Sherry Lynn’s Last Dance
Factually based on Robert Scott’s
Deadfall. (My local insights are also included, in parentheses.) [Heads up! Lilibet’s insights are likely to be even more local.]
In early 1976, 15 year old Sherry went on a road trip down Highway 101 from bucolic northern California’s Emerald Triangle to the Bay Area city of Los Gatos CA. Sherry had been raised on Fruitland Ridge, some miles off the highway and into the woods; she had grown up there with her two sisters; her neighbors included the fraternal Annnibel twins. Now she was going south to visit her father and stepmother.
==Map: Los Gatos to Myers Flat==
Google Maps
After a week in the big city, Sherry felt overwhelmed and wanted to go home. She boarded the bus with the intent of breaking her journey to visit friends before she returned to her mom’s place. (Though Scott says Fruitland Ridge is in Miranda, the Google Map places it closer to Myers Flat.)
Sherry got off the bus in Garberville. She visited with her friend Glenda for several days. Like the Smiths, Glenda’s family also lived some miles east of the main highway, although in Alderpoint.
On 30 April, Sherry, Glenda, and Glenda’s family went to an all-ages dance at the Firemen’s Hall in Garberville, arriving at about 9:30 PM. Sherry quickly arranged for a ride with a friend at dance’s end, to elder sister Pam Smith’s place. Sherry didn’t want to barge in on their mother at 2:30 AM or so.
(Scratch your mental picture of a ballroom of sedate waltzers in ball gowns. Instead, picture an old pioneer barn dance attracting all the bush veterans, hippies, back-to-the-landers, loggers, fishermen, cowboys, Indians, and general isolates from miles about. Dub in a raucous rock sound track. Let the booze and dope flow bounteously while everyone frantically boogies down and madly socializes. Liaisons and assignations are made, dope deals arranged, hookups hooked, friendships and feuds pursued. That’s a NorCal dance.)
Over the next four hours, Sherry danced nine dances with four partners. Five of those dances were with 18 year old John Annibel, who had grown up an outcast among the Fruitland Ridge kids. (Scott says: Tell tale. Generally weird, irrational, and sometimes assaultive behavior.) Annibel wanted to leave before dance’s end. Sherry wanted to stay and socialize. They argued about that.
At some point, she cancelled her arranged ride, to switch to John Annibel’s car. Besides Glenda and two members of her family, three other individuals knew of Sherry’s change of plan.
Sherry was seen to retrieve her luggage from Glenda’s family’s car. She was also seen leaving the dance with John Annibel when it broke up at 2 AM. However, no one actually saw her get in his car. (At this point, most attendees are shopping about for post-dance parties, saying goodbye, etc.) At any rate, six witnesses stated Sherry left, or was planning to leave, with John Annibel.
Her body was found at 6 PM on 2 May 1976 by a motorcyclist stopping to urinate. Sherry had been beaten, strangled, and chucked down an embankment headfirst. She laid just off a bypass that paralleled Eel Rock Road. The bypass was blocked at the downhill end by a fallen tree, and was accessible only from the uphill entry. That bypass was barely visible from the main road; it would almost certainly take local knowledge to know it was there. The bypass was also very near the Annibel residence.
After tracing several leads concerning various individuals, homicide investigators soon settled on John Annibel as the chief suspect. When questioned, Annibel first claimed to have left the dance at midnight. When he found out there were witnesses to the contrary, he changed his tale to leaving at 2 AM, without Sherry. He then failed a polygraph test. His vehicle was searched, apparently with no significant finds.
Despite living about a 30 minute drive from the Firemen’s Hall, Annibel did not get home until 3 or 3:30 AM. He turned around and left again at 6 AM and returned at 9. Ironically, one of the two people reporting this was Pam Smith; she was involved with the other Annibel twin and was at their family spread. The other informant on the arrival and departure times was John Annibel’s uncle.
Despite all this circumstantial evidence, John Annibel was never arrested for Sherry’s murder. He would also be suspected in other homicides and disappearances. More on him here:
Suspected in the murder of Janet Lee Bowman, 19, Eureka CA, 30 September 1975:
CA Janet Lee Bowman, 19, Eureka, 30 September 1975
Suspected in the murder of Karen Frances Fisher, 21, Trinidad Head, 18 January 1976:
CA - CA Karen Frances Fisher, 21, Trinidad Head, 18 January 1976
His live-in girlfriend disappeared: Andrea LaDeRoute, 22, Fortuna, March 1980:
CA - Andrea LaDeRoute, 22, Fortuna, March 1980
Other websleuths have noted other cases that may be linked to Annibel. One is the double murder of Kerry Graham and Francine Trimble, 16 December 1978:
CA - Kerry Graham, 15, & Francine Trimble, 14, Forestville, 16 Dec 1978
Then there is the disappearance of Karen Marie Mitchell from Eureka, 25 November 1997:
CA - CA - Karen Mitchell, 16, Eureka, 25 Nov 1997
And then he was finally nailed for murdering Debra Sloan in 1998.
Was it the lack of physical evidence that stayed the prosecutor’s hand in the Smith case? Or do you, my reader, also believe John Annibel should stand trial for Sherry Lynn Smith’s murder? Or, to put it another way, if you were on the jury, would you convict him?