her, and then I
began to take them on my own. But he had called,
(17:07):
and he had said different things in the phone calls,
cruelly taunting our family. He had called saying a letter
would be coming from Sherry. That proved to be true.
On the fifth day he called, he read some directions
that while he had led us to believe for five
days that Sherry was alive, he had actually killed her
(17:29):
the very first night, and he had left her body
outside and in South Carolina, that he'd index that summer
was well over one hundred and ten degrees and so
because he left her outside, all forensic evidence was destroyed.
Really would never know what actually was the cause of death, definitively.
(17:50):
But he read those directions, the authorities followed them, they
found her body, and then you know, so at this point,
I'm thinking, Okay, all this time he's been leading us
to believe she was alive. We were holding on to
hope that she was because if you tell me something,
I'm going to believe you. And so then to find
(18:10):
out she's actually been dead all these days that we've
been searching, that we've been on the phone with him,
that we've been praying, pleading with God. People have been
out in the woods in the heat, searching for Sherry,
and all the while she was already dead, and so
we kept calling, he kept calling, And then it was
the last phone call after we'd basically been prisoners in
(18:33):
our own home for that whole month, and he did
say he said, don did you know that God wants
you to join shery And it's just a matter of time.
And I remember him saying something to the effect this month,
next month, this year, next year, but you can be
sure I will get you too, And I remember thinking, Okay,
(18:55):
our lives have already been on hold for an entire month,
and these law enforcement officers are going to have to
go back to their own families and their whole own lives.
This man can get me, will he get me? Am
I going to live the rest of my life in
fear of when he's going to do to me what
(19:16):
he did to my sister. It was It was a
horrifying phone call to receive.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
No, it is horrifying and in some awful way accurate.
There's no way they can continue to protect you every
single day. You do eventually have to leave your house.
And you didn't know who this person was. You didn't
still know who you were looking for.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yes, exactly. And also the reason that we absolutely knew
he could do it was not only had he taken
Cherry's life, he had taken a nine year old little
girl's life and called and had given and had given
me directions to her body as well. And so we
couldn't really even grieve the loss of because we were
(20:01):
so afraid of where he was, what was he doing
when we knew he was quite capable of doing this
to more people.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
And John Douglass had already said he believed he was local. Well,
I believe he was driving by your house. I think
that's why he said that about they can't continue to
protect you. And then when he did kidnap and murder
again only nine.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yes, she was nine years old, Deborah may Helmick from
her front yard where she was playing with her little brother,
same situation. Her dad was in the house and looked
out the window and he killed that nine year old
little girl and just senseless and sick. And so he
(20:49):
had already taken two precious lives, and we absolutely knew
he would do it again because he seemed to enjoy
the cat and mouse game. To him, it was a
game and he was in control, and so yes, I
just wondered, how long are these law enforcement officers going
to stay here and protect me? At some point, everybody's
(21:09):
going to get back to their.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Lives, that's right, especially no, when he's still out there.
And it wasn't just law enforcement. When the postmaster learned
about the letter, he went and opened up the post
office and looked for that letter himself.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yes, and it was in the It was in the
early hours of the morning, and my dad had a
post office box for his business because he worked from home,
and the letter was there in the post office, and
sure enough, it was in Sherry's writing. It was a
(21:47):
two page letter, and we were so grateful to receive
that letter from her because we read I remember thinking, well,
if she wrote this letter, she was alive to write
this letter. This is her handwriting. She's still alive, and
that gave us hope that we were grasping to.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
You're saying, letter, but can you tell people what the
title was when you opened it?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
I can. Yes. It was entitled Last Will and Testament,
and I think Sherry named it that, probably because she
was supposed to graduate on June the second, and by
this point it was. It's dated six one eighty five,
three ten am, which means he had been holding her
(22:39):
for about twelve hours. And she wrote this amazing letter
to my family that will forever be such a gift
to us because in her letter she I mean, I
just put myself in her place. She was seventeen years old.
She was sitting in her room with a man. She
didn't no. I can't even fathom being given a piece
(23:04):
of paper, a blank piece of paper, a pen, and
being told you can write a letter of farewell to
your family, and then I'm going to kill you. And
that's basically what she was facing. This is the most
amazing display of courage and bravery, as my sister sat
(23:24):
there and wrote these words. So I'll read it to you.
It says Last Will and Testament, six one eighty five,
three ten am in capital letters. I love y'all. I
love you, mommy, Daddy, Robert down and Richard and everyone
else and all other friends and relatives. I'll be with
my father now, So please please don't worry. Just remember
(23:48):
my witty personality and great special times we all shared together.
Please don't even let this ruin your lives. Just keep
living one day at a time. For Jesus good will
come out of this. My thoughts will always be with
and in you, And in parentheses, she wrote casket closed.
(24:08):
I love you all so and she underlined damn much.
Sorry Dad, I had to cuss for once. Jesus forgave
me Richard Sweeteye that was her boyfriend. I really did,
and I always will love you and treasure our special moments.
I ask one thing, though, except Jesus as your personal savior.
(24:29):
And beside that, she put smiley face. My family has
been the greatest influence of my life. Sorry about the
cruise money. Somebody please go in my place. I am
sorry if I ever disappointed you in any way. I
only wanted to make you proud of me because I've
always been proud of my family mom, Dad, Robert, and Dawn.
(24:50):
There's so much I want to say that I should
have said before. Now. I love you. I know y'all
love me and what will miss me very much. But
if y'all stick together like we always did, y'all can
do it. Please do not become harder upset. Everything works
out for the good for those that love the Lord
(25:11):
all My love always, Sharon in Prientan sies Sherry F. Smith,
and then in capital letters, she wrote, I love y'all
with all my heart, pes Nana, that was our grandmother.
I love you so much. I kind of always felt
like your favorite. You were mine. I love you a lot.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Seventeen years old, and I just think.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
It's the most amazing letter of faith over fear of
more concern for my family than herself. I think she
had come to terms with the fact that it's seventeen
years old, her life really could be ending, and I
(26:01):
think she came to peace with that, and it's just
the most amazing letter in it even all these years later,
I'm so grateful because at that point when we realized
she had been taken, I mean, I just remember and
I remember looking at my mom and I remember saying,
(26:23):
mom our lives are shattered. They're over, aren't they. And
I remember her saying, I don't know, honey, I just
don't know. But in that moment, I thought, how can
we get on with life? Cherry is gone? How do
you pick up the pieces? And how in the world
(26:45):
could she say some good will come out of this?
There could never be any good because Sherry wasn't just
my sister. She was my best friend. She was my
singing partner. I mean, when you live in the country,
your family is also they're your friends because you don't
have people. And so we had ridden horses together, we
(27:07):
had swam together, we had been best buddies together. And
I just remember thinking I'll never be able to get
on with life after this. But I took to heart
her words, just keep living one day at a time.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
And she even said, she said, don't let this make
you hard.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Don't let this ruin your lives. Absolutely believable. Don't let
this make you hard or upset. Because everything and you know,
my dad, he was a Baptist deacon and we were
raised in the South, and we were a Baptist in
church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Tuesday night, you
name it.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
We were there, like my grandmama said, every time the
doors were open.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
In time, the door were open. And my dad, my
dad said, when I was a little girl, it was
a it was a night that we were having dinner
and Daddy stood up to walk out the door and
he said that as a little girl, I said, well, Daddy,
wear you what meet? No are you going to at
church tonight? Because it was always church. But and my
(28:14):
dad was famous for this, and I cannot agree or
deny that I may have done this to my own children.
But he would tape Bible Versus on the bathroom mirror.
I guess he figured with two daughters and a son,
that was the best shot at us seeing them. And
the very scripture that Sherry included in that letter, to
(28:35):
the best of her memory, just is remarkable because she said, remember,
everything works out for the good for those that love
the Lord. Some good will come out of this, and
that's that's Romans eight twenty eight. That was the scripture
that was on the bathroom mirror at this time. And
(28:56):
that scripture says, for we know that God causes all
things work together for good for those who love Him
and are called according to His purpose. And at that time,
never in a million years could I have ever imagined
that life would ever be good again, but that God,
even God, could cause something good to come out of this,
(29:17):
because there was nothing good in this.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Well, let me just tell you about Sherry. Now, in
that moment, she had already been with this killer for
twelve hours. She wasn't treated good in those twelve hours.
But in that letter, Not only does she uplift y'all,
tells y'all, hey, I'm gonna be fine. I know where
I'm headed. It's good. She tells y'all to go on,
(29:43):
be happy, live your life. She tries to save the
soul of her boyfriend. And then my favorite part of
the whole letter, she ends being funny when she tells Grandmama,
you know I'm your fai.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Well, I'm sorry, but I thought I was Nana's favorite,
and I to say that, so I'm not. I don't
know what Cherry was talking about. But when I get
to Heaven, Cheryl, I'm gonna say, excuse me, we got
was Nana's favorite. But Sherry actually had a very rare
disease that is called diabetes incipitus. There were only two
(30:23):
children in the state of South Carolina at this time
that had it, and and so my nana always said,
will bless her heart, she's afflicted. And so that's why
Sherry was the favorite. Also. And then also I love
that she said, y'all remember my witty personality. Because as
(30:44):
a senior in high school, you know they always have
senior superlatives. Well, Sherry was the only one in her
senior class that was voted on and got two. Everybody
loved her. She loved everybody. I still have people to
this day that they will meet me where I'm seen
at the church somewhere, or I'm in the grocery store
or in the line at the post office, that say
(31:05):
you're Sherry Smith's sister. I went to school with her.
I was somebody that was bullieder. I was an outcasta
and she said to me, hey, don't sit by yourself,
come over here and say with us. I mean, she
was just that kind of person. But she was voted
most talented and wittiest, and they told her she had
to choose which one, and she chose wittiest. I would
(31:25):
have chosen most talented, but anyway, she chose wittiest. And
she was funny and she always I can remember Mom
would be so mad at us about something, and Mama
would just be on the verge of wanting to cuss
at us, and Sherry would say, Mama, just say it,
just say it. It'll make you feel better. And I
(31:48):
think that's why she passed him the lesson, because we
weren't closed to but I got that moment. She had
every right because amen, Amen, that was a moment that
called for it, but she was funny and she did
in that moment. I think so turned the focus from
herself to the ones that she loved the most, which
(32:08):
was her mom or dad, or brother, her sister, her friends,
her boyfriend, her grandmother. And what a beautiful example of
living life until it's over, taking hold of the last
moments that she said to speak like. I can't even
understand how she did it, but she did it, and
(32:28):
she spoke words of faith and hope and love and perseverance.
And she's my hero. She's the hero in my family's story.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Well, I want to talk about you real quick too,
because forgiveness that's a hard road. Because I'm going to
tell you. People think, oh, I'm going to forgive this
person that hurt me or this person that did wrong
to me, and you think it's a one step. It's not.
You've got to make your mind up that you're going
(33:04):
to forgive that person every day. And you have forgiven
her killer.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Cheryl, I will say only by the grace of God,
because I am not a forgiver on my own. Larry
Jean Bell was arrested and the very piece of evidence
that led to his capture was Sherry's letter. There was
an imprint of a phone number on her letter that
led to where he was house sitting, and he was
(33:32):
arrested and my mom and I were immediately taken to
the Lexington County Jail cell where Larry jan Bell and
the sheriff sat across from my mom and me. And
the minute he began to speak, our job was to
go there and identify the voice of the caller with
the man sitting there, to verify that this was him.
(33:55):
And the minute he began to speak, my mother looked
at him and she said, I know that you are
the man that killed my Sherry. And she said there
is nothing you can say or do that will justify
your choice. She's gone, and she said, but I'm looking
at you. I know you did it, and I don't
(34:15):
even hate you. And I remember walking out of that
room and saying to my mom, how in the world
could you say that to him? He didn't deserve it,
And I'll never forget what she said. She said, Honey,
in that moment, I didn't just see him as the
man who killed Cherry. I saw him as another mother's son.
