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Although Saratoga Springs, New York is a generally safe place to live with a low violent crime rate, in November of 1980, the community was terrified after 22-year-old Sheila Shepherd was found brutally murdered in her own apartment.
Sadly, despite over 4 ½ decades of investigation, renewed public attention & continued pleas from her family, Sheila’s case remains unsolved to this day & the person responsible for her horrific death has never faced justice.
Sheila Marie Van Ness Shepherd was born on July 16, 1958 in Jacksonville, Florida to parents James & Marcia Van Ness. When she was 5-years-old, her family was living in New London, Connecticut when her brother, James, was born. They eventually settled in Saratoga Springs, New York, a city 3 hours north of Manhattan, where Sheila & James were raised.
According to her father, Sheila was a beautiful girl who was full of life & had a smile for everyone she met. However, according to her maternal aunt, Terrie Boisseau, she had a difficult home life as a teenager & struggled to get along with her parents. During her freshman year of high school, Sheila moved to Colorado to live with her Aunt Terrie & her Uncle Chuck. Since Terrie was only ten years older than her niece, they had more of a sibling relationship.
At 17-years-old, Sheila married Richard Shepherd, a man in the Army, & they moved to Germany together. While they were overseas, they had their daughter, Sativa, but when Sheila was 20-years-old & their daughter was about one, she & Richard separated in 1978 while they had been living in California. After their separation, Sheila moved back to Colorado to live with her aunt & uncle again.
In about May 1980, Sheila decided to move back to Saratoga Springs & her Aunt Terrie & Uncle Chuck followed about six months later. Moving forward to November 1980, Sheila was trying to get her life back on track after her separation from Richard so she began taking secretarial courses at Worldwide Educational Services where she was also paid to do office work. While she focused on her education, 2-year-old Sativa was temporarily living with Richard’s parents in the nearby town of Greenfield.
Only weeks before her death, Sheila moved into a small second floor apartment at 125 Church Street that was in a subdivided Victorian home. It was within walking distance of her school as well as to the downtown area. She was doing well, enjoying her classes & she was a very reliable student.
On Saturday, November 22, 1980, Sheila’s mom, Marcia, saw her daughter out in the early afternoon near the Grand Union grocery store & later that afternoon, a neighbor recalled her coming back to her apartment. Since she was a young, very social girl, it wasn’t uncommon for Sheila to go out with her friends several times a week.
According to her Aunt Terrie, Sheila likely spent Saturday night downtown. On her way back to her Church Street apartment, she stopped off at The Hub, a popular bar that eventually closed in 2004, but had been on the same street as her apartment.
According to police, since bar patrons they later spoke with had been drinking that night, their recollections had been hazy as to whether they had seen Sheila out on Friday night or Saturday night. It had likely been on Saturday night as one person recalled seeing Sheila in the bar alone while Saturday Night Live was on. From The Hub, her exact movements are unknown.
The walk home from the bar at 35 Church Street would’ve taken about five minutes to reach her apartment at 125 Church Street.
One unconfirmed witness thought they had seen Sheila on Saturday night at about 8 pm walking with a muscular, stocky man who was wearing a leather jacket. Since they’d only seen a side profile of the person, they couldn’t be sure, but they thought the man was Black.
One of Sheila’s downstairs neighbors told police that it sounded as if Sheila had been hosting a small gathering that night, hearing maybe 2-3 voices as well as the radio playing. However, investigators were never able to determine who, if anyone, had been there that night & no one came forward to say they had been there.
One of the downstairs neighbors told Aunt Terrie that she may have heard Sheila come home on Saturday night. After she did, she heard a thud & some activity going on, but nothing that sounded like anger or violence.
When Aunt Terrie popped by her niece’s apartment on Sunday night just to check in, there was no answer at the door, but she could hear the radio playing inside. This surprised her since Sheila was paying for her own electricity & Terrie didn’t think she would have left the radio on when she wasn’t home.
When Marcia stopped by the apartment to see her daughter on Monday, she experienced the same thing; there was no answer at the door, but she could hear the radio playing.
When Sheila didn’t show up for her secretarial classes on Monday, November 24, the teacher sent two students to check on her. Once again, their knocks went unanswered while they heard music playing inside. Since she was a very reliable student, when she was a no-show yet again on Tuesday, two days before the Thanksgiving holiday, her family was notified.
Marcia went over to her sister & brother-in-law’s, asking Terrie & Chuck if they would go with her to Sheila’s apartment. They arrived at 10 am & once again, they found Sheila’s apartment locked. Knowing that she often left her window unlocked at the top of the fire escape to allow her brother to come & go when he wanted to stay, Chuck volunteered to go up while Marcia & Terrie waited outside.
It can be noted that decades after her niece’s murder, during an interview, Terrie mentioned that Sheila’s brother, James, who had been 17-years-old, was in prison at the time.
As Chuck reached the window, Sheila’s bed was positioned just below. He could see what appeared to be a figure under the covers. As he climbed through the window, he had to crawl over his niece’s body to get into the apartment. A green blanket covered much of Sheila’s body, but when he moved it away, he was horrified to see that she was nude & clearly deceased.
Traumatized & in shock, he ran to her front door, knowing that Marcia & Terrie were on their way up & prevented them from coming inside. They immediately began banging on a neighbor’s door, asking if she would call the police.
Responding officers found Sheila spread-eagle on her bed with her hands & feet each tied to the underside of the metal bedframe. Her ankles were secured with her own shoelaces while one wrist was tied down with the belt of a robe & the other with a length of fabric from another garment.
The shoelaces around her ankles hadn’t been secured well & investigators felt that had she been tied up while alive, she would have likely been able to wrestle free. A 5-inch steak knife from Sheila’s kitchen had been plunged into her abdomen where it remained.
There was no clear sign of forced entry or a burglary. Other than finding that one of Sheila’s fingernails was badly broken to the point that it was almost in half, there were no other signs of a struggle. Because there were no injuries around the bindings around her wrists & ankles, it’s likely Sheila had been positioned this way postmortem.
On November 28, three days after her body was found, Saratoga County Coroner, Donald L. Clark ruled that Sheila’s cause of death was asphyxiation. He determined that she had died sometime between 1-2 am in the early morning hours of Sunday, November 23 after she suffocated from the sash of a blouse being forced into her mouth.
He determined that the knife wound to her abdomen occurred at least 30 minutes after her death. There was a strange mark on her cheek that could have been from insect activity such as a cockroach, but there were discussions amongst investigators that it could’ve been from a partial toothmark impression.
On December 8, 1980, State Police Laboratory tests determined that Sheila had not been raped. Her blood alcohol level was 0.25%, which is over 3 times the legal driving limit. With this level of intoxication, she would have most definitely been impaired, but it’s unclear if her intoxication had been voluntary or if it had been used by the killer to gain control.
No DNA or fibers were found under her broken fingernail. Although she hadn’t been sexually assaulted, based on the fact that she was found naked with her arms & legs bound to the bed frame, the murder was likely sexually motivated.
The scene suggested a methodical killer who could be either male or female. After her death, they covered her body in a blanket & possibly repositioned her shoes neatly alongside her bed. They may have also staged her body in the position it had been found.
The killer may have left her apartment with some of Sheila’s photos as three days earlier on Wednesday, Aunt Terrie had brought her niece a trunk of her belongings, including photos that were missing after her murder.
Because the knife had been plunged into her abdomen about 30 minutes after her death, the killer seemed to have no sense of urgency or concern they would be caught. This could mean that they felt close to her & took the time to stage the scene before leaving.
There were only two points of entry/exit into the building, the main door as well as through the window & down the fire escape. Investigators weren’t quite sure how the killer got in & out of the apartment that night. In his panic after finding his niece’s body, Chuck felt certain that the deadbolt had been engaged when he approached the door from inside. Because Sheila’s keys were missing from the apartment, investigators initially thought the killer could have left through the door, locking it as they left, but when the snow melted in the spring, the keys were found across the street from her apartment. It’s possible they had taken the keys & discarded them there when the fled the scene.
Various people were aware that Sheila often left her window open at the top of the fire escape, so it’s entirely possible that the killer came in & left this way.
There was the possibility that the killer could have been lying in wait in her apartment while she’d been out at the bars. They could have also potentially followed her home that night or may have accompanied her back to the apartment.
Since the knife, bindings, as well as the sash that was used to suffocate Sheila had all been taken from her apartment, suggested that her murder had not been premeditated as the killer hadn’t brought the supplies with them.
When investigators spoke with Richard Shepherd, Sheila’s estranged husband, he indicated that he’d been 227 miles away, out with friends at the bars on Long Island during the timeframe of her murder. State police checked & rechecked his alibi, verifying that he was telling the truth. He was ruled out as a suspect before his death sometime in the late 1980s from a heart attack at 39-years-old. Despite the fact that Richard had been cleared from the case, some of Sheila’s family members still believe that he was responsible.
Sheila’s Uncle Chuck was also looked into. However, he had no history of a violent past & had only gone up the fire escape into his niece’s apartment after he was asked to by his wife & sister-in-law. Not long after their niece’s murder, Terrie & Chuck’s marriage fell apart & they divorced.
