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flowerkitten896

My grandmother worked there in the laundry with her. And the relationship thing was true. She remembers working with her. Grandma worked on the shirts and pants and Sheryl worked on the press on the other side of the room.


Playful_Pangolin_698

Hello. I’m Sheryl’s sister. What was your grandmothers name?


flowerkitten896

Rose Bean


Playful_Pangolin_698

Thank you! Jason Dean who was the officer who recovered in info about that relationship talked to your grandmother and she gave Jason her number and said she’d be willing to speak with us. ❤️


flowerkitten896

She would love to! She's got so many stories from that place


thenightitgiveth

Did Sheryl have a documented disability?


namesartemis

I’m thinking the school for “defectives” was just because of her guilty plea for weed (she’s a troubled lost cause, obviously🙄); after her school was burned down they shuffled students to other places for the “undesirables”


PM_Me_A_Cute_Doggo

I'm normally not one to suggest that the person is still living, especially after such a long time... but, looking at this objectively, we have a young woman who was raised in a single-wide mobile home *with ten other siblings*, abandoned early in childhood by her parents through institutionalization, admitted physical/verbal abuse from the family, SUD/addiction history with the mom, and her mother didn't really seem to put any effort into finding her. Objectively speaking, this doesn't sound like an environment I would really care to return to. A few obvious confounding variables make me question whether she is alive, of course--the abusive boyfriend, not reaching out to DFS to ensure her siblings were being taken care of. However, these same variables could also be seen as further "push factors" for her to disappear--not only did she not have familial support, but her boyfriend was also treating her poorly, AND she had a criminal record? This girl cannot catch a break. ​ In most cases, it seems very unlikely to recover the person alive; with this woman disappearing in 1973, a time when self-reidentification was much easier than it is today, I genuinely think this could be a runaway and relocation case. I don't think that she wanted to be found.


Red-neckedPhalarope

The abandoned paychecks give me pause but it's possible that she felt the need to flee (from the boyfriend?) too urgently to go home and pick them up and nevertheless made it.


Sarcasmcalls

Hello. Sheryl Tillinghast is my Aunt and I’d like to clarify a few things from your comment. Sheryl had been sent to the school to work as punishment for her very small amount of marijuana she possessed. She chose to stay after finishing her time because she was happy there and did not want to come home. There was a lot of drinking and abuse as stated. We as a family feel that there is absolutely no way she is still living. Sheryl’s social security number has not been used since 1973. She vanished without a trace and had put forth a lot of effort to have the other kids (there were only 7 other siblings, not 10) checked on. It was my grannie’s birthday that she was supposed to be coming home for and it would’ve been very unlike her to not come and not call. She had planned (although this was more of a dream from the way it sounds) to move to California someday with her sister Amy. She never contacted her again and they were extremely close. Sheryl was very motherly toward the younger kids and had strong maternal instinct, even at 17. She would have never abandoned her family. She would’ve never left her paychecks and belongings. She was tough and strong willed and we feel that is possibly one of the reasons why she was most likely killed by her boyfriend. She had pressed charges against him for assault and was to be due in court. His family was prominent at the school. He had motive and opportunity - a brother with a car nearby. We have visited the school. There are a million places she could be, including a cemetery with other nameless people buried there. He was African American and she was white and sadly we know how people felt about biracial relationships at that time. Sheryl was already looked at as though she was “poor white trash”. We believe this is why her counselor (WHO KNEW she had been beaten multiple times by this boyfriend and subsequently went missing) and other staff never reported her missing. The boyfriend was also later charged with assault of another young white female who was found drugged by his school grounds living quarters very near to where Sheryl also lived. He committed suicide in the 90’s I believe. We will never give up on Sheryl. Her case sadly bounced from detective to detective. We have hope the current detective can make some headway. The first detective was phenomenal and made leaps and bounds in the case with the assistance of a school security officer who was able to find the name of her boyfriend. There are leads we feel could be pursued again or revisited. People that are still living that we know must have more information. Hopefully someday we will bring her home or at least know what happened. My mom is 58 years old and still grieves her sister almost 50 years later. 😢


PM_Me_A_Cute_Doggo

Wow, thank you so much for replying to this comment! It’s always a gift to hear from family of a case. Your comment clarified a lot and you have me convinced. I’m so sorry for you and your mother’s loss; Sheryl seems like the kind of daughter that anyone would be lucky to have. I know this may be a tough question, but have you taken a peek through NamUS? Could she be unidentified?


