Warrant Said Issued in Missing Girl Case

A warrant has been issued in the 1986 disappearance of a 6-year-old girl, just days after a woman contacted the girl’s parents and said she might be their daughter, a sheriff said Wednesday.

Boone County Sheriff Dennis Brannon said the warrant remained under seal. “I do believe it’s a female, but beyond that I really have no idea,” Brannon told Indianapolis television station WRTV.

Indiana State Police scheduled a news conference for later Wednesday.

The warrant comes after authorities sought DNA tests to determine whether the woman was Shannon Marie Sherrill, who vanished while playing outside her mother’s Thorntown home.

Brannon said he knew few details of the investigation, which has primarily been handled by Indiana State Police, and did not know who was being sought. He said he did not believe there had been an arrest.

The issuance of the warrant was first reported Wednesday by The Lebanon Reporter.

The newspaper, citing a source close to the investigation, reported the warrant was issued Tuesday.

Boone County Prosecutor Todd Meyer told the newspaper that Boone Superior Court Judge Matthew Kincaid heard information at a probable cause hearing late Tuesday afternoon.

Meyer said he could not yet comment on the specifics of the case and that the hearing and the records involved were not open to the public.

A message seeking comment was left Wednesday by The Associated Press at the offices of Meyer and Brannon. State police and FBI officials would not confirm any developments in the case Wednesday.

Police in Virginia said Tuesday they were helping Indiana authorities investigate the woman’s account.

Sherrill’s father, William Michael Sherrill, who talked Saturday with the woman, said DNA tests were planned to determine whether she is his child.

He said he was stunned when the woman called him after speaking to his ex-wife, Dorothy Sherrill, who still lives in Thorntown near the area where their daughter vanished about 30 miles northwest of Indianapolis.

“I had questions in my mind that I was going to ask her, and when I got her on the phone, my mind just went blank,” said Sherrill, who manages a service station in Tipton.

State police 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten declined Tuesday to discuss the investigation, including whether DNA tests were under way.

But Sherrill said Thorntown police have told him DNA tests were planned to compare his and his former wife’s DNA to that of the woman. “We gave blood samples years ago, so they have our DNA and they’re waiting on hers,” he said.

Virginia Beach, Va., police, meanwhile, were helping investigate the woman’s story by checking out names and addresses she gave Indiana State Police, police spokesman Jimmy Barnes said.

He said it was not clear whether the woman, who apparently lived in Virginia at some point, still lives in the Virginia Beach area.

One of the names Indiana authorities gave Virginia Beach police could be a name the woman was using when she supposedly was taken to Virginia Beach as a child. The other names could be the names of people involved in the abduction, Barnes said.

If the woman’s account is true and she is Shannon Sherrill, now 22 years old, it would be among just a handful of cases where a missing child resurfaced after more than a decade, said Ben Ermini, director of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s missing children division.

“Missing 17 years and then located – it isn’t very common, although it does happen. Certainly here at the center we never give up hope,” Ermini said.

In cases of children missing for several years, DNA is almost always used to help determine their biological parents, Ermini said. Sometimes, dental records and fingerprints are used.

The quickest that DNA test results could be completed would be within about two days of submission of blood or tissue samples to a laboratory, Ermini said.

Shannon Sherrill’s name is one of about 5,500 active cases dating back to the 1970s that is maintained by Ermini and others at the Alexandria, Va.-based center.

After Shannon Sherrill disappeared in 1986, hundreds of people scoured fields and wooded lots for three days to no avail.

“The whole town was looking for her, everybody,” said Shirley Childress, 63, a retired nursing home worker who has lived in Thorntown nearly 20 years.

Childress said the case of the missing girl with a mop of brown hair and angelic face still haunts the town. She would like to believe that the woman is Shannon Sherrill.

“I would be pretty happy if it’s true, if it’s her, but I don’t know. I hope it is,” she said.

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On the Net:

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children: http://www.missingkids.com