And so long as you haven’t experienced
This: to die and so to grow,
You are only a troubled guest
Of the dark earth
— Goethe, “The Holy Longing”
But somebody cared about Sherry Perisho—somebody missed her terribly, and claimed her by writing letter after letter to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office for anything that might tell her why Sherry had moved to Big Pine Key, and why she had been murdered.
Her first cousin, Marilyn Angel, was also her best friend, and her surname fits. She wanted to protect Sherry’s reputation, and was incensed when her cousin was called a prostitute. She even wrote a letter to a television station in Miami when they showed her cousin’s body, nude, floating in the water. “If you show one, you have to show them all!” she wrote.
Investigators found stuck inside her dinghy, among the deceased woman’s things, an autobiography Sherry Perisho was writing. It is, of course, incomplete. The last chapter was written in blood by Charlie Brandt.
What the autobiography—which Sherry was in the process of getting copyrighted—reveals, is an infinitely more complex portrait than that of “the homeless transient” who is mentioned in passing by all the media covering the case. She was more like “The Outsider,” from the book of the same title by Colin Wilson—a landmark investigation into alienation in literature and in life.
She was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, and she and her mother lived in a series of trailer parks. Then they moved to Illinois, where Sherry started high school. Something she wrote at the time summarizes her restlessness and curiosity about the world: “Spiritually, I didn’t want to be dead at 21 like most country wives.”
She recounted how her father taught her to swim at the age of three by simply throwing her in the ocean, while “Mother taught me to make paper flowers colored with lipstick to sell in the bars for a dollar. Dad would give me a little sip of beer in a glass and encourage me to pan handle change from the men he worked with.” Sherry Perisho was well prepared, from earliest infancy, for life on the road—or in the ocean, as evidenced by another entry:
“We visited Cypress Gardens. Sometimes Dad would rent a cabin cruiser and take us deep-sea fishing. The dock was busy and clean. The north had left me sad.”
According to her autobiography, Sherry felt a “sadness,” or “depression,” or worse yet, “alienation,” whenever she was in colder climates. In other words, apparently, whenever she was not in Florida.
“I missed the sun and the beach,” she writes. Happily the wandering family settled in the Sunshine State.
According to the writer, she was, and was reputably acknowledged as being, “psychic.” Whether there is such an explanation for this, and whether it be coincidence, precognition, or just a bad dream, is still an enigma.
“Although really not a mind reader, I wanted to know about sex and crime. I had scored 85% on tests given by psychics at Duke University and occasionally had uncanny dreams. Later, while studying death and violence, I realized that violent and primitive scenes may have laid the foundation for one of the more shocking and violent of all my occult experiences. At the age of four, I slept in the upstairs…room of a large house in St. Petersburg. We were several miles from the beach with senior citizens. I had begun to withdraw; my hair had turned blonde from sleeping tightly curled on one end of the bed like a rabbit. I’ll describe the nightmare. About dusk or twilight I saw my father seated in a wheelchair in front of a motel near a heavily wooded area. Three men stood behind him. I noticed the middle-man suddenly raise a chainsaw and slice the top of my father’s head off.
After the nightmare, my father found work in Washington and asked my aunt and uncle to put me on a plane. I remember the trip very distinctly.”
A dream of decapitation is certainly a coincidence, though some may think that it is not. After Sherry Perisho’s murder, the Medical Examiner found her head almost severed from her body. Her heart was never found.
When she was a young girl, she also had a Howdy Doody marionette; it took hours to untangle the strings. And the children laughed at “Charlie the Bartender,” whose face would light up and smoke would pour out of his ears whenever he took a drink. That is obviously a coincidence as well, but is, in retrospect, grotesquely poetic, like a Grimm’s fairy tale.
And then the “alienation” seeps in, as well as Sherry Perisho’s precociousness and the angst that went with it.
“I started exhibiting some coldness and alienation. I became instantly aware of time and a silent inner and outer dimension. At seven, I was acutely conscious of the microscopic and atomic worlds.”
According to her, her I.Q. tested out at 136 in primary school, which indicates a superior intelligence. “As I studied drawing, poetry, and music I was sorely piqued over my lack of imagination and considered it also a handicap.” This “lack of imagination” may have played a part in her choice of action, or inaction, much later on, when she moved to Big Pine Key and opted to live in a dinghy under the bridge.
What is known, again, from her writings, is that the young woman did despise whatever she considered “bourgeois” or conformist.
“My aunt and uncle’s home was quite comfortable, furnished in expensive maple and carpeted. They wore expensive clothing and enjoyed television. Although they loved art, they would never give up the comforts of home to run away. Artists and radicals were frightening, although they were of the same fibre as the original prairie settlers.”
She might not have become “an original prairie settler,” but chose the ocean for other reasons.
Another entry:
“Not only was depression a constant presence in my life, it was the keystone to an event that became a turning point in my life.
“As I stood in the honeysuckle-covered back porch, I was struck by the hideous ugliness of my environment. In five seconds, the sky had darkened and ping-pong-size balls of hail began to rain from the firmament.
“I connected the terrible weather and depressed state I was casually familiar with American Indian rain dancers and The English version of dowsers and thought if it was possible I would set about to reverse the effect as an alternative heating source for northern climates.”
Sherry Perisho was often observed gazing at the sky from her dinghy, and trying to communicate with the planets out loud. She loved astronomy from a very early age, she writes.
“Staying out at night to study the skies, I studied charts of the constellations and the Greek and Roman mythology about them.
“The mystery of the universe intrigued me. I fought my doubts about the power of the mind. Is it possible to read minds? Is the spoken language simply the pyrotechnics of pre-recorded genetic material?”
Later, as she matured, Sherry would test some of these theories by pushing her personal boundaries.
She mentions becoming a contestant in beauty pageants, and winning some of them. She doesn’t seem to attach any importance to this, as if the events don’t carry any sense of reality. Instead, she pens her thoughts about social injustice.
“News of the American farmer on the media seemed to consist of pictures of deplorable poverty and food stamps. The universe seemed to consist of haves and have-nots, and a have-not generally had ‘have not’ permanently stamped on his forehead. The general working class couldn’t even understand the state or government policy, and had never even read a hardcover book on economics from end to end. Lay-offs meant unbearable cutbacks and violence.”
As far as a personal romantic life, Sherry Perisho is equally casual and detached.
She met a young hockey player from Chicago at age thirteen, and although she had no knowledge of sex, he became the first boy to make love to her, and in half a minute.
And then, in her usual cavalier way, she writes, as if all in one breath and in one sentence.
“I managed to get elected as Freshman Class President and managed to get engaged before my sixteenth birthday. I was on decorating committees and spent a lot of time at the apple grower’s house. His physique was unimpressive and he suffered from Huntington’s chorea but his hair was blonde, his eyes were green and he was quite intelligent. Sometimes at night, we drove to the orchard and parked by the lake, to make love.
We talked about everything under the sun. From Mary Baker-Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, to Impressionist art. He made a good lover, strong and enduring. I reached sexual fulfillment and would have remained faithful till the end. We used birth control.”
As emotionally disconnected as the romance started, it ended, and Sherry is not sorry.
“I was relieved. I had wanted to marry a more attractive man and gave his diamond back.”
At this point, she seemed somewhat disconnected, and too concerned about national and world issues than her to care much about own microcosm.
“1965 had been the beginning of the bad times both for me and for the nation. The escalation of the Vietnam conflict made it a national issue. The evening news reports were full of bombings and massacres. Anti-war protesters began to flood the capital. Human rights activists like Martin Luther King began to appear making speeches for radical changes in society.”
She was obviously either influenced by the feminist movement, or might have been a forerunner of it as she writes:
“As to sleeping with a man without benefit of clergy when younger, I felt if I wasn’t pregnant there were no charges. The person and the time and place weren’t unpleasant. A cosmopolitan person would survive countless extra-marital experiences and multiple marriages. The only bad experiences were due to exploitation and lack of choices.”
Again, the incipient detachment seeps into her writing.
