Sherry Henderson Left the Side Door Unlocked. A Motel Wall Hid Her.

In June 2021, Sherry Henderson stayed late at a church food pantry to walk a new volunteer through the inventory sheet. She disliked an empty box going back on a shelf, because it made the supplies look fuller than they were, so she checked the shelves herself and crossed out a wrong total. The next afternoon her daughter found the house open, the coffee cold, and her reading glasses still holding a page. Three years later a county road worker knocked on a motel wall that had been looked after.

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Sherry Henderson, 62, of Birchwood Lane in Fenwick, Ohio, was reported missing by her daughter, Nicole Tran, on June 17, 2021. The side door was unlocked and nothing inside was disturbed. On June 18, 2024, a county road worker photographing a motel closed since 2019 found a wall that did not belong; behind it was a sealed compartment holding her remains, identified by dental records. The medical examiner could not establish a cause of death from the bones. Craig Peterson, 47, a senior field technician for the firm that maintained the motel, had inspected Sherry's furnace in March 2020, and his credential was used at the motel on June 14 and 17, 2021. He was arrested on August 4, 2024. In February 2025 he told investigators in a recorded interview that he had built the compartment in advance, entered her house through the side door, taken her to the motel and killed her, and that he had also entered a second Fenwick home in 2017. In April 2025 a jury convicted him of murder and he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

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This episode is fiction. Sherry Henderson, Craig Peterson, Dunmore County, Fenwick and the Lakeview Motor Inn are invented for the show, and the case is not based on any real person, business or investigation.