Cold Case Files - Missing in Altoona

Episode Date: August 23, 2022

When 22-year-old Sherry Leighty vanishes in 1999, her family is left wondering how a dedicated mother of three could just vanish without a trace. The case takes on a new life a decade later, thanks to Sherry’s sister, who uses new social media outreach to crowdsource information. Check out our great sponsors! 1-800 Contacts: Order online at 1800contacts.com - download their free app - OR call 1-800 Contacts (that’s 1-800-266-8228) Progressive: Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 27 million drivers who trust Progressive!

An A&E original podcast. This episode contains descriptions of violence. Listener discretion is advised. My dad was in contact with the police department on a regular basis. It was always, they had no answers. They haven't, you know, seen or heard of her, nothing. I feel like he kind of like lost hope as far as getting any help from law enforcement. Whenever the police kind of gave up hope on the whole deal, I kind of did as well.

There are 120,000 unsolved murders in America. Each one is a cold case. Only one percent are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories. On October 2nd, 1999, Shelley Nagel's family and friends gather at her house for a birthday party for her youngest son. Altoona, Pennsylvania is a city nestled in the Allegheny Mountains. It was built around the railway tracks and it is steeped in the history of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It is a quiet area with a hometown feel and a great place to raise children. The typical family event seems to be going as planned. Shelly's father and her brothers Richard and Sean are there,

but her sister Sherry has not arrived with her kids yet. Sherry has recently separated from her husband Aaron, and she and their children are living with Aaron's parents. As Shelly begins to usher the guests out onto the patio where the party would take place, a surprise arrival draws her attention. Someone rang the doorbell, and there stood Aaron, Sherry's husband, and his dad, Ken, the lady, with my nieces and nephew. I was confused a little bit.

I assumed it would have been Sherry bringing the children to the party. Shelly and Sherry, with the kids, they always had big parties. We were always all together whenever those kids had a birthday, though. It was definitely out of character for Sherry to miss one of the kids, whether it had been Shelly's children or her own. Sherry's absence becomes more concerning when her family questions her husband and father-in-law. My dad and I asked Erin where Sherry's absence becomes more concerning when her family questions her husband and father-in-law. My dad and I asked Aaron where Sherry's at, and Aaron didn't know.

And then Ken said something like, I can't believe she left the kids. Why would she leave the kids? And him and my dad had some words back and forth, and then Aaron and his dad left. Just the mere fact of not hearing from her, not even a phone call to say, you know, I'm sorry I didn't make it, that had me worried. Sherry and her siblings were raised by a single parent, their dad. After being abandoned by their mother, their father did his best to make sure his children had everything they needed. He would take us, we would go to the parks, we would go swimming at the local lakes around here and a lot of picnics, a lot of car rides out in the country.

Sherry was shy as a teenager, but also very loving, caring, sweet, and kind. Her brother Richard remembers her sunny disposition. She's always the one to put a smile on your face. She was always happy, never really, you'd never seen her down. Sherry met her husband Aaron when she was 14 years old. Aaron was three years older than Sherry, and this was something that made her father worry. But when Sherry got pregnant with her first child at just 15, her life changed immediately,

and the age gap became the least of their concerns. That was a little difficult time. I know she had told me first. I don't know if I was the very first person, but she did tell me before telling our dad because she was worried what he was going to say or do. But I kind of got her to get the nerve up. Obviously, Dad was not happy about it.

I believe my dad became more supportive. You guys made a mistake here, but let's do the right thing about it and make sure you're both taken care of. Thanks to the support of her family, Sherry was able to graduate from high school. But becoming a mother at just 15 meant that she had to grow up and settle down much sooner than the other girls her age. By the time she was 21, Sherry and Aaron had three children, and they were Sherry's world.

She stayed at home with the kids while Aaron worked as a long-haul truck driver. Aaron's job kept him away from home for at least a week each time he left, so it was a lonely and challenging time for Sherry. She was left to raise her children alone the majority of the time. The fact that Aaron was never home to be part of the family, I think that's what added the stress to their relationship. Their relationship began to break down, and in 1999, Sherry and Aaron separated. Having spent the last seven years raising her children, Sherry didn't have the money to get a new place for them right away, so she had to move in with her husband's parents, the Leedys. Her siblings, Shelly and Richard, recall what it was like for Sherry adjusting to her life after her marriage broke down. That was very uncomfortable

for her. She started working for a temp agency to save money to get out from underneath the Leedys. After she moved in with the Leedys, began dating. A gentleman named Ryan. Aaron caught her and this new boyfriend talking in the alley. It caused a big argument. When Sherry doesn't show up for her nephew's birthday party, just a few weeks after that argument, with absolutely no notice, her family begins to worry that something is really, really wrong.