There were no suspects identified in any of the states Sheila had visited, but she was very social in the downtown bar scene & came across many people. However, there was no indication that she socialized with a rough or violent crowd that involved drugs. Within a few months, the hotline that was set up to field tips grew quiet & leads began to dwindle.
One year after Sheila’s murder, investigators released a section of the FBI profile of the suspected killer on November 24, 1981. According to the profile, the killer was likely a white male who knew Sheila well enough to be invited into her apartment. He likely lived in the city & was about the same age as 22-year-old Sheila. He may have been in the military & there was a nearby Navy base, but the knots to Sheila’s bindings were not of a nautical type.
Eight years after Sheila’s murder, another Saratoga Springs woman was found naked & dead in a ditch off Putnam Road at about 9:45 am on Wednesday, July 6, 1988 after she’d been bludgeoned to death. 28-year-old Pamela DeVizzio was last seen leaving Gaffney’s bar alone on Caroline Street the morning before at 4:15 am. When she didn’t come in for her shift at Mangino’s Restaurant at Saratoga Lake, her father reported her missing. As with Sheila’s case, her murder remains unsolved.
A man dubbed The Alphabet Killer, Joseph Naso, is a convicted serial killer on death row for raping & killing four women with alliterative initials, including Roxene Roggasch, Carmen Colon, Pamela Parsons & Tracy Tofoya. He was born in Rochester & traveled between California & New York in the 1970s & 80s for his job as a commercial photographer.
Of the murders he’s been convicted of, his victims were found naked, bound & gagged with pantyhose. He had a compulsion of staging the bodies in certain positions & photographing them, something that actually resulted in his arrest after police found his keepsake photos in 2010.
Sheila Shepherd’s name fit the profile & she had been bound & found naked, however, she had not been gagged with pantyhose nor had she been sexually assaulted as his other victims had. Although some believe that she may have been one of his victims, no evidence has definitively linked him to Sheila’s death.
Marcia Van Ness, Sheila’s mother, died on her 72nd birthday on September 24, 2011. Sheila’s brother, James, who she was exceptionally close with, died at 54-years-old in a motorcycle accident on June 17, 2018.
Sheila’s murder had been Saratoga’s only unsolved homicide until March 28, 2025 when 44-year-old Jessica Lyman & her 8-year-old son, Eli Painter, were found shot in their townhome. Although no arrests have been made & the murder weapon has not been found, according to a January 2026 article, gunshot residue was found on the clothing of Jessica’s 15-year-old son. The teen was home when his mom & brother were shot & claimed he hadn’t heard anything as he had been asleep.
As of 2021, Investigator Chris Callahan of the SSPD is taking a fresh look at Sheila’s case. He’s since examined all of the case files left behind by the original investigators in the 1980s, he’s interviewed leads & has gotten Sheila’s case covered by the true crime podcast, Crawlspace. He was hoping that maybe there was a missing piece in the investigation & although there were some holes, for the most part, he found that the original team had left no major stone unturned.
However, since nearly 46 years have passed since Sheila’s murder, many witnesses have since passed away while memories have drastically faded. Despite the passage of so much time, the community of Saratoga Springs has not forgotten Sheila. Callahan remains hopeful that he will one day get closure for those who loved Sheila dearly.
Sheila Shepherd is frozen in time as a 22-year-old woman who had been trying her best to get her life back on track in hopes of finishing school & having her daughter back with her. The person who came inside her apartment, took her life under mysterious circumstances & slipped out into the night, has never been held responsible. Someone out there knows what happened & there’s hope that one day, the truth will come out.
In May 2024, a $50,000 reward was announced by Sheila’s family. If you have any information regarding the murder of Sheila Shepherd, please contact the Saratoga Springs Police Department at (518) 584-1800 or call the Crime Tips Hotline at (518) 584-TIPS (8477) or email tips@saratogapolice.org
References:
- Uncovered: Sheila Shepherd
- The Saratogian: Daughter’s murder still unsolved, 25 years later
- Saratoga Living: Exploring Saratoga’s oldest unsolved murder case & the investigator still assigned to it
- Compassionate Funeral Care Inc.: James Paul Van Ness
- WGNA: Can you help solve this 37-year-old upstate New York cold case?
- Medium: The murder of Sheila Shepherd
- 2KUTV: No arrest year after Saratoga Springs mother/son murders
- KSL: Teen son of slain Saratoga Springs woman had gunshot residue on his clothing, police say
- YouTube: Crawlspace: Sheila Shepherd – 1 – The Unsolved Murder of Sheila Shepherd
- YouTube: Crawlspace: Sheila Shepherd – 4 – Aunt Terrie
- APB Cold Case Blog: Slain in Saratoga – Who killed Sheila Shepherd?
