Sherry Ross loved Eric Clapton. She was a rebellious free spirit, a funny, loving young woman whose life centered around her baby girl, Graylyn.
“She was a wonderful mother who obviously cared for her daughter,” said her neighbor, Frankie Tennison.
Graylyn’s life was forever changed in 1991, when at 6 years old, she watched a man stab her mother to death inside their home in Jacksonville, Florida .
Now 28 years later, Sherry’s murder is still unsolved. Graylyn West is determined to figure out who killed her mother.
“After all this time, I’m not going to stop, I still have hope,” she said. “I want my mom to know she did not die in vain.”
Growing up, Sherry Ross was different from the rest of her family. While her brothers and sister were rigid, Ross was more free and as a result, she was never terribly close to them. When she was 17, the family moved to Brunswick, Georgia, where she became pregnant. She didn’t realize it, though until three months later, when her family moved to Nashville, Tennessee.
Ross hid her pregnancy from everyone as long as she could and refused to identify her baby's father despite her mother’s desperate pleas. For whatever reason, Ross did not want West’s father to be a part of her life.
Graylyn Christine was born in Nashville during the fall of 1984. The pair became each other’s worlds.
At 20 years old, Ross decided to move to Jacksonville. As a single mother, Ross did whatever she could to provide for her daughter, including dancing at a local gentlemen's club. Shortly before her death, she had begun selling bonsai trees, in hopes of making the venture a full-time job. “She always did what was best for me,” West, now 35, said.
At some point during her time in Jacksonville, Ross met her husband, Jazzo, and they began hanging out with a biker gang.
“Sherry was not like the rest of the [biker] girls, she was classy,” said Tennison, her former neighbor. “She was a good person, she was good-hearted, and she was really trying to be someone.”
Ross and her daughter settled into a neighborhood known as Lackawanna, a residential neighborhood adjacent to the train tracks, with a crime rate that is currently three times higher than that of Jacksonville’s, according to statistics available from realtor.com. However, West says she never felt unsafe because the gang protected them. “My mom never locked any of our doors.”
Indeed, on the day Ross was murdered, her doors were unlocked. May 8, 1991 was just like any other day. Ross had dropped West off at school earlier that morning and picked her up later that day. On the way home, the pair got into a disagreement about cleaning the house.
“I remember I was pretty upset,” West said. “I went into my room and started counting money like I was going to run away and that’s when I heard a scream and a commotion and I got scared.”
West remembers hearing a man say, “Give me all your money and give me all your gold,” and she remembers her mother asking the man not to hurt her. The man then asked if anyone else was in the house and Ross said no, so West hid under her bed. All she could see was the man’s feet. West does not remember how, but she somehow managed to get from under her bed to her closet because she knew it would be safer there.
“I remember being in the closet and having a bat,” West said. “I remember the bat because I was contemplating getting it and helping my mom.” As much as West wanted to help her mom, she just couldn’t move her feet. West is unsure how long she waited before coming out of the closet, but she knows for certain that is wasn’t until it was completely silent.
“I remember creeping out of my room and immediately seeing blood on the floor,” West said. “I followed it straight to my mom’s room and she was laying halfway on the bed with her feet dangling off it.”
West tried to talk to her mom and even shake her awake but she got no response. West did the only thing she could think of and ran across the street to a biker gang member’s house for help.
Since West was only 6 years old when her mother died, she was never able to comprehend what she had witnessed. “Even though I remember all those details, it still, to this day, doesn’t necessarily feel real,” West said.
West says she struggled a lot while growing up. She felt like she was alone and that she was a burden to her grandparents, who became her caretakers after her mother’s murder. From the ages of 9 to 12, West really began to experience the effects of losing her mom. “I tried to kill myself,” West said.
West’s life turned around when she was about 13 years old through forgiveness. West remembers thinking about what this man could have been going through in his life that ultimately led him to murder her mother.
She couldn’t help but cry for him and ultimately, forgive him. That saved her life.
“If I continued on the path of destruction, I was going to be dead. He would take my mother’s life and I was basically letting him take mine, too,” West said.
Even though West forgave her mother’s killer, solving the case would bring her the closure she needs in her life. “There were two things I set out to accomplish in this life: the first was finding my father and the second was solving my mother’s murder,” West said.
She found her father a few years ago through genetic testing, and describes him as a good man with a troubled past.
“Now that I have found my father, all that’s left is solving this case and giving hope to other families along the way.”