Sherry's family members knew something just wasn't right. So they turned to Aaron's parents, who Sherry had been living with, for information. My mind didn't want to believe it, but I don't know, it just, it didn't feel right. Calling up at the ladies to find out where Sherry's at. The ladies had told my father that Sherry had ran off to Maine with her boyfriend. They never said who. We just automatically assumed they meant Ryan. We didn't have a phone number.

We didn't have an address. We didn't know who he was. Maybe he did something to her. We didn't know who he was. Maybe he did something to her. We didn't know. That's what was a little worrisome. A few weeks pass without any contact from Sherry, so her father decides to go to the police. As Sherry is an adult who has reportedly started a new relationship following the breakdown of her marriage, the police feel as though there is nothing to investigate. As far as they're concerned, Sherry has gone to Maine with a new boyfriend, and if she has not made contact with anyone, it is by choice.

It's reasonable for the police to assume Sherry has left to start a new life, away from her in-laws and her possessive ex-husband. The police in Altoona had no reason to believe that she was in danger or that a crime had been committed. Their belief was simply that she had decided to leave and have no contact with her family. But the police don't know Sherry like her family does. There was nothing more important to that girl

than her children. Excuse me. Sherry would have never left her children due to the simple fact that she was abandoned by her mother and she would never put her children through that. Her kids were her world. In my heart, in my mind, I knew something bad had happened. The police speak with the last person to see Sherry before she went missing, her father-in-law, Kenneth Leidy.

Kenneth says that Sherry had woken up to go to work on a Friday morning before getting a lift from him, and after he dropped her off, he never saw her again. As time moves on and no one has heard from Sherry, her family begins to see less of her children, which is odd for this close-knit family. I was around my nieces and nephews all the time. Our kids played together. After her disappearance, that came to an end. Her children were raised by their father and their grandfather and grandmother. And as far as I know, the ladies led them children to believe that their mother was an alcoholic and ran off with another man, and that's why she wasn't around.

My dad was in contact with the police department on a regular basis. It was always, they had no answers. They haven't, you know, seen her, heard of her, nothing. I feel like he kind of lost hope as far as getting any help from law enforcement. Whenever the police kind of gave up hope on the whole deal, I kind of did as well.

Whenever Sherri first went missing, maybe there was a possibility that she left for a while. But my problem was, as the time went on and she didn't contact my father, she didn't contact her children, she didn't contact anybody, I didn't believe she'd be coming home. The months turn into years with no contact from Sherry at all. The Altoona police insist that there is no case to investigate. But even after five long years, Sherry's father does not give up looking for her. And in February 2005, his final thoughts are of his daughter.

Our dad was definitely heartbroken over the whole ordeal. I think he felt like he let her down, like he wasn't there for her. The last time I was at the hospital with him, he said, have you heard from Sherry? I did promise him that I'm going to find her. I'm going to bring her home. He was real happy, but he passed away two days later. I had faith that I would be able to find her. Six more years pass by, and as social media becomes a more effective tool in missing persons cases, Sherry's sister Shelly sets up a Facebook page to try and find any information about Sherry's disappearance.

The response from the Altoona police has been disappointing. But Shelly starts by trying to track down Ryan, the man Sherry was dating at the time of her disappearance. In 2012, she finally finds him, and the theory that Sherry had voluntarily left to go to Maine with him is blown apart. I started searching on a couple social medias. I eventually came across him through,

I believe it was his wife's page, but I reached out to him and asked him if he remembered Sherry. I didn't want to scare him off. He reached back out to me and said he did remember her, and the last time he saw her was when Aaron confronted him by Aaron's parents house. Sherry had asked Ryan to leave. That was the last time he saw her. The revelation prompts investigators to take another look at Sherry's disappearance. If she didn't run off to Maine with a boyfriend, then where did she

