CLEVELAND — This Sunday will mark a sad anniversary in Cleveland: Six years since Aliza Sherman was brutally murdered near the Galleria.
At the time, she was in the heat of a bitter divorce battle.
A nurse for the Cleveland Clinic and mother of four, Sherman was downtown visiting her attorney, but the two never met.
Instead, Sherman was stabbed to death eleven times in broad daylight outside 75 Erieview Plaza. It was just after 5 p.m. on a Sunday.
“It’s absolutely mind-boggling,” friend Jan Lash said. “I think about her every day.”
Lash was among the last people to talk to Sherman and says she was just 48 hours from her divorce trial when her attorney, Gregory Moore, called the meeting.
Texting her both before and after her death, Moore told Sherman he was in his office, when in fact, he was not.
The proof later came from key cards and phone records a grand jury used to indict him, and Moore admitted to a judge that he lied. In exchange, a series of charges were dropped.
But those admissions seem to have given little insight. Though police say they have people of interest, they never named a suspect.
“I’m just getting frustrated and angry,” Lash said. “I’m really disappointed and it hurts.”
Over the years, balloons have been released, candles lit, and a $100,000 reward has been offered, while the question still remains: Why?
Nothing was taken from Sherman, while surveillance video shows a hooded figure at the scene who has never been identified.
Loved ones won’t stop asking.
“I don’t know what more needs to be done but either fresh eyes, or, maybe there’s new technology that can be looked at. But it’s really hard for me to believe that all this time has passed, and no one has been brought to justice,” Lash said.
On Sunday at 5 p.m. there will be a small memorial for Sherman at the spot where she died, just as there has been each year since her death.