She had a “flirtatious affair with an older man.” According to her writings, the man was married and poor. She got pregnant. She arranged for an abortion. The older man introduced her to his best friend.
This cannot really be interpreted as coldness—given the writer’s intensity and longing for something more—let alone promiscuity. Sherry Perisho was more or less, in her own words, a student of life, with all the disconnect and detachment that entails. At this point, she might have been headed for a nervous breakdown, or a bout of enlightenment.
And then, in the depths of another depression, she called “the friend,” and figured it “might be healthier to move to New York or California.”
The man asked her to marry him over the phone. She blurted out an acceptance and they eloped in the summer.
It was a practical decision for her.
“Marrying him would mean better quarters and my choice of schools. I wouldn’t be bothered with a haphazard courtship and ugly scenes.
“I think there are these reasons why women get married: Ideology, economics, and politics. I had married for ideological reasons.”
These don’t seem like hidden agendas, or taking advantage of someone, in Sherry Perisho’s mind and heart. Everything was logical, everything out in the open. Everything was thought out so it might lead uninterruptedly to her field of study. Except in this particular case, things did not go as she wished.
Again she narrates objectively, as if she weren’t in the picture:
“Our first months together didn’t turn out well. I was depressed and stayed home while looking for a job. Our sex life dribbled down to a forced performance. I was frigid and after a couple months gave up having sex at all. The Americans landed on the moon.” She attaches the same important to her sex life as to hearing about the astronauts landing on the moon.
Sherry writes that she “took a drive to Ball State,” the university, took the exam for advanced placement, and re-enrolled as a pre-med student. She started in December of 1970.
However, “Between school, l5-20 hours of part-time work, a husband and a seven-room home I was hustling.”
And then she began to study Eastern philosophy, and about reincarnation she ponders: “I felt reincarnation is only a feeling gotten from prerecorded genetic material filtering through the subconscious.”
Then, more importantly:
“I felt that God and the Holy Spirit are a phenomena of consciousness and enlightenment. The Devil was the embodiment of the unconsciousness.”
Consciousness and enlightenment and the embodiment of the unconsciousness. Sherry Perisho had only begun to tap what made her and Charlie Brandt polar opposites.
And then, once again, her marriage end. She writes about it in disparate yet connected sentences that evidence the same detachment as before.
“I was depressed and suicidal. I wanted a divorce. I masturbated. I hated Ken for not being a good sexual partner. I wished I had more money. I wanted to run away. I didn’t know what sex and romance was if I had it. Watergate hit the news. I wanted a baby.”
She took a new course offered by the university. “Death and Violence.”
Almost prophetically, she later writes: “Spiritual death could occur as a strangulation, drowning or beheading. I had choked on society, drowned on emotionalism, and needed strong identification to survive crises.”
There is no way, or is there, that Sherry Perisho would have known where her physical, or spiritual death, would occur, but it is possible that some people sense, preternaturally in some way, the manner in which they will leave this earth.
By this time, Sherry had separated from her then husband at the age of twenty-one, and she writes:
“Dr. Timothy Leary of California had made news with his experience in the use of mind-altering drugs. Several members of major rock groups had been arrested for possession of marihuana. Abbie Hoffman had been arrested in Chicago.” Hoffman was a founder of the self-titled “Yippies,” and accused of being an anti-government revolutionary.
A friend at Ball State University asks her if she wants to move to New York.
“Medical school could wait. I was free and unhandicapped by children or a spouse. New York could be fun.”
She shares an apartment on the Upper East Side. She starts an interior decorating business. She makes money. She collects and studies art.
And then, from her rich artist friends who had a lot of very rich patrons, she began to experiment with psychedelic drugs. This could have led to the breakdown that eventually took her to Big Pine Key.
“I learned to drink champagne and smoked a little grass. Poppers, amyl nitrate, had us on the floor on our hands and knees giggling uncontrollably.
I did acid and Quaaludes, peyote and Digoxin, THC and cocaine.
I took speed and worked continuously for three days.”
In her quest for self-knowledge and to know the universe around her, Sherry studied parapsychology in New York, began to subscribe more to Eastern philosophies like Buddhism, and read Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, in which Huxley chronicles his experience with psychedelic drugs. It was also the source of the name Jim Morrison took for his band, “The Doors.”
As she studied and read, she writes, “evil began to creep into my life.” Perisho never fully explains what this “evil” is, but she does qualify it by writing: “It was difficult to maintain what Easterners refer to as the cloud state.”
This is when she began to experiment with extra-sensory perception and out-of-body experiences by delving “into Body in Pain and the imagination. From 1977 to the present I virtually lived on the street, experiencing starvation, over-exertion and exposure to the elements. Overexertion seemed to be the primary key to any extra-sensory powers concerning the climate.”
Sherry read Carlos Castaneda, who wrote about extra-sensory perception from psychedelic experiences, Native American “guides,” and his reclusive, mind-opening trips with peyote into the primeval jungles.
She concludes: “I managed to come through the vulgar experience of becoming aware, both from drug and non-drug-related experiences.”
“Vulgar?” Did she long for more?
“From Eastern books describing the anima and animus I sorted through voices and sensations, choosing the path to spiritual freedom.”
Freedom is what she sought to attain, why she went through such extremes of mind and body. “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” Janis Joplin had sung.
Then Sherry read the most romantic “outsider,” as Colin Wilson, the English writer, dubbed the German novelist Herman Hesse.
“I read Herman Hesse, titles like ‘Siddhartha,’ ‘Steppenwolf’ and ‘Damian,’ books describing man’s struggle with the soul in crisis. Since moving to New York my sleep had become the background for several occult experiences.”
And then, some experiences occur:
“While practicing meditation and mindfulness at a yoga club upstate I had several visionary experiences. One rather pleasant one occurred in the afternoon. I had fallen asleep and woke up with the sensation I was floating several feet above the ground. The roof to the little cabin had disappeared and my instructor had appeared at the door and spoke to me.
“I had witnessed a “floating” after-death experience once while lying in bed in my apartment in New York. I awoke from sleep one evening to find a ‘man’ or ‘warlock’ attempting to strangle me. Telling myself I was still dreaming and had ‘summoned’ the assassin. Although my experiences are due to what Indians called the ‘third eye,’ westerners know it as the subconscious and imagination. They happened so rarely I regarded them as a thanatopic experience and kept track of them as a register of good health. I feel the pre-recorded messages stored in the gene were a plausible source for all powers.”
One wonders if she felt her real murder and dismemberment, inside her dinghy and lying on the bottom of the little boat, as one of those nightmares.
At this point, her regimen to overcome human wants and sensations became more rigorous and earnest. She was certainly headed downward at this point.
“I returned to New York in the fall of 1979, and continued an exercise program combined with dance. I managed to earn a few dollars with this method. In my resting hours I meditated and tried to transcend lesser wants and feelings. Much had happened to me. Short of amputation I had felt more intensive pain than could be endured by the human mind or body. No one and nothing existed. I was no longer cold, no longer hungry, the outside world no longer mattered…as spring came I took occasional walks, but the spontaneous ability to react had been erased from life.
“The world was full of a stillness. If it just remained the same, that seemed satisfaction enough. I had no more energy to fight any more ‘devils.’”
Did Sherry fight Charlie Brandt under the Big Pine Key Bridge in 1989? Had her “ability to react” been “erased from life?” Was she unable, or unwilling, to fight the Devil himself?
But at this point she met another man, another “outsider” to accompany her in her travels to the outer limits.
“Ken Hall was a tall platinum blonde of Swedish descent. His iceblue eyes looked over an aquiline nose and thin-lipped curved mouth. He played classical guitar and worked as a carpenter. We spent the summer out-of-doors, eating the food and smoking the cigarettes people gave to us. I smoked a little now and then, a leftover from a lack of stimulants. As we trailed through New York, we set destinations at least a hundred blocks away; such as, Let’s walk to Harlem, or Let’s do all of Central Park today. We carefully pushed our bodies to the limit.
“Social Security had granted a check for $2300 and a small monthly check of $370.”