go? As with most cases where a person goes missing, those closest to them become the initial suspects. Sherry's estranged husband, Aaron, is said to have been furious about her new relationship and even suspected that it had been going on before they split up. This information seems like a motive to the new investigative team assigned to the case. Former sergeant from Pennsylvania State Police, Daniel Sneeth, joins the investigation and works alongside District Attorney George Zanuck as they attempt to build a case. It seemed as if Aaron was attempting to cooperate with law enforcement the entire time, but they still had suspicions regarding Aaron. Altoona didn't think they could rule out anybody

in the Lighty family at that point. The whole family would have been of interest. You don't know. There could have been a plot. There could have been more than one person involved. By April of the following year, information is uncovered about where Sherry may be. One of the messages I had received from Aaron's ex-girlfriend, she claimed that my nephew said that his mother was buried underneath an outhouse on the Leidy's property up in Warrior's Mark. For someone to say something like that kind of hit me like a ton of bricks. I have to tell the police this because this was something we'd never even heard of. They were just kind of matter of fact.

I thought it was a big deal, but they didn't seem to. The Leedy family owns a farm that they use as a hunting camp in Huntington County. The 150-acre farmland is in Warriors Mark Township, an area situated between the hilly countryside of central Pennsylvania, around 20 miles from Altoona. Although the detectives have a suspicion that Sherry's body is out there somewhere, they have no idea where to begin, and Kenneth Leidy is far from enthusiastic about the police searching his land. As he was the last person to see Sherry on the day that she went missing, this causes alarm. Sherry's family has reason to believe that her father-in-law, Kenneth,

was capable of doing something to her. His behavior around Sherry has caused concern before. We knew Sherry was uncomfortable around Ken Leedy because he was really touchy-feely. He would touch her hair. There was just some really odd behavior. It was kind of creepy that your daughter-in-law... I heard plenty of creepy stories of peeking undercovers when he thinks Sherry was sleeping. Creepy actions for an older man to a younger woman. District Attorney Dave Smith learns that

it will not be easy to get on the Leedy property. Initially, Ken Leidy had indicated to the Altoona Police Department that we could go on to the property. But then Aaron's father, Ken Leidy, contacted the detective from APD and said, no, you're not coming on my property without a search warrant. And that flagged us as to why that situation had changed so suddenly. They need a search warrant, and suspicion alone is not enough to grant one. We knew if we could get on that property, we would at least have a fighting chance to find Sherry.

We just didn't have enough to get a search warrant. We were pretty much at dead end. I mean, 13 years later, there's no bloody sidewalk to look at. There's no ball bat to go pick up. We didn't have anything. Without anything else to go on, the detectives wonder if they can arrange a phone call between Aaron and his father. A phone call that the other, they can consent to be recorded as long as it's authorized by the district attorney.

Aaron at the time knew he was still a suspect. Maybe we could find out through Aaron what Kenneth knew. In an effort to clear his own name, Aaron agrees to help the detectives, and they devise a plan to try and get his father to talk. It's April 19, 2013, and Aaron makes his way to the state police barracks with his lines memorized for the call. He then calls his father from an interview room. Aaron tries to reason with his father by telling him that he is a suspect too. And he asks his father what it is that he's not telling him. But Kenneth avoids the questions and becomes agitated.

He said, I can't talk here. I have to go somewhere else. The detectives urge Aaron to try again, so he calls his father back. And the conversation that happens next changes the course of the investigation once again. Aaron was upset on the phone. His dad was upset on the phone. And out of the blue, Kenneth said, I did it. It was the most stunning moment of my legal career.

He had just confessed to a homicide that happened 13 years ago. The feeling was gut-wrenching. We just had this guy tell us he killed somebody 13 years ago, and nobody ever knew she was dead. And at that point, everything changed. Kenneth claims that Sherry's death had been an accident, and when Aaron asks him where she is, Kenneth replies that she's on the farm. The vast expanse of the farmland is surrounded by

fences and rocky terrain, and Kenneth indicates that Sherry is buried under a rock pile somewhere on the land. That evening, state troopers go to Kenneth Leedy's residence and question him about Sherry's disappearance. Kenneth has no idea that his confession was recorded, so he remains defiant as the troopers begin to probe him for answers. When the troopers tell Kenneth that he will have to come to the state police barracks for further questioning, he jumps up from his seat on the couch and attempts to get out of the room. He has a gun upstairs, and he intends to use it on himself.

