Mary Badaracco

I have copied this well written column about missing mother, Mary Badaracco which tells the story of a daughter's search for her mother who has been missing for 24 years. The story has the same elements as many others that have been told here before.


Take on Life: Unsolved Badaracco murder case still hurts
By Brian Koonz
STAFF WRITER
Article Last Updated: 08/20/2008 09:00:24 AM ED

Some anniversaries are marked with candlelight dinners and plane tickets. They are cause for celebration, moments to inhale life in deep, delicious gulps.

Other anniversaries, like the one Beth Profeta observed this week, are just the opposite. They are licenses for pain, moments when it's impossible to inhale anything.

Profeta should know.

It's been 24 years since she lost her mother, Mary Badaracco, to a cold-blooded killer. Although the Sherman woman's body was never found, police declared her a homicide victim in 1990.

"How would I describe how I feel?" Profeta said Tuesday. "It's primal. I wