What happened to Cheryl Scherer? Preview Dateline: Missing In America Season 5
August 10, 2026
AI Summary
5 min readCheryl Scherer was 19 years old when she left her family’s home in rural Missouri on April 17, 1979. She never came back. Nearly 50 years later, her case remains unsolved. In a preview for the fifth season of Dateline: Missing In America, host Josh Mankowitz frames Cheryl’s disappearance as a story that could only have happened in a specific era—before cell phones, before smart watches, before doorbell cameras made constant surveillance a mundane fact of life. “This was all before cell phones,” Mankowitz says. “Back then, parents had no choice but to trust they’d see their teenager at the end of the day.” The episode sets up a quiet, unsettling mystery: a young woman vanishes from a world with few digital footprints, and the people who loved her have spent decades waiting for an answer that has not come.
A disappearance in a pre-digital world
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:55) **Preview: Dateline Missing in America Season 5** - Host Josh Mankowitz introduces the podcast's fifth season, which features six new unsolved mysteries, and appeals to listeners who might have a clue that could help crack one of these cases.
- 2 (01:24) **Setting the Scene: Life Before the Grid** - The narrative establishes the era of the story, the 1970s, as a time when there was no constant surveillance or cell phones, making it much easier for someone to disappear.
- 3 (02:21) **The Disappearance of Cheryl Scherer** - The case is introduced: 19-year-old Cheryl Scherer failed to come home on April 17, 1979, and has been missing for nearly 50 years.
- 4 (02:57) **Call to Action and Outro** - The preview concludes with a direct invitation to listen, directing listeners to search for "Dateline Missing in America" or access it via Dateline Premium.
+ Full timestamped outline available in the app
Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Hey Dateline fans, here's a special preview of the next episode of Dateline: Missing in America Season 5. In "Gone by Noon," Josh Mankiewicz delves into the disappearance of 19-year-old Cheryl Scherer, who vanished from the Rhodes Pump-Ur-Own gas station in Scott City, Missouri, on April 17, 1979, and hasn't been seen since. Listen to the full episode in the 'Dateline: Missing in America' feed - something you hear might jog a memory that could help authorities find Cheryl.
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