Still, like most outsiders, she was not happy, although she had some small resources to live on. “I was alone, a hapless scientist, with no equipment, no computer, no expert to explain the details…I was steeled for a future world of space travel and super powers likened only to Star Trek: “world of interplanetary travel at the wink of an eye.”
Sherry Perisho’s very last entry in her autobiography reads: “As I am writing, I have nearly succeeded and hope to next attend law school.”
Law school was not to be, as Sherry, for some reasons unbeknownst to anyone, then moved from New York to Big Pine Key.
In retrospect, it now seems inevitable that Charlie Brandt and Sherry Perisho would meet at that fatal juncture called “the swimming hole” under the Big Pine Key Bridge. They almost seem like characters out of the analysis of the outsider in literature, from Colin Wilson’s book.
Charlie Brandt: “An Existentialist monster who rejects all thought, a Mitya Karamazov without an Ivan or an Alyosha to counterbalance him. He reaches beyond prohibitions, beyond natural instinct, beyond morality…(he) loves nothing and everything. He is primeval matter, monstrous soul form…”
Mitya Karamazov is Dimitri Karamazov in the Dostoievsky novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Mitya is primitive and hedonistic; Ivan is his intellectual brother, and Alyosha his saintly one. Charlie Brandt did not have the two latter aspects incorporated into his alter ego.
Sherry Perisho, on the other hand, is akin to the heroine of Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady, Isabel Archer:
“Her social success in English society leads a very eligible English Lord to propose to her; she refuses him because she feels that life is far too full of exciting possibilities to narrow it down so soon…She too is ‘defeated by life,’ by her own inability to live at a constant intensity.”
When referring to German author Herman Hesse, whom Sherry read, Wilson states:
“He has a deep sense of the injustice of human beings having to live on such a lukewarm level of everyday triviality; he feels there should be a way of living with the intensity of the artist’s creative ecstasy all the time.”
Both Charlie Brandt and Sherry Perisho sought freedom in different ways: Charlie, by living in the present, his “glazed look” transporting him into the inner world of joy where he could satisfy his primitive instincts; Sherry, by pushing herself to the limits and surviving in the simplest way she knew how, while always reaching for the stars, or the artist’s ecstasy.
Each of them hailed from different towns in Indiana: Sherry from Terre Haute, and Charlie from Fort Wayne. Both moved to Big Pine Key, and there, under the Big Pine Key Bridge, and in the dinghy that had brought Sherry so much freedom, they were fated to collide.
Charlie Brandt was, in a word, an Existentialist interloper.
And Sherry Perisho, in her own way, summoned up the Devil himself.
This is the autopsy report from Sherry Perisho’s murder, now a case number at the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, where she was liked by all law-enforcement officers, as well as by the residents of Big Pine Key. In 2008, the department built a memorial in honor of all Brandt’s victims, and placed flowers around Sherry Perisho’s dinghy that had beenher home:
OFFICE OF THE MEDICAL EXAMINER
DISTRICT SIXTEEN—MONROE COUNTY
FISHERMEN’S HOSPITAL* MARATHON, FLORIDA 33050
PERISHO, Sherry
ME89-128/K89-9842
DOD July 19, 1989
Found 22:20 hours
Deceased alleged to be Sherry Perisho. Autopsy begun at Fishermen’s Hospital morgue in Marathon, Florida, on July 20, 1989, at 0:57 hours. Autopsy performed by R. J. Nelms, Jr., M.D., Medical Examiner. Identification of remains by Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. Investigating officer assigned to the case is Detective Jerry Powell of Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, Key West. Remains transported from the scene by Bill Sutton, Chief Forensic Investigator. Present at the examination are Bill Sutton, Ronald Hartman (paramedic), Detective Trish Almeda, Detective Lt. Conradi, and Deputy Greenwood.
