By Sharon Turco
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Myrtle Kaylor displays family photos of her daughter Sherry, brutally murdered at age 21. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

In March 1985, Sherry and Joe Byrne were planning their future. Sherry, 21, and Joe, 25, had married a few months earlier. She was working as a part-time cosmetics saleswoman, and Joe had a job with a prominent financial company.

They bought a house in Springdale. They were trying to have a baby.

Then in a brutal and gruesome act, Joe's friend and fraternity brother, David Brewer, lured Sherry from her home on a ruse, then abducted, raped and killed her.

"As time goes on, it's less about how much I miss her," says Joe Byrne, now 43 and living in Bridgewater, N.J. Now, "I'm sad that she was robbed of her life, and (I) can't enjoy the fruits of my work."

Brewer was convicted of Sherry Byrne's kidnapping and murder. The state of Ohio will execute him on Tuesday; Gov. Bob Taft on Friday declined to grant clemency.

There's never been any question that Brewer killed Sherry on March 21, 1985. But his attorneys say death is not the right punishment for a 43-year-old man who led an upstanding life before and after the crime.

"Our argument is that his whole life should be taken into account," says Ohio Assistant Public Defender Joseph Wilhelm. "That should outweigh the worst thing he ever did."

Sherry's family says death is exactly the right punishment.

Sherry Patton Byrne (Courtesy Myrtle Kaylor) | ZOOM |

David Brewer didn't just take Sherry's life when he strangled her with a necktie, stabbed her 15 times and slit her throat. He ruined the lives of everyone close to her.

Her mother, Myrtle Kaylor, had to be hospitalized. Grief overwhelming all other emotions, she and Sherry's stepfather, Lylburn Kaylor, soon divorced. Joe, too, said he was in and out of psychiatric care after his wife's death.

Now, "An unexplainable ease has come over me," Joe Byrne says. "I think he needs to die, mostly because I don't think he and his attorneys should be rewarded for all the lies they have perpetuated over the years.

"Dave has never accepted responsibility for what he did," he says.

A carefully laid trap

That March day, Brewer, an appliance store manager who lived in suburban Dayton, Ohio, called Sherry Byrne and invited her to come meet him and his wife at a Sharonville hotel.

David Brewer is taken into police custody on March 27, 1985. (File photo) | ZOOM |

But when she arrived with her puppy, Beau, she found Brewer alone there.

After assaulting her, he forced her into the trunk of his car, then drove her around for hours before killing her that evening on a secluded road in Greene County. The puppy was let loose.

Four days later, Brewer confessed and led officers to her body. He was convicted that fall and sentenced to death.

Joe Byrne describes his wife as a beautiful person who was always smiling. He theorizes that Brewer misinterpreted her friendly nature. Then, when he found out she didn't have the same feelings, he got mad and attacked her.

On the day he was sentenced for Sherry's murder, Greene County Prosecutor William Schenck told Sherry's family the appeals would take more than 15 years. Countless appeals in state and federal court have led to Tuesday.

Schenck has presided over four death penalty cases - Brewer would be the first defendant to die. Byrne asked him to witness the execution with him, and Schenck agreed.

He debunks the argument that Brewer should be spared because he is good person.

Myrtle Kaylor keeps newspaper clippings from 1985 detailing her daughter's murder. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

"Some crimes are so horrid nothing else matters," Schenck says. "What he did more than justifies the death penalty. He had more than a dozen opportunities to let her go and he chose the dark side."

Schenck says he's tense about watching a man die, but stands by his decision. "I asked for the death penalty, and I have to have enough backbone to see it through," he says.

A husband's grief

It's never been easy, but the first year was the hardest, Joe Byrne says. Twice that year he checked into the psychiatric unit of The Christ Hospital.

"I wanted to die," Byrne says.

He never went back to the home he shared with Sherry. Instead, he moved into his parents' Middletown home. He couldn't even go back to his job. When his boss pleaded with him to return, Byrne tried, but burst into tears on his way downtown. He turned around and went home.

Beau the puppy was found and returned to Byrne. For months after the murder, if a woman screamed on television, Beau would go crazy.

Slowly, Byrne found his drive again. He sold the Springdale home, keeping only a few mementos. In particular, he clung to a basketball jersey his wife often slept in.

He filed civil lawsuits, winning a half million dollars in a wrongful death suit against Brewer - not that Brewer has any money. It was more about making sure Brewer never sold the rights to his story for a book or movie, Byrne says.

Byrne remarried in late 1987. When a job offer came from New Jersey in 1988, he took it. Too many sad memories in Cincinnati, he thought.

He and his second wife, Cristine, have three children.

Now the most difficult times are anniversary dates. The day Joe and Sherry got married, her birthday. The day she died.

In 1990 during a trip home to visit his parents, Byrne went to the deserted farm lane where his wife drew her last breath. "I just sat there are cried," he says.

Byrne has stayed close with the Kaylors over the years. That's helped, Myrtle Kaylor says.

"There's a void in my life as if it's never really complete," says Kaylor, who lives in Dayton.

She's never been able to forge close relationships like she had with her daughter. "I never remarried, never gave of myself like that," she says. "I'm so afraid that I'll be hurt again."

She's hoping Brewer's death will bring a sense a relief.

"It's not going to be a celebration," Kaylor says. "I don't celebrate somebody else's downfall, but at the same time it means I don't have to deal with more hearings and more appeals and read about it in the paper."

Kaylor says by attending the execution she'll "walk the last mile with her daughter."

E-mail sturco@enquirer.com

Details of Sherry Byrne's killing