Sunday, December 2, 2012

Beth Bentley - missing 132 weeks

Beth Bentley vanished on or about May 23, 2010.  Why "on or about"?

Because only one person knows for sure. Or could that be two or three?

Friend Jenn Wyatt's story (is she sticking to it?) is that she dropped Beth off in Centralia, Ill. on Sunday, May 23, 2010, at about 5:30PM near the Amtrak station.

About two weeks after that Jenn told me that Beth never intended to take a train north to Chicago.

Supposedly, best friends Jenn and Beth did not talk about what Beth was going to do when she got out of the rental car in Centralia (which must have been rented in Beth's name, since Jenn didn't have a valid driver's license (her California driver's license had expired)). That is virtually impossible to believe. Beth's car was stored in the garage of the house Jenn was renting in Woodstock.

As the story got to me, Beth and Jenn were going to meet back up so that Beth could retrieve her car on Monday and get home by the time her husband, Scott, got home from his law office on that Monday.

The timeline for Monday is quite vague. What time did Jenn leave Mount Vernon? What route did she take back to Woodstock? Where did she plan to meet Beth and at what time?

When you look at the phone records for Monday, well, they tell quite a story - most by the dialing pattern for the calls that were attempted and the absence of calls you might expect to see in the records?

The Woodstock Police must have gotten the details of the week-end and for Monday out of Jenn, but they remain tight-lipped even two and one-half years later. A retirement and assignment rotations have moved personnel active in the investigation off the case.

Remember now ... this is a Missing Person case at the Woodstock P.D. It's not a criminal case, if it's a missing-person case with no suspects and no "persons-of-interest".

Why aren't all the details being laid out for the public, so that maybe, just maybe, the public could start helping the Woodstock Police to fill in some of the blanks?

Is Jenn feeling pretty smug now that she slid out from under the two felony charges lodged against her by the Woodstock P.D.? Does Jenn know more than she is letting on about?

I hope that anyone with any knowledge of Beth's disappearance or habits or friends or any other details of a private nature has written out all those details and given them to a person who can absolutely trusted to deliver the information to the police in case some untimely incident impairs the  ability to recall details. All the details, written up and signed, sealed and delivered to a trustworthy confidante (someone with whom she (or he) has only a professional legal and totally independent relationship - not a friend or drinking buddy) could be valuable "insurance" for anyone with knowledge of what happened to Beth.

A "voice from the grave" is better than no voice at all.

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