JAN 30, 2020
Serenity Dennard Disappearance: year later, mystery unsolved
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As the one-year anniversary of
Serenity’s disappearance approaches, South Dakota News Watch interviewed several people close to
Serenity or her case. The reporting has led to several discoveries, including:
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Serenity was known to run away frequently from her family home in Sturgis. Runaway prevention was part of the reason for her placement and part of her treatment plan at Black Hills Children’s Home. Serenity tried to run away one week before her final escape and was placed on a protocol of “arm’s length only” monitoring. But for reasons unexplained, the strict runaway-prevention effort was ended a day or two before her Feb. 3 escape, according to Serenity’s adoptive father and his wife, who are her primary caretakers.
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Serenity’s adoptive parents, now divorced, and their loved ones have had their sorrow and stress worsened by criticisms and outrageous false statements on social media and a website created about the case. Serenity’s adoptive mother has been accused of involvement in her disappearance, even though she was at work when the girl went missing and investigators do not suspect any of the parents. Serenity’s adoptive father has had strangers take pictures of his other children playing outside his home and has been accused of giving his daughter a phone in a plot to help her escape.
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Hartland and Sheriff Kevin Thom say it is highly unlikely that
Serenity was taken by a stranger or someone driving by. They base that view on the short period of time
Serenity was out of sight; the fact that she was walking in snow boots on a rural stretch of a road trafficked almost exclusively by locals during winter; and the fact that it was late morning on a chilly Super Bowl Sunday.
“I can’t even begin to calculate the odds that someone who would be willing to violently abduct a child happened by on a rural western South Dakota road within the few minutes they had to do that and successfully abducted her,” Hartland said.
Cadaver dogs searching for her have picked up scents, but it is unknown if the odors emanated from
Serenity.
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Serenity and another girl made an impromptu plan that the girl would distract staff members so Serenity could run away, Hartland said. When the girl ran out of the gym and back into the main building, one staff member chased her while the other stayed and supervised the remaining children.
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The witnesses said about three to five minutes elapsed from when they watched
Serenity running to when they first notified the cook. Then, another three or four minutes went by from when they lost sight of Serenity to when they drove onto Rockerville Road to begin searching.
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The department also gave immediate national attention to the case by reporting
Serenity as a missing person with the National Crime Information Center, and the next day issuing a national Missing and Endangered Person alert, which is one step above the NCIC notification, Sheriff Thom said.
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In the days after, detectives interviewed children’s home employees and residents who were at the home the day
Serenity left. Eventually, Hartland said, his team interviewed all employees or former employees of the home who had had any contact with Serenity, about 100 people in all.
Investigators also interviewed both sets of
Serenity’s adoptive parents and her birth parents, and none are considered suspects, Hartland said.
“We’ve been criticized for not investigating the children’s home staff and the families, when in fact those are two of the first things we did,” Hartland said.
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The weather turned bad the day
Serenity ran away, with temperatures below freezing and snow that fell and stayed for several weeks, hampering the search and reducing the chances
Serenity could survive outside for more than a few hours, Thom said.
“In terms of
Serenity specifically, she’s very small, she’s 4-foot-9, roughly 90-some pounds, so if she’s in the woods and got lost, at the point you’re becoming hypothermic, there’s the potential that you find a spot to curl up to get warm, under a rock ledge or next to a log,” Thom said. “Experienced searchers will tell you that it’s not uncommon to walk past people multiple times in an area once they get hidden and you can be a few feet from someone and walk right past them.”
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The sheriff’s office consulted a pediatrician who said that given
Serenity’s age, size and the weather, she possibly could have walked three to four miles from the children’s home, presenting searchers with a giant area to search.
Thom noted that his department has an ongoing case in which a man remains lost in the Black Hills. Experienced elk hunter Larry Genzlinger, 66, of Howard, was hunting near Deerfield Lake in the Black Hills on Oct. 1 and has not been found despite an aggressive search.
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