August 3, 1980. AuSable Township, Michigan. 20-year old Cherita Thomas borrows her friend’s car in order to pick up her daughter from a babysitter, but the vehicle breaks down before she arrives. Witnesses see Cherita climbing into a blue pick-up truck driven by a white male, but she is never heard from again. Jimmie Allen Nelson, the babysitter’s brother-in-law, is suspected of harming Cherita in a racially motivated hate crime, and even though Cherita’s body is not found, Nelson is charged and convicted of her murder three decades later. However, Nelson’s conviction is overturned when newly discovered evidence surfaces which reportedly implicates another suspect, so the murder charge against him is dismissed in 2014. Was Jimmie Allen Nelson actually responsible for Cherita Thomas’ disappearance? If not, then what actually happened to her? This week’s episode of “The Path Went Chilly” chronicles a convoluted missing persons case which has had a number of surprising twists and turns over the past 40 years.

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Additional Reading:

http://charleyproject.org/case/cherita-janice-thomas

http://www.iosconews.com/news/article_165d5202-3706-5394-8298-92de7a5a7925.html

https://www.macombdaily.com/news/nation-world-news/michigan-court-strikes-murder-conviction-in-case/article_d03714a2-e37b-5665-8ca4-00f7e736789c.html

https://abc7news.com/archive/7771114/

http://www.michbar.org/file/opinions/appeals/2012/082312/52533.pdfhttp://www.michbar.org/file/opinions/appeals/2014/022514/56526.pdf

https://law.justia.com/cases/michigan/court-of-appeals-unpublished/2008/20081223-c271768-41-271768-opn.html

https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/casedetail.aspx?caseid=4394“True Police Stories of the Strange & Unexplained” by Ingrid P. Dean