This week Cold Hearted examines the 1975 murder of Sherry Gibson, a case where the truth took nearly three decades to be revealed.
March 1, 1975, in rural Indiana and firefighters were called to an abandoned farmhouse to put out a blaze, they found the naked body of a woman in the ruins. The victim was 23-year-old Sherry Lee Gibson and she’d been sexually assaulted and stabbed to death.
The initial investigation led to teenager John Jeffers, who was in juvenile detention in 1977 when he confessed to the murder. He died five years later of a drug overdose and it seemed that the case was finally closed.
However, fast forward to 2001 and Ella Mae Dicks confessed to police that she and her ex-husband Wayne Gulley had been involved in the murder. Dicks told police that she and Gulley had been driving about after they had committed a robbery. They chanced upon Gibson and her boyfriend, Lindy Alton, who were parked up in a field.
The couple forced Alton into the trunk of the car and then drove Gibson to the farmhouse, where she was raped and killed.
In August 2003 the then 62-year-old Gulley was found guilty of the murder and given a 50 year sentence, with Dicks being given 15 years for her part in the crime.
Cold Hearted airs at 10:00 PM on Investigation Discovery.
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