“Julie…Julie, wake up… I think something awful has happened to Sherry.” Just hours earlier, Clarence and Julie Shelmire had been out on the water under the Big Pine Key Bridge embracing the sweltering heat of July on a Wednesday afternoon, toying around on their jet skis as they occasionally did. At this point, they did not know a passing moment would turn into a permanent fixture in their minds. The sun was beginning to settle into dusk and what little light was left illuminated the small section of water containing the home of a resident with whom the couple was familiar: Sherry Perisho. It was 8:30 p.m. when Clarence and Julie had approached Perisho and the dinghy she called home. Perisho never used paddles, and would wade her small boat to and from shore. On this evening, the ten-footer had careened itself one hundred and fifty feet from the shoreline. Sherry had on a lightly colored sundress and welcomed the couple’s friendly greeting. There was a brief bit of conversation and the Shelmires left feeling even better about their day because of Sherry’s upbeat, positive mood—yet at the same time all three of them had been unknowingly in the crosshairs of Charlie Brandt.
“What, what is it?”
“I have this awful feeling something has happened to Sherry.”
It wasn’t a nightmare and it wasn’t something physical. What had awoken Clarence was the sick feeling in his stomach and the racing of his heart; yet those were just symptoms of something larger, something everyone feels at one time or another in this life, yet can’t quite pinpoint. For Clarence, the answer to his gut feeling would be provided just hours into the oncoming day; but for now, he was left with nothing more than the startling subconscious scream, and sheets soaked in sweat.
The night of July 19 was an uncomfortably hot night, and sweaty at ninety-five degrees. Roy and Nedra Plant had planned to spend the evening with their friends Dale and Rosemary Evans. The group of friends had gone about this routine numerous times before, and as night fell, they all made their way down to the north end of the North Pine Channel Bridge for an evening of fishing at the swimming hole. The full moon cast a welcoming spotlight on the area. They cast the first rod into the water at 9:00 p.m. After an hour and fifteen minutes of no luck, Roy cast out Nedra’s pole, only to catch something that none of them could ever have prepared for. What first looked like a mannequin with a fishing hook in its left elbow would soon be identified as the cold, lifeless, disemboweled body of Sherry Perisho, floating face-down like a buoy left by the butcher.
In a fearful frenzy, Roy rushed to the local Tom Thumb store and alerted the police of this terrifying find. It wasn’t long before yellow crime-scene tape lined the area like a grid, or a shark net.
As police canvassed the area, it wasn’t too far down the embankment that they saw Sherry Perisho’s most prized possession since she had retreated to the Keys: her dinghy, all ten feet of it, capsized in the water as if it were a symbol of how the life switch of her time on earth had been flipped as well. An underwater search uncovered Perisho’s men’s one-speed bike and bike basket containing a copy of the New York Times, Arrow trash bags, six packs of Bugler Tobacco, tan shorts, a bag with a used tampon, pink sunglasses, a Clorox bleach container, earphones to a radio, an Eveready flashlight, Skin So Soft lotion, insect repellent and a pack of Winston cigarettes. Also found were a blue-and-white umbrella, an orange life jacket, two gallon water jugs, a Coca-Cola can, a Grand Prize AM/FM pocket radio, a caramel corn container, and a red hip purse containing various batteries, a knife, lighters, pens, and cold-sore medicine.
The final two items were a Mickey Mouse blanket and a one-dollar bill which only brings to mind the meagerness for which her life was snuffed out, although that was clearly not the motive. This sad scene strewn with trivial items was all that was left to signal the last remnants of Sherry Perisho’s tumultuous and sad, yet equally and beautifully inspiring path that she carved without fear or hesitation.
When the investigators responded, they found pentagrams in the area. “It appeared teenage kids had been doing that,” said Sergeant Dennis Haley. When they retrieved her, they found her organs were removed, and her throat cut so many times her head was almost severed.
“She was eviscerated,” Sergeant Patricia Dally stated.
