Woman gets 7 years for heroin overdose death of sister-in-law
BY DAN ROZEK Staff Reporter drozek@suntimes.com January 20, 2012 12:02PM
Sherry Best
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Updated: February 22, 2012 8:04AM
Sherry Best said nothing for 10 days while her brother-in-law desperately searched for his missing wife, who vanished in April after dropping off their daughter at a friend’s home.
But the Waukegan woman knew what happened to her sister-in-law: she had watched 34-year-old Melissa Best of Round Lake Park fatally overdose on heroin she provided, then helped hide her body from frantic relatives and police, Lake County authorities said.
Sherry Best was sentenced Friday to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to drug-induced homicide in her sister-in-law’s April 15 death.
Melissa Best, the married mother of two teenage children, died shortly after injecting herself with heroin given to her by her sister-in-law.
When Melissa Best collapsed after taking the drug, 33-year-old Sherry Best didn’t call for help, authorities said.
Instead, she waited about 30 minutes until her husband, Charles Best — the brother of Melissa’s husband, Clinton — returned home from work.
Charles Best briefly tried to revive Melissa, but when his efforts failed, he and his wife loaded her body in her own minivan, then dumped the vehicle in the parking lot of a condo complex near Grayslake. On the way back to their transient hotel in Waukegan, the Bests stopped at a Denny’s Restaurant to buy milkshakes, Lake County officials have said.
Melissa’s husband reported her missing later that day, triggering searches by police. Her husband and other family members posted fliers around the community, opened a Facebook site and conducted their own searches.
Charles Best on April 25 led police to the van holding Melissa’s body.
In October, he had agreed to testify against wife after pleading guilty to concealing a homicidal death. Charles Best was sentenced to six months in the Lake County Jail, placed on two years’ probation and ordered to perform 150 hours of community service work.
Sherry Best — who is expected to spend less than five years behind bars — said little as she was sentenced Friday by Lake County Judge George Bridges.
“Do you understand you’re going to serve this sentence in prison?” Bridges asked.
“Yes, sir,” Best replied softly.
She faced up to 30 years in prison for the offense. As part of her plea deal, prosecutors agreed to dismiss felony charges of concealing a homicidal death.
Melissa’s husband, Clinton, sat stoically with other relatives in the courtroom as his sister-in-law pleaded guilty, but he declined to comment on the guilty plea and sentence.
In a statement released when his brother and sister-in-law were arrested, Clinton Best called his relatives “heartless and cowardly.”
“To allow someone to die and then hide them to the point where they cannot be found for 10 days — causing us to have to worry about what has happened to them — shows just how heartless and cowardly these people are,” Clinton Best said in that 2011 statement.
Prosecutor Matthew DeMartini said Friday, “These kind of cases are just tragedies.”
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