Monday, February 21, 2011

Beth Bentley - 39 weeks missing now

Yesterday marked the 39th week that Beth Bentley has been missing. From where? Mount Vernon, Ill.? Woodstock, Ill.? Some place in-between or nearby?

Beth was 41 when she disappeared. Who is keeping the pressure on to find her?

There is no indication that the law enforcement agencies in southern Illinois are doing anything. Which ones could be working the case? Mount Vernon PD? Centralia PD? Jefferson County Sheriff's Department? Illinois State Police?

There is no indication that the Woodstock Police Department is doing anything now to find her. Beth was classified as Missing Person-Endangered, but her missing status has never been placed on the website of the Illinois State Police for missing adults. WHY NOT?

How many adults are missing in Illinois? You can check for yourself. Search for "Illinois State Police Missing Adults". Choose the Illinois State Police (official) website. How many? You'll find ten (10). That's all; ten. The oldest case is 1988; the latest is Stacy Peterson (2007).

Is Beth Bentley there? No!

From the State Police website comes the following: "If you have information concerning any endangered missing adults in Illinois, please do one of the following:

- Call (800)U-HELP-ME (843-5763) - nationwide
- Send an e-mail message to the Illinois State Police at missing@isp.state.il.us. Your information will be treated as confidential. Please remember to include the name of the adult in your e-mail message."

I wonder what would happen if hundreds of people emailed the State Police, asking them to list Beth. And if the same hundreds emailed the Woodstock Police Chief or called him to ask why Beth is not so listed.

To save your time, theirs and his, I shall email him today and ask. If I hear from him by Wednesday at 5:00PM, I'll post his reply in a new message on Wednesday. Please delay contacting him or the Illinois State Police until Thursday, so as not to flood their e-mailboxes.

2 comments:

Justin said...

Why do you hack at the Woodstock PD for this? She was a resident of Woodstock but there is no indication that any crime occurred here. Woodstock PD has no jurisdiction in this incident. If someone from Woodstock is involved in a crime in Chicago, do Woodstock Officers become involved? Rhetorically NO.

Gus said...

Snidely, you ask a very good question. Thanks for your comment.

The answer is that Woodstock PD has said that it is the lead investigatory law enforcement agency in this case, because Beth was reported missing to them on May 24.

Because early reports were that she was driven to Centralia by her traveling companion, Jenn Wyatt, it seemed to me that an agency in southern Illinois should have been lead investigatory agency. Then the whole Centralia story became questionable, and the location moved back to Mount Vernon.

Big questions surround where she went and with whom she spent time after leaving the Frosty Mug on Friday night. There haven't been any answers to those questions.

The people who should know are Jenn Wyatt, Ryan Ridge and Nathan Ridge, and they aren't talking.