(34:38):
And she said, in that moment, I believe God supernaturally
took care of the bitterness in my own heart. She
said there was so much pain, it was like a
physical ache in my heart. And she said there was
just no room for unforgiveness. And she said, I just
believe for me, God settled it then and there. And
(34:59):
it was not long after that I received a letter
from Larry Bell on death row. He had been sentenced
to two death sentences and he was executed years ago,
but he wrote me a letter. And it had been
two years since he took Sherry's life in Deborah Mayhelmet's life,
and he wrote me from prison, and he said that
(35:19):
someone there had come and they had shared the gospel
with him, that God so loved the world that he
gave his only son, that whoever believes in him won't perish,
but he'll have everlasting life. And he claimed in that
letter that he had asked God to forgive him. And
then he asked me the question, will you and your
family ever forgive me? And I wish I could tell
you I was like my mama, but I wasn't because
(35:42):
I thought, first of all, how dare you even ask
me that question? Because I don't hate you? I think
I'm doing pretty good, but I never wanted to hear
from that man again, justifiably so. But I remember taking
that letter and thinking, I don't hate you, dude. You're
doing better than you ever should. And I shoved it
in the bottom of a filing cabinet. And so for
(36:04):
two years I sat on that letter and I would
go speak at a church somewhere. I'd sing it a
church somewhere. If I was asked to tell my story,
I would, and somebody would always ask me, well, you
didn't talk about the man, how do you feel about him?
And sometimes somebody would be bold enough to say, have
you forgiven him? And I thought, in my mind, how
(36:25):
dare you ask me that question? But finally I came
to the place and I said, God, I know we're
supposed to forgive. My Daddy raised me to understand where
to forgive like we've been forgiven, But how in the
world do you forgive the unforgivable? Because if ever there's
anything unforgivable, this is it. And so I just had
(36:45):
to go to the Bible, and I just had to
go to scriptures that would say forgive as you've been forgiven.
And so I finally came to the place to understand
that forgiveness is a choice that we make, just like
Sheery sitting in that room chose faith over fear. I
had a choice to make, and so I sat down
(37:07):
and it was the scripture in Ephesians four thirty two.
It says be kind and compassionate to one another. What
did John Douglas tell me I had to do on
the phone calls be kind and compassionate to that So
here I was looking at the word of God, be
kind and compassionate forgiving each other, just as God through
(37:29):
Christ has also forgiven you. And so in that moment,
that is where I made the conscious decision, not a
heartbelt decision, but just like I made a conscious decision
to be kind and compassionate to this man on the
phone who was holding my sister and who later killed her,
to forgive him. And I wrote him back and I
(37:49):
just told him, dear mister Bell, I can never forget
what you've done. My life is forever changed, my sister
is no longer here. However, because of the grace I've
received from God. I want you to know I choose
to forgive you. I didn't feel a bit different I
(38:09):
didn't have fireworks going off, but I can tell you
that it was a work just like my mama said.
It was a supernatural act of God within my heart
that allowed me to go on with life, because I
do believe that saying that says you either are going
to be bitter or you're going to be better. And
(38:30):
I didn't want to be better. I didn't want to
be that girl. And you know, I still have it
all these years later. I mean, I'm telling you I
was somewhere, Oh my gosh, Oh, I was in the
line at a restaurant yesterday picking up a to go order,
(38:51):
and this lady behind me goes, you're done Smith Jordan,
aren't you? And I said, I am, and she goes,
I remember that story from all those years ago, and
so many times I have people say to me, you're
Sherry Smith's sister. You're that girl whose sister was murdered,
aren't you? And so all these years later, while I
am very proud to be Shery's sister, that's not all
(39:11):
there is to this chick, because I'm not just that
girl whose sister was murdered. Because I didn't stay there
and Sherry said, y'all keep living your lives. And that's
what we did, That's what we've done, that's what I'll
continue to do, because life is a gift. Sherry lived
hers beautifully for seventeen years, and I'll do the same.
(39:33):
One of my preachers said, if you ain't dead, God
ain't done, and Cheryl, I ain't dead. I'm getting older.
Come in, honey, I'm still here. And every day that
I'm given, it's a gift to make a difference in
somebody else's life. And I take that very seriously. And
whether I'm standing on a stage in a church, whether
(39:55):
I'm talking on a podcast with a sweet lady like you,
or whether I'm in the line at the grocery store,
I want to take that seriously to allow something good
to come in this life that I've been entrusted to
live and to live it well.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Well, you know, I have four sisters, and our mama
used to say, forgiving somebody it and for them it's
for you. Yes, yes, and you have done that beautifully.
But I got to quote you because I want people
to hear this, because I laughed so hard when I
read this your quote when you tell people get out
(40:33):
of the mire and get in the choir.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Oh listen. It was one of my favorite stories of
I was sitting on the front row of the First
Baptist Church of Wagner, South Carolina, about to give a
concert on a Sunday morning, and I heard the gentleman
behind me on the second row say to the girl
beside him, who has that? And she said, that's our
speaker singer for today. I literally want to turn around,
(40:56):
go I can hear y'all. And then I heard him say, oh, yeah,
that's that girl whose sister was murdered. And I stood
up that day and I said, you know, somebody just
said this morning, that's that girl. But that ain't all
that that is to this girl, because we either had
(41:16):
the choice to stay stuck in the mire or to
get out of the mar and get in the choir
and sing about the goodness that God still has in
our lives. And that quote came from this gentleman at
this church. I sang at this elderly man, he said, sweetheart,
you know what you remind me of. Have you ever
heard that quote? Get out of the mire and get
(41:39):
in the choir? I said no, but I'm going to
steal that because I love that, Because That's the way
I want to live my life, because every single one
of us we have those circumstances that we would never choose.
But when we choose to take God at his word
and we choose to live them to the best of
our ability, just like Sherry did every day, that is
(42:03):
when we're not stuck in the miyre anymore, but we
choose to get out of them. And the truth of
the matter is, forgiveness does not make the offense all right.
It can't be made okay, he did kill my sister,
but it makes us all right. And that is what
I have found. I am not bitter, I am better,
(42:23):
I can say, just like my mama did. While we
never would have chosen this, we are thankful to God
for the good He has brought out of this that
in nineteen eighty five we never could have imagined. But
now I can't even begin and probably won't know this
sight of Heaven all the good that did come out
of this, and so we can just be grateful.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
There ain't nothing I can add to that. Honey, Dawn.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being
with me today and talking about Sherry. And I'm going
to tell you you and I are going to get
together soon and I'm gonna wear your crayon.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Well, let me just say, Cheryl, I love your accent.
I feel like I'm with a homegirl because you know,
my accent is what it is and I have not
changed it because it's who I am and it's part
of my roots. And I love your down home humor.