There were both fingerprints found on the gunnel of the boat and palm prints found on the bottom of the boat. Neither belonged to Sherry Perisho. There was no DNA analysis back then, but there was a fingerprint database. Arresting officers must have taken Charlie Brandt’s prints after he’d murdered his mother. And after Sherry Perisho’s murder, investigators would have been able to run the prints found on her boat through the database. However, they had nobody to match them to.
If Charlie’s prints had been on record, and not expunged because of his youth, he would have been nailed, and no more murders would have occurred—including Darlene Toler, Teri Helfrich Brandt, and Michelle Jones.
The newspapers, however, picked up on every rumor, and of course the tabloids dripped with Halloween scare headlines. The week before Halloween, on October 19, 1989, the Weekly World News announced, as though it were a concert, “SATAN IN PARADISE.” The story’s lead read: “A veil of terror has darkened a 10-mile stretch of the Florida Keys where two beautiful young women were fiendishly butchered by one or more Satanic cultists who ripped their hearts out.”
The reporter managed to find one pious, well-meaning woman to corroborate his findings, a church worker who had counseled several cult members. “They’re bored kids,” she said. “They look very normal on the outside. They’ve been involved in initiations…used girls for ritual offerings on altars.”
The fever surrounding the case, with its slew of suspects, never felt like it was going to break. On July 21, two days after the Perisho murder, the first suspect was interviewed. His name was Gary Paul Guekel. Guekel was originally confronted by an officer as he was crossing the street to go to the Summerland Key Quick-Mart. When the officer asked for his identification, Guekel explained that he had none, and that he was a wanted man in Washington State for auto-theft charges. When the officer patted him down, he didn’t find anything suspicious and upon inspecting his bag, found only a pornographic magazine. The officer’s eyes caught a possible red flag in the form of a scratched left cheek and busted lip. Were these wounds the work of a frantic Sherry Perisho, fighting for her life? The officer decided to take the man in for further questioning at the Big Pine Key substation. There the man explained that he did sleep under the Summerland Key Bridge, and that on the day of the murder he had been at the day labor hall and then had spent the evening hours drinking with his friends outside the Quick Mart. It was there that he fell into some work, when he met a father-son duo who hired him on to work construction the following day. As for the busted lip and scratched cheek? It was the result of a fight he had drunkenly gotten himself into and lost later that evening, when he’d returned to the bridge to crash out for the night. The officer found no evidence to link the man to the crime, and Washington State decided not to extradite him on his auto-theft charges. They let him go.
Five days later and Mike Felix Balogna was taken by Lieutenant Richard Conrady to the main headquarters of the Big Pine Key Sheriffs Office. Balogna was an interesting character who had spent the last few months of Sherry Perisho’s snuffed-out life living with her on occasion. The dinghy she seemed so happy to call home, was provided to her by Balogna, and during those final months, the duo had maintained a sexual relationship. People who were questioned stated that Balogna was by far the closest person to Sherry during the days that served as a sad countdown toward her destruction. Balogna proclaimed his innocence in the crime and asked for a polygraph. After the test, Polygraph Examiner and Deputy Sheriff Mike Scott confirmed he was telling the truth. Balogna was cleared. An ex-roommate of Balogna’s named Jim Sturgeon was also later contacted and polygraphed, but he too was cleared.
Twenty-six days later, on August 16, 1989, the phone line lit up at a Big Pine Key radio station. When the host picked up the phone, th
e voice on the other end stated that the killer of the girls (Patty Lorenza, Lisa Sanders, and Sherry Perisho) on Big Pine Key was a Mr. Robert Erwig. Fifteen minutes later, the ringing of a phone grabbed the attention of Detective Ed Miller, of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department. On the other end were the Metro–Dade crime stoppers and Officer Mike Cardenas informing Miller of a tip they had received that also pointed to Mr. Erwig as the perpetrator of the recent murders. The informant was an old neighbor of Erwig’s who was constantly at odds with the man. His reasoning behind believing Erwig to be the killer was that the caller and Erwig had been in a heated argument, and Erwig had told the man if he complained to the police about him anymore, he would rip out the neighbor’s heart. The neighbor, in what he described as fear for his life, fled the Keys. He told the officer that Erwig still lived in the last house on Mahogany Lane in Big Pine Key, that he was in his thirties and of German/Latin descent, with black hair and brown eyes and was known to work as a surgical assistant back in Pennsylvania.
