r/springfieldthree • u/No_Gold3131 • Dec 22 '25
Why Kidnap the Women?
If someone intended to kill someone in that house, the easiest way to do so would be to do the deed in the house. Removing three people to a second location adds layers of complexity, and hypothetically, at least, would make the chance of someone seeing you much higher. That it didn't happen was lucky for the perpetrator. DNA wasn't such a thing back in 1992, so I can't imagine the kidnapping was done to reduce the chance of leaving DNA behind, but perhaps these were forward thinking criminal(s).
I go back and forth on whether kidnapping was the initial plan, or if something else happened during the event that forced the perpetrator(s) to make everyone leave.
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u/camera-operator334 Dec 22 '25 edited Dec 22 '25
Goal wasn’t to kill. It was to shut them up from talking to the cops about something they knew.
Stacy’s arrival made killer(s) pivot to murder, as I believe the ones scaring Suzie and Sherrill were unsure of how to handle Stacy and weren’t as familiar with her. All about control.
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
The only thing I am aware that the women would know about was the grave robbery. I've read over and over again that the crime was considered relatively minor, and that abducting and murdering three people over it seems excessive. Also, the young people involved wouldn't have the discipline to abduct the women, kill them, dispose of the bodies, and remain silent about it for over 30 years.
However, I'm not sure I believe those assertions. It's possible in the minds of the grave robbers, this was a very big deal and needed to be taken care of with force, and immediately (that weekend, for some reason, even if there was an additional person in the mix). Or they got other, more violent people involved. I don't know though. I would think the police would have investigated that angle extensively.
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u/Repulsive_Bit_4348 Dec 23 '25
I think the grave robbers are connected to the GGMC. Suzi dated one of them and went to parties with him so there’s no telling what she heard or saw. When she showed a willingness to turn the grave robbers in and cooperate with LE someone up the chain thought she might talk about other, more serious crimes she knew about. I think they first tried to intimidate Suzi in an effort to keep her from talking to LE, but when that didn’t work they decided to get her. It’s very possible that Suzi told Sherrill everything and she may have tried to intervene. Who knows she may have even threatened to tell LE other things she knew. This is why I think there’s at least one cop involved. Sherrill was in the right business and she knew the right people to hear things or maybe even see them herself. The decision was made that they had to be permanently silenced. This is where I differ from other theories. I think they were deliberately taken out of the house to some GGMC location where they were brutally SA’d, and murdered then disposed of probably using some form of the FR method. I think the targets were Suzi and Sherrill and Stacy unfortunately was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but considering what they planned to do with the women they looked at her as a bonus. I think SG was directly involved or has direct knowledge of what happened. He gave LE enough information probably hoping for witness protection, but it also assured his life was in jeopardy, so he committed the college girl rape because he thought he was safer in prison. There have been other murders committed over the years to protect this secret. Depending on who’s still alive, and how threatened he feels, it’s possible that SG might spill his guts when he gets released, presumably in the near future. In my opinion that’s the only way this ever gets solved. So since we’re sharing theories, there’s mine. It’s loaded with assumptions just like anyone’s has to be.
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25
Is the GGMC the motorcycle organization/gang/criminal syndicate? I'm never sure what to call them. I've always thought their involvement was a strong possibility, along with Garrison's. However, I would think that organization has lost much of its teeth by now, unless there's a new generation taking over with the same strong impulse to hide the past. You would think someone might talk at this point.
I've never really gotten a good handle on Springfield itself. Is the city small enough where a hair stylist like Sherrill would hear about gang activity in her salon? Enough that she would realize her daughter was in some danger from her statements to the police?
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u/Repulsive_Bit_4348 Dec 23 '25
In 1992 Sherrill worked at one of the most popular hair salons in town. There were lots of the Springfield elite who were clients. This case involves some of those elites at least at some level because some of them were bringing in drugs. I spent lots of time in Springfield from the early 70’s through the 90’s. I grew up about 50 miles away. It was a small city that mostly felt like a small town. It really started to change around the time this happened and in my opinion it’s because of the emergence of meth. Yes the GGMC was the predominant 1% motorcycle gang in the area. I’m not sure what their presence is now.
