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The Murder of Sheila Jo Harris
Years after she was brutally slain, determined investigators caught the killer of the former beauty queen.
In January 1982, 18-year-old Sheila Josephine Harris from Nevada appeared to have the world at her feet. She had recently been crowned Miss Douglas County at one of the beauty pageants she frequented, and she was at community college while working a part-time job to support herself.
But little did she know that someone had been secretly watching her from a distance — someone who was about to take her life.
A shocking and violent crime
Sheila Jo was dating a boy named Steven Furlong, who was the brother of the local Sheriff Kenny Furlong and one of the sons of a former under-sheriff. On Monday January 4th 1982, she spent the evening at Steve’s parents’ house before returning to her own apartment ahead of another busy day.
However, her manager became worried when she failed to show up for a shift at Raley’s grocery store the next morning and got in touch with Sheila Jo’s family. Concerned something might be wrong with the usually diligent employee, her mother Linda Bratton and a family friend named Janice Broderick went to her apartment to check on her.
There, they found a devastating sight. Janice, who had entered Sheila Jo’s bedroom before Linda, tried to shield her friend from seeing the terrible fate that had befallen her daughter. Sheila Jo’s lifeless body was lying face down on her bed, her nose bloodied and her neck badly bruised.
Investigators were swiftly dispatched and detectives surmised the marks originated from a ligature, probably an electrical cord. They also found wooden splinters on Sheila Jo’s body and clothes as well as a hole in the wall beside the bed, which they thought might have occurred as the beauty queen fought for her life.
A subsequent autopsy revealed Sheila Jo had been bound and raped before being beaten with a wooden board and strangled with — as police had assumed — an electrical cord, both of which were now missing. The ferocity and violence of the crime took even the seasoned investigators aback.