I love your warmth that I feel across this call today,
(43:22):
and I just thank you for thank you for the
invitation to come and share my family's story and share
the journey of forgiveness and perseverance and taking life for
all it's worth for the glory of God. So I'm
just grateful for the privilege to be with you today, y'all.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do with a quote, some good will come of
this Cherry Smith. Y'all, it's a new year. Go out
there and do some good in Cherry's name. I'm Cheryl McCollum,
and this is Zone seven.
Y'all tonight, I am so honored. I have a former
Miss South Carolina, second runner up to Miss America. She's
a singer, she's an author, she's a mother. Now this
might not sound like the average Zone seven topic that
just hang on, there's a twist. Tonight We're going to
(00:31):
talk about bravery, overcoming just tremendous heartbreak and forgiveness. It's
a new year, and y'all are about to be uplifted. Honey, y'all,
please welcome down Smith Jordan to Zone seven. Dawn, Thank
(00:51):
you so much. Happy new Year, and welcome to Zone seven.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
Thank you, Cheryl, Happy new year, and thank you for
having me.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
I could hardly sleep with just the excitement of being
able to talk to you and just you know, tell
your story and again uplift people in this new year.
But first things first, do you still wear your crown?
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Not what?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Let me tell you something. Let me tell you something, child.
I would wear it to waffle house, Walmart, to the
family re union. I'd let people know. I would let
them know every day. I would No.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
I tell you what I do because I have a
private piano and voice studio, and so when I work
with contestants, that are competing. I let them put it
on and take a picture with it. But that crown
has not been on my head since nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Well, I will just say for the record, it would
be on my sugar. But that's wonderful, And you know,
there's so much that goes into that. I guess it
was thirty years ago. I went to Columbus Georgia and
watched the Miss Georgia paget. I was k noted out.
I had no idea what really went all into it.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
You know, it's a lot. It was a lot. It
is a lot, but especially in this day and age,
it's so much more. I mean back in nineteen eighty six,
oh my goodness. I mean we were just normal girls
and I really never envisioned I would be Miss South
Carolina and second runner up to Miss America. I was
just a college student. And now girls have they have trainers,
(02:46):
they have hair and makeup, they have interview coaches. I
was just a normal girl who showed up and happened
to win, and it was by the grace of God.
But you know, Miss America is a lot different these days,
and they have platforms and issues and so but yeah,
I mean, and then when I won, I mean, that
(03:08):
was my full time job that year. I did three
hundred I did three hundred and fifty appearances in one year,
and that was incredible, and that was really the platform
by which God opened the doors for me to do
what I do today. So it was just I think,
meant to be obviously, and here I am, all these
(03:28):
years later, so grateful for that opportunity and just that
huge platform to be able to begin the ministry to
which I've been doing all these years later.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Well let's talk about what you're doing now, but I
want to start kind of for me where your ministry
really started. And that's May thirty first, nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
I was a rising senior at Columbia College. I was
majoring in vocal performance. My sister, Sherry was seven, our
brother Robert was fifteen, and Sherry was two days from
high school graduation and in the fall she was planning
to come to Columby College to study music as well.
(04:12):
So we were so excited, and I was thinking I
was on Broadway. I was a singer dancer at a
theme park, Cara Wins in Charlotte. So I had hit
the big time and that was my summer job, and
so the show was going to open on June the first.
(04:32):
So May thirty first, I had gone out shopping for
Sherry's graduation present. And we are a big animal loving family.
My dog is sleeping at my feet right now, My
cat's rooming around on the kitchen calendars. And we I
had hamsters in college because I wanted a pet. So
I had gotten Erry a hamster for her graduation gift
(04:54):
to take to the dorm. And I came in from
shopping and my roommate said, dog, you need to call
your mom back. She said Sheery has been abducted. And
in that instant I couldn't even understand, like it just didn't.
I couldn't rep I couldn't comprehend abducted. What has abducted me?
(05:15):
I don't even I can't compute that. And of course
I knew what that word meant, but at the time
I was like, wait, what you didn't say abducted. And
so sure enough I called my mom and she said,
a patrolman is coming to your apartment. He'll be there
in a few minutes. Pack a bag, you're coming home.
(05:37):
And at twenty one years of age, I just remember
thinking this is ridiculous. Sheery has not been taken, She's
just gone off somewhere with her friends. I mean this,
I'm going to miss the opening of my show and
get home and everything's going to be normal. And at
twenty one, you just don't even begin to imagine your
sister has actually been kidnapped.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Well, I think again. I mean, obviously you knew what
the word meant, but trying to tag that word with
your sister, there's no way that you could let your
mind go there. No.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And I remember saying my roommate's name was Jody. I said, Jody,
what are you even talking about? What are you saying?
And she said, just call your mom. And you know,
especially back in nineteen eighty five, that just did not happen.
And we lived out in the country in Lexington, South Carolina.
(06:36):
We were in the middle of a field was where
our house was of twenty acres. We had no neighbors.
We were surrounded by woods. My dad had moved us
out to the country because he wanted us to have
a simpler life. And your dad was home, Yeah, Dad,
Mom were home because Dad's office was in our house.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
This was a Friday afternoon Broad daylight, y'all family home, and.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Dad looked out the window and here, Mom, I think
Mom saw Cherry's car at the top of the driveway
and she just yelled, Cherry's home. And then it was
just strange because she didn't come down the driveway. Her
car just sat there. And so something in my dad's
gut just said, something is wrong. And so when your
(07:26):
driveway is seven hundred and fifty feet from the road,
you don't walk to the mailbox in an emergency. So
he grabbed his keys and he raced up the driveway
and when he got there, Cherry's car door was open,
the engine was still running, her purse was in the
(07:47):
passenger seat, and there was no sign of sha So.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
By the time you get home, there's a full man hunt.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yes, yes, we pulled you know. That was That was
the most odd, uncomfortable ride from Charlotte, North Carolina to Lexington,
South Carolina. And I just, I mean, I just remember it.
It's almost like it was another lifetime. But then it's
almost like it was just yesterday, and I just remember
(08:18):
being in the back seat going this is so stupid.
Cherry is shopping. Cherry's at her friend's house, Cherry is
somewhere else. There's no way she's been taken. And I'll
never forget the minute we turned into my driveway and
I saw the yard and the field full of sheriff
(08:45):
Department cars, police, and then in that instant, I knew,
oh my gosh, this is not a mistake. This is real.
This is really happening. And I remember walking in the door,
and the minute I saw my mom's face, I knew.
I just knew, oh my gosh, this is real because
(09:05):
I'd never seen an expression on her face like the
one that she had, just horror, disbelief, pain like you've
never I'd never seen. And there were my family members,
my aunts had come, people from our church were in
our house, and it was it was just so surreal, Cheryl,
(09:27):
because I just remember going, I don't even know what's happening.
This is like a bad dream. I'm gonna wake up.
This cannot be real. And of course it was real.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
To law enforcement's credit, there's so many things that I
admire that they did. Number one, going and picking you up.
Number Two, immediately believing that there was something wrong, not
just oh she'll show back up, she's with a friend,
you know, whatever, and then the amount of people they
(10:00):
put on it immediately from different agencies. So the scene
that you're painting for me is just their action with
stellar in that moment.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
They were amazing. Law enforcement was amazing from the beginning.
And I never really realized it until I became an
adult and had children of my own and a family
of my own and realized those people literally put their
lives on hold for my family and families like my family.
(10:36):
They basically stayed with us. Sheriff Mets of Lexington stayed
with us his deputies. So yes, they really were incredible
to my family.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Well, then the other thing he did that I thought
was remarkable is he called John Douglas. I am certain
everybody knows who he is. That's listening to his own seven.
But John Douglas original mind hunter. He established the behavioral
unit at the FBI. So he came to lexingon South
Carolina to develop the profile of this killer.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yes, and profiling was a brand new science, and he
came and he had this whole profile put together of
this person that he believed to have taken Cherry. And
it was remarkable at how exact he was.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
He was, He was on the money spot on.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Thank God for that, for that man, for that brand
new science, for my family's sake, and for all those
following and.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
In nineteen eighty five, I mean, he was unknown. This
ability was not something that people utilized. They didn't know
about it. In Atlanta, we used it with the miss
and Murdered Children, which was seventy nine to eighty one.
But even then we didn't really understand it. We didn't
understand how we could do it. So when your case
(12:10):
in eighty five, when you're talking about, oh, he'll probably
live with his parents, he's a white male, he's going
to be in his thirties, he's going to probably have
a blue collar job. I mean, party, y'all might have
been like, Okay, this is kind of hocus pocus John,
right right, but he was spot on. Now I want
to talk about your mama for a minute again, because
(12:33):
I cannot, as a mama ever think about what happened
next in this case without thinking to her. Because here
you have a child that has been kidnapped. John Douglas
shows up at your house and wants your other baby
to do something. Tell everybody what John Douglas asked you
(12:56):
to do.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
Well, first of all, my mother was amazing because when
this person called our home for the very first time,
it was a man, and he asked to speak to
my mother. And so it was in the wee hours
of the morning and we were all groggy. We're all
in mom and Dad's bed, Robert, Dad, Mom, and me.
(13:18):
I'm trying to get some rest. And this phone call
comes in the middle of the night and this person says,
I want to speak to miss Smith. And so Mom
answered the phone and he began to say, this is
what Sherry was wearing. She was at the mailbox. I
took her at gunpoint and Mom hung up the phone
(13:40):
and she said, oh my god, that man has Sherry.
And so he didn't. And the profile so panned out
because he would not speak to a man. He wanted
to speak to Mom. He wanted to be in control,
and so Mom took that call. She took another call,
and then of course she became so upset and she
(14:03):
screamed into the phone, please do not kill my daughter.
And so at that point, John Douglas said, I'm gonna
need Dawn to take the phone calls. Now, I was
twenty one years old, and I remember the lady that
took me up in my bedroom. Her name was Lydia Glover.
(14:24):
I still see her face to this day. And she said,
we're going to need to ask you to do something.
She said, this man needs to feel like he's in control,
and he needs to feel like you care about him.
And she told me all these things, and she said,
we're going to need you to answer the phone. Your
mom is too upset. She really doesn't need to be
(14:46):
doing this. Can you do it? And I remember that
day I didn't bad an. I I said absolutely, because
the point was we want you to keep him on
the phone as long as possible. You need to be paid,
you need to be kind, You need to keep them
on the phone. You need to lead the conversation and
hopefully the calls will be traced and we will get
(15:09):
Sherry back. And so at that point I didn't think
with my emotions. I thought with my Okay, this is
something I can do to help get my sister back,
because it's the most helpless feeling to be sitting there
knowing your sister is somewhere and there's nothing you can
do to find her. But all of a sudden I
(15:32):
could at least take these phone calls. And so I did.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
That love that you had for your sister was beyond bravery,
It was beyond anything. I don't even know why. I
can't put into words what I'm feeling, but you know
what I'm saying. You would do anything for her, even
if it meant you were the lure of this killer.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Well, at that point, you know, everything stopped, Our lives
completely stopped. And I'm not one to just sit around.
I'm always busy doing something, and that just made, you know,
it just made me feel like, if this is the
one thing I can do, I don't even see myself
as brave. We were desperate, We were so intent on
(16:22):
finding Sherry that it was just what I could do
one thing.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So you did take that call and he said something
to you so horrifying. It just it gives me chills
right now down my spine that you would be on
this call and this killer would say to you, God
wants you to join Cherry.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Yes. So he had called our home eight different times
during a month long investigation that is still to this
day the largest man hunt South Carolina has ever seen,
and so eight different phone calls where Mom answered the
first few, then I answered with her, and then I
began to take them on my own. But he had called,
(17:07):
and he had said different things in the phone calls,
cruelly taunting our family. He had called saying a letter
would be coming from Sherry. That proved to be true.
On the fifth day he called, he read some directions
that while he had led us to believe for five
days that Sherry was alive, he had actually killed her
(17:29):
the very first night, and he had left her body
outside and in South Carolina, that he'd index that summer
was well over one hundred and ten degrees and so
because he left her outside, all forensic evidence was destroyed.
Really would never know what actually was the cause of death, definitively.
