What happened to Missouri store clerk who went missing at the end of her 1991 shift

Was a Missouri woman who disappeared from a convenience store the victim of a serial killer or did she walk away from her happy family life and just disappear into the night?

Thirty-year-old Cheryl Ann Kenney was a married mother of two who worked as a clerk at the Quality Convenience Store on Business 71 Highway in Nevada, Missouri.

She usually worked until midnight, but it was a slow night on February 27, 1991 and she decided to close the store early a couple of hours early. Her time card shows she clocked out of work at 10:00 p.m. and set the store alarm at 10:17 before locking the door..

The store's janitor left a few minutes before Kenney closed up. He stated there weren't any customers' cars in the parking lot when he left, but there was a male customer inside the store whom he didn't recognize. Walk-in customers weren't unusual, as there were several hotels within walking distance.

She never arrived home and has never been heard from again.

Her locked white Chevrolet was later found abandoned in the store parking lot. It is believed that she was abducted between the front door of the store and her vehicle. Two witnesses in the area reported hearing a woman scream right around the time Kenney would have gone out to her car.

The witnesses didn't go to the police until several days later, after they read about her disappearance in the newspapers.

Kenney's case may be linked to two other Missouri women. Angela Hammond was abducted from a convenience store parking lot on April 4, 1991 and never heard from again. Trudy Darby, a convenience store worker in Macks Creek, was abducted from her workplace on January 19, 1991, six weeks prior to Hammond's disappearance. The store was found robbed of $220.

Darby's nude body was found in the Little Niangua River two days later; she had been shot twice in the head. Half-brothers Jesse Rush and Marvin Chaney were later convicted of the robbery and Darby's rape and murder.

There are similarities between Darby's murder, Hammond's abduction and Kenney's disappearance, but there is no hard evidence to link the cases. The two missing women's cases remain unsolved.

In 2000, bones thought to be Cheryl's were found in a field, but they were later determined to be of an unidentified male. Cheryl and Angela's cases remain unsolved.