She tried, she tried hard, but she lost

By By Suzanne Monk / managing editor
Dec. 29, 2002
Too often, stories about crime are stories about cops and lawyers, investigations and lab results, arrests and indictments, motions and hearings, courtroom pyrotechnics.
But, at the heart of each story are people. In the worst situations, they are people who died violently and left behind a family who can't forget, who can't lay it down and move on.
The story of Nanci Scheber is a story like that.
Nanci was murdered on New Year's Eve 1997. The case has never been solved.
Her mother, Sherry Scheber Alexander, was in town last week. She lives in Atlanta now, but comes back to Meridian to visit friends and try to speak with someone from the police department.
Nanci had problems
Nanci was a beautiful girl from a caring family. She got into drugs and her mother fought it tooth and claw. Sherry would find out where Nanci was hanging out, tell the police to go arrest her, bang on doors in dangerous neighborhoods looking for her daughter.
And she'd go get Nanci.
You also find out who your friends are, Sherry said, when you've got a child in that kind of trouble.
Thanksgiving 1997
Nanci tried to go straight.
She had surrendered to authorities and was doing time in prison for auto theft even going so far as to refuse early parole because she didn't think she was ready.
Nanci was released at 8 a.m. on Thanksgiving Day 1997. Sherry and Sam Zachry, a family friend, went to pick her up. Nanci was worried. She was afraid of being pulled back in. She was afraid her former associates would harm her or her family.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, she made her mother listen to what she wanted at her funeral, right down to the music. She told Sherry she wanted to be an organ donor.
Was Nanci successful in leaving drugs behind? It's hard to say. Her mother would like to think so but she also believes the violent sub-culture played a part in Nanci's death.
Christmas 1997
Nanci celebrated Christmas quietly at her grandparents' house on Grandview Avenue.
Sherry was there, and showered her daughter with gifts. Nanci got sweaters, a new jacket, a cocktail dress to wear on New Year's Eve. She got a necklace, a ring and earrings. She got perfume Cool Waters and C.K. She got silk pajamas and beautiful lingerie.
Nanci liked to write and Sherry got her a book of poems and pretty blank journals. Nanci painted, as well, and Sherry got her art supplies.
Last, but not least, she got a blue bear.
It was.
Nanci was beaten to death on New Year's Eve, her skull opened above the eye with a hand plow. The blow did not kill her right away. She bled to death at a landfill in the cold December air over a period of as much as two to three hours.
She didn't have her new jacket when the police found her body the next morning. She had given it away to an older lady who would later call Sherry and ask if she wanted it back.
Nanci's organs could not be harvested.
December 2002
In the mid-afternoon, as emergency workers rushed to Newton to help people hurt in a tornado, Sherry was getting her hair cut.
It's one of the things she does when she's in town. She comes about once a month, stopping off in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where her parents live now. Sherry drives on to Meridian, and makes an appointment with the only hair stylist she likes one who has listened to stories about Nanci for years.
While she's in town, she calls the Meridian Police Department a dozen times, but is less successful getting appointments there. She didn't get a call-back on this trip. Maybe next time.