148: Hernando County Jane Doe: The Women Who Vanished Before Her, Part 1

In 1980, Pam Sherrell escaped a violent attack by a man who abducted her and tried to kill her. He evaded capture, but her escape would set off a chain of events that revealed a much darker story unfolding in Hernando County, Florida.

Months later and thousands of miles away, two young women crossed paths with the same man at a bar. He tried to get them to leave with him. They refused, but as they watched he left the bar with another young woman: Rene Saling. The next day, Rene was found murdered.

Back in Florida, investigators were trying to solve the disappearance of another young woman: Sandra Jean Graham who had disappeared after an ordinary evening playing pool with a stranger.

And behind it all was a man whose history of violence stretched back years despite repeated encounters with the criminal justice system: Billy Mansfield Jr.

As investigators pieced together what happened to the women, Mansfield was on the run. HIs eventual capture would expose a pattern of violence that stretched far beyond the murder of Rene Saling.

And somewhere in the story was a woman whose name investigators would not learn for more than 40 years. She is still known only as Hernando County Jane Doe

📍 Florida  | 1975-1981

📖 Featuring an original poem written and read in her honor by Corrina Smith.

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