Guest column: It’s past time to solve Oklahoma’s most well-known cold case

On Sept. 23, 1987, sisters Cheryl Genzer and Lisa Pennington walked away after attending the Oklahoma State Honest and have been by no means seen once more. A month later, their our bodies have been present in a shallow grave in northwest Oklahoma Metropolis. 

To this present day, nobody has been held accountable for his or her murders. 

Almost 35 years later, the “State Honest Murders” stay certainly one of Oklahoma’s most notorious chilly instances.  The case has garnered nationwide consideration and was featured on “America’s Most Needed” in 2001, but, remarkably, the case continues to obtain little, if any, consideration from native officers, who refused to cooperate with the present. In a case replete with a number of objects of bodily proof and years of bragging and confessions by one of many main suspects, it’s puzzling. 

There is no such thing as a scarcity of proof on this case. Sadly, there may be an obvious lack of resolve to pursue it. After 35 years, the household deserves solutions. With a scarcity of official curiosity within the case, it’s straightforward to pose uncomfortable questions. The women have been Native People; is it maybe simpler to dismiss them due to their Indigenous standing? The place is all of the bodily proof that was collected within the case? Has it been misplaced, destroyed? In that case, doesn’t the household should know this?

The dad and mom of Cheryl and Lisa have each handed away with out having a decision to their daughters’ murders. Half of their household was taken from them in a single on the spot, but through the years their requires justice to native authorities fell on deaf ears. Is that this acceptable for an Oklahoma household?

On Sept. 23 this 12 months, a information convention will likely be held on the cemetery the place the ladies and their dad and mom are buried aspect by aspect. There’ll as soon as once more be a renewed name for justice. Within the absence of native officers, maybe among the candidates operating for district legal professional or mayor will attend in help. The household mustn’t need to depend on curiosity from exterior the state, however happily, they proceed to have it. 

Wet Robinson, a member of famed Canine the Bounty Hunter’s investigative crew, has offered her years of expertise to the case and can attend the information convention in help of this household.

Sadly, for a few years, it has solely been these exterior the state who’ve labored to resolve the case. It’s gone time for Oklahoma officers to face with this household to demand solutions in certainly one of Oklahoma’s most well-known chilly instances. With vital advances in DNA, additionally it is time to submit the a number of objects of bodily proof for testing to deliver this case to decision.

It’s time to resolve the “State Honest Murders,” and there may be data and proof to do it.

Dorian Quillen is a licensed skilled counselor in Norman and a former non-public investigator.