Local group setting up billboard to help find woman missing since 2002

BILLERICA, Mass. - In October 2002, Amy Sher left Lahey Clinic, where she worked in the finance department, only to never be seen ever again.

Her disappearance remains a mystery nearly sixteen years later, and a local group is setting up a billboard in order to mobilize the community to come forward with answers - which they believe may help solve Sher's cold case.

Police, family and friends believe Sher was murdered.

Wendy Murphy, an attorney involved in the case for more than a decade, hopes the billboard will incentivize people to come forward with answers.

Billerica Police Chief Roy Frost has reason to believe that Sher's husband, Robert Desmond, is a person of interest in the case and may have information on her whereabouts in 2002.

However, due to lack of evidence, police are unable to prove anything in a court of law nor can they make any arrests.

"We're all interested -- Billerica police, the Middlesex District Attorney's Office, the Massachusetts State Police Homicide Unit -- we're all interested in bringing closure to this for her family and friends," Frost said.

Sher's family was so detached from her that, back in 2002, they hired a private investigator to find Sher and help them reconnect with her.

Five days after the investigator reached out to Sher in the parking lot at her workplace, she told her boss she felt sick and never returned to work.

Her resignation letter was sent to her Lahey by her husband, yet her boss said they didn't recognize her signature in the letter.

Investigators said Desmond has changed his story regarding Sher's disappearance over the years, raising questions about his involvement in the case.

"Robert Desmond is a person of interest, and that's because he was the last person to be seen with Amy - there was a lot of domestic violence in their relationship, and he gave inconsistent statements to police," said Wendy Murphy, the family's attorney.

Desmond left the state a few years later with the couple's son, Michael.

"The most disturbing thing that Robert Desmond said, in my opinion, was that he wasn't going to let his son testify in front of the grand jury," said Murphy.

Amy's sister Joani McCullough told Boston 25 News that, in the days leading to Amy's disappearance, co-workers noticed she came to work with injuries.

"She came in with bruises on her arms - she came in one time, I think, with a broken back," said McCullough.

The billboard idea, a plan inspired by the recent Academy Award-nominated film 'Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri', is the family's biggest hope in figuring out if someone out there heard or saw something - perhaps from the young boy who may be a key witness.

In the film, a mother advertises her daughter's unsolved murder, which will essentially be the same thing with Sher's billboard - only this one will involve only one billboard in Billerica.

Murphy said she's finalizing the billboard design with a picture of Sher and her son, Michael, with a message asking people to contact police if they've seen her.

The billboard is set to go up on April 16, and will run for a month.

Cox Media Group