A trooper tries to stop Kenneth, but he's assaulted before other officers can tackle Kenneth and handcuff him on the ground outside of his home. Kenneth is charged with aggravated assault against a law enforcement officer and is detained in the Blair County Prison. He refuses to answer any further questions. The investigators finally have what they need to apply for a search warrant, and Huntington County District Attorney George Zanuck

answers an urgent call on a peaceful spring morning in sleepy, rural Pennsylvania. The detective from the Altoona Police Department believed that a body was buried in Huntington County. When the detective explained things to me and said there was no question about it, this was not someone who ran away. This was a homicide case. The detectives pinned their hopes on the following morning's search of the farmland they had suspected for so long. It's just after 8 a.m. when the search team arrives on the 150-acre parcel of land in Huntington County, Warriors Mark Township, armed with a warrant. Officers fan out across the property with high hopes that they will quickly find Sherry after 13 long years. They know they're

searching for a rock pile close to a fence row, but there are countless rock piles and the vast expanse of farmland is surrounded by fence rows. We weren't just going to search this property like we would search a house in a drug case. Aaron Lighty joined us, showed us the fence row. He thought his father was talking about, during the phone call, multiple fence rows. Pretty much lined the property in different intervals. Ken Lighty, he had a hunting stand there.

The sense was that should be the starting point. We had been in contact with the Pennsylvania State Police can-9 unit and we had a cadaver dog. Because the body had been in the ground for so many years, the scent would travel and it could be 200 yards away. You could dig and dig and dig, but you still may not find the body. We realized pretty quickly this wasn't going anywhere. The search dragged on that day with little results. It's a daunting task to try to figure out where is she. And there was a resolve by everybody that we're not leaving this ground until we find her.

The state police contact forensic anthropologist Dr. Dennis Dirkmaat and his team from Mercyhurst University to assist with the search. The Pennsylvania State Police were looking for a set of human remains. I brought along my team from Mercyhurst to conduct a full-scale excavation. Between 50 and 100 people scour the land. Cadaver dogs pace, looking for a scent to indicate a body is nearby. But as night falls on the fifth day of searching, hope begins to fade once more. You start the morning fresh,

and as the days kind of drag into another day, you've got to recharge, and you've got to just keep thinking, like, we're going to find her. It could be the next rock could lead us to her body. So it was challenging. There was many highs and there was many lows, and they were long days, and they were longer nights because you would be exhausted, you would go home, and you would try to rest, but you couldn't rest.

My concern was we don't have a body yet. We have a statement saying it was accidental. That potentially could hurt us as far as moving forward. Without a body, the detectives will struggle to make a murder charge stick. Kenneth Leidy has already been charged with assault on an officer, but unless they find Sherry's remains, her killer might go free. After over a week of unsuccessful searches, the detectives have no choice but to call off the effort. They decide to try and offer Kenneth a plea deal to convince him to tell them where he buried Sherry's body. If he complies, they will lower the charges from first-degree murder to third-degree murder. This means that instead of facing life in prison, the maximum sentence Kenneth will have to serve will be 7 to 14 years.

Sherry's family find the offer insulting and feel as though it's an injustice for her life. I was very angry. I didn't understand why they had to make a deal with him. And without asking the family first how we felt. Does he deserve a deal? No, the man don't. He took somebody's life. The investigators and district attorney feel as though it's their only option. My guess is the family wasn't going to be thrilled with anything less than a death sentence. And I can say I wasn't thrilled with anything less than a death sentence. But I had to weigh finding the body and getting some significant time with the hope that he dies in jail to never finding the body and not having a prosecution. Almost an impossible call, but ultimately it was my call to make.

In order to recover Sherry Leidy and to bring her back to her family and to get some type of justice with the conviction of Ken Leidy, I think the plea agreement was what we needed to do. On May 10, 2013, Kenneth Leedy agrees to take the plea deal and confess to Sherry's murder. Sergeant Daniel Sneeth reads an excerpt from Kenneth's statement. As we were heading out the front porch, I said to her, are you coming home to be a mother this weekend, or are you going to continue to be a bar whore? She just simply kind of turned and said, well, you.

And I said, you. And I gave her a shove. The shove, it was forceful. It was forceful and she hit her head right side of her head on my truck, I believe the mirror, and fell face first on the left side of her head onto the sidewalk.

Kenneth claims it was an accident and he panicked. He decided to get rid of Sherry's body, so he loaded her onto his truck and drove her from Altoona to Warrior's Mark and buried her on his property. The following day, Kenneth is taken from the Blair County Prison by Pennsylvania State Police officers and brought to the farm to show investigators where he had left Sherry. Walking around the area of this old fence row, he pointed out two locations. I remember saying, okay, Ken, tell me which one I should start looking at. He was handcuffed. He raised his hand and pointed and said, I would start there. I started throwing rocks off the pile. A void appeared.