EVIDENCE OF INJURY: The anterior neck is slashed open with a 27.0 cm incised wound and two additional incised wounds above the larger wound at each end of the larger wound measuring 9.0 cm in length on the right an 5.0 cm in length on the left. There is also a stab wound on the right upper anterior neck measuring 17.7 cm in width with the sharp end of the wound toward the right. The right carotid artery is severed with a clean cut and exposed, and white foam is noted in the trachea, which has also been severed with a clean cut as well as the underlying esophagus. There are two superficial stab wounds of the left neck and shoulders apparently angling toward the left as they enter, the one further left imbedding in shoulder bone, with the sharp edge pointing upward and measuring 2.1 cm in length. There are also cut marks on the anterior vertebral column of the neck. The chest and abdomen have been slashed open with a fairly continuous incised wound extending from the pubis up to the 1st rib with serrated marks in the mid portion of the wound, exposing bowel in the abdomen and the sternum. The right nipple has been cut off. In the addition, the sternum has been slashed open in the mid portion up to the 7th rib where the incision angles toward the left imbedding into the left 1st rib. There is an anterior laceration and opening of the pericardial sac, and the heart is absent with the aorta and pulmonary artery cut cleanly across and the right atrium mostly removed except for one small fragment. There is an estimated 1000 cc of blood present in the left pleural cavity, but none in the right pleural cavity. There is a large laceration through the diaphragm with a deep incised wound of the liver in the left lobe near the mid portion of the liver as well as smaller incised or stab wounds of the left lobe of the liver and one small stab wound of the right superior anterior mid lobe of the liver. There are multiple perforations of bowel and mesentery, small bowel. There are red colored bruises of the scalp, three in the occipital area and two in the frontal area measuring up to 3.0 cm with no underlying injury of the skull or brain.
There are two green bruises or contusions of the lower leg interiorly near the ankles and a superficial scratch of the left arm, purple contusion of the right upper arm measuring 6.0 cm, a blue contusion of the right posterior upper arm measuring 2.0 cm, and two green defensive contusions of the left forearm. There are scattered green contusions of the left lateral foot. The clothing is blood soaked, but the bikini pants and overriding white warm up pants do not have cuts. The upper bra strap has been cut, and the cup from one side of the bra is missing. There is also a cut into the upper anterior white shirt near the neck wounds. No blood is remaining in the blood vessels of the body. There is retroperitoneal hemorrhage of the right lower abdomen in the region of the inferior vena cava.
EXTERNAL EXAMINATION: The body is that of an unembalmed well-developed well-nourished Caucasian female weighing approximately 130 pounds, measuring 62 inches, representing the stated age of 39 years, clad in blue bikini pants and blue bikini bra which is loose, white warm-up shirt and white warm-up pants, all wet and blood stained. There is a fishhook with ballyhoo bait hooked to the pants. In general, the skin is well tanned in a bikini distribution, body hair is normal in distribution, the hair of the legs is unshaven, the scalp is intact, and scalp hair is brown and medium long with a red beret. In general, the face is intact and uninjured. The pupils are 7.0 mm and equal and irises are blue. The ears are intact without earrings. The nose is intact, symmetrical, and both flares are patent. The mouth contains natural teeth, but the upper teeth are in poor repair, missing all upper incisors with two small caps, the right lower molar is missing. The right upper molar in the rear is capped, the left upper premolar is capped, and the left lower front molar has a yellow metal inlay. The mouth contains some foamy white to clear fluid. Lips are intact. The neck shows no fractures of dislocation of vertebral column. The chest is symmetrical and intact except for previously mentioned injuries. The back is clear with a few scattered acne scars. Axillae are clear. The abdomen has a lower mid vertical abdominal scar measuring 14.0 cm in length. The genitalia are normal adult female and the rectum is unremarkable grossly. No jewelry is noted. Buttocks, legs, and arms show normal development, and there is a 3.0 cm scar on the left dorsal foot. There is full rigor mortis of all muscle groups at 1:30 AM, but at the scene at approximately 10:30 to 11:00, no rigor mortis was noted. Minimal posterior purple lividity is present.
INTERNAL EXAMINATION: The viscera of the neck are present but disrupted. The thyroid gland is grossly normal and retracted upward with the trachea.
