SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - A man whose family farm was searched as part of the investigation into the 1971 disappearance of two girls said the state should apologize for the physical and emotional devastation law enforcement agents left behind.
Kerwyn Lykken said false leads in the case that turned out to be a car accident prompted searches in 2004 that left lasting scars on his elderly mother and other family members.
He pulled Attorney General Marty Jackley aside after an Elk Point news conference this week in which Jackley confirmed that Cheryl Miller and Pamella Jackson were killed when their Studebaker drove off a gravel road and landed in a creek.
“I said this family has been put through the ringer and said we still deserve an apology,” Lykken said Thursday afternoon, of what he told Jackley.
Jackley said Friday that it would be inappropriate to apologize because several state and federal judges have reviewed the searches and concluded they were justified, based on evidence that includes a sealed search warrant with details that have not been made public. The searches were a legitimate part of the search for two missing girls, he said.
“Certainly, it was important for me to acknowledge and respect that it was unfortunate that that search had to happen. But it had to happen,” Jackley said. “Hopefully there can be closure for three families.”
Investigators were led to the farm largely because of Lykken’s brother, David Lykken, who was sentenced in 1991 to 225 years in prison for breaking into a former girlfriend’s house in Vermillion and raping her repeatedly over a four-hour period in 1990. Several other women testified at his sentencing that he had assaulted and raped them, too.
When the state started a cold case unit with federal funding that has since dried up, David Lykken’s name came up because he was a classmate of Miller and Jackson and the family farm is less than two miles from the gravel pit where the girls were headed the evening they disappeared.
Investigators searched the farm in 2004 and collected bones, clothing, a red purse, a Bible, camera, photographs, newspaper clippings, two chrome-plated hubcaps and other items, according to court documents. Authorities didn’t indicate if any of it was connected to the girls until this week when they said the items taken would be returned the Lykken family.
In 2007, a Union County grand jury indicted David Lykken on two counts of premeditated murder, two counts of felony murder and two counts of murder in the disappearance of Miller and Jackson. State prosecutors later dropped all six murder charges after concluding a jailhouse informant lied about David Lykken supposedly admitting to killing the girls.
A federal judge who ruled in favor of investigators who carried out the searches did conclude they unreasonably prevented the Lykkens from tending to their cattle and a pregnant cat, which resulted in the death of some kittens.
“David was in prison,” Kerwyn Lykken said. “My mom, my son, my sister. They were the ones who went through the brunt of this.”
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