As I leaned forward on the rocks, I was on all fours, and I could look down in the hole. There's a bone in that hole. We knew we had found Sherry Lighty. For years, Sherry had been on that ground. For years, Ken Lighty walked past her gravesite hunting. For years, that family had been on that property. Now, the investigators can try and find out what really happened to Sherry by conducting an autopsy and a forensic examination

to determine the exact medical cause of her tragic death. Forensic anthropologists are experts in determining the time, manner, and cause of death in cases where the victim's remains are highly decomposed. Dr. Dennis Dirkmaat is at the scene where Sherry's remains were discovered. As we were excavating, both legs were folded up, basically almost to the chin. Even the best contortionists couldn't do that. That told us that maybe the body was somewhere else.

Somebody had noticed the smell, then he had gathered up the remains and then buried her. Sherry's remains are carefully removed from the burial site and transported to Mercyhurst University to be examined by Dr. Dirk Ma. At the laboratory, the process would be a review of every bone surface that we have to see if there's any evidence of trauma. The right side of the face showed significant fracturing, showed more damage, and probably was a point of impact. This side was also damaged,

but probably because it was either against the ground or against a wall or something like that, and so you have a significant force here and then created many fractures here, many fractures here that ran through the skull. Sherry's skull has been crushed. Her cause of death is blunt force trauma inflicted with an object that caused such extensive damage to her skull that it shattered it.

When the investigators confront Kenneth with the results that contradict his story of causing Sherry's death by accident, he claims to remember something being in his hands as he moved towards Sherry, but he never elaborates beyond that. The plea deal has been signed, so even with the evidence that Sherry's death was clearly not an accident, Kenneth can only be convicted of third-degree murder. At a hearing in February 2014, Kenneth Leidy receives a sentence of 7 to 14 years in prison. His attorney, Thomas Hooper, reads a statement Kenneth has prepared where he expresses his regret that the circumstances spiraled out of control, his regret for not coming forward sooner, and his regret for the pain that he caused the family. During the sentencing hearing, Sherry's sister

Shelly and her brother Richard speak directly to their sister's killer. My family has been through living hell these past 14 years, not knowing what happened to Sherry. We knew she would have never left her young children. Not only did this monster take away their mother, but he lied to them for all these years, blaming Sherry, knowing all along he killed my sister. He has no conscience, no soul. I lost a sister, but they lost a mother. Sherry's most basic right, her right to life,

was cruelly and unjustly taken from her. I told him I thought what he did is inexcusable. What he put those children through is unimaginable. December 22nd, 2013, Sherry is reunited with her family for a final goodbye. When we finally got her home, we did have a memorial service for her, and she was then buried with her father. I felt like we were finally all together again. Kenneth Leidy became eligible for parole after serving seven years in prison in 2020. It has been 21 years since Sherry's murder, and the short sentence continues to outrage her family.

Every year, we have to worry because he's up for parole. It's just not fair for him to be able to get out and live a normal life after taking a life. When Kenneth Leidy came up for his first parole hearing in 2020, I did speak in front of the parole board. I did start a petition. The first hearing, I think I had over 2,000, And the second hearing, I had over 7,000. Kenneth Leidy was denied parole again in January 2022, and his next parole hearing is scheduled to take place in 2024.

The maximum sentence he can serve behind bars, 14 years, is the same length of time he was able to get away with murder while Sherry was left in an unmarked grave. Sherry's family continues to grieve for not only the loss of their sister, but for all of the things their sister lost, like watching her children grow. I would hope that one day I would be able to sit

with all three of them, her children, and just answer any questions that they have about their mother. I miss Sherry a lot, and I know that she's finally at rest, and I know she's with our dad. Cold Case Files is hosted by Paula Barrows. It's produced by the Law and Crime Network and written by Eileen McFarlane and Emily G. Thompson. Our composer is Blake Maples. For A&E, our senior producer is John Thrasher,

and our supervising producer is McKamey Lynn. Our executive producers are Jesse Katz, Maite Cueva, and Peter Tarshis. This podcast is based on A&E's Emmy-winning TV series, Cold Case Files. For more Cold Case Files, visit AETB.com.