(17:50):
But he read those directions, the authorities followed them, they
found her body, and then you know, so at this point,
I'm thinking, Okay, all this time he's been leading us
to believe she was alive. We were holding on to
hope that she was because if you tell me something,
I'm going to believe you. And so then to find
(18:10):
out she's actually been dead all these days that we've
been searching, that we've been on the phone with him,
that we've been praying, pleading with God. People have been
out in the woods in the heat, searching for Sherry,
and all the while she was already dead, and so
we kept calling, he kept calling, And then it was
the last phone call after we'd basically been prisoners in
(18:33):
our own home for that whole month, and he did
say he said, don did you know that God wants
you to join shery And it's just a matter of time.
And I remember him saying something to the effect this month,
next month, this year, next year, but you can be
sure I will get you too, And I remember thinking, Okay,
(18:55):
our lives have already been on hold for an entire month,
and these law enforcement officers are going to have to
go back to their own families and their whole own lives.
This man can get me, will he get me? Am
I going to live the rest of my life in
fear of when he's going to do to me what
(19:16):
he did to my sister. It was It was a
horrifying phone call to receive.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
No, it is horrifying and in some awful way accurate.
There's no way they can continue to protect you every
single day. You do eventually have to leave your house.
And you didn't know who this person was. You didn't
still know who you were looking for.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yes, exactly. And also the reason that we absolutely knew
he could do it was not only had he taken
Cherry's life, he had taken a nine year old little
girl's life and called and had given and had given
me directions to her body as well. And so we
couldn't really even grieve the loss of because we were
(20:01):
so afraid of where he was, what was he doing
when we knew he was quite capable of doing this
to more people.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
And John Douglass had already said he believed he was local. Well,
I believe he was driving by your house. I think
that's why he said that about they can't continue to
protect you. And then when he did kidnap and murder
again only nine.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Yes, she was nine years old, Deborah may Helmick from
her front yard where she was playing with her little brother,
same situation. Her dad was in the house and looked
out the window and he killed that nine year old
little girl and just senseless and sick. And so he
(20:49):
had already taken two precious lives, and we absolutely knew
he would do it again because he seemed to enjoy
the cat and mouse game. To him, it was a
game and he was in control, and so yes, I
just wondered, how long are these law enforcement officers going
to stay here and protect me? At some point, everybody's
(21:09):
going to get back to their.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Lives, that's right, especially no, when he's still out there.
And it wasn't just law enforcement. When the postmaster learned
about the letter, he went and opened up the post
office and looked for that letter himself.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Yes, and it was in the It was in the
early hours of the morning, and my dad had a
post office box for his business because he worked from home,
and the letter was there in the post office, and
sure enough, it was in Sherry's writing. It was a
(21:47):
two page letter, and we were so grateful to receive
that letter from her because we read I remember thinking, well,
if she wrote this letter, she was alive to write
this letter. This is her handwriting. She's still alive, and
that gave us hope that we were grasping to.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
You're saying, letter, but can you tell people what the
title was when you opened it?
Speaker 2 (22:16):
I can. Yes. It was entitled Last Will and Testament,
and I think Sherry named it that, probably because she
was supposed to graduate on June the second, and by
this point it was. It's dated six one eighty five,
three ten am, which means he had been holding her
(22:39):
for about twelve hours. And she wrote this amazing letter
to my family that will forever be such a gift
to us because in her letter she I mean, I
just put myself in her place. She was seventeen years old.
She was sitting in her room with a man. She
didn't no. I can't even fathom being given a piece
(23:04):
of paper, a blank piece of paper, a pen, and
being told you can write a letter of farewell to
your family, and then I'm going to kill you. And
that's basically what she was facing. This is the most
amazing display of courage and bravery, as my sister sat
(23:24):
there and wrote these words. So I'll read it to you.
It says Last Will and Testament, six one eighty five,
three ten am in capital letters. I love y'all. I
love you, mommy, Daddy, Robert down and Richard and everyone
else and all other friends and relatives. I'll be with
my father now, So please please don't worry. Just remember
(23:48):
my witty personality and great special times we all shared together.
Please don't even let this ruin your lives. Just keep
living one day at a time. For Jesus good will
come out of this. My thoughts will always be with
and in you, And in parentheses, she wrote casket closed.
(24:08):
I love you all so and she underlined damn much.
Sorry Dad, I had to cuss for once. Jesus forgave
me Richard Sweeteye that was her boyfriend. I really did,
and I always will love you and treasure our special moments.
I ask one thing, though, except Jesus as your personal savior.
(24:29):
And beside that, she put smiley face. My family has
been the greatest influence of my life. Sorry about the
cruise money. Somebody please go in my place. I am
sorry if I ever disappointed you in any way. I
only wanted to make you proud of me because I've
always been proud of my family mom, Dad, Robert, and Dawn.
(24:50):
There's so much I want to say that I should
have said before. Now. I love you. I know y'all
love me and what will miss me very much. But
if y'all stick together like we always did, y'all can
do it. Please do not become harder upset. Everything works
out for the good for those that love the Lord
(25:11):
all My love always, Sharon in Prientan sies Sherry F. Smith,
and then in capital letters, she wrote, I love y'all
with all my heart, pes Nana, that was our grandmother.
I love you so much. I kind of always felt
like your favorite. You were mine. I love you a lot.
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Seventeen years old, and I just think.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
It's the most amazing letter of faith over fear of
more concern for my family than herself. I think she
had come to terms with the fact that it's seventeen
years old, her life really could be ending, and I
(26:01):
think she came to peace with that, and it's just
the most amazing letter in it even all these years later,
I'm so grateful because at that point when we realized
she had been taken, I mean, I just remember and
I remember looking at my mom and I remember saying,
(26:23):
mom our lives are shattered. They're over, aren't they. And
I remember her saying, I don't know, honey, I just
don't know. But in that moment, I thought, how can
we get on with life? Cherry is gone? How do
you pick up the pieces? And how in the world
(26:45):
could she say some good will come out of this?
There could never be any good because Sherry wasn't just
my sister. She was my best friend. She was my
singing partner. I mean, when you live in the country,
your family is also they're your friends because you don't
have people. And so we had ridden horses together, we
(27:07):
had swam together, we had been best buddies together. And
I just remember thinking I'll never be able to get
on with life after this. But I took to heart
her words, just keep living one day at a time.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
And she even said, she said, don't let this make
you hard.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Don't let this ruin your lives. Absolutely believable. Don't let
this make you hard or upset. Because everything and you know,
my dad, he was a Baptist deacon and we were
raised in the South, and we were a Baptist in
church Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Tuesday night, you
name it.
