One of the biggest mysteries in all of South Dakota — the unknown fate of 9-year-old Serenity Dennard — elicits one singular emotion more than any other for those who loved, cared for or searched for the precocious girl who disappeared from a Black Hills youth home more than five years ago.
Some people monitoring the missing person’s case feel disappointed that Serenity was able to escape from the locked Children’s Home Society facility on Feb. 3, 2019.
Others seethe with anger that employees of the complex near Rockerville waited 80 minutes to call 911 after she ran away in the middle of winter without a coat.
Many remain consumed with curiosity over how a young girl on foot with less than a five-minute head start could evade an initial search by employees and remain lost after a two-year, manpower-heavy search of the craggy, wooded Black Hills area.
And a few others, some with social media proclivities and only scant knowledge of the law enforcement investigation that took on national proportions are pained by their insistence that Serenity was abducted by a stranger driving on a rural road, a neighbor of the children’s home, an employee of the facility or even a member of Serenity’s extended family.
But hovering above the entire tragedy is a painful sadness that remains top of mind and fresh of heart in all those who played a role in Serenity’s life or the effort to find her and who want nothing more than to bring closure to a haunting mystery with no answer in sight.
“The lasting emotion for me is that I still hurt that she’s not found,” said Tony Harrison, a former captain in the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office who oversaw portions of the physical search for Serenity and the missing person’s investigation.
“I still hurt for the family. I hurt for the thousands of people who volunteered to search for her. I hurt for the investigators that absolutely poured their entire day every day for years into this case. And I hurt for myself a little bit as a dad because there’s nothing worse than not being able to find a little girl.”
Authorities haven’t ruled out anything but have settled on a working theory that the mischievous girl quickly made her way into the remote section of the Black Hills around the children’s home, tried to hide and became lost before freezing to death, according to several law enforcement officials interviewed by News Watch in recent years.
While no individual has been conclusively cleared in the case, investigators said they do not believe a stranger or neighbor abducted her or that any member of her family or the children’s home had a hand in her disappearance.
Their doubts about a possible abduction arise largely from the fact that a woman and girl were in a car at the children’s home and saw Serenity run away, then drove up and down Rockerville Road after her a few minutes later without seeing her or anyone else.
“I can’t even begin to calculate the odds that someone who would be willing to violently abduct a child happened by on a rural western South Dakota road within the few minutes they had to do that and successfully abducted her,” then-sheriff’s detective Jamin Hartland said in 2020.
In January 2021, authorities officially halted the physical search for Serenity, her remains or any trace of her in the wooded area around the children’s home. Yet the missing person’s case is still open and active, according to Helene Duhamel, the sheriff’s spokeswoman.
Serenity Dennard
One of the biggest mysteries in all of South Dakota — the unknown fate of 9-year-old Serenity Dennard — elicits one singular emotion more than any other for those who loved, cared for or searched for the precocious girl who disappeared from a Black Hills youth home more than five years ago.
“The Pennington County Sheriff’s Office remains committed to investigating any leads received regarding Serenity’s disappearance,” Duhamel wrote in an email. “To date, we have investigated 329 leads with the help of other law enforcement agencies throughout South Dakota and the nation. As this remains an open investigation, additional details are not being released at this point in time.”
The initial two-year investigation into Serenity’s disappearance involved a dual track effort.
The physical search for Serenity included more than 1,500 personnel from 66 separate agencies who covered more than 6,000 miles of terrain during 220 search attempts involving people on foot, air searches and use of cadaver dogs. The first days of the search were hampered by rain that turned to snow and temperatures that dipped well below freezing.
A simultaneous investigative track sought to rule out foul play and search nationwide for Serenity. In all, 538 people were interviewed or contacted by authorities. The children’s home, nearby residences and outbuildings were searched numerous times, and six search warrants were executed, officials said.
Harrison said the sheriff’s office received numerous reports of sightings of Serenity during the investigation, none of which panned out. Oftentimes, well-intended people would contact the department, such as when someone in Las Vegas took photos of a young girl in a parking lot who resembled Serenity but which turned out not to be her.
Then-Sheriff Kevin Thom told News Watch in 2020 that the department took a “systematic, methodical approach” to the investigation that became the most exhaustive and expensive in county history.
He kept a large map of the area around the children’s home on his desk, with a tangle of blue and red lines indicating each specific path taken by searchers and dogs.
Thom, who declined a request for an updated interview, said in 2020 that the case was stressful for his department. Duhamel said that when Thom was interviewed when he retired in December 2022 that he mentioned the Serenity case as one that will remain in his thoughts for years to come.
“It’s emotionally taxing. It’s always more emotional when it’s a child, and people connect to that differently,” Thom said in 2020. “We’ve had a lot of emotional ups and downs. .. There’s some days you go out there and think this is the day we’re going to find her and we don’t. We’ve gone through that cycle many times, but we pick ourselves up and go back out.”
The inability to find Serenity or any evidence of her disappearance has compounded the anguish over losing a child for those who loved her, including Darcie Gentry, 42, who adopted Serenity with ex-husband Chad Dennard in 2014 after fostering the girl for several months.
Gentry is Serenity’s legal adoptive mother and retains secondary custody but did not live with her at the time of the disappearance.
For years after Serenity disappeared, Gentry kept a bedroom in her Rapid City-area home made up with stuffed animals and Serenity’s favorite things in case she returned.
Serenity was a “super smart” and outgoing girl who brought joy and light to those around her, even as she battled emotional problems caused by uncertainty and abandonment during her childhood, Gentry said.
If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Serenity Dennard please contact the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office at (605) 394-6113 or (605) 394-6115 Source: Sdnewswatch.org.
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