The old year has passed; the new year is here. Will a New Year's Resolution be to find Beth Bentley within the next 30 days?
It could happen, you know. All it would take is leaning on the people most likely to know exactly what happened to her. You start with the smallest, closest circle, and then you slowly widen the circle. You connect the dots. You identify the lies, the misdirections, the deceptions. You connect the dots.
The Woodstock Police Department has given the same, old, stale summary to the City Manager and the City Council for months, and it has gotten away with it. Why is it that the City Manager, the Mayor and the City Council have accepted a "boiler-plate" summary in the monthly Police Department report, month after month?
Why isn't some official shouting, "NO PASS! This tells us nothing about what has been done in the past month. It tells us that NOTHING has been done in the past month."
The City was successful in withholding the Police Department's file after a Freedom of Information Act Request was filed. Releasing it might interfere with the investigation. What investigation?
If it's "only" a missing person case, then let's have it. But, if it's more than that - if the police really think that criminal activity was involved with or related to Beth's disappearance - then let's hear how many people have been interviewed, how many searches have been conducted, how many police agencies are still involved, etc.
Why is the Woodstock Police Department so tight-lipped about this case?
Let's say that they really do think there was a crime here, and they have a pretty good idea who is involved. OK, so rattle a few cages. The next time (and there will be a next time) that someone in the smaller circles of friends, neighbors, family, co-workers, acquaintances gets pinched for drugs or a DUI, do NOT go for a deal. Hold out for the maximum sentence. If the person thinks that she or he will be Sheriff Nygren's guest for 364 nights, then the lips might just loosen and some important information would slip out.
Sure, the person will have lawyered up. So what? The City has a prosecuting lawyer. All you do is refuse to deal. Take the case to trial. Opportunities started slipping through fingers less than a month after Beth disappeared.
Remember when Jenn Wyatt got a ticket in June 2010, while she was driving the car (owned by Beth) in the middle of the night? She gave the deputy an expired California driver's license. Yet later, in court, she had an Illinois driver license that was valid when the ticket was issued. Just how does something like that happen? When you are issued an Illinois driver's license, you turn in your expired out-of-state license. Don't you?
And six months before that, when she got a ticket in Woodstock for a seatbelt violation, she presented her expired California driver's license, and the cop just wrote down the information, including the expired date!
Didn't he realize her license had expired? How did he overlook that? Did he feel sorry for her? Didn't a supervisor review the ticket? Did she just have such a nice smile that the cop overlooked her expired license?
Just how did she happen to come up with a valid license in court, but didn't have one when the deputy stopped her? He would have run her name through the computer system, and it would have found any valid Illinois driver's license. It didn't, so he wrote her a ticket. So, how did she get a license that was issued to be effective when she had gotten stopped in June?
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4 comments:
The City has a prosecuting lawyer? Really?
1) I'm convinced Beth's disappearance and likely, her subsequent death; need be categorized as a "death by mis-adventure". Bless her soul!
2) Im also almost entirely convinced that such "mis-adventure" occurred in McHenry County.
Like I suppose you, Gus; it seems entirely innane and unjust that justice can only be served upon miscreants years, if not DECADES after a heinous crime.
It's too bad that a few lawyers weren't in her company!
DBTR, thanks. More coming mid-week.
Various counties' State's Attorney's Offices and Sheriff's Offices have got to get it into their collective heads that we the voters are increasingly tired of what they'd assure us is "justice".
It seems to many of us that their avoidance of legal actions against their departments seems to far outweigh the need for their departments to deliver Justice to the voter and taxpayer alike. And the same goes for our elected "Judges".
AND it seems that all such taxpayer dollars as are nowadays devoted to "adjudication", as well as in defending and exonerating our elected Officials would be better spent prosecuting our criminals in the first place.
I would be the very first to acknowledge that EVERYONE deserves a vigorous Defense, that the "State" must absolutely be compelled to prove its case.
Yet at the same time, all too many of us rightly perceive that the situation we're presented with now is suspect, inadequate and entirely ridiculous.
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