156: Jami Hagel Sherer: When Domestic Violence Becomes A Disappearance
She Goes by Jane: A True Crime PodcastShow Notes
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.
Steven controlled where Jami went, who she saw, and how often she could be away from him. As Jami became increasingly isolated from her friends and family, the confident and outgoing young woman they knew began to disappear.
To many, Jami's life seemed successful: she was building a career and Microsoft, started a family with Steve, and purchased their first home. But those who knew her well, knew she was looking for a way out. But leaving Steve would never be as simple as walking out the door. There were threats of violence, financial complication, a child to protect, and the growing fear that he would never let her go.
But by the fall of 1990, Jami was ready to make plans for a life without him. She was ready to tell him she wanted a divorce. So she stepped out the front door of her parents' house to tell him, and she was never seen again. 📍 Redmond, Washington | September 30, 1990
📖 Featuring an original poem written and read in her honor by Jami Rice. ➡️ Help bring attention to missing and unidentified women—subscribe and share this episode.
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More about Jami Rice:
A Southern California native, Jami lives in the Los Angeles area with her husband, three children, and two dogs. As a pre-teen, Jami read books about serial killers and followed true crime cases on tv. In 2017, she was the jury foreman on a first degree murder trial in Los Angeles County. Shortly after that trial concluded, Jami launched MURDERISH podcast as she wanted to share true crime cases with like-minded people. Her very first episode was a recounting of her experience being a juror on a murder trial.
Voted “Class Clown” in school, Jami was the kid in school who often had her seat moved to the front of the class because she “talked too much.” Not much has changed, and through MURDERISH Jami now has a vehicle and an outlet to tell fascinating true crime stories to people without getting into trouble for talking too much.
Every other Monday, Jami releases a new episode of MURDERISH where she gives listeners a 3D look at fascinating true crime cases. Jami tells these stories with the empathy victims deserve. In each episode, she walks you through the victim and perpetrator’s background, how their worlds collided, details of the crime, and what went down during trial.
Jami’s professional background includes an 18 year career in commercial real estate financing. In 2018, she ditched her corporate gig and joined her husband in operating their Landscape construction and design company. When she’s not telling true crime stories, Jami is working alongside her husband to transform outdoor spaces and argue over who is the boss. Jami also enjoys going camping with her family, coffee, good conversation, binging on HGTV and Bravo, riding on the back of her husband’s motorcycle, karaoke, laughing, an
More from She Goes by Jane: A True Crime Podcast
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
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
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On November 18, 1995, Jacqueline “Jackie” Levitz spent two hours choosing wallpaper for the new home she was renovating in Vicksburg, Mississippi. She had only recently moved back to the area to be closer to her family, and she was already imagining the house as a gathering place for the people she loved.That shopping excursion would be the last time anyone saw her.Two days later, a friend went to check on Jackie after her family realized she wasn’t answering the phone. Her Jaguar was still parked outside and her jewelry and fur coats were still in the house. A television was playing in the bedroom and a half-finished glass of water sat on the windowsill. But Jackie was gone.The search for Jackie produced possible witnesses and conflicting theories about what happened to Jackie that night, but none of those brought law enforcement any closer to finding Jackie or learning what happened to her.Today, more than three decades later, Jacqueline Levitz remains missing.
Irene Silverman was missing. And by the time Sante and Kenneth Kimes went to trial for her murder, there was still no body, no murder weapon, and no definitive account of what happened to her the day she was last seen.