Member-only story
‘Like Dying A Hundred Times’: The Disappearance of Cheryl Lynn Carter
The mother-of-two vanished without a trace in the 1980s.
It was 1982, and 37-year-old mother Cheryl Lynn Carter had just returned home after the regular school run to start her daily work as a self-employed writer.
But her kids returned to the house to find no sign of her — and she hasn’t been seen since. With concerning links to a dangerous serial killer and sexual predator, will there ever be answers in Cheryl’s disappearance?
A normal day — until it wasn’t
Cheryl had been born and bred in Idaho, but was a recent transplant to California in 1982. She had lived with her kids in Santa Rosa for three years, but they had moved to Healdsburg in Sonoma County and the children — aged seven and nine respectively — were newly enrolled at a school there.
On September 7th 1982, Cheryl dropped the little ones off and returned home to work on her business. She was a self-employed editor and writer and could work remotely, which was somewhat unusual for a woman at the time.
Not long before noon, Cheryl realised both of the children’s lunchboxes had been left behind and so she made another quick dash to West Side School in order to hand-deliver them.