Speaker 1 (27:49):
We were there, like my grandmama said, every time the
doors were open.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
In time, the door were open. And my dad, my
dad said, when I was a little girl, it was
a it was a night that we were having dinner
and Daddy stood up to walk out the door and
he said that as a little girl, I said, well, Daddy,
wear you what meet? No are you going to at
church tonight? Because it was always church. But and my
(28:14):
dad was famous for this, and I cannot agree or
deny that I may have done this to my own children.
But he would tape Bible Versus on the bathroom mirror.
I guess he figured with two daughters and a son,
that was the best shot at us seeing them. And
the very scripture that Sherry included in that letter, to
(28:35):
the best of her memory, just is remarkable because she said, remember,
everything works out for the good for those that love
the Lord. Some good will come out of this, and
that's that's Romans eight twenty eight. That was the scripture
that was on the bathroom mirror at this time. And
(28:56):
that scripture says, for we know that God causes all
things work together for good for those who love Him
and are called according to His purpose. And at that time,
never in a million years could I have ever imagined
that life would ever be good again, but that God,
even God, could cause something good to come out of this,
(29:17):
because there was nothing good in this.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Well, let me just tell you about Sherry. Now, in
that moment, she had already been with this killer for
twelve hours. She wasn't treated good in those twelve hours.
But in that letter, Not only does she uplift y'all,
tells y'all, hey, I'm gonna be fine. I know where
I'm headed. It's good. She tells y'all to go on,
(29:43):
be happy, live your life. She tries to save the
soul of her boyfriend. And then my favorite part of
the whole letter, she ends being funny when she tells Grandmama,
you know I'm your fai.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Well, I'm sorry, but I thought I was Nana's favorite,
and I to say that, so I'm not. I don't
know what Cherry was talking about. But when I get
to Heaven, Cheryl, I'm gonna say, excuse me, we got
was Nana's favorite. But Sherry actually had a very rare
disease that is called diabetes incipitus. There were only two
(30:23):
children in the state of South Carolina at this time
that had it, and and so my nana always said,
will bless her heart, she's afflicted. And so that's why
Sherry was the favorite. Also. And then also I love
that she said, y'all remember my witty personality. Because as
(30:44):
a senior in high school, you know they always have
senior superlatives. Well, Sherry was the only one in her
senior class that was voted on and got two. Everybody
loved her. She loved everybody. I still have people to
this day that they will meet me where I'm seen
at the church somewhere, or I'm in the grocery store
or in the line at the post office, that say
(31:05):
you're Sherry Smith's sister. I went to school with her.
I was somebody that was bullieder. I was an outcasta
and she said to me, hey, don't sit by yourself,
come over here and say with us. I mean, she
was just that kind of person. But she was voted
most talented and wittiest, and they told her she had
to choose which one, and she chose wittiest. I would
(31:25):
have chosen most talented, but anyway, she chose wittiest. And
she was funny and she always I can remember Mom
would be so mad at us about something, and Mama
would just be on the verge of wanting to cuss
at us, and Sherry would say, Mama, just say it,
just say it. It'll make you feel better. And I
(31:48):
think that's why she passed him the lesson, because we
weren't closed to but I got that moment. She had
every right because amen, Amen, that was a moment that
called for it, but she was funny and she did
in that moment. I think so turned the focus from
herself to the ones that she loved the most, which
(32:08):
was her mom or dad, or brother, her sister, her friends,
her boyfriend, her grandmother. And what a beautiful example of
living life until it's over, taking hold of the last
moments that she said to speak like. I can't even
understand how she did it, but she did it, and
(32:28):
she spoke words of faith and hope and love and perseverance.
And she's my hero. She's the hero in my family's story.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Well, I want to talk about you real quick too,
because forgiveness that's a hard road. Because I'm going to
tell you. People think, oh, I'm going to forgive this
person that hurt me or this person that did wrong
to me, and you think it's a one step. It's not.
You've got to make your mind up that you're going
(33:04):
to forgive that person every day. And you have forgiven
her killer.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
Cheryl, I will say only by the grace of God,
because I am not a forgiver on my own. Larry
Jean Bell was arrested and the very piece of evidence
that led to his capture was Sherry's letter. There was
an imprint of a phone number on her letter that
led to where he was house sitting, and he was
(33:32):
arrested and my mom and I were immediately taken to
the Lexington County Jail cell where Larry jan Bell and
the sheriff sat across from my mom and me. And
the minute he began to speak, our job was to
go there and identify the voice of the caller with
the man sitting there, to verify that this was him.
(33:55):
And the minute he began to speak, my mother looked
at him and she said, I know that you are
the man that killed my Sherry. And she said there
is nothing you can say or do that will justify
your choice. She's gone, and she said, but I'm looking
at you. I know you did it, and I don't
(34:15):
even hate you. And I remember walking out of that
room and saying to my mom, how in the world
could you say that to him? He didn't deserve it,
And I'll never forget what she said. She said, Honey,
in that moment, I didn't just see him as the
man who killed Cherry. I saw him as another mother's son.
(34:38):
And she said, in that moment, I believe God supernaturally
took care of the bitterness in my own heart. She
said there was so much pain, it was like a
physical ache in my heart. And she said there was
just no room for unforgiveness. And she said, I just
believe for me, God settled it then and there. And
(34:59):
it was not long after that I received a letter
from Larry Bell on death row. He had been sentenced
to two death sentences and he was executed years ago,
but he wrote me a letter. And it had been
two years since he took Sherry's life in Deborah Mayhelmet's life,
and he wrote me from prison, and he said that
(35:19):
someone there had come and they had shared the gospel
with him, that God so loved the world that he
gave his only son, that whoever believes in him won't perish,
but he'll have everlasting life. And he claimed in that
letter that he had asked God to forgive him. And
then he asked me the question, will you and your
family ever forgive me? And I wish I could tell
you I was like my mama, but I wasn't because
(35:42):
I thought, first of all, how dare you even ask
me that question? Because I don't hate you? I think
I'm doing pretty good, but I never wanted to hear
from that man again, justifiably so. But I remember taking
that letter and thinking, I don't hate you, dude. You're
doing better than you ever should. And I shoved it
in the bottom of a filing cabinet. And so for
(36:04):
two years I sat on that letter and I would
go speak at a church somewhere. I'd sing it a
church somewhere. If I was asked to tell my story,
I would, and somebody would always ask me, well, you
didn't talk about the man, how do you feel about him?
