Of Mice & Men & Murder

Sidney, Montana, lies in Richland County in the north-east of the state, close to the North Dakota border. In January 2012 it was still a quiet rural town of about 6,420 people, a place where, as one writer put it, respectable folk went to the bar on Saturday nights and nobody locked their doors. Sherry Lee Arnold, forty-three, was a maths teacher at Sidney High School. She was born on 13 February 1968 and grew up on her family's ranch about twenty-five miles outside town, the daughter of Ron and Sharon Whited, with a sister, Rhonda. She was valedictorian of Sidney High School's class of 1986, played volleyball at the University of North Dakota in Williston, earned a teaching degree from Dickinson State University in 1990, and taught in Tioga and Minot, North Dakota, before returning home. She had taught maths in Sidney for eighteen years. She married Jerome Papineau in 1994 and had two children, Jason and Holly; the marriage ended around 1997. On 12 September 1998 she married Gary Arnold, also a teacher at Sidney High School, and between them they had five children. She had beaten a rare cancer after six years of treatment, ran half marathons, coached softball and had been named KTVQ's teacher of the month in the autumn of 2011.

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Before dawn on 7 January 2012 Sherry Arnold put on her New Balance shoes and went for a run along Holly Street, the truck route past the Sidney Sugars refinery. At about 6.30 a.m. the Explorer pulled up behind her. details of the account remain covered until revealed They dragged her into the back seat, where she was strangled, and covered the body with a blanket. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now They buried her, then returned the shovel to Walmart for a refund, keeping the receipt.

Gary Arnold reported his wife missing that day. About a thousand people, roughly a fifth of the town, searched the fields; the Montana Army National Guard sent forty soldiers. A New Balance shoe and a hat were found in a ditch on Holly Street, with signs of a struggle in the frozen mud. Police looked at forty-one registered sex offenders living within a mile of her route, ten of them non-compliant. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed The autopsy found black, gritty material in her stomach and trachea, consistent with her face having been forced into the mud. Two thousand people attended her funeral in the Sidney High School gymnasium, where a Chicago Cubs hat and flowers were placed on the casket.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed A running trail in Sidney is dedicated to Sherry Arnold.