Slightly over a month after Guekel was cut loose from the substation ,a man by the name of David Enulott, a local Radio Shack employee, had called police to inform them that he had recognized a photo of Sherry Perisho in one of the local newspapers, the Key West Citizen. He explained to the officer that Sherry Perisho had been a friend of his friend, a man named Hampton Kelly who would be filling in the slot for suspect number three. Hampton Kelley was a pleasant man when interviewed, one completely devoid of any knowledge of current news. His television didn’t carry the local channels, nor did he read any local newspapers. When the officer showed him a picture of Sherry Perisho, he explained that he knew her but it had been at least a year prior when he’d last seen her. They met when she was hitchhiking along Stalk Island, a place where Sherry also had many friends. Hampton had picked her up, and she’d stayed with him. After several days she had left and for a while after that would stop by from time to time to stay for a few days. As time went on, Sherry Perisho ceased her visits and became an old memory in the mind of Mr. Kelly. He was cleared of any connection to the murder, but said he would show the photo around Stock Island to Sherry’s friends in case they might be able to help.
Another month would go by and then, on October 12, 1989, Detective Ed Miller of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department received some photos from Detective Bob Schott of the Bartow Police Department. Schott explained how he had received some startling news during a telephone conversation. On the other end had been an FBI agent giving his take on the Perisho case, tipping Schott about the newest suspect. The man’s name was Paul Crews, a white male, who was wanted in Bartow, Florida, for the brutal murder of a young white female named Clemmie Jewel Arnold, who was found in a remote area with her head barely hanging from her neck. The investigators on that crime believed the knife was too dull to fully sever the head. At that point the man had last been seen traveling through South Florida and South Carolina, where the woman’s car was found. Crews was later found on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania, after brutally murdering a young couple. In 1991, a Pennsylvania jury found him guilty of the murders in the trails, and Florida decided not to extradite him on the Clemmie Jewel Arnold case.
Former Monroe County Sheriff Rick Roth had a plausible hypothesis for the way in which Charlie might have approached Sherry Perisho and killed her without her seeing him, as was his usual M.O. She’d tied her boat close to shore, off a canal that cuts into Big Pine Key. “She was anchored on shore. She would go ashore to cook, and here was a canal that opened up into the bay right there, a canal that cuts into Big Pine Key. Sometimes she would cook in a little campground on shore.”
As for the popular picnicking place for locals that Charlie and Teri frequented, Roth comes to the conclusion: “I wouldn’t be surprised if he had met her before. The swimming hole was a mile from where she was found. I think he approached her on shore. I think the murder occurred on shore, but that is only my supposition. Either he threw her in the water or she was killed in the water.”
It is a haunting image in any case—free-spirited Sherry Perisho cooking meat, her face lit from the front by the fires of the flames, and a shadowy figure approaching her from behind, intent on stealing her heart.
In 1989, right after Sherry Perisho was found murdered and mutilated, investigators brought in a profiler from the FBI.
It was at this time on October 22, 1989, that members of the FDLE and the FBI would combine their efforts to come up with a profile of the killer.
What can be made out of the profile is this:
The perpetrator probably does not own a vehicle, and if he drives one it would be a loaner belonging to a friend or a vehicle belonging to family or a mother or father. He would probably be incapable of maintaining a vehicle. This perpetrator is probably psychotic and is not polygraphable, as the perpetrator probably does not feel he has done something wrong or committed a criminal act. It is also highly probable that the perpetrator carries a pocketknife with him at all times. It is believed by the profilers that this individual will commit this type of crime again if he is not apprehended.
The perpetrator probably was a high-school graduate who is a loner and is considered to be a social outcast. He probably lives alone and is incapable of holding a regular job, and may work for one or two days at a time.
It is the profilers’ belief that this perpetrator is not sexually active, and that the motive of the homicide was to remove the victim’s heart. It is further believed by the profilers that the perpetrator intended to take the victim’s head as well as the heart, due to the amount of damage done to the victim’s neck. The profilers do not believe that the perpetrator of this homicide is not capable of raising children.
