Sharon Faye Smith, known to family as Shari, was 17 when she was abducted from her Lexington County, South Carolina, driveway on May 31, 1985, two days before her high school graduation. She had returned from a pool party and was taken at gunpoint while checking the mail. Her family endured taunting phone calls from the abductor and received a letter titled Last Will & Testament that Shari had been forced to write. Investigators were led to her body on June 5, 1985; decomposition made an exact cause of death difficult to determine, though suffocation was suspected.

Investigators developed an FBI profile that helped identify 35-year-old electrician Larry Gene Bell, who had a prior history of assaults on women. A partial phone number impression on the stationery used for the forced will connected Bell to employers who provided a lead, and hairs consistent with Shari’s were found in his apartment. Bell was arrested on June 27, 1985, tried for Shari’s kidnapping and murder beginning in February 1986, convicted, and sentenced to death. He was also tied to the abduction and murder of 9-year-old Debra May Helmick and has been linked to other disappearances and killings.

Did anyone who knew Shari or lived in Lexington County in 1985 have memories or information that might shed light on her last day?