Beth Bentley - missing 180 weeks now

Beth Bentley has been missing 180 weeks now. Bentley, 41 when she vanished in 2010, was reportedly last seen in Centralia, Ill. by her friend, co-worker and traveling companion Jenn Wyatt, who said she dropped Beth off near the Amtrak station last on a Sunday afternoon.

When you look at the stale Missing Person flier on the Woodstock Police webpage today, you won't see any updated information. Have the police not learned anything after the flier was put together almost three years ago?

Beth was reported missing at 10:48PM on Monday night, May 24, 2010. This was well after she was expected to return to Woodstock with her friend, Jenn, in order to pick up her car from Jenn's garage and drive home before her husband arrived home from work. Where did this timetable come from? From Jenn Wyatt on June 10.

Surely, Jenn had told the Woodstock Police the same information. Right? Did Jenn explain why Beth had turned over a rental car to her in Mount Vernon? Or why she (Jenn) drove the rental car without a valid driver's license? Or when she drove back? Or by what route? Or when she first became worried about meeting back up with Beth?

This is a Missing Person case, according to the Woodstock Police Department. It's not a criminal case. Yet the Woodstock Police Department has released little information. And it denies FOIA requests. Perhaps it's time to follow the lead of FirstElectricNewspaper.com in its quest for a report from the McHenry County Sheriff's Department and involve the Public Access Counselor of the Illinois Attorney General's Office and, if necessary, McHenry County Circuit Court.

Have other law-enforcement agencies been involved? Mount Vernon (Ill.) P.D.? Jefferson County (Ill.) Sheriff's Department? Centralia (Ill.) P.D.? Illinois State Police (Zone 7 Investigations)? Did the State Police take over the case?

In most Missing Person cases, the police solicit and invite help from the public. In most Missing Person cases, the family is relentless in its quest for help from the public. By April 2011 a restaurant owner in Harvard had already taken down the flier about Beth, believing that Beth had been found in Miami. Wrong ...  Who told that restaurant owner that Beth had been found?

Is this really a criminal investigation case?