May 21, 2012
CROSSVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- The remains found in California do belong to Chevelle Wheeler, the sheriff's department confirms.
Her mother Paula called it, "The greatest Valentine's present I've ever gotten."
It's the ending to a grisly, heart breaking story.
26 years ago, Chevelle, Chevy to her friends, decided to skip school.
Instead she went for a drive with this a 19 year old friend, Wesley Shermantine.
She was never seen again.
Her dad, Ray, still remembers it like it was yesterday.
"I wish I could have said goodbye," he said, pausing to catch his breath. "It breaks my heart."
For the next 16 years the Wheelers waited, their daughters case closed and opened again.
They moved to Tennessee to get away. More women went missing.
Then in 1999 Shermantine and his childhood friend Loren Herzog were arrested.
Shermantine sent to death row for 4 murders, among them? Chevy Wheeler.
He's suspected in 21 others.
"There were women showing up every couple months," Ray Wheeler met Shermantine face to face several times. "It was those two dodos."
Shermantine was behind bars, but he wasn't talking.
"He told us in court we would never know where she was," Paula Wheeler said.
Until late last week, he started telling police where he buried bodies in exchange for cash.
He gave them a map of his old property and a name, Chevy.
Friday night the Wheelers got the call they've been waiting for for 26 years.
"He [the sheriff] told me they had started looking for my daughter," Ray said, a smile coming to his face. "He didn't mince words. He thinks he found our daughter."
Paula is overjoyed, she said, out loud what she had been hoping for for more than a quarter century. A sentence she had survived marriage troubles for, watched her other daughter battle drugs and depression for. "We're going to California," she said, "to get Chevy and bring her home."
The family tells us they didn't need a DNA test, Chevy was wearing the same clothes as the day she went missing.
The Wheelers will fly to California February 25th to pick up their daughter. They plan on having her bones cremated and put on their mantle, so they always know where she is.
