13 WTHR - Indianapolis News |New lead in 20-year-old disappearance?

New lead in 20-year-old disappearance?

Thorntown - In the nearly 20 years since six-year-old Shannon Sherrill vanished from her Thorntown home, hundreds of leads have turned into hundreds of disappointments for her family.

"I just want to bring my daughter home." Mike Sherrill hopes the latest tip into Shannon's disappearance will finally bring her home. This one is from 44-year-old Jeff Sunnycalb, an inmate of an Ohio prison who wrote a letter nearly seven months ago to Thorntown's town marshal.

Marshal Jeff Woodard says, "The only contact we got from this guy was a letter in December. He just asked this department a question. That's all he was doing."

But the question had to do with Shannon Sherrill.

Sunnycalb, a convicted child rapist and prison informer helped Texas police solve a series of child murders based on information he turned over that led to the arrest of his former cellmate.

Mark Stegemoller with the Warren Correctional Institution says Sunnycalb "has been credible working with Texas law enforcement with missing child cases."

A private investigator working for the Sherrills is meeting with Sunnycalb hoping to learn more.

"The town marshal's got his own ideas," says Mike Sherrill, "and is going in one direction and our investigator is going in another direction. So this is more than what's happened in the past."

Prison investigators say it's unlikely that the inmate is pulling a hoax, urging Indiana investigators to take whatever leads Sunnycalb can give them seriously in the hope of solving a nearly 20-year-old crime.