Daughter of murdered Utah woman helps families find answers

SALT LAKE CITY — With more than 250 unsolved homicides and more than 130 missing-person cases in Utah, many families continue searching for answers years after a loved one disappears or is killed.

"Utah Missing and Unsolved Day" is launching this year to provide support, resources and hope for those families.

The woman behind the event, Heidi Miller, knows firsthand the uncertainty and grief that comes with an unsolved case. Her mother, Sherry Black, was murdered nearly 16 years ago.

"She was just a wonderful, amazing woman," Miller shared through tears.

On Nov. 30, 2010, 64-year-old Black was found beaten and stabbed to death inside her South Salt Lake bookstore.

Investigators found key evidence at the scene, including a belt and DNA left behind by the killer.

"I think we all just expected that we would find out who did this rather quickly," Miller recalled during an interview with the host of KSL's "Cold Podcast," Dave Cawley.

But an arrest didn't come quickly as weeks turned into months, and months turned into years, with no suspect.

For Miller, the uncertainty was relentless.

"It's just this constant weight in the back of your mind," she remembers. "As you're driving down the street, was it that person? Did they do it? You know, did I just pass them?"

She describes the experience as "ambiguous grief," a type of loss that lingers when there are no answers.

In 2017, with her mother's murder still unsolved, Miller decided to channel her grief into something positive.

"We just needed to look for a way to take something that was so awful and make something good out of it," she said.

She founded the Sherry Black Foundation to support families of missing and murdered loved ones and to advocate for improvements in cold case investigations.

"Even if I couldn't have an answer, I needed to help other families not go through what we're going through," Miller said.

In addition to helping families, the foundation also works to provide specialized training and resources for law enforcement agencies investigating cold cases.

"Bringing these experts together and getting them comfortable with each other and learning how to talk to each other and say, 'Hey, do you know how to do this, or do you have an expert in this?' Yeah, that is so key and so important," Miller said.

Just a year after starting the foundation, Miller watched investigators identify the Golden State Killer through genetic genealogy, a technique that links DNA evidence to distant relatives.

"When they caught the Golden State Killer, I knew," Miller recalls. "I knew we would have a solve."

Detectives used the same investigative tool in her mother's case and within a couple of years, Miller got the phone call she had waited nearly a decade to receive.

"We got him" are the words Miller remembers the detective saying to her that day.

"And it was nobody I had ever heard of, and he had confessed on the way to the jail. It was a shock," she said.

In 2022, Sherry Black's killer was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

And while the resolution did not erase Miller's grief, it brought an end to years of uncertainty.

"The day that he was sentenced, I was able to just put it behind me," she said while acknowledging she will always miss her mother.

Miller prefers to remember her mother not as a victim, but as the person she was throughout her life.

Sherry Black was curious and adventurous. She loved animals, books and learning new things.

"She wouldn't want us to live in the grief," Miller said. "She wouldn't want to be remembered that way. She was so much more than how she died."

That legacy lives on through the Sherry Black Foundation, which continues to advocate for families affected by unsolved crimes and missing persons cases.

The organization is hosting "Utah Missing and Unsolved Day," an event created to provide new tools and connections for those still searching for answers. It will be held Saturday, Sept. 26, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Miller Free Enterprise Center at Salt Lake Community College in Sandy.

More information is available here.

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