Bookstore owner murdered in her store, DNA leads to killer a decade later

hello and welcome to Crime Watch Daily Updates I'm your host Anna Garcia Book

store

s are a place to be transported to another world to escape the noise of everyday life and end up in a new place for a bookseller in Salt Lake City, Utah, however, the future chapters of her life were cut short when she was mugged and

murdered

in her own

store

Sherry Black and her husband Earl owned a

bookstore

called B and W Supply Billiards and books Sherry looked after the books while Earl restored pool tables in his store right next to his house. On November 30, 2010, Earl returned to B and W to discover that his wife had been beaten and stabbed in the store.

Little seemed out of place, except for an Armani belt that the

killer

left bloody fingerprints on, but investigators couldn't find any matches. Based on those prints, detectives cleared Earl and his family of suspicion and then, almost exactly a

decade

after Sherry's violent murder, detectives in Salt Lake arrested 29-year-old Adam de Burro in October 2020. Investigators they finally achieved a break in the case after sending DNA to a lab and scientists were able to create a profile of the suspect's likely appearance and that's how they got to Adam in October 2021, he pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and was sentenced to prison life without parole. case of a well-known local businesswoman whose family finally got justice after her murder a

decade

later

in a small

bookstore

on a busy road behind stacks of Dusty novels and dog-eared hymnals.

An unthinkable horror. vicious and senseless what happened behind the counter of this quaint country bookstore a random crime or cruel bloodthirsty revenge there was someone who didn't like sherry there was at least one now everyone in my hometown asks what the high price was of these rare books paid for In Cold Blood Salt Lake City seat of the Mormon religion their stories and Records written on the centuries-old pages of books pages that can be worth a fortune like how much does a good Book of Mormon cost a hundred thousand dollar book Black Sherry lived here and loved books too was a voracious reader from a young age my mother had so many books her daughter Heidi Miller says Sherry never read a book she didn't love I mean it was always a passion she knew what she was doing she knew where everything was and she had a gift for it it was amazing Heidi married into wealth her husband Greg Miller owns the Utah Jazz NBA team but Greg says his in-laws Sherry and Earl preferred a simpler life they didn't have a lot of money for her in one role, but they really worked hard to make the most of what they had

later

in life together.

Sherry and Earl fulfill a dream: to open a quirky little shop along this busy stretch of Eight Lane Highway next to the bookstore. Cherry Black's house looks like a small log cabin they almost call it a BMW Billiards and Books where Earl restores old pool tables and Sherry buys and sells rare books the most valuable artifacts of her Mormon faith is a small bookstore is a niche bookstore above all for most LDS books which was Sherry Black's passion and this quaint religious bookstore is the last place you would expect something bad to happen that would change early one morning when Sherry's family finds out the devil visited her little log cabin called her cell phone and i called her at her house and no one was answering and it was so weird i had a really weird feeling.

Sherry's husband Earl returns to the store in the early afternoon. He had just returned to the bookstore to download some items. Earl whimpers his way through Sherry's stacks of books calling her name the eerie silence nothing out of the ordinary for the quiet little shop when you first walked in you wouldn't have even noticed something was wrong until you started looking further up close when earl looks closer in the warehouse he stumbles upon the utter horror 9-1-1 whats the address is sherry lying in a pool of blood she is awake she is not dead she is fine if she is breathing she is not dead i cant handle this It's a site so graphic and terrifying that it stuns even veteran detective Joe Satara.

What was your reaction when you saw Sherry? In fact, I want to say that I've been doing this for quite some time and this was probably one of the most brutal scenes I've ever seen. she was

murdered

, she was beaten and stabbed and it was a violent and brutal scene straight out of a horror and horror story Heidi's earlier strange feeling becomes shockingly real when Earl calls her voice trembled with pain and confusion my dad called and said someone had killed your mom and me just that it didn't make any sense he just said you need to get it fast Heidi runs across town her mind is still spinning it was so cruel and I don't know nonsense you thought it was someone who knew what they were doing who broke in with a purpose this was not a well planned well organized crime there is still cash in the register and the rest of the store seems to be intact she put the most valuable books in a safe and it seems they were all accounted for but if not it was a robbery, why when you went in and assessed the crime scene did you find any evidence or clues as to who might have done it right?