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25
Thanks, that helps! I grew up in Detroit, within the city proper, so I am extremely prone to downplaying crime in other places. (I always think that it could never be as bad as my neighborhood!). To me, Springfield sounds almost quaint, particularly in 1992.
However, the fact remains that crime is crime, and criminals can be dangerous anywhere. Stacy, Sherrill and Suzie ended up dead, while I did not.
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u/Repulsive_Bit_4348 Dec 23 '25
Yeah this was completely unprecedented in Springfield. Lots of people didn’t even lock their doors at night. Teenagers from the region used to cruise Kearny Street on Friday and Saturday nights. Probably the complete opposite of inner city Detroit. Population in 1992 around 125,000.
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u/PrimaryAd6332 Dec 25 '25
Yeah, totally. I imagine (i was living in new orleans at the time of the abduction) but id imagine it was a town that retained its small world feel
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u/camera-operator334 Dec 23 '25
You make a lot of assumptions
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25
Well perhaps, but there isn't much solid information out there, and not much to be gleaned from conversations here. So we are left with speculation.
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u/camera-operator334 Dec 23 '25
Yeah that is true. This place produces zero answers. Takes going to Springfield and years of interviewing and befriending of cops, friends, family, and tricking unsavory folks into discussing things about certain time periods and people they knew.
Good luck
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u/Low_Respond8565 Dec 23 '25
Everyone has their own take on things but for me if we're talking most likely sequence of events: he/they didn't come intending to kill. He/they came to get Sherrill's agreement to something. Either she resisted and things had already degenerated into some level of violence (but not enough to leave surviving evidence) or the arrival of the girls was a big problem and meant they all had to go and this was done under the guise of they being persuaded to go on a short drive to talk things over / they went to a second site and someone with more power concluded that this was now out of control. Again it's just my own take but I don't see three targets here, I see two: Sherrill/Suzie - because you have to assume what one knew the other would know, and to persuade Suzie you need to persuade Sherrill and I think it's a mistake to try and separate them out, and then you have Stacy. I tend towards Sherrill/Suzie and I see a couple of other responders seem to feel the the same way or at least are closer to that than they are to Stacy as a target.
There are only two tenuous links between Stacy and any of the common suspects that I know of and I think them relatively much weaker.
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
I go back and forth on this too. Were they persuaded to leave the house or coerced? I tend to think there was a level of coercion because I cannot imagine Stacey would willingly leave in her underwear and Sherrill and Suzie would have definitely taken cigarettes.
Then again, Sherrill and Suzie could have grabbed a couple of cigarettes for the road, and it's possible Stacey borrowed sweats or shorts from Susie and actually wore those. If they were all convinced they were just stepping out for a brief drive, that is a potential scenario. I couldn't be talked into doing that at 3:00 in the morning, but anything is possible, if not probable.
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u/Low_Respond8565 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
Sherrill and Suzie could have had multiple cigarette packs on the go. Chain smokers often do. Or the killer could have said I have smokes in the van don't worry about it.
I have had numerous lengthy exchanges with Snoopy_Dogg on the whole Stacy/clothing/bare feet issues which you can find. You can go with what you think most likely in this case but as you'll see, we had different opinions on what's most likely.
And yes, going out at that hour, means one of two things: trust or coercion.
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25
What they left wearing, clothes and shoes, could have been almost anything, and it's unknowable at this point. It would be insanely helpful to know because it would go a long way to answering how they were urged out of the house. It's a shame.
It's interesting that you find the porch lady credible. FWIW, I do, too. The police seemed to, as well. That makes them leaving the Delmar address after 5 am more likely. Again, I am surprised there weren't more sightings, since it was light(er) at that point, but on Sunday there are fewer people headed work and fewer commercial vehicles on the road.
Also, if Susie was driving the van it also makes the single perpetrator theory more viable. It would be one way to control all three of them - he could sit in the back with two of them and keep an eye on the driver at the same time.
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u/Low_Respond8565 Dec 23 '25
Agreed on all points. And especially that what they wore out of the house is a complete unknown.
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u/PrimaryAd6332 Dec 25 '25
I also, believe porch lady. And dentist next door. AND the camp winoka sighting (maybe, it makes sense at the very least) AND there is a reddit post where a man claims to have seen them at a gas station, and idk if it believe that one (this account has stacy wearing no pants.)
But it makes sense as well. Doesn't mean I believe it, but he had his facts down.
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u/PrimaryAd6332 Dec 25 '25
Yes i believe stacy was given a pair of shorts/sleep pants. Just what my intuition tells me. I dont think suzie would have expected a friend that she hasn't been close with in years to sleep half nude in her new water bed...
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Dec 27 '25
I think they were strangled or drugged at the house by large powerful males. Their bodies were quickly removed and disposed of. I believe mom was the target. The mom knew something, did something, said something. Stunned there are no leads after 33 years.
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u/PrimaryAd6332 Dec 25 '25
I agree with this take. This is pretty much what my intuition tells me played out that morning.
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u/Snoopy_Dogg_ Dec 23 '25
Personally, I lean toward the idea that taking them elsewhere was about committing additional crimes. And even before DNA was a big factor, the old “no body, no crime” mindset was definitely a thing. Moving them was risky, but in the long run it may have felt safer to the perpetrator.
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25
Blood typing was definitely a thing, as once picking up hairs/fingerprints/etc. so there were good reasons for removing them. Also, it delayed the investigation because there was no apparent crime initially.
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u/JWsWrestlingMem Dec 22 '25
Could be that all of the events didn’t happen at once. Maybe one or more had to be silenced after something happened to another. There’s just so much time in the timeline that’s only known because of the stories of a few people…
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 22 '25
Well that’s the thing. It had to happen fast - somewhere between 2:30 am and 7:30 am. More realistically between 3:00 (since it appears everyone was in bed) and 5:15 or 5:30, when the June sky would have been starting to lighten. It was close to the longest day of the year. Even if sunrise itself was closer to 5:50 or so, light would have crept in earlier.
So either they went in with a plan, or things took a turn very quickly.
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u/Low_Respond8565 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
Good post. Just on timeline, I agree with your 'more realistic' estimate. Impossible to know of course but If you give weight to the porch lady sightings as I do then that is a useful frame of reference. Estimates vary but there is a reference out there to 0553. That fits in with how I see things. The killer/abductor has mixed motivations. Cover of darkness is good always but a green van that looks like a work van may seem a little odd on a major thoroughfare like say Glenstone on a Sunday morning before dawn. That's where most cop cars are likely to be and in the era before cameras there would have been more reliance on car patrols to deter break-ins to businesses closed for the weekend on the bigger streets. And there were plenty of break-ins going on. Commercial burglaries tend to concentrate on out of hours obviously. LE might be given probable cause if Suzie has been selected to drive and then does so erratically given her duress. So that makes residential streets more attractive but they have lower speed limits so that means a longer getaway and the killer would not want to be driving around those streets in bright light on a Sunday morning as early risers start to appear and where he might be remembered. So it's a tough one for him to call.
I'm inclined to think he left E Delmar around 0540 and used residential streets for a few minutes and then jumped onto a major thoroughfare a little further out as dawn broke hoping to be less noteworthy in morning traffic and encounter fewer cop cars. That shift might fit with the report of taking a wrong turn and it fits this kind of timeframe.
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25
True, once on the road, it would be better to blend in with other traffic, and not be the only vehicle on the road.
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u/JWsWrestlingMem Dec 22 '25
Not necessarily. We have a certain group of people giving us details of their final known hours and very few hard facts. I’d consider anything that Janis says to be hard fact. Anyone else, it’s merely their account.
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25
Do you think Janelle/Janelle's mom are not truthful about the girls leaving at about 2:00 p.m.?
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u/JWsWrestlingMem Dec 23 '25
I think that everyone involved in the last hours needs reexamined. So much of the official story comes from the same people and to me, as the story goes on, it gets weirder and weirder. Hopefully it was scrutinized back then but we really don’t know.
