Jeffrey Sauerbry charged with Summer Shipp’s 2004 murder
Almost eight years after the Kansas City woman Summer Shipp disappeared, and nearly five years after Shipp’s remains were found on the banks of the Little Blue River, Jeffrey Sauerbry has been charged in her killing. Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker announced the first-degree murder charges on Friday — the same day that a jury convicted Sauerbry for the 1998 murder of William Kellett.
Shipp vanished December 8, 2004. Her daughter, Brandy Shipp, reported her missing two days later, after her mother failed to show up for work conducting market research surveys at an Independence grocery store. A few days later, Shipp’s 1986 BMW was discovered with her belongings locked inside.
The charges filed last week say Shipp was conducting a door-to-door survey the day she went missing, and Sauerbry invited Shipp into his home. Independence police have long suspected Sauerbry in Shipp’s disappearance. But, as The Pitch reported in 2005, investigators had a hard time pinning anything on him.