In this particular case, there is plenty of evidence, including the

killer

's fingerprints. and an item that is definitely out of place in this old religious bookstore a modern armani exchange belt we think it came from the suspect why was it there? on the attack, but why would someone attack a mild-mannered bookstore

owner

the whole time we were there? He was very surprised that it was never stolen or knows of any trouble in that way that he recorded shortly after the murder of Sherry, her Earl's husband. he says that he has to not only bury his wife, but also dismantle the bookstore he loved so much.

I don't know, we're not leaving the store open. We plan to sell the books, but we're going to make her proud. We're not just going to, we're not just going to get rid of You never know what she knew, but we can try, and Earl's gut-wrenching pain proves to investigators that he had nothing to do with Sherry's murder. We have cleaned up all the family we have. I've looked at them extensively and you have to in an investigation like that. His friends, close friends and family have no idea who did this, and neither do the police.

The blood of the prince. Nothing matches. Nothing in the police records. Dark omen of crime for lore Was there ever anyone who seemed questionable let alone the Shadow Side? From time to time she would get people like that, not a lot. It turns out that Sherry had a brief affair with a suspicious client. the brutal murder of her why do you think someone is going to come to murder you for a book A Tale of Terror that you expect to read only in detective novels? Sherry Black was brutally murdered in the waiting room of her antique bookstore I just came out of a horror story her unknown killer perplexed cop he's just not on the radar yet at this point Sherry's killer left behind blood and clear fingerprints but they don't match anyone in the books how many people he has interviewed on this case over the hundreds years also on the scene an imitation Armani Exchange belt its origin is unknown there was a sticker on the back of the hood the numbers three two three we could never confirm what it really meant sherry was beaten and stabbed here bmw billiards and books an unassuming store she owned with her husband earl so this is the crime scene you never know she was here unless she really knew what the killer could want to make Sherry pay with her life the answer might be here on the shelves the weird mormon books can be worth an extraordinary amount of money Ken Sanders has an old bookstore much like Sherry's it's a big deal in Salt Lake City , home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, where parishioners will pay big bucks for a million-dollar printed history book of Commandments worth a million dollars more people will kill for much less than that amount of money at stake a dangerous clientele is never far away when you find out that this poor woman has been brutally murdered it's like, it's beyond comprehension who would do that.

Everyone wonders if he was Sherry's killer. Someone she dealt with before. he stole some extraordinarily rare books and these books were inadvertently bought by Sherry Black and he sold some of them before it was known they were stolen and they had to be returned by that seller Lauren Nielsen and he is not a Mormon missionary his father has several rare books and weird elements of Mormon history, so it wouldn't be a huge surprise if some bad guy took advantage of her and Sherry helped bring him down, cooperated with law enforcement, and the prosecution of that individual related to the murder Sherry was a victim of. of a brutal vendetta is the best lead detective joe sutera has, but hopes of a quick resolution are dashed once again the connection to nielsen is a dead end it was a link to sherry so of course we investigate that and he is not the suspect evidence blood prints unique fashion belt could put a face to the data so far take a good look this face is not a photograph but a digital reconstruction the heritage is 46 percent west african and 34 percent from European researchers put the Killer's blood test through the phenotyping process generating a mugshot of Mere strands of DNA from 25 years old to 38 to 52 years old this particular person 25 years old and then the second poster is one of someone 52-year-old Ben Pender ozutera stopped re-examining interviews and evidence and getting the The killer's digital mug shot into public view I think someone saw something, even if it's not something that's going to solve the case, allows us to move forward in the case and continue moving forward in this case, I mean because it's ongoing and this is a case. that will never go away, it will not go on the Shelf until we have a resolution.

Sherry's daughter Heidi and hers son-in-law Greg Miller won't let Sherry kill her and increase the reward to 250,000 for information. who catches the killer you guys have really done just about everything anyone could do we've been blessed with some resources that many families don't have and we're fortunate to have been in a position where we can do some of that and the Millers have something else something which certainly helped me stay strong during my own trial of captive kidnapping even when all seemed lost i hope my parents never gave up on me how do you keep going without giving up even though the odds don't really feel like they're in your favor that much I feel like as long as I know we're doing everything we can there's hope I can never lose hope