Morning: Sherri Miller works the A.M. shift at Dakota Hospital in the housekeeping department. She returns to her grandpa Nick Jensen’s home where she’s living and lays her paycheck on the table.
6:00 P.M. Sherri calls Pam Jackson, who was sewing a dress with her mother in their rural home, and asks if Pam would go out with her driving that night.
8:00 P.M. Sherri pulls into Pam’s driveway in her grandpa’s 1960 Studebaker Lark. Pam grabs her father’s red flannel shirt, says goodbye, and rides off with Sherri.
8:00-9:00 P.M. Sherri and Pam are seen around Vermillion by various friends. The girls try to convince others to come with them to a party being thrown by the seniors.
9:00-9:30 P.M. Sherri and Pam visit Sherri’s grandmother Pearl Jensen at Dakota Hospital. Pearl is very sick, dying of cancer, and Pearl’s roommate can tell Sherri was very worried about her.
10:00 P.M. Classmate Mary Kaye Larson sees the Studebaker take a wrong turn on a road near the gravel pit keg party. Shortly thereafter, Mark Logterman, Pat Gale, and Steve Glass walk out of the rural Garryowen Church and talk with Pam and Sherri in the church parking lot.
10:15 P.M. After trying to give directions to the party to the girls, the boys suggest they follow their car to the location. After a couple miles, the boys realize the girls are no longer following them, but they assume the girls changed their mind and decided not to go.

The Vermillion Plain Talk publishes the first article referencing the missing girls. The Sioux City Journal publishes a similar article two days later on 6/3/71 that includes descriptions of Pam and Sherri’s clothing, belongings, and the 1960 Studebaker Lark they were driving.

Sherri’s grandmother Pearl Jensen dies at Dakota Hospital. Her family publishes her obituary in a couple newspapers in hopes that Sherri would see the news and return for the funeral. When she does not, worries increase that she did not run away.

Adele Jackson, frustrated by the lack of investigating being done by local authorities, writes a letter to the South Dakota Attorney General, listing all the reasons she thinks it’s unlikely Pam and Sherri ran away. The AG sends the case to the Division of Criminal Investigation, the state police agency, which assigns a special agent to travel to Vermillion.

Stumped and without any leads, Agent Patterson writes a letter to Winnipeg, Manitoba authorities asking them to check a local hippie commune. Canadian police write back multiple times to report they cannot find the girls.

Calling it their best lead so far, Agent Patterson and Chief Offerdahl interview Luther League employees in Sioux Falls, show them the photograph, but don’t find anyone helpful. A month later, the DCI ends its active investigation, assuming the photo was likely of Pam.

Reporter Randal Hunhoff from the Vermillion Plain Talk newspaper publishes a 20-year anniversary story about Pam and Sherri’s disappearance. He is the first journalist to interview the three classmates who saw the girls last and to explain how they were headed to the rural party that night. In 1993, Hunhoff writes another version of the article for South Dakota magazine. Those two pieces revive interest and curiosity in the case across the region, including within law enforcement.

With the use of grant money and a reserve officer program, the South Dakota Attorney General’s office and DCI creates a cold case unit. Assistant DCI Director Trevor Jones is named supervisor, but Agent Mike Braley is the true leader of the cold case unit as they select the disappearance of Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller as one of the two cases to begin working on, with David Lykken in mind as the suspect.

After receiving information from retired Officer Hofman that David Lykken may have sexually assaulted his sister, Susan, Agents Braley and Devaney contact her and interview her. Susan tells them Pam and Sherri had never been to the Lykken farm and that she didn’t think David had anything to do with their disappearance. But in a second interview in August, Nancy changes her story and begins to tell the agents memories of seeing the bodies of the two girls and the Studebaker at the Lykken farm when she was a teen.
(*Susan’s name has been changed for this story)

Dozens of agents raid the Lykken farm where David’s brother Kerwyn Lykken lives in one house and his 84-year-old mother Esther lives in another. Agent Braley interrogates Kerwyn, who says he doesn’t know anything about the disappearance. Cold case unit supervisor Trevor Jones gives Kerwyn a polygraph and tells him he fails. Agents dig large trenches in spots told to them by Susan where the family used to burn and bury trash. At the end of the week, the cold case unit takes a number of items from the Lykken farm, but find nothing that implicates the family in Pam and Sherri’s disappearance.

After failing to find evidence in the farm search, the cold case unit uses a psychologist, Dr. Fred Magnavito, to hypnotize Susan and attempt to prompt more memories from her. She recounts a story about her brothers and father burying a hole the night she saw the Studebaker and the girls’ bodies. She also now remembers seeing them lying in a wheelbarrow.

Using new details obtained from David Lykken’s sister through hypnosis, investigators search the Lykken farm a second time, looking for the Studebaker as well as a wheelbarrow and feed grinder.

Cold case investigators learn from prison staff that an inmate, Aloysius Black Crow, says David Lykken gave him information about disposing of Pam and Sherri’s bodies.

With his lawyer present, Kerwyn Lykken is played a portion of the Aloysius Black Crow recordings. Kerwyn claims the voice on the tape does not belong to his brother David.

After being indicted for a separate cold case murder in Union County, James Strahl is placed in the same jail cell as Aloysius Black Crow, who had been moved there after wearing a wire in the South Dakota State Penitentiary to help investigators in the Lykken case.

Within three weeks, cold case investigators learn Black Crow claims Strahl provided key details of his crime.

Kerwyn and Esther Lykken file a lawsuit against cold case investigators, claiming the searches of their farm were unconstitutional.

David Lykken makes his first court appearances after being charged with the murders of Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller. He claims his hearing should be in juvenile court because he was 16 when the allegations took place. The judge denies that request and Lykken pleads not guilty.

David Lykken’s legal defense team finally receives the Aloysius Black Crow recordings, listens to them, and immediately believes the other voice on the tape does not belong to David Lykken.

A prison guard listens to the tape at their request and tells them the voice belongs to another inmate at the prison, Bill Eutzy.

Defense attorneys question Black Crow about the recordings and Lykken’s sister about her memories in a court hearing to determine what evidence can be used in the trial. In addition, several of David Lykken’s rape victims testify about his penchant for choking, which is how prosecutors believe he killed Pam and Sherri. They hope to use those witnesses in trial to establish a modus operandi.

At approximately the same time the funeral for Pam’s father Oscar Jackson is beginning, local man Jim Sorensen finds the Studebaker in Brule Creek, just 100 yards from the driveway to the gravel pits the girls were trying to reach. Sorensen was out there looking for the car, inspired by a newspaper article he just read about a similar case in Oklahoma. Days later, the DCI leads an excavation of the Studebaker in which Pam and Sherri’s remains and mementos are found.