A South Carolina man will spend the rest of his life in prison for fatally strangling his girlfriend, whose buried body was discovered in a wooden chest built by her own grandfather more than two years after she went missing.
Sheridan Dirk Fogle, of Orangeburg County, killed 51-year-old Penni Whiteside and kept her body inside of a wooden “hope” chest at their Myrtle Beach apartment for a few days, before burying her in 2022, according to prosecutors.
Fogle, now 56, buried her inside of the chest, which had been gifted to Whiteside by her grandfather when she was a child.
After Myrtle Beach police began investigating Whiteside’s disappearance in May 2022, comments made by her neighbors led investigators to suspect Fogle buried her below a brick fire pit located behind the Myrtle Beach apartment complex, according to prosecutors.
When investigators excavated the fire pit on June 12, 2024, they unearthed the wooden hope chest containing Whiteside’s remains, prosecutors said.
Following the discovery, Fogle was arrested at his new wife’s home in Orangeburg County and ultimately confessed to Whiteside’s killing, according to the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Solicitor’s Office.
A jury found Fogle guilty of murder on Thursday, October 29, the office announced in a news release. He was then sentenced to life in prison.
“Sheridan Fogle has a history of violent crimes towards women, including assault for strangling but not killing his first wife and domestic violence involving Penni,” Assistant Solicitor Jonathan Roger, one of Fogle’s prosecutors, said in a statement. “I am pleased that in the South Carolina Department of Corrections he will no longer have the opportunity to assault a woman.”
Whiteside’s son, Hunter Smith, spoke following Fogle’s sentencing and commented on the impact of his mother’s death.
“It’s just been disbelief, trying to come to terms with it, because, you know, every little thing that happens in your life, you want to call your mom and tell her, and you can’t,” Smith said, per NBC affiliate WMBF-TV.
Fogle allegedly strangled Whiteside after an argument. According to prosecutors, he killed her while wanting to begin a new relationship and married another woman within a year, per The Post and Courier. Prosecutors also said he lied to police by claiming she left him for a different man.
Fogle and Whiteside dated for about five years and had broken up multiple times over the course of their relationship.
“To say it was a toxic relationship would be an understatement,” Fogle’s attorney, Elizabeth Tilley, said, according to the newspaper.
Following Fogle’s arrest, he told police during an interview at the Myrtle Beach Jail that he strangled Whiteside after she allegedly “came at him,” armed with a knife, WMBF-TV reported.
“I grabbed her by the throat, she hit the floor…by the time it was over, I panicked, I didn’t know what else to do,” said Fogle, who cried during the police interview.
“I got out of the room and got high,” Fogle also said, referring to what happened afterward. “Then I put her in the box, and I kept the box in the house for like two days…it took me like three days to get all that done.”
On Thursday, a judge handed Fogle’s sentence without the possibility of parole.
