Vanished in Vermillion is a fascinating,and often quite astounding,true crime story about the disappearance of teenagers Sherri Miller and Pam Jackson in a remote part of South Dakota in 1971.
With the initial investigation carried out by the local Sheriff, who didn't seem overly interested,let alone competent, it was incredibly over 40 years until the girl's fate was discovered....in circumstances that would be roundly ridiculed if read in a work of fiction. Also stranger than fiction was a lot of the incredibly shoddy police work over the years with innocent people hounded and smeared and a Cold Case team intent on nailing someone for murder despite their "evidence" being flawed,to put it very mildly and proved to be so in extremely embarrassing circumstances..

Author Lou Raguse is an experienced journalist and tells the tale of this bizarre and tragic case impeccably having interviewed many of the people involved personally. It's a damning indictment of not only the police but also the justice system involved in this case as laziness and incompetence put already grieving people under the spotlight of a murder enquiry and mostly refuses to accept the damage done let alone apologise for it.

Quite an amazing book with plenty of surprises. I really enjoy True Crime books where clever police work solves a mystery and the well-oiled justice machine makes sure the right person is jailed under the burden of impeccable evidence. This isn't even close, a complete ongoing shambles and in some cases a total disgrace, a damning indictment of those pledged to protect and serve. It's a fascinating read with a surprising conclusion that proves that often truth is far stranger than fiction.

Vanished in Vermillion details the 1971 disappearance of Sherri Miller and her friend Pam Jackson. I didn’t know anything about this case and I don’t want to spoil the details here in my review. I found this decades old cold case and final resolution from 2013 absolutely fascinating. The author writes the book with ease. His writing style comes across calm and even; like he’s telling a good friend about this really intriguing cold case. I liked how he set the tone in the beginning of the book, reminding the reader what was going on in the country and that particular area of South Dakota in 1971. He also does a great job of bringing you along and keeping you on the edge of your seat throughout each step this case takes regardless of how much time passed since it occurred. He also remains impartial through the telling and documents the 2004 investigation in great detail. I appreciated that the author included pictures throughout the book. It helps to visualize who and what the author is speaking about and I wish more true crime authors were including photos.

The lack of care and concern the Sheriff from 1971 put into this case was heartbreaking and frustrating especially given his indignant nature towards DCI becoming involved. Even DCI failed these families. The times may have been different but their actions are inconceivable regardless of the year. I was truly fascinated as well by the cold case detectives and how they focused on one individual and their family with limited circumstantial evidence. The repercussions of their actions and how they reverberated out to all of the families involved and the community really throws a light at what it’s like jumping to conclusions to make a puzzle piece fit when perhaps it doesn’t. All of the elements that bring this book together are written and detailed so well by the author. This is a great read for a true crime fan who is looking for a different narrative than the traditional true crime format.

Thank you to Post Hill Press for this ARC via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

When Pam Jackson and Cheryl Miller went missing in May 1971 The town sheriff said they were runaways but their friends and families knew better. It would take two decades for the case to really start being investigated. And even though the cold case detective think they knew what happened the question still linger 50 years later. Vanished In Vermillion is the only True Crime book written about the cold case and by the end of the book I don’t know who is a bigger victim the missing girls are the accused family members. At a time when we were supposed to be so enlightened and so respectful of other peoples feelings it’s amazing to me the things police still get away with because if you’re innocent until proven guilty why is it OK to go in trash someone’s home and leave it like that. It is so sad the potential that was the loss the day p.m. and Cheryl went missing and we’re never seen again and I found this book so interesting and no it isn’t easy to write a true crime book that takes no sides but tells the facts and lets the reader decide on their own and that’s exactly what the author did with this book. I am glad the girls finally get their story told and think the author did a great job and it is a book I highly recommend . I received this book from NetGalley and the publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

Reviewing true-crime books is almost dumb. Like....here...critique someone's hard work. BUT...then you read a few bad ones and you realize...there's a reason for this.

This is NOT one of the bad ones. This book gets you from page one and does not stop. With each page turn, the story goes deeper and gets wilder. I don't even want to tell much more because the fact that Sherri and Pam's families had to wait for 40+ years for peace because of inept law enforcement is so frustrating.