On examination of the thoracic cavity, the pleural surfaces are smooth and glistening, and the right pleural space is free of excess fluid. The pericardial sac is smooth and glistening and but contains no fluid. The heart is absent (see Evidence of Injury). Major vessels are devoid of blood (see Evidence of Injury).
The larynx, trachea, bronchi are filled with foamy fluid. Lungs show minimal anthracosis, but both are enlarged and heavy due to copious quantities of pulmonary edema, the right weighing 985 grams and the left 860 grams.
On examination of the abdominal cavity, the fatty panniculus measures 3.0 cm. The peritoneal surfaces are smooth and glistening, there is no excess fluid or adhesions, and abdominal organs are in proper position. The mucosa of the entire GI tract is generally intact except for occasional puncture wounds of the small bowel, and the appendix is present and uninjured. The stomach contains an estimated 150 cc of food and fluid consisting of tomatoes, watermelon seeds, peanuts, popcorn seeds, cottage cheese, and zucchini or pickle like green vegetable fragments. Small bowel and colonic contents appear normal. The liver weighs exactly 1470 grams and cut surface is normal without evidence of scarring. The gallbladder is normal and the biliary system is patent. The pancreas has normal contour, size, and position. Cut surface reveals the normal tan lobular appearance. The spleen weighs exactly 110 grams with slight wrinkling of the capsule. Its cut surface appears normal.
On examination of the retroperitoneal and pelvic structures, the adrenal glands are normal in position and appearance. The kidneys have the usual bean-shaped contour and each weighs exactly 100 grams. The cortex measures 0.7 cm and the medulla 1.2 cm in thickness. Collecting systems are patent and normal. Urinary bladder is contracted and devoid of urine with normal mucosa. The uterus is normal in appearance. Fallopian tubes have been severed with the distal ends absent. The ovaries are normal in appearance, and one contains a corpus luteum with central gray zone. Lymph nodes are small and visible but unremarkable.
On examination of the cranial cavity, the skull is intact. No internal bleeding is noted. The cranial fossae are intact and sella turcica appears normal. Pituitary gland is grossly normal. The brain weighs exactly 1350 grams. The gyri and sulci are of normal width. Cranial blood vessels are patent without evidence of significant arteriosclerosis or congenital anomalies. Sectioning of the brain reveals no abnormalities.
TOXICOLOGY EXAMINATION: Blood in NaF tubes and serum are collected. Blood is collected in EDTA tubes and turned over to Detective Trish Almeda of Monroe County Sheriff’s Office. A “rape kit” is collected with oral, vaginal, and rectal swabs; fragments from skin; combed and plucked pubic hairs; and plucked scalp hairs; and all are turned over to the Sheriff’s Department.
Cardiovascular: Sections of atrium reveal no abnormalities of endocardium, myocardium, or epicardium. Sections of pericardium reveal acute hemorrhage in the adventitial fat.
Respiratory: Sections of lung reveal areas of pulmonary edema and minimal anthracosis. Alveolar spaces and walls are fairly normal in appearance.
Gastrointestinal: Section of esophagus is unremarkable as is section of appendix. Small bowel is relatively well preserved with slight postmortem autolysis of surface mucosa. Section of colon reveals a small amount of recent hemorrhage in the submucosa. Section of stomach and small bowel at pylorus reveals fairly well preserved mucosa with only superficial early postmortem sloughing and no significant underlying pathology.
Liver and Gallbladder: Gallbladder is well preserved except for loss of mucosal cells, and there appears to be underlying chronic cholecystitis. Sections of liver are well preserved with normal architecture. No evidence of scarring or inflammation. Areas of congestion are evident to a mild degree, particularly subcapsular, and there is one area of recent hemorrhage in soft tissues adjacent to liver.
Pancreas: Well preserved with no signs of postmortem autolysis and no abnormalities noted.
Spleen: A suggestion of focal subcapsular recent hemorrhages, otherwise no abnormalities.
Genitourinary: Sections of kidney are well preserved without evident abnormalities. Urinary bladder wall is unremarkable. One section of ovary shows corpus albicantia and another shows active corpus luteum. Section of cervix shows mild chronic cervicitis with squamous metaplasia.
