10 years later, is Aliza Sherman’s murder any closer to being solved?

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Jan Lash lives with the guilt of not being there when her best friend, Aliza Sherman, was brutally murdered in broad daylight outside of her divorce attorney’s office building in downtown Cleveland.

The 53-year-old Cleveland Clinic nurse and mother of four was killed on March 24, 2013, at 75 Erieview Plaza.

According to investigators, she had been stabbed 11 times.

“I couldn’t help her and she would call me a lifesaver and I wasn’t to her because she ended up getting murdered,” Lash said. “She went down there alone. Sorry I wasn’t there too.”

“To know how she suffered, and none of her jewelry was taken, her purse was there, everything was there. It wasn’t a robbery,” Lash tearfully expressed.

Lash spoke to Aliza minutes before the murder. They exchanged texts.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve a best friend who never gave up on me or our friendship,” Aliza wrote in a text message to Lash.

A surveillance camera captured grainy video footage of someone running from the bloody crime scene.

Lash believes Aliza was lured to her attorney’s office. She said Aliza was going through a messy divorce with her estranged husband, Sanford Sherman, at the time of her death.

Over the years, Lash jotted down things she said Aliza shared with her about her relationship.

“She was so distraught and so afraid, and she just wanted this divorce to be over and move on with her life, though she knew he would never totally leave her alone,” Lash read from her notes.

Sanford Sherman has not been identified as suspect or charged in connection with his estranged wife’s murder.

Lash said Aliza also told her that her divorce attorney, Gregory Moore, kept changing the time they were supposed to meet on the day that she was murdered.

Moore lied to homicide detectives about where he was that Sunday evening.

In 2017, he was sentenced to six months in jail after pleading guilty to several charges, including giving false information to investigators.

Moore sent text messages to Aliza moments before and after her death, saying that he was inside his office. However, investigators discovered he was not actually in the building.

“Why wasn’t he there? And why did he lie?” Lash asked. “Ten years later and she doesn’t have justice, and it’s just not fair.”

No one has ever been arrested for Aliza’s murder.

The Cleveland Division of Police handed the investigation over to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation nearly two years ago.

“We get mountains of things to go through, so it’s not a quick process, " explained BCI Special Agent Lindsay Mussell.

Aliza’s case is just one of forty cases Special Agent Mussell is currently working on.

Mussell was a police officer at the time of the gruesome murder back in 2013 and said the case immediately got her attention.

“Here’s a woman who is devoting her life to care for other people and then her life is taken from her,” Mussell said.

Special Agent Mussell said BCI has DNA technology, latent fingerprint examiners, and other investigative tools to help crack the cold case.

“You have to look at what the facts are telling you, and then go from there,” Mussell explained. “We’re pretty much going to come in and analyze every part of that investigation.”

There is never a time that Mussell, who is also a mother, shuts off her investigative mindset. She said each case stays with her twenty-four hours a day, and she wants every victim’s family to know that she is committed to putting in the work.

“It’s constantly back and forth gauging what information do you need. Pairing that information to what we know what we don’t know and so that’s just a continual process,” Mussell detailed.

Special Agent Mussell said each day she believes investigators are getting closer to solving Aliza’s murder.

As for Lash, she’s just praying the days and months of the killer being out on the streets won’t continue to turn into years.

“I miss her. She was my family. She was a sister, a soulmate. Best friend,” Jan solemnly expressed.

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