When retired county treasurer Sharron Erickson was found murdered in her garage in her small Nebraska town, suspicion soon spread throughout the community.

“People started pointing fingers at each other,” Erickson’s friend Don Clark recounted in the premiere episode of Oxygen’s The Killer Among Us. “Saying, ‘I bet he did it.’ Or, ‘he did it’ or ‘he did it.’”

With just over 100 residents, Colon had always been a tight-knit community—until Erickson’s death caused everyone to rethink everything they thought they knew about those living beside them.

“Now,” host Alan Cumming said, “locals who once looked out for each other are looking suspiciously at each other.”

Who Was Sharron Erickson?

Erickson was well-known in the Colon community after working for more than 30 years for the county treasurer’s office.

“Sharron Erickson had probably the highest standards of anybody that worked at the courthouse,” Clark recalled. “She was always dressed properly, very cordial to people.”

After retiring in 1998, Erickson was enjoying a slower-pace of life at her home along Main Street—a quaint one block hub at the center of town, complete with a post office, bank and restaurant. She even settled into a routine, starting each day by visiting the postmaster to get her mail and then chatting with the employees at the bank.

But on June 30, 2003, when Erickson missed a daily phone call with a relative, the family member reached out to bank employees and asked them to check on the 66-year-old.

Sharron Erickson, whose case was featured on Oxygen’s The Killer Among Us.

Photo: Oxygen

What Happened to Sharron Erickson?

With help from the postmaster, who had a key to her home, they discovered Erickson dead, laying in a pool of blood in her stand-alone garage, located just across the street from her house.

“She was wearing what appeared to be like clothes that she would be sleeping in, just like a pajama outfit,” former Saunders County prosecutor and coroner Scott Tingelhoff recalled. “There is a gun that is laying just by her head, which is in a pool of blood and it appears that maybe it’s a self-inflicted gunshot.”

Erickson’s small purse was also found at the scene.

Though it was initially thought to be a suicide, that theory was ruled out after investigators noted that there was no magazine in the gun. Plus, blood smeared on a nearby door couldn’t have been left by Erickson after suffering a fatal gunshot wound.

In addition, the coroner discovered Erickson had been beaten and strangled to death, not shot.

Evidence Suggests Someone Broke into Sharron Erickson’s Home

There were other troubling signs at Erickson’s home. An alarm that she placed on the back door was going off and there was evidence the door had been pried open. Her phone line had also been cut.

In the bedroom, an empty gun holster was sitting on a table.

“It looked like she might have been in bed,” Saunders County Deputy Kyle Couglin explained,“and she might have taken the gun out of the holster and left in a hurry.”

Investigators believed the attack likely started in Erickson’s home and, at some point, she fled to the garage across the street to try to escape, but was confronted and killed.

“Sharron didn’t keep a large amount of cash or any particular valuables in her home,” Saunders County Det. Kevin Stukenholtz said. “We discovered there was cash in her purse, so the assailant who was trying to get into the home, it wasn’t clear to us what they were going in there for.”

Sharron Erickson

Photo: Oxygen

Investigators Talk to Possible Suspects in Sharron Erickson’s Murder

As investigators tried to piece together the 𝓈𝒽𝓸𝒸𝓀𝒾𝓃𝑔 crime, they learned that she was not one to shy away from conflict. She had repeatedly gotten into arguments with her next door neighbor, a trucker. However, he was ruled out after police verified that he’d been out of town the night of the attack.

They also spoke to James Marrs, a 25-year-old farm hand who lived with his family just behind Erickson’s property. Marrs was known to get into trouble from time to time, but he told detectives that on the night Erickson was killed he’d been out at a bar and then went to a friend’s house before returning home—a claim that his friend and mom verified.

Investigators also questioned the postmaster, who had a close relationship with Erickson, after he seemed to be inserting himself into the investigation, but he denied having any involvement in her death.

DNA Evidence Leads to Sharron Erickson’s Killer

The case seemed to hit a standstill until DNA swab results revealed that Erickson had also been sexually assaulted before her death. Authorities sent the results off to a lab in Omaha, hoping to get a DNA profile of their killer.

“Once we determined that there was semen located, and anytime you see a strangulation, it becomes more personal,” Tingelhoff said. “You’re up close with somebody and you’re in contact with them. We were able to focus on narrowing down who would be personally associated with Sharron.”

However, after the DNA profile of the semen was run through a law enforcement database, no match was found.

Then, in April 2004, investigators learned that Marrs’ friend may have been lying about the farm hand’s whereabouts on the night of the murder.

Marrs agreed to submit a DNA swab, which ultimately matched to he sample left at the crime scene.

According to Stukenholtz, “The DNA hit was enough to arrest him.”

Who Killed Sharron Erickson?

Once in custody, Marrs confessed that on the night of the murder he’d been drinking and doing cocaine at a bar in Wahoo. After coming home, he decided he wanted to steal some cash and went to Erickson’s home, where he cut the phone line and then forced his way inside—only to be confronted by Erickson.

“Her gun was not loaded,” Tingelhoff said. “She probably brandished the weapon to scare James.”

But when she didn’t fire the weapon, Marrs started to beat her. When she escaped and ran for her garage, he followed her there and killed her.

“Everything he was saying fit the entire aspect that we’d investigated,” Stukenholtz recalled, “but he would not admit to the 𝒔𝒆𝒙𝒖𝒂𝒍 𝒶𝓈𝓈𝒶𝓊𝓁𝓉 and almost started to shut down in his confession when I went to that.”

Prosecutors hit a stumbling block in the case when Marrs’ confession was suppressed, but Marrs ultimately agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder in August 2025 on what would have been Erickson’s 69th birthday.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Now decades later, investigators say Erickson’s murder transformed the once quiet community of Colon.

“I think people start wondering do I really know that person?” Tinglehoff said. “And not specifically just Mr. Marrs. Do I really know my neighbor and are they capable of something?”