And sometimes somebody would be bold enough to say, have
you forgiven him? And I thought, in my mind, how
(36:25):
dare you ask me that question? But finally I came
to the place and I said, God, I know we're
supposed to forgive. My Daddy raised me to understand where
to forgive like we've been forgiven, But how in the
world do you forgive the unforgivable? Because if ever there's
anything unforgivable, this is it. And so I just had
(36:45):
to go to the Bible, and I just had to
go to scriptures that would say forgive as you've been forgiven.
And so I finally came to the place to understand
that forgiveness is a choice that we make, just like
Sheery sitting in that room chose faith over fear. I
had a choice to make, and so I sat down
(37:07):
and it was the scripture in Ephesians four thirty two.
It says be kind and compassionate to one another. What
did John Douglas tell me I had to do on
the phone calls be kind and compassionate to that So
here I was looking at the word of God, be
kind and compassionate forgiving each other, just as God through
(37:29):
Christ has also forgiven you. And so in that moment,
that is where I made the conscious decision, not a
heartbelt decision, but just like I made a conscious decision
to be kind and compassionate to this man on the
phone who was holding my sister and who later killed her,
to forgive him. And I wrote him back and I
(37:49):
just told him, dear mister Bell, I can never forget
what you've done. My life is forever changed, my sister
is no longer here. However, because of the grace I've
received from God. I want you to know I choose
to forgive you. I didn't feel a bit different I
(38:09):
didn't have fireworks going off, but I can tell you
that it was a work just like my mama said.
It was a supernatural act of God within my heart
that allowed me to go on with life, because I
do believe that saying that says you either are going
to be bitter or you're going to be better. And
(38:30):
I didn't want to be better. I didn't want to
be that girl. And you know, I still have it
all these years later. I mean, I'm telling you I
was somewhere, Oh my gosh, Oh, I was in the
line at a restaurant yesterday picking up a to go order,
(38:51):
and this lady behind me goes, you're done Smith Jordan,
aren't you? And I said, I am, and she goes,
I remember that story from all those years ago, and
so many times I have people say to me, you're
Sherry Smith's sister. You're that girl whose sister was murdered,
aren't you? And so all these years later, while I
am very proud to be Shery's sister, that's not all
(39:11):
there is to this chick, because I'm not just that
girl whose sister was murdered. Because I didn't stay there
and Sherry said, y'all keep living your lives. And that's
what we did, That's what we've done, that's what I'll
continue to do, because life is a gift. Sherry lived
hers beautifully for seventeen years, and I'll do the same.
(39:33):
One of my preachers said, if you ain't dead, God
ain't done, and Cheryl, I ain't dead. I'm getting older.
Come in, honey, I'm still here. And every day that
I'm given, it's a gift to make a difference in
somebody else's life. And I take that very seriously. And
whether I'm standing on a stage in a church, whether
(39:55):
I'm talking on a podcast with a sweet lady like you,
or whether I'm in the line at the grocery store,
I want to take that seriously to allow something good
to come in this life that I've been entrusted to
live and to live it well.
Speaker 1 (40:12):
Well, you know, I have four sisters, and our mama
used to say, forgiving somebody it and for them it's
for you. Yes, yes, and you have done that beautifully.
But I got to quote you because I want people
to hear this, because I laughed so hard when I
read this your quote when you tell people get out
(40:33):
of the mire and get in the choir.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
Oh listen. It was one of my favorite stories of
I was sitting on the front row of the First
Baptist Church of Wagner, South Carolina, about to give a
concert on a Sunday morning, and I heard the gentleman
behind me on the second row say to the girl
beside him, who has that? And she said, that's our
speaker singer for today. I literally want to turn around,
(40:56):
go I can hear y'all. And then I heard him say, oh, yeah,
that's that girl whose sister was murdered. And I stood
up that day and I said, you know, somebody just
said this morning, that's that girl. But that ain't all
that that is to this girl, because we either had
(41:16):
the choice to stay stuck in the mire or to
get out of the mar and get in the choir
and sing about the goodness that God still has in
our lives. And that quote came from this gentleman at
this church. I sang at this elderly man, he said, sweetheart,
you know what you remind me of. Have you ever
heard that quote? Get out of the mire and get
(41:39):
in the choir? I said no, but I'm going to
steal that because I love that, Because That's the way
I want to live my life, because every single one
of us we have those circumstances that we would never choose.
But when we choose to take God at his word
and we choose to live them to the best of
our ability, just like Sherry did every day, that is
(42:03):
when we're not stuck in the miyre anymore, but we
choose to get out of them. And the truth of
the matter is, forgiveness does not make the offense all right.
It can't be made okay, he did kill my sister,
but it makes us all right. And that is what
I have found. I am not bitter, I am better,
(42:23):
I can say, just like my mama did. While we
never would have chosen this, we are thankful to God
for the good He has brought out of this that
in nineteen eighty five we never could have imagined. But
now I can't even begin and probably won't know this
sight of Heaven all the good that did come out
of this, and so we can just be grateful.
Speaker 1 (42:45):
There ain't nothing I can add to that. Honey, Dawn.
I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being
with me today and talking about Sherry. And I'm going
to tell you you and I are going to get
together soon and I'm gonna wear your crayon.
Speaker 2 (43:00):
Well, let me just say, Cheryl, I love your accent.
I feel like I'm with a homegirl because you know,
my accent is what it is and I have not
changed it because it's who I am and it's part
of my roots. And I love your down home humor.
I love your warmth that I feel across this call today,
(43:22):
and I just thank you for thank you for the
invitation to come and share my family's story and share
the journey of forgiveness and perseverance and taking life for
all it's worth for the glory of God. So I'm
just grateful for the privilege to be with you today, y'all.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
I'm going to end Zone seven the way that I
always do with a quote, some good will come of
this Cherry Smith. Y'all, it's a new year. Go out
there and do some good in Cherry's name. I'm Cheryl McCollum,
and this is Zone seven.
Host
Sheryl McCollum
Popular Podcasts
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com