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The Malarik family was hosting an unforgettable sleepover with cousins in 2001 when Sherri Malarik, a 34-year-old Navy air traffic controller, stepped outside during their dinner and never returned.
The chilling discovery of Sherri’s body, shot and left in the passenger seat of her red minivan, occurred the next morning in a Winn-Dixie parking lot in Pensacola, Florida. The tragedy cast a shadow over the family, as recounted in the “The Sleepover” episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.
Over two decades later, the mystery surrounding that night continues to split Sherri’s children, despite two trials and one acquittal.
When did Sherri Malarik go missing?
On Friday, September 21, 2001, Sherri vanished amidst a lively evening with her blended family of five children, aged between 3 and 11 years old.
Sherri and her husband, Greg Malarik, both in the Navy, each brought one son into their marriage from previous relationships and had three more children together.
On the last night of Sherri’s life, the couple was hosting the children’s cousins at their home for a sleepover.
“We were super excited. Some were playing video games, some were eating,” Jacob Malarik, Sherri’s son from a prior relationship, shared with Dateline. “It’s just kids being loud and playing.”
But according to Jacob, who was 11 at the time his mom went missing, just as the children were sitting down to eat dinner, Sherri stepped outside to go talk to Greg, who was trying to fix the family’s minivan in the backyard, and never returned.
Greg told the children that Sherri had run to the store to get milk, but hours passed without any sign of her. Greg called Sherri’s sister Tina Leake, and police to ask about whether there had been any car accidents that night.
By early the next morning, when there was still no sign of Sherri, Tina’s husband Jeff Leake got in his car to go look for her. After hours of driving through Pensacola, Jeff spotted Sherri’s minivan at around 8 a.m. in the parking lot of a Winn-Dixie grocery store.
Sherri Malarik’s body is found
Jeff walked up to the car and discovered his sister-in-law shoved down on the passenger side floor board, covered in blood. He raced to open the car door and discovered that Sherri was cold.
“It was an, ‘Oh my God, how am I going to tell her family?”’ moment, Jeff said to Dateline correspondent Andrea Canning of his agony when he realized that Sherri was dead.
The medical examiner would later conclude that Sherri had been shot twice in the head with a .25 caliber handgun.
“I fully believe everything happened in the van from the blood evidence that I saw,” said now-retired Escambia County Sheriff’s Office investigator Buddy Nesmith.
Someone had taken Sherri’s rings and a CB radio that was usually kept in the van.
Greg Malarik’s affair exposed
As the investigation into Sherri’s death began, detectives quickly learned that Greg was keeping a secret. While Sherri was on a year-long deployment to Greece, Greg began an affair with Jennifer Spohn, a single mom who worked in his office and occasionally babysat his children.
Several of the children remembered that on the night Sherri disappeared, Spohn had come by the house at around 9 p.m. to return a lawn mower.
Tina said that her sister Sherri had confided in her that she learned about the affair after returning from Greece through her youngest daughter Tera, who asked her why Greg didn’t love her anymore.
“And she’s like, ‘Daddy still loves me’ and (Tera’s) like, ‘Daddy doesn’t love you, Daddy loves Jennifer,’” Tina recalled.
Despite the heartbreaking discovery, Sherri was committed to making the relationship work.
“She wanted to forgive and forget and stay strong as a family unit,” Tina said.
When she spoke with investigators, Spohn freely admitted to having the affair, but insisted she hadn’t harmed Sherri.
Investigators grow suspicious of Greg Malarik
As investigators dug deeper into the case, they found some things that just didn’t seem to add up. Although Greg said that Sherri had left the house to go get milk, authorities found her purse, carrying her driver’s license and credit cards, still tucked into a drawer in a bedroom.
They also noted that her van had been parked at the back of the grocery store parking lot, even though it hadn’t been busy that night.
Sherri’s family described Greg as controlling and said he forbid her to wear makeup or hairspray during their marriage — claims that he’s denied.
And Sherri’s 10-year-old niece Lisa, who was at the house the night Sherri vanished, reported hearing a loud sound “like the explosion of a bottle rocket” while Sherri and Greg were outside together that night.
Detectives began to suspect that Greg may have been involved in the shooting, but they had no evidence to prove he wasn’t at home all night like he said.
“Things that just didn’t make sense”
Jacob also came to believe that his stepfather may have killed his mom and told authorities as a child that his stepfather had owned a small gun just months before the murder that could have fit the description of a .25 caliber weapon, but no such weapon was ever found.
“There were things that just didn’t make sense, like our mom going to the store that night to get milk,” Jacob explained. “Our mom was very organized. This is the first time our cousins are ever coming over to the house. I find it very hard to believe she would not have been prepared for it.”
He alleged that Greg was known to have a violent temper.
“He would punch holes in the wall, he would grab us by our hair, drag us up and down the hallways,” Jacob said, adding that as a child, he sometimes slept with a knife under his bed.
But Greg denied the allegations of abuse and Tera — Sherri and Greg’s youngest child — had different memories of her father.
“He was supportive of me. He shared his love of music with me,” she said. “He’s very much a teacher.”
An arrest and two trials
For years, Sherri’s case went cold. Then in 2020, although the case was still largely circumstantial, investigators arrested Greg.
Their case was strengthened even further when Spohn, now living in Illinois, agreed to testify against him. She told Dateline: Secrets Uncovered that on the night that Sherri was killed, she picked Greg up in the Winn-Dixie parking lot and drove him back to the house, before knocking on the door a few minutes later under the guise that she was returning the lawn mower, to help him establish an alibi in front of the children.
“I’ve made plenty of decisions that I regret,” she said. “I can’t go back and change it, so all I can do is go forward and try to let the family know what I knew.”
Spohn also said that after meeting Greg at the door of his home, he gave her a bag filled with clothes that he had been wearing and a gun, which she said she threw off a bridge in an attempt to help him destroy evidence. Authorities searched the area, but never recovered any evidence.
Greg continued to maintain his innocence and had the support of his daughter Tera.
There was no forensic or DNA evidence to link him to the crime and he insisted he’d been home all night.
His first trial began in June of 2022, but the jury was unable to reach a decision. He went on trial a second time — this time with Tera testifying for the defense — and was acquitted.
Greg’s defense team poked holes at Spohn’s story and argued that she’d had the motive and opportunity to kill Sherri, which she has denied.
A family torn apart
The trial may have guaranteed Greg his freedom, but it tore his children apart. Jacob, who testified for the prosecution, and his younger sister Tera, who testified for the defense, haven’t spoken since the verdict.
“I’ve got a lot of anger in my heart right now that I’m trying to deal with and that’s why I’ve put Tera off for a moment, is I need to deal with my stuff,” Jacob said of the fractured relationship.
As for Tera, she’s hoping to someday repair the bond she had with her brother.
“I’m ready whenever he is,” she said.