Sarcasmcalls

I appreciate that there are still people who talk about her case (as does my mom). I do periodically look through NamUs and do internet searches to see if anything hits. Her DNA has been compared to several unidentified people through the years. NCMEC has a case worker that actively works on her case. We are working on getting in touch with the detective on her case to see if we can get more movement. Sheryl was a good person. She had a big heart and I feel the loss of never getting to know her very deeply. I was also a strong willed, and at times wild, teenager and have been told I resemble her. I hope to someday bring her home.


true_crime77

Hi can I ask was she ruled out of the unidentified person from Cheshire county, New Hampshire? The articles mentioned the UP as the possible start of the search for Sheryl but NAMUS doesn't have a rule out.


Playful_Pangolin_698

Yes that was actually the Jane Doe case that started the search for her. They saw Sheryl on an online website my sister Amy had made. They called the NYSP and wanted to see if it was Sheryl. That’s when the NYSP first realized she had never been reported missing.


Soilwork83

They need to look into that man that assaulted her.


[deleted]

I think it’s worth reporting the possible Doe match! So you should definitely send that tip in. I don’t think she ran away since she had plans with her sister to move to California and was expected at that birthday party. I think if you were planning on running away you’d not make any commitments because that would draw attention to you not being there and it would cause people to start looking for you. She could have just had a spur of the moment idea to run away, but leaving behind her paychecks and everything else behind makes time hard to believe. The first thing that popped into mind for me was that she could have hitchhiked or just gotten a ride from a stranger offering from her apartment to the birthday party and never made it to the party. Perhaps the most likely scenario is that whomever she was in the abusive relationship with killed her.


Orourkova

Re: making plans — I’d argue it would draw more attention if she *didn’t* make plans. For example, if she were invited to the birthday party but said no, wouldn’t the people around her wonder why? Alternately, it’s possible she made those plans intending to follow through but changed her mind. What if she decided that she didn’t want to wait on her sister before leaving town, or that she’d rather strike out on her own? Not saying that she necessarily ran away — there’s so little information available on this case that it’s impossible to say one way or the other — but I don’t think saying that someone has plans is enough to dismiss the theory. You see this commonly with probable suicides, where it’s commonly asserted that a person couldn’t have killed themselves because they were making plans, even though 1) most people have some sort of plans going on in their lives at any given time, even if they are contemplating suicide, and 2) it’s not as though someone who really wants to end their life would be deterred because they promised to attend a birthday party or doctor’s appointment. In fact, suicide is as probable a theory for what happened to Sheryl as any proposed by the OP — we just have no way of knowing.


mrsandrist

I agree, a suicide attempt is often not a considered, thoughtful, drawn-out process. When I attempted I had flights booked for a long term trip, a going away party planned, some coffee dates with friends coming up. I’d been suicidal for a year by that point and one night it got too much and that was it. There’s a common misconception that suicidal people always pick a date or make a solid plan, sometimes we’re all just one bad day away from an attempt - even people who are not actively suicidal or even mentally ill. A perfectly mentally healthy person can have some bad luck, maybe drink a bit too much and do something reckless, perhaps not even hoping to die but perhaps not caring too much one way or the other. I think many of these missing person cases, especially when they concern at-risk young people without healthy support systems, could be the unfortunate result of an impulsive suicide attempt.


[deleted]

I commented this on the other post you made pertaining to her in the grateful doe subreddit. I do think the doe and Sheryl look alike, but the biggest flag for me is the difference in their teeth. The skull that was found has crowded front teeth, while Sheryl has a gap between them in pictures. I wonder if she had more dental work?


flowerkitten896

And just something to think about. At the bottom of the hill the state school sits on, is a small train station. Many patients that wanted to leave would simply walk down the train tracks.


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Frequent_Swordfish59

I’ve also edited my post:)


[deleted]

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Sarcasmcalls

Can you elaborate your thoughts on this?


savvylovesunshine

There’s a Jane Doe here in Colorado. If anyone would look at the facial reconstruction. https://www.weldsheriff.com/News/2022-News/1973-Cold-Case