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Sharon "Lecia" Schollmeyer was an independent girl who lived alone in a Salt Lake City apartment and worked at Lamb's Grill downtown when she was killed in 1977.
The Utah native had lived in England and in the mountains of Idaho before her family returned to the Salt Lake Valley, and, at 16 years old, Schollmeyer opted to leave her mother and siblings to rent an apartment in the Avenues neighborhood of Salt Lake City.
That wasn't what her mother, Sally Kadleck, preferred. But it reflected the spirit of the era, and her mother offered her support.
"We weren't hippies at all, but we had done some interesting things in her life," Kadleck said in a phone interview Wednesday. "[My children] felt they could do anything they wanted to. [They were] very strong and self-sufficient."
Kadleck said her daughter had many friends. She looked old for her age, and was fun and caring, Kadleck said.
Schollmeyer didn't like the people living among her at the apartment building on 125 E. First Avenue. She had recently returned to her apartment to find her door broken open and her apartment ransacked, Kadleck recalled. The two went apartment shopping on a Saturday in December, hoping to find a better option.
"One reason she couldn't afford to move out was because she used some of her tips to buy shoes for a [co-worker]," Kadleck said.
That Saturday outing would be the last time Kadleck would see her daughter alive.
After Schollmeyer failed to show up to work Monday, Dec. 5, 1977, Kadleck went to the apartment and found her daughter naked, gagged and blindfolded in her bathtub. Medical examiners determined that Schollmeyer was strangled.
"I can't tell anybody how it feels, because until you've experienced it, it's your own experience," Kadleck said.
Investigators believe Schollmeyer was killed the night after she returned from looking for a new apartment.
Salt Lake County prosecutors recently charged Patrick Michael McCabe, 59, with her death. At the time, McCabe was a 20-year-old working as the building manager at the apartment where Schollmeyer was killed.
Kadleck says McCabe was the person who let her into the apartment to check on her daughter.
In 2013, detectives working on the case submitted for DNA testing the halter top used to gag Schollmeyer. A national database matched DNA from the halter top to McCabe, who was living in Bell, Fla., in December 2016. McCabe's DNA was in the system from a 1999 sexual offense involving a minor, according to court records.
McCabe told investigators last week that he used a butcher knife to gain Schollmeyer's compliance before raping and choking her, according to court documents. McCabe fled Utah three months later, according to court documents, and he hadn't returned to the state before police brought him from Florida on Sunday.
On Wednesday, McCabe spoke quietly as he answered questions from a judge, who appointed a public defender during an initial appearance by video in Salt Lake City's 3rd District Court. His next court appearance is scheduled for March 20.
McCabe is charged with first-degree murder, a capital offense punishable by death, as well aggravated burglary and aggravated sexual assault, first-degree felonies.
Kadleck wasn't in court Wednesday.
She said she reluctantly looks forward to the case moving through the court system — it will be difficult to hear more details of her daughter's death.
"I want him to go to prison for the rest of his life," Kadleck said of McCabe. "He's had 40 years he didn't deserve."
Twitter: @TaylorWAnderson