Endocrine: Pituitary gland is unremarkable. Thyroid and adrenal glands are likewise normal in appearance.
Lymphatic: Sections of three lymph nodes are unremarkable. One shows mild anthracosis and is therefore probably hilar in origin.
Infrequent germinal centers are present in a normal frequency.
Central Nervous System: Section of medulla oblongata is well preserved and unremarkable. Section of pans reveals no abnormalities. Sections of cerebellum, dentate nucleus, and hippocampus are likewise unremarkable. Sections of basal ganglia and cerebral cortex are generally unremarkable. One small focus of calcification is present in one section of cerebral cortex in the adjacent white matter.
1. Incised wound of chest with excision of heart and right nipple, left hemothorax, lacerations of pericardium, diaphragm, and liver.
2. Incised wound of abdomen with multiple punctures of small bowel and mesentery and right retroperitoneal hemorrhage.
3. Incised wounds of neck transection of right carotid artery, trachea, and esophagus, and exsanguination.
4. Severe pulmonary edema secondary to salt water drowning.
5. Chronic cholecystitis.
6. Chronic cervicitis with squamous metaplasia.
7. Recent hemorrhage, colon, liver, spleen, pericardium.
8. Focal calcification, cerebral white matter, significance undetermined.
CAUSE OF DEATH: Salt water drowning and exsanguination due to traumatic wounds.
MANNER OF DEATH: Homicide.
TOXICOLOGY FINDINGS: Negative. See attached report.
R.O. Nelms, Jr., M.D.
Medical Examiner
District Sixteen
Monroe County, Florida
It states there were no drugs found in her system.
Marty Helfrich Morgenrath, Teri and Mary Lou’s sister, remembered something peculiar about the Sherry Perisho case.
“The last time we were there, at Charlie and Teri’s home on Big Pine Key, my husband and I wanted to go kayaking. I looked at renting [a kayak], and then we both decided to buy one and keep it there at their house. So we went kayaking several times, and Teri got very upset about that, and we found that strange, because we only went to visit once every two or three years. Then, later, when we went back, we’d realized we kayaked right past where Sherry Perisho’s boat was.”
Nobody knows whether Teri Helfrich Brandt knew with any degree of certainty whether her husband Charlie was responsible for the murder of Sherry Perisho. But everyone was certain that if she subconsciously knew, she was in deep denial about it, and it cost her her life.
In 2004, Seminole County investigators conducted an interview with Patricia McClintock, or Pat Helfrich, the second-oldest of Teri’s sisters after Mary Lou, Michelle’s mother.
Pat had spent a lot of time with her baby sister and her new brother-in-law, and found them to be madly in love with each other. Charlie did not want children, and the sister thought Charlie felt they would take all the attention away from him, “since [he and Teri] were so into each other.” But then, Pat also recalled that Charlie never talked about his family. And then came the “glazed look” that everyone talked about. “There were sometimes you couldn’t talk to Charlie,” the sister explained. “It was like he wasn’t there.”
“They both drank quite a bit,” she said. “I would say my sister was a borderline alcoholic. And when she drank, she could really push buttons.”
Pat experienced this during an excursion to Europe with her youngest sister. “I took her with me to Italy, to ski, with some friends of mine. Well, we were all ready to go and Teri didn’t want to go, and she exploded with foul language. When she didn’t want to do something she didn’t want to do it. Period.”
Pat remembered another time on Little Palm Island, where Teri worked at a resort for a while. “Teri was getting flirtatious with some of the men on the boat, and Charlie had to hold her back. But he didn’t do it in an angry way. He was mellow, kind of slow.” Everyone described Charlie as “slow.” Slow and deliberate and with a vacant look in his eyes: It fits almost every description of every horror movie’s bogeyman. One time, joking with Agent Dennis Haley, we compared Charlie to Michael Myers of Halloween, who never dies. Haley laughed and quipped back, “He reminds me more of Jason!” meaning the deranged murderer with the hockey mask on Friday the 13th. The following incident brings this image closer to a demonic reality.