SARATOGA SPRINGS — The family of a woman found murdered in her Saratoga Springs apartment more than four decades ago is offering a $50,000 reward for any information that leads to an arrest in the case, city police announced Friday afternoon.
Sheila Shepherd was 22 when her uncle Charles Boiseau found her dead in her apartment around 10 a.m. on Nov. 25, 1980. After he found the door locked and his niece wasn't answering, Boiseau climbed up the escape ladder and through an unlocked window into her apartment at 125 Church St., according to Gazette reporting from the time.
Boiseau discovered his niece's body with arms and legs spread-eagle and tied to her four bed posts naked, a gag in her mouth and a five-inch steak knife sticking out of her chest. Boiseau had been called to check on Shepherd after she hadn’t shown up to the Worldwide Educational Services school at 87 Church St. where she had been studying to become a clerk-typist for two days.
Shepherd was recently separated from her husband Jack Shepherd.
The coroner ruled that Sheila Shepherd died of asphyxiation, not a stabbing, after her blouse was shoved down her throat.
While numerous interviews and pieces of evidence have been collected over the years, police have gotten few leads.
At one point, there was an FBI sketch released of a suspect in the case.
Original Daily Gazette article on Sheila Shepherd's murder, published Nov. 26, 1980.
Saratoga Springs police Lt. Paul Vietch said there have been a few sketches of suspects over the years.
“The facts of the case lead us to believe that Shepherd knew her assailant(s) and that there is still information being withheld that only someone involved would know,” he said in a follow up email Friday. “We continue to follow up on leads that come in and our goal is to have new leads come in with publicization of the reward.”
The follow-up Gazette article on Sheila Shepherd's death, published Nov. 27, 1980
The case was featured in "The Murder of Sheila Shepherd," a seven-episode podcast by Crawlspace Media in 2020, after two city officers — Sgt. Chris Callahan and Investigator Matthew Wilson, both of whom are still assigned to the case — attended an April 2019 panel that featured Crawlspace Media co-founders Tim Pilleri and Lance Reenstierna. The officers decided to seek the duo's help getting information about the case out to the public.
Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 1-518-584-TIPS or tips@saratogapolice.org.
In this episode Crawlspace Media's Tim Pilleri and Lance Reenstierna sit down with Investigators Chris Callahan and Matt Wilson of the Saratoga Springs Police Department to discuss the 1980 unsolved murder of 22 year old Sheila Shepherd. We speak about who Sheila was, what her life was like at the time of her murder, how she was found, and more.