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The Flossie Wilbur story
ANGELICA, N.Y. — A 35-year-old cold murder case of Flossie Wilbur is finally solved.
Wilbur, who would be 110 if she was alive today, has been missing since Aug. 24, 1985 in Angelica, N.Y., when all police could find were her groceries in her car.
A search for her remains continues today near Almond, N.Y. after an alleged “death bed” confession from a neighbor who said he killed her.
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| David Sherk |
David Sherk, a neighbor of Wilbur, is in a medical facility in Wyoming County, N.Y. with terminal cancer and allegedly confessed to the crime, several police sources confirmed. It appears he will not be charged because of his condition and cooperation with where the body is possibly buried, police said.
The New York State Police searched an area Wednesday and did not find any remains. The area near the Almond Dam has been flooded many times over the years.
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| Photo by Zach Lyman Films |
Wilbur does not have known family, but if they do come forward, there is money involved. According to the New York State unclaimed funds website, there is $34,000 in her name reported by Allegany County Surrogates Court. Troopers kept her accounts open in case anyone tried to withdraw money. It never happened.
Two investigators from the case said Wilbur had a diary where she said mean things about people in town and one said she “talked about Sherk all the time.”
In this report, we talk to two district attorneys who investigated the case, a former state police investigator, the former mayor of Angelica and police officer who responded to the missing person report.
James Euken was the district attorney in 1983 (became a judge in 1997) and when he found out the state police were digging for her remains, he went by the site with his wife.
“Well, there she is, 35 years later,” Euken said today on his drive. “Her sudden disappearance was a mystery to all. It caused it to be a case of public interest for many years. Local police are re-examining this case for possible accomplices. I’ve never forgotten the search for truth in this case. I’m pleased to learn that we don’t forget the unnamed victims in Allegany County.”
Sherk was a hoarder and an antique collector. He had a yard sale year-round at his house on West Main Street in Angelica. Police said when Frank Fritz and Mike Wolfe from American Pickers were in the area filming for the television show in 2015, they checked out his collection for two days but it did not make a show. As the years went on and his home was condemned, he lived out back in sheds he made. They are still standing today.
One neighbor who did not want to be named said, “David was very friendly and kept to himself. He was a little eccentric, but we all liked him.”
According to his Facebook page, Sherk practices Hare Krishna.
However, the same was not said of “Flossie.” The Buffalo News ran an investigative piece by Ben Fanton on Flossie’s disappearance in 1992.
Fanton said in his article “What seem to stand out are entries in her diary indicative of an ill will toward those in her community. Mrs. Wilbur referred to some of them with terms such as ‘bum,’ ‘idiot,’ and ‘half breed.’ She was 5 feet 6 inches tall, weighed 160 pounds and always dressed in rough clothing such as blue jeans and men's flannel shirts. A menacing-looking club shaped like a small baseball bat hung on the wall of her kitchen, and a bolt action shotgun leaned against the wall next to the door between the living room and dining room of her small house.”
Fanton interviewed Rolland Rasmusson who lived across the street and said, "Most people didn't think very much of her. She kind of had a foul mouth when she was talking and a lot of people didn't like her very well."
The Buffalo News article also said Ed and Kay Eicher, both teachers at Belfast Central School, moved out in 1976 because of Wilbur. The article described racial slurs toward Fresh Air Kids, chasing kids with a club and “they would return home and find rotten fruit, vegetables or garbage smeared on various parts of the house.”
Wilbur was widowed. Her home was torn down four years ago and a member of the construction team said Sherk was outside gardening most days.
Sherk would go to auctions, police said, and on the day Wilbur disappeared they said she went to an auction near the picturesque Angelica Park Circle. The hate describing Wilbur is not present in Angelica, a beautiful village with the name “A Town Where History Lives.” Unlike other areas of New York, Angelica’s population has grown since 1985. Wilbur remained a resident because it was a missing person report.
Pete Johnson was an officer under Jim Fleming at the time and later became Angelica mayor.
Speaking from his home near Rochester, N.Y. today, he remembers that day in 1985 well.
“I stopped in the Angelica Village Market to buy a pack of cigarettes, which I have not done for 22 years, for the record, and the clerk who was working said, “Have you seen Flossie?” Everyone in Angelica only had to use a single name. I said, being smart, “No, I haven’t been looking for her.” She said you should be, she hasn’t picked up her paper in a week,” said Johnson. “Instead of having it delivered, she had it held. But she wouldn’t shop there, she shopped at Harrington’s Grocery in Belfast.”
The groceries in the vehicle, including milk from Harrington’s, were in her 1985 Ford Escort when Johnson went to the scene days later.
“Some groceries were out, some were in the car. We were in the midst of this search when the fire alarm went off, there was a one-car roll over near the Angelica Conservation Club and took us away until that night,” Johnson said, who taught at Angelica and Genesee Valley Central School from 1979 to 2009. “We went back and looked for any sign something happened, maybe she slipped and fell down the stairs? That is how the original report came out.”
Johnson remembers his boss, Angelica Police Chief Jim Fleming, getting the state police involved around Labor Day Weekend.
“He got the state police involved and rightfully so, and at that point, I lost track of the investigation,” said Johnson.
Vince Evans is now retired from the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, but lives one town over from the scene. He led the New York State Police investigation.
“We weren’t called until September and that gave them six days to dispose of the body,” said Evans. “We had four guys who had this case file since me and it’s bizarre we never solved it. It was unusual. This was ‘who dunnit?’ To this day, any time I think about the case and have an idea, I let the guys know who have the case files.”
Residents in Angelica had yellow bumper stickers and in black it said “Where’s Flossie?” But for Evans, it took on a new meaning. His friends and friends of friends, knowing the case was eating at him, would send postcards from all over the world that simply said things like “Greetings from Flossie!”
When reminded what people thought of Flossie, Evans brought up the cards.
“Only one person in this world really liked her, and that was me because I was getting post cards from all over the world from her,” he said. “And it hasn’t stopped. Two months ago, I got one from China!”
Allegany County Court Judge Terrence Parker was the assistant district attorney to Euken at the time.
“It was like a burr that got under your saddle and you couldn’t solve it,” Parker said Wednesday. “Periodically, we got leads on people who we thought did it, but they never panned out.
“You don’t ever let it go. The state police will tell you, they never, ever close homicides. While there has been public … and I hate to use the word amusement … about her disappearance, it was a serious matter,” he added.
When asked if the amount of hate made it hard to investigate, Parker said, “It doesn’t matter if someone liked the victim or not, they are still a victim. The hard part comes in getting cooperation from some people because they didn’t like her. She may not have been anyone’s best friend, but she was a member of the community and didn’t deserve that to happen to her.”
Then Parker admitted, “When it came up, the conversation always started ‘I didn’t like her much, but …”
Other names, including a resident who served time in prison for a violent crime against a deceased Belfast woman, came up.
“They always thought she was in the concrete here in the Olean Street bridge which was being built at the time,” said Angelica resident Bill Ross. “They suspected Sherk but couldn’t prove it. She threw human feces at his house because she was nasty. But there were so many other suspects!”
Sherk is tall and lanky and has spent time living in different assisted living residences, including in Wellsville, N.Y. and was at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, police said. His name is still listed in tax records in Angelica along with a woman from California.
One Angelica resident who did not want to be named, said she used to play in the back yard in the house next to Wilbur and she pointed a shot gun at the children once.
Johnson thinks the news gives Angelica residents a certain amount of relief and closure.
“I was talking to a friend of mine from Angelica, this is like watching an old episode of Cold Case Files on TV. The only difference is, in the cold case files, they solve everything in 60 minutes with commercials,” said Johnson. “Here, we know there is weeks of time before they can finish the forensic pathology, that is if they actually find something. Everyone can move on … If I remember, there is no family and other than people sending out post cards to an investigator, there was nothing."
During his one week on the case, Johnson said he remembers, “Nobody did like her. I remember saying in the early stages of this case to a reporter, ‘You hear about people who would literally cross the street to avoid talking or seeing someone and people did that with Flossie. They would literally cross the street.’ That’s pretty telling how people felt about her.”
Also in the diary was a list of things Wilbur stole from residents in the community.
“I remember looking through it, Jim Fleming found it,” said Johnson. “He pointed out to me. She kept a list of things she had stolen from people around the neighborhood and I’m sure that is in evidence somewhere. Some was junk, some was valuable antiques.”
Johnson said if Flossie was around today, this would not have happened.
“Almost 40 years later, I would think she would have been handled a little bit differently,” he said. “We had a lot of calls there. Today, there would have been some mental health help. But it was a different time.”
The digging for Flossie is expected to continue this week and in different areas, police said, as they try to pinpoint the exact area Sherk was referring to from memory.
(Michael Baldwin from Wellsville Regional News contributed to this report)
from Wellsville Regional News (dot) com https://ift.tt/3gCSgQj
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