The profile was only spot-on about two things: The perp would pass a polygraph with flying colors. Not only did he feel absolutely no remorse for his crime, but actually relished it. If he took the body parts, he relived the crime and reveled in it. And, of course, the perpetrator would have no children. That was a decision he and his wife had already made.
The rest of the profile placed Charlie Brandt way off the radar.
On September 9, 1989, Stephanie Sheerer, who lives on a sailboat on Newfound Harbor—the same harbor where Sherry Perisho was found murdered and mutilated—explained to police that a man she knew by the name of Mike Dentini was someone who might be as a suspect. Stephanie Sheerer went on to explain that Dentini had been hanging out with Sherry Perisho frequently, as close to the day of the murder as the previous Friday. Unfortunately, it was not a friendly get-together. Sheerer stated that when she saw the two together down by the harbor, they were carrying on an argument that would leave Sherry clutching her cigarettes and pacing back and forth. Sheerer also stated that she had overheard a local couple heavily arguing not too long after the murder of Sherry Perisho. During this dispute, Sheerer claimed to have heard the woman yell, “Are you gonna kill me too, killer? Like you killed the little girl?” Later the woman was interviewed, and denied ever making that accusation. She and the man were eventually cleared of any involvement in the Perisho case.
Pamela Jean Evans, a Big Pine Key citizen for seven years, came to the police around this same time. She wanted to report strange phone calls she had received, in case the content of the calls could help police in any way, and also because the calls had begun to terrify her. When a woman was brutally beaten and raped on Big Pine Key earlier in the year, she had received a phone call from a man making obscene comments. Again, after Lisa Sanders was murdered, she’d received yet another antagonizing, threatening phone call. On July 17, just hours after Sherry Perisho had been disemboweled, Pamela received another perverse phone call. The last call had been on November 12, 1989. Was this the killer, stalking another woman? The answer, in time, would be no, but the fear in the community was already at an all-time high, and it was a fear that was gripping all of the female residents of the Florida Keys.
A local probation officer had phoned the police from her office ex
plaining that on the night of Sherry Perisho’s murder she’d witnessed a white Cadillac, driven by a white male, turn into the swimming hole at 6:40 p.m. This turned out to be another empty lead. Frustration mounted.
One Michael Eichmann was also brought in for questioning. He voluntarily gave a statement that he’d never had any sort of close relationship with Perisho and that, although the two of them had frequented the same swimming hole and area in general, her boat had never been anchored anywhere near his.
Another person questioned was Robert G. Rawls, who coasted the waters in his sailboat Shangri-la. Rawls was known to engage in satanic activity in the area and his boat had been anchored on or near No Name Key around the time of Lisa Sanders’s murder. This was not known by investigators at the time of the interrogation.
Otis Nichols, a Big Pine Key citizen, was known to frequent the swimming hole to practice his martial arts. Three to four months prior to Sherry Perisho’s death, he had been arrested for reckless display of weapons on Big Pine Key. He was known to have a mental problem.
Sean Carnes, another Big Pine Key resident, had informed police that two men, both poorly dressed and with bad teeth, and one of whom lived in the bushes, had made the statement that “This would be an easy one to take the heart out of.”
Detectives Miller, Price, Robichaud, and Young canvassed the neighborhood conducting interviews and questioning locals as to whether or not they had seen anything or knew anything about the victim. The end of West Cahill Street overlooks the area where the murder had happened. The second house on that street was occupied by Kevin Wilhortte, who informed officers he knew the victim back when they had both lived at the Castaways Trailer Park, two or three months earlier. Wilhortte had no additional information as far as a personal connection, but informed officers of a suspicious van that had been hanging out by the swimming hole. He explained that the man who drove the yellow van was tall and skinny with a beard, and that he carried a goat in the back of the van. Wilhortte suspected the driver was involved in satanic activity in the area. Upon later investigation this van was ruled out as having anything to do with the case.
Invisible Killer Page 7