The Taco Time Stop She Never Made: The Disappearance of Jami Sherer

Author

Benjamin Hayes

Publication Date

July 2, 2026

Jami Sue Sherer was 26 years old, working in the human resources department at Microsoft and raising a young son, when she disappeared from Redmond, Washington, on September 30, 1990. She had married her husband, Steven Sherer, in 1987 despite her family's disapproval, and by the fall of 1990, that marriage had deteriorated to the point that Jami was actively planning to leave him. On the morning she vanished, she called her mother twice with updates on a meeting she was having with Steven, and then simply never turned up again. It would take Redmond police a full decade to build a murder case strong enough to convict her husband without ever finding her body, a case made only more remarkable by what Steven Sherer would go on to attempt from behind bars once he was finally locked up.

A Marriage Against the Family's Wishes

Jami Hagel was born December 1, 1963, into a large family, and grew up to build a career in Microsoft's human resources department. In 1987, at 22 years old, she married Steven Sherer, a decision her family reportedly disapproved of from the start. The couple had a son together, Tyler, and settled into life in Redmond, a Seattle suburb that had, by the late 1980s, become closely associated with Microsoft's rapid growth.

Controlling and Abusive

The marriage that followed was, by the accounts of friends and family, defined by control rather than partnership. Steven reportedly demanded Jami dye her hair to a color he preferred and pushed her toward getting breast implants, changes to her appearance driven by his preferences rather than her own. Friends and relatives noticed bruises on her over the years, explanations for which Jami would offer up herself, the kind of quiet excuse-making that so often accompanies an abusive relationship. Steven had, prior to marrying Jami, already been convicted of abusing a former girlfriend badly enough to require hospitalization, a documented history of violence that had not stopped Jami's family from watching the relationship unfold with growing unease. During the marriage itself, he continued exhibiting controlling behavior, closely managing Jami's appearance and how she spent her time, and at one point placed advertisements for her in adult magazines without her consent, alongside an accumulating list of separate criminal charges involving assault, burglary, and theft.

By 1990, Jami had begun quietly planning to leave him, reportedly packing her belongings in anticipation of finally ending the marriage for good.

The Morning She Vanished

On the morning of September 30, 1990, Jami left her parents' home, where she and her son had been staying, to meet with Steven after he asked her to discuss reconciling. Around 8:30 a.m., she called her mother to report that Steven had grabbed her purse during their conversation, a small but telling detail suggesting the meeting had already turned tense. At approximately 11:45 a.m., she called again, saying Steven was at their shared residence and that she planned to stop by a local Taco Time before heading back to her parents' house to pick up her son. She never arrived at the restaurant, never made it back to her parents' home, and was never heard from again.

The Car in the Church Parking Lot

Jami's charcoal gray 1980 Mazda RX-7 turned up several days later, abandoned in the parking lot of a church in Shoreline, Washington. Investigators found an overnight bag packed inside the vehicle, along with a notable absence: the bag contained clothing but no underwear, an odd omission for someone supposedly packing to leave. Jami's purse itself was missing entirely from the car. The vehicle's driver's seat was also positioned in a way that suggested someone considerably taller than Jami, who stood only five feet tall, had driven it last. There was no indication the car had been involved in any kind of accident. A tracking dog brought in during the investigation followed a scent from the area to a nearby bus stop before losing the trail entirely.

A Red Stain and a Rented Steam Cleaner

Jami's own sister told investigators she had noticed a large red spot on the carpet inside the home Jami shared with Steven during the week Jami disappeared, a stain Steven explained away as spilled juice. Investigators later discovered that the carpet in question had been steam cleaned repeatedly, with a patch of new carpet installed directly over the area where the stain had been, changes made in the same narrow window of time surrounding Jami's disappearance. Separately, a witness reported seeing a shovel in the bed of Steven's truck the day after Jami vanished, a detail that, combined with the carpet cleaning, painted an increasingly damning picture even before investigators had anything resembling a body.

Moving On Too Fast

Steven's behavior in the days and weeks following his wife's disappearance struck nearly everyone around him as deeply wrong. He began dating other women within days of Jami vanishing. He gained access to her financial assets shortly afterward. Witnesses reported that he wore an article of Jami's underwear on his wrist and, remarkably, began describing himself as a widower before there was any evidence Jami was actually dead. He reportedly made comments at some point about disposing of a body somewhere in the forests, a statement that, whether meant as a threat, a confession, or simple dark bravado, only deepened the suspicion already surrounding him.

A Case Reopened

Despite all of this circumstantial weight, prosecutors did not move quickly. Jami was formally declared legally dead in 1997, seven years after she disappeared, and Redmond police officially reopened the investigation that same January, gathering new witnesses and revisiting evidence that had sat largely untouched for most of the 1990s.

Arrest and Trial

It took until January 2000 for Steven Sherer to finally be arrested and charged with first-degree murder in his wife's death. Despite the complete absence of a body, and despite a defense that argued the physical evidence against him was insufficient to prove murder had occurred at all, a jury convicted him in June 2000. He was sentenced to sixty years in prison, joining a short list of Washington state defendants ever convicted of murder without a recovered victim.

A Plot From Prison

Steven's story did not end with his conviction. While incarcerated, he attempted to arrange, through a fellow inmate, to have his former mother-in-law's Bellevue home burned down as an act of revenge against Jami's family for pursuing the case against him. Authorities became aware of the plot and staged a fake house fire, covering it in local news broadcasts to make the scheme appear successful. When investigators later observed Steven celebrating what he believed was a completed act of arson against his own former mother-in-law, they had all the confirmation they needed. He was charged with criminal solicitation to commit arson in April 2003 and received additional prison time on top of his existing sentence, a strange and telling postscript from a man who, even from behind bars, could not stop trying to punish the family of the wife he had already been convicted of killing.

A Book, and a Case That Stayed Open

Jami's case became well known enough to be featured in true crime writer Ann Rule's 2000 book Empty Promises: And Other True Cases, bringing national attention to a story that had already consumed a decade of investigation in Washington State. Steven's appeals against his conviction were repeatedly denied in the years that followed, though in February 2008 a federal judge in Seattle scheduled a hearing specifically to examine why certain evidence collected by the tracking dog after Jami's disappearance had never been introduced at his original trial, a procedural question that, while raising some doubts about the thoroughness of the original prosecution, never resulted in his conviction being overturned.

Still Missing

Steven Sherer, now in his sixties, remains incarcerated at Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Washington State, having spent more than two decades behind bars for a murder he still maintains he did not commit. Jami Sue Sherer's remains have never been found, not in the forests he allegedly referenced, not anywhere connected to the carpet stain in their former home, and not anywhere the tracking dogs or subsequent searches were ever able to identify. Her son grew up without her, and her family got a conviction but never got her back, a resolution that answered who was responsible for Jami's death without ever answering where she actually is.

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