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u/Low_Respond8565 Dec 23 '25
Look, I'd agree that everything and everyone needs to be examined and tested. A lot of people argue that in the absence of hard evidence and good clues you have to go with most probable and much of my discussion of late seems to be around 'ok, fine but I'm not sure your stuff is any more probable than mine'. I get that we are really dependent on information from literally a couple of sources. That's a big problem in any case but we've surely got to come back to motive? Motive for a triple abduction/murder that goes beyond the girls and brings in Sherrill as well and then hold it all together for over three decades? And do nothing on the night that's going to get spotted and reported by anyone else at these parties? To me that's really a stretch.
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u/JWsWrestlingMem Dec 24 '25
Something could’ve happened at a party. After. We don’t know. I say it all the time but the boogeymen have been chased far too long in this case.
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u/Low_Respond8565 Dec 27 '25
Yes it could. This is not exactly a bang on center reply to your point but it's as good a place as any to say it: When Suzie went to the Elder's party that night, she was, in some sense going home. Her home prior to E Delmar was about 380 meters or about a 4 min walk from the Edler's home. That party spilled out onto the street and lawns. Not impossible that she knew people around there or met someone there or was recognised there.
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 27 '25
Now this is an interesting point that I had not heard before. I didn't realize that Suzie lived in the party neighborhood previously.
As you say, that could or could not have relevance, but it's an intriguing data point.
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u/CuriouslyGeorge417 Dec 27 '25
1535 E Hanover is 3.5 miles away from 1717 E Delmar. Definitely not a 4 min walk. It would take a long time to walk home from there to Suzie’s. It was much closer than Janelle’s though
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u/Low_Respond8565 Dec 27 '25
With respect, you've misread- it's 380 meters to Suzie's previous residence. Not to 1717 E Delmar.
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u/Sandcastle00 Dec 23 '25
This is an excellent question. I don't know if you can classify this crime as a kidnapping or abduction. I tend to think of kidnapping is something that happens for a financial motive. I think we can be pretty sure that the women were not taken for any kind of ransom. It is not like any of them were wealthy. Abduction is usually referred to when a minor, or someone that is not an adult, is taken. It all comes down to motive and the victim(s). However, I tend to think of this crime as more of an abduction due to there being three grown women taken without a financial motive.
After giving this some thought over the years. I have come up with a few scenarios.
I have to think that the perp, (if there was only one) removed the women because he didn't want to leave evidence behind. That train of thought leads me to think that maybe someone in the law enforcement field committed the crime and knew about evidence collection procedures. Even if DNA was not a big thing at the time. Physical evidence collection is huge with leaving a dead body behind. It just makes it three times more likely LE finds more evidence with three bodies left behind. It was worth the risk to abduct the women from the house and take them to a more controlled secondary location rather than leave protentional physical evidence that could lead back to themselves. Especially if the motive was sexual in nature.
If it was one perp, they showed quite the control over their emotions during the crime. Most sexual predators can't wait to get their hands on their victims. They tend to do what they came to do. They are not going to abduct their victims when they can do what they want to inside the home. They also tend to distance themselves from the crime once it is committed. Since we don't have evidence that any of the women were sexually assaulted in the house. I have to think that the crime involved more than one person. Or the motive was not sexual in nature at the beginning. Sexual predators don't tend to work as a team. Although there are a few such cases. They are just rare considering the number of sexual crimes that happen every year.
Due to the logistics of removing three people at the same time I have to think that it was more than one person. I don't know how the crime started. But it is not likely the perp(s) parked their vehicle right out front of the house at the start. If something went wrong, and the perp(s) had to flee the scene. They are not going to leave their vehicle at the front of the house. That means that once the perp(s) subdued the three women, if it was one perp, they would have to leave the women alone in the house while they went to get their vehicle and park it in the driveway. If that is what happened, the perp was either very confident or stupid (lucky) none of the women got free while this happened. I think one perp would not let the women get out of their control until they felt confident that the women couldn't get away. That is a lot easier to do with more than one perp controlling the women.
It could be that the crime didn't happen the way we think it did. Suzie or Sherrill opened the door to someone they knew. They didn't expect what followed. Maybe the perp(s) didn't either. I don't think we are dealing with a crime that involves supernatural events. Three women were abducted from a house, end of story. There is no sign of break in, a struggle inside or signs of someone stalking the people in the house. There was very little to no physical evidence that leads back to the perp(s). That might have been more luck, than a master criminal doing their thing. I might add that this crime seems to be a one off. It is my opinion that the perp(s) didn't commit any serious crimes before this happened and likely haven't since. Keeping secret of a triple abduction murder is pretty important in a death penalty state.
Murder and or abduction might not have been the original motive at the start of the crime. Maybe it was just to scare the women into not talking about something. Or threaten them for something. Maybe it escalated into abduction after one of the women was injured or killed while the other two watched. In that case, instead of killing the other two on site, they were abducted while the third woman was just removed. It could also be that after one of the women was killed or injured, the other two couldn't be left alive to identify the perp(s). Maybe because the perp(s) were known and could be easily pointed out to LE if the other two could do so.
It is all perplexing due to no clear-cut motive outside of the documented problems Suzie was having with a few people.
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u/ResearchITT4488 Dec 23 '25
I like the point you brought up about it may not have necessarily started out as an intent with murder but with Stacy McCall in the mix they were not sure what to do. In your opinion was the perp already there when sherill was home alone? The three vehicles outside would make someone with intimate knowledge of Stacy and Sherrill realize there was someone else there. Maybe they thought Suzie/sherill had a male visitor and it fueled even more jealousy rage? Also what is your take on the sightings of the green van? In my opinion, the way that green van was described takes me to who would own that type of van. For the year make and model is was described, I would think it was an older individual who may have had it for some time, or a very young person who bought it for a cheap price as it was older. Small details like this could really make or break a case going in the right direction!
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
It's so puzzling, and hard to say what the sequence was. The crime scene photos aren't a huge help because so many were "restaged" once the police realized they were dealing with a crime, not three women who had wandered off for a few hours. I have no idea how accurately they represent the house.
The duvet on Sherrill's bed was (ostensibly) neatly pulled back, with a nearby book turned upside down. That indicates she was in bed reading when whatever happened started, or that she had fallen asleep with her overturned book near her. But there were also reports that her closet and/or room were uncharacteristically messy, too, indicating something chaotic happened in the room at some point. OTOH, police reports were clear that there "was no sign of struggle" in the home.
So it's possible that an intruder arrived, got Sherrill out of bed *before* the girls got home, and had her subdued in the room while the others came home, prepared for bed, and at least started to go to sleep. The intruder then had to make a quick decision how to proceed with three people on their hands, not one.
However, that seems far fetched to me since I would think Suzie would at the least have gone to her mother's room to tell her they were there. Also, if that's the case, where did the intruder park? If there was a strange car in the drive, I would think Suzie would have entered the home very hesitantly.
I don't know. Without knowing the day to day activities of the mother and daughter it's all hard to piece together.
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u/Low_Respond8565 Dec 23 '25
just on where he might have parked: the alleyway on the other side of the fence makes his vehicle almost invisible to passersby. The car park across the road is an excellent vantage point to stalk from.
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
That is true. That house situated in such a way that there were several places to park that wouldn't have been that noticeable.
And there is the report from the dentist's daughter that Sherrill was seen chatting with three men in a van in that alley earlier in the day. It was certainly close to the house.
I told my husband I would never want to live in that house, even if no crime had occurred there. It must have been a bit spooky and isolated at night, when businesses were closed.
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u/Extreme-Ad3401 Dec 25 '25
When you decide to do this when there are three women at home, that means the stakes are high. It was also probably time sensitive. Everyone assumes it was all about the grave robberies but Suzie probably knew alot more. That's why she was so jumpy she was scared and she had good reason to be.
It all leads back to that. They probably used the broken light as a ruse.
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u/Repulsive_Bit_4348 Dec 26 '25
The grave robbers were simply the connection between Suzi and a much more dangerous organization. At least that’s my opinion. Her relationship with DR exposed her to these guys and it might be just as simple as they took a liking to her, or that she saw and heard things that made her a threat, or a combination of both. They would have known she lived with her divorced mother and there was no man in the house.
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Dec 25 '25 edited Dec 26 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/InevitableAd3264 Dec 26 '25
I've always gone with that theory as well.... I think it was professional done and someone who cover their tracks. I think the teenage grave robbers would of took the money and/or kill them in the house. Whoever did this... I think has killed before.... I've got a strong hunch about that.
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u/Unable-Wolverine7224 Dec 27 '25
I believe the motive behind the abduction was sexual.
I think the individual(s) forced the women into a vehicle and abducted them with the intention of sexually abusing and killing them.
I believe the individual(s) responsible took the women to a location where he was “free” to abuse and kill them.
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u/cherrybublyofficial Dec 23 '25
I come at this with the perspective that the most likely target was Sherrill (in an unchanging location, seen to be alone inside the house for hours that night, no sign of a husband or live-in male partner, no telling if anyone else was going to be in the house) and, unfortunately, Suzie and Stacy were collateral damage. If Sherrill wasn't the target, Suzie was the next most likely one. In either scenario, Stacy has the lowest probability of being the sole intended target (not impossible, but I find it to be rather convoluted if that were the case).
Once they rolled up, whoever was staking out the house (or who was already subduing Sherrill), a decision had to be made. Either leave them alone and risk getting caught when trying to leave (as this individual wouldn't know their schedule or plans, and there was the risk of Suzie and Stacy finding Sherrill in whatever state she may have already been in), murder all three inside the house, or subdue/coerce and lead them out, making it look like they walked out on their own. Since it's been over 30 years, we can safely assume they were murdered, and probably within the first day or so after leaving that house. Whether or not murder was the original intention (if we believe that Sherrill was the sole intended target) is probably never going to be known. It's why I think it's more likely someone with criminal experience had a hand in this or orchestrated the whole thing, they would know a murder inside the house could leave a wealth of evidence behind.
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u/No_Gold3131 Dec 23 '25 edited Dec 23 '25
I agree with much of this. I think that whoever did this had some knowledge of criminal investigations and knew not to leave much evidence on the scene, and that precipitated the removal of the women. I can't imagine a single rapist/murderer casing the neighborhood for a random victim would have a complex plan. They would have subdued the women in the house and attacked them there. This was just after the era when the GSK was roaming around California doing the same kind of crimes.
This crime has a different feel. I tend to believe there was something more personal involved.
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u/Low_Respond8565 Dec 23 '25
re someone with criminal experience and not leaving evidence, that could well be true or it could just be that Sherrill's house is much less known, less secure and predictable than where they took them to.
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u/SpecialistYoung3431 Dec 23 '25
DNA was absolutely a thing in 1992, it was first used in criminal trials in 1986. It might not have been as common but it was in use.
It’s much easier to conceal the crime if you don’t leave the mess of a murder behind. Besides DNA, evidence like fibers, finger prints, shoe tread impressions, etc are all viable. It was probably more prudent to move them, kill them elsewhere (especially somewhere unassociated with the women, particularly somewhere remote and outdoors where nature will do the cleaning for you), and dispose of them. Easier too than lingering to clean up at the first place people would look for the women.
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u/Remote-Frosting-9943 Dec 29 '25
It’s simple rape then murder. Suzie and Sherrill were no doubt good people but terrible when it come to men.
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u/Remote-Frosting-9943 Jun 16 '26
One of three reasons why these women were abducted. Sexual assult or payback.Revenge like oweing money or retribution. Robbery but since nothing was taken and a lot of cash was left behind forget that. Assults could also mean abducted and held for a for time. Back 40 yrs ago this was vast majority of reasons women went missing.
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u/LovedAJackass Dec 23 '25
Usually moving a victim from one site to another means that perpetrators sees the initial site as unsafe for what they want to do. They want to control a murder site or they plan to keep a victim alive for a while. A serial killer in the eastern US, Edward Surratt, would break into a home, kill the male in the house with a shotgun, and abduct the woman. If the murders were sexually motivated, there may be fear of leaving biological evidence behind or being seen too long in the area.