Show Notes
Law enforcement called some of San Diego's missing and murdered women "NHIs," short for No Humans Involved. It was police slang used to describe victims they believed didn't matter.By 1988, the number of women disappearing from San Diego County had become impossible to ignore. Years before, the sheriff had said there was not a disproportionate number of women, but by the time forty-three women were murdered or went missing, the public started pushing for answers. There would be few to find.In the final episode of our three-part series, we examine the investigation that became one of the largest homicide task forces in California history, the competing theories that shaped the search for answers, and the unidentified women who remain without names decades later. We also explore how police culture, public perception, and systemic failures influenced which victims received urgency and which did not.The women of El Cajon Boulevard were never one story. They were daughters, mothers, sisters, and friends whose lives intersected in a city that too often looked away.This is the final chapter of San Diego's Lost Women. 📍 San Diego, California | 1980s - 1990s 📖 Featuring an original poem written and read in her honor by Jennifer Cox. ➡️ Help bring attention to missing and unidentified women—subscribe and share this episode. 📍 Find us on Instagram & Facebook. 📚 Get Aimee’s book, Doe, now available via University of Akron Press, Bookshop.org, and Amazon. 📰 For more women-centered true crime content, subscribe to Aimee’s newsletter, GIRLHUNT. More about Jennifer Cox: Jennifer combines a glowing personality with outlandish humor to invent her own comedic style. She burst on the scene in 1995 with her excellent yet underrated performance as middle child "Jan Brady" in "The Brady Bunch" movies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from She Goes by Jane: A True Crime Podcast
“If something happens to me, don’t give up until you find out what happened," Pamela Butler told her brother. He could never have guessed he would need to do just that.
For years, Steven Sherer had called his wife, Jami Hagel Sherer, over and over whenever she was away from him. It was a way for him to constantly monitor where she was, who she was with, and to control her actions. On September 30, 1990, he called Jami’s parents’ house twice. And then the phone stopped ringing.Jami had told her mother that morning that she was leaving Steven. Jami told her mother she just wanted to gather a few belongings, grab her favorite lunch, and then return to her parents’ house. It should have taken minutes.Jami never arrived.When Jami didn’t arrive and Steven didn’t call, her mother worried the two had reconciled. But when Steven showed up without Jami claiming he hadn’t seen her, her mother knew something was very wrong. Jami Hagel has been missing since that day in 1990. Listen to Part 2.📍 Redmond, Washington | September 30, 1990
In 1986, 22-year-old Jami Hagel met Steven Sherer at a bar in Redmond, Washington. He was charming, persistent, and was soon sending her a dozen roses. Within months, the relationship that started with romance would become something far more frightening.
On a June night in 1950, seventeen-year-old Barbara Kelley left home for a date with Henry Baird, a 28-year-old World War II veteran she had been seeing for several months. Barbara told her parents she would spend the night at a friend’s house in nearby Eureka. There was no reason for them to worry. The next morning, Henry was found nude on a remote beach along the Northern California coast. He had been shot to death. His companion, Barbara, was nowhere to be found.Henry had been shot in the back of the head. Nearby, his clothes were found neatly stacked. With them were Barbara’s clothes. But there was no sign of Barbara. Within hours, police began to investigate the theory the teenager had been involved in Henry’s death. In the years since the murder and disappearance, speculation has run rampant including false confessions, searches through the woods, and a connection to an eerily similar case in another county.But at the heart of it all is Barbara Kelley, a seventeen-year-old girl who went on a date and never came home.📍 Humboldt County, California | June 17, 1950
ComposeWrite to Aimée Baker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices