The 1960 Studebaker found upside down in the creek is less than a mile from the gravel pit wher Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller were going the night they disappeared. While the discovery could bring closure to those families, it could also bring closure to another Union County family, which has been connected to the case for nearly a decade. High spring water levels followed by a drought this summer helped reveal the old car. Authorities recovered a Studebaker hubcap and a license plate matching the car once owned by Miller's grandfather. The disappearance of the Vermillion High School juniors was one of the initial investigators of South Dakota's cold case unit. The unit was formed in June 2004 to focus on unsolved suspicious deaths and disappearances, there's no limit on filing criminal charges in homicide cases.
The local people didn't want to give the Lykkens a lot of support because they didn't want to be on the losing side in case they were guilty, but I knew from the start that they wouldn't find any bodies. You don't know what people have done over the years, but that's why I was really upset and went to bat for them. David Lykken's defense attorney from 2007, Mike Butler, says the discovery of the car on that road is consistent with the evidence that was collected at the time of the disappearance that revealed the girls were last seen near that gravel pit; Butler adds it's likely this all could just be a tragic car accident. Lykken, 59 is prison serving an unrelated 227 year sentence for rape and kidnapping. In july 2007, a Union county grand jury indicted Lykken on two counts of premediated murder, two counts of felony murder and two counts of murder in the disappearance of Miller and Jackson. But state prosecutors dropped all six murder charges after discovering a prison snitch made up a supposed admission.