This is a must-read for anyone who likes reading about missing persons cases.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

A very detailed and well researched investigation of a cold case.

2 young girls Sherri and Pam go missing. It is picked up by the cold case unit, who have hoped to find out what happened to the girls.

A very thorough account.
I would recommend this book especially true crime fans.

I received this as a free ecopy from NetGalley.

The first time I heard the names, Sherri Miller and Pam Jackson, was in conjunction with a news article about finding their car in water and how the two seventeen year old girls had been missing for years. I wanted to read the book not only because I love true crime, but because Vermillion and some of the other locations mentioned in the book are only 2-4 hours away. I also wanted to know more about the Sherri Miller and Pam Jackson as people, their cold case, and the outcome.

Lou Raguse does a wonderful job of storytelling and this books was a quick, easy read. It includes details about Sherri and Pam and their families, the lives, and the little help offered by law enforcement on girls who just ran away and would be back. The cases are further riddled by law enforcement and the legal system errors, failure to scrutinize information, have tunnel blindness, believe hypnosis comments as truth, ruining a family and individual's life. Even with the finding of the car and determination of their deaths. Controversy still surrounds and has divided people over which cold case ending they believe.

This was such a sad and heartbreaking story. But it was presented in such a way that it was also quite riveting. At its heart is a story about how indifferent and biased police work can lead to heartache and the not knowing what happened for three families.

This book is broken into three parts, the first being the disappearance of the girls and the aftermath and lack of police interest in the case. The middle part is all about how 30 years later a new cold case department totally messed up the whole thing by using unreliable witnesses and holding on to their own biases to take the case in the totally wrong direction. The final part is the truth of what really happened to these two girls and how a single person tried one more time to figure out where they had gone on that fateful day.

It is really hard to believe that it took over 40 years for this case to be solved when all it would have taken is the police paying attention to it in the first place. The police in that era of time, often leapt to the idea that all teens who disappear, just run away. If they had taken the time to interview the girl’s families, friends and coworkers they would have found that there was no way these girls would have just left. But they didn’t.

There were also many mistakes made by the cold case team. Partly because they were totally biased against this one guy and totally believed that he was guilty of killing these girls. Granted he was not a very nice guy, and was already in jail for assault and rape, but the only evidence pointing to him was that he lived near where the girls disappeared. They put his family through a lot of agony because the wanted to believe that this guy was guilty and they were covering for him.

The truth of what happened was the saddest and most surprising of this whole story. The third part of the story was told through the author’s eyes and it became a bit more personal that way. I was glad that they were finally found, but sad that both girl’s parents died without ever knowing what had happened to them.

This is truly a compelling story about how indifferent and biased policing can hinder the truth of what happened in any case. If you enjoy true crime, this is one you don’t want to miss.

An excellent examination of a decades-old cold case, and how it came to finally be closed. It is incredibly in-depth, with pictures from the case that I had never seen before. Definitely worth a read for someone interested in missing persons cases.

Vanished in Vermilion by Lou Raguse


A crime that wasn’t really a crime, small town law officials, prejudice, rush to judgement all contributed to something that took over 40 years to solve.

Missing girls, who officials didn’t believe were really missing, but runaways.
In the 60’s & 70’s missing teenagers were usually listed as runaways, law officials were hampered with having to wait days before searching and even then a lot of times there was no urgency.

Haphazard search, limited search area,not questioning everyone who last saw them in the original investigation all contributed to years of wonder for 2 families.

Possible false repressed memories, rumors and innuendo started the second search over 20 years later. This effort was plagued by zeroing in on a man already serving time 227 years for rapes, then insisting his whole family was involved in covering up the crime. Relentless searches, destruction of property, fabrication of evidence and false information from a jailhouse snitch led to persecution that followed a family for years. No restitution publicly or financially was ever given to the family.

Fast forward to 2013, many family members of both the missing girls and the accused man have died without a closure. People are still interest in the case, some make attempts to try to find the girls by retracing the routes the girls may have take. Family members had been doing their own searches over the many years. It takes one person deciding to try one more time, by going in a different direction to solve a mystery that finally gave 3 families closure.

