A Cure for the Common Cold Case

Greg Tyner is a man on a mission.

A A A Comments By Julie Jargon Thursday, Dec 18 2003

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Linda and Everett never thought they'd be raising teenagers at this stage of their lives, but the boys' father isn't very involved, and they wanted to make sure that Caleb and the twins remembered their mother.

"I get disappointed and angry with the police about why they can't do more. Maybe the case isn't high-profile enough for them," Linda says. "We were watching something on television recently about the Elizabeth Smart case, and Caleb said, 'Those people are rich; that's why the police helped them.' You take a common Joe and Jane like Everett and I, and not much gets done."

John Johnston

Greg Tyner

John Johnston

Greg Tyner

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"We were very fortunate to have had the detective we had," Everett points out. "She laid a really good case and got the warrant, and so many of the cases in FOHVAMP don't have that. We got to bury our daughter, and there are a lot of people who don't get to do that, either. Everything's been done in our case but finding the guy. It just gives you a big old pit in the stomach."

But he and Linda aren't getting their hopes up too high. They've gone down that road before. "I'm just going to let Greg handle it. My purpose is to raise these three boys. I appreciate what Greg and Howard are doing, and I pray something comes of it, but Chester Todd has been out there for seven years, and I'm not going to suddenly focus on finding him, because if I did that, I'd be back to the place I was right after Sherri died, and I'm not going to do that to myself."

Although Linda is more adamant about seeing her daughter's killer captured, she has mixed feelings about enduring a trial. She wonders how she'd cope if Todd was caught and then acquitted. "Then it would be over, and we'd really have no closure."

But Mitchell is looking forward to the day he can face his mom's killer in court: "I want him to see the kids whose mother he took away."