I was given this book by Net Galley in exchange for a fair review at Amazon, Facebook & GoodReads. If you like a good mystery, this should fit the bill.

Living near Vermillion, I was instantly interested in this book. This was a well thought out and organized book. It can't be easy to report on things like this.

An interesting case that was new to me,
Long overdue answers to a case that had gone terribly cold.
I highly recommend this book.
I voluntarily reviewed an advance reader copy of this book.

This was actually a very heartbreaking and sad story. It’s 1971, two seventeen year olds, Pam and Sherri haven’t returned home from the night before. What comes next, no one could have been prepared for.

The way the police handled this case initially was subpar and almost non existent, stating to both families “that they must of run away and will eventually turn up”. Leaving the families to try and piece the series of events together for almost seven months, before they opened an official investigation.

Once the investigation was launched, absolute chaos ensues as police follow hunch after hunch with no real payoff that ultimately puts the families through more bad than good (which could of been avoided in the first place if they took this seriously from the beginning and asked the right questions to the right people) while searching for answers.

In the end, lazy and poor police work would send this case on a wild goose chase for the next 40+ years before the truth is uncovered.

Overall, this was an interesting read. I’d never heard of this case so I was hooked, waiting to see how this would come full circle. The final answers to their death, left me super sad for the families. 40 years of worry and suffering, worst of all, hoping that they would get answers when the truth was closer to home than anyone predicted.

If you like true crime, this is worth the read. The author takes a unique approach, really painting the picture of what life was like and providing enough back story to show insight on why the investigation took the turns that it did before revealing the truth.

Thank you Post Hill Press for this ARC, courtesy of NetGalley. Publication date for “Vanished in Vermillion” is Feb 21, 2023.

In 1971 two teenage girls go missing while driving to a party. It will take 40 years till it is finally discovered what happened.
This was such an interesting read some of the twists in the case was crazy. The writing was really good and this is a definite read of you are a fan of true crime.
Thanks to Netgalley for the Arc.

I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts, but I don’t read that many true crime books, so I jumped on this opportunity through Netgalley and I did not regret it. “Vanished in Vermillion” centers on the case of two 17-year-old high-school girls who disappeared in 1971. Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller were driving to an end-of-school-year party but they never made it to the party. The local police first assumed that they had just ran away, although the two girls weren’t known for any family issues and had not shared any plans in that direction. When police started to look, they did too little, and too late. It becomes a cold case, and the families are left with this terrible uncertainty. Then in 2004, more than 30 years after the disappearance, a cold case unit picks up the case and steers it in a new direction, with deep consequences.

The book is quite long and quite detailed, and in the middle I grew a little frustrated. But at the 80% mark my interest rose again and I was riveted by the last part. The original South Dakota police investigation seemed so shoddy in the first place, but what the cold case unit did was just another level of problematic.

I don’t want to spoil anything here, but it was astonishing to me that a cold case unit could repetitively make bad choices, despite factual contradiction. That they made one mistake is totally okay, but that they persisted in that direction for years despite getting no confirmation that they had it right is mind-boggling to me. What a waste for all, including tax-payers’ money! But the saddest part was for the families whose members died without seeing the end of it, not knowing the truth, or persuaded by false accusations. At some points the cold case unit relies on non-scientific revelations, at a time where it was already widely known that those were unreliable and had no legal basis, but they still used it in court. Distorsion of facts by the prosecutor team went unchallenged and didn’t seem enough to show that the cold case unit was on wrong tracks.

It is shocking how long it took to finally get to the truth, and that the truth may never have been discovered but for a chance event, and not thanks to anything the police did. This reminded me strongly of the podcast Bone Valley, which I have just finished and will discuss another day.

Lou Raguse has researched the case quite thoroughly and drives his points methodically. I just wished the book had been edited to shorten the middle part that’s weighed down by too many details, and expanded for the last part that pinpoints problematic aspects of this particular investigation, but stops short of taking systemic conclusions.

As an aside, the title refers to Vermillion, the small town in South Dakota where the case took place, but when I picked up the book, I thought it referred to the red color and therefore to a bloody or gory murder… I wonder how this town took the name of a color.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley. I received a free copy of this book for review consideration.

Vanished in Vermillion was a very well written true crime book about a notorious case in South Dakota. Having no prior knowledge of the case before reading the book, it was a real eye-opener. Unlike many true crime novels, this one didn't spend half the book giving background of the two missing girls, the area they were from, what the world was like at the time of their disappearance, etc., instead spending just enough time doing so to get you up to speed. It was only about 20% or so of the book before the primary suspect was unveiled, followed by his ignominious history and then the story of how he became the focus of law enforcement investigations. As he is painted as the very likely culprit, every here and there are smidgeons of doubt as to if everything being said about him is true. But as the story continues more and more damning testimony and the eventual pursuit by a cold case team makes everything seem like a foregone conclusion. Even worse, the complicity of his family appears to make the situation worse. And then a huge bombshell that unravels most of what you just read is revealed. Lou Raguse certainly did his due diligence in researching and writing this book, and produced one of the more captivating true crime stories I've read. 4.5 rounded up to 5*

Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller were the “good girls” in town. They didn’t drink or smoke weed and had never even been to a party before. After hearing about a party out near Old Highway 77 the girls decide that they want to check it out. They met up with a car of boys that night looking for directions, so the boys told them to follow behind their car and they’d get them to the party. It was going to be a fun night - a new adventure for the two “good girls.” But somewhere on that twisty-turny rural dirt road of Highway 77 the boys realized the girls’ car headlights weren’t behind them anymore. The boys had to turn around because they had missed the road they were supposed to turn off on and the girls had just behind them not long before that.

Pam and Sherri were never seen again. Failures by the police department dragged this case on longer than it should have. They said the teens had simply run away of their own accord and refused to do much for a long time. This is an amazingly well written book that takes you deep into the case of the missing teens. It took more than 40 years for the police to discover what happened to the girls that night. Between the events of that night and the 40 years that followed the case took so many twists and turns it’s almost unbelievable. This is a must read for those who love true crime stories.

I couldn’t put this down once I started reading. It’s compelling, gripping, and tears at your heart. We get a chance to get to know these two girls better. I noticed this case has a lot of 7’s associated with it. It was 1971, the girls were 17, and they were on Highway 77 when they disappeared.

I received an ARC version of this book and am leaving this review of my own accord.
#VanishedinVermillion #NetGalley

A fascinating true crime story about a case that was unsolved for over 40 years. The author does a fantastic job laying out the facts and giving us insight into each of the characters (victims, suspects, police, friends, family). As in any good true crime story, you think you have solved it as you are reading but as the story becomes more complex it clearly is a case of sometimes all the parts don't add up to the whole when you are dealing with memory, testimony, and supposition. It took many years and many people involved to finally crack the case. In the meantime, many families' lives were damaged. The author was able to interview many of the key people later and I really liked the insertion of himself into the narrative at that point -- it worked really well to help add closure to the book.
I recommend this book.

Thank you to Netgalley and Post Hill Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Being a true crime fan, this was both interesting and frustrating to read. Poor police work from the get go. Laziness and just plain sad. It took over forty years for the case to be solved. Certain parts of the story dragged on more than i would have personally liked but, being a true story these things can be forgiven. Not the outcome i thought at the end after so much drama but glad the cold case was solved and the author brought light to this book so their story could be heard for years to come.

A very well written book from 'true crime' shelf. The author's knowledge on the subject is amazing and well researched. It shows how judicial system worked in the past and works till present day. It's appalling that it took 42 years to discover what happened the the teenagers.

I received a free copy of, Vanished in Vermillion, by Lou Raguse, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. 17 year olds, Sherri and Pam went missing on May 29, 1971, everybody had there own theories about what happened to the girls, but nobody really knew. It seems like the detectives wanted to pin it on anybody, I know their are good and bad cops everywhere, but these guys were no good. I felt so bad for the families Of Sherri and Pam, not knowing for decades, before they were found. A very well written book, I enjoyed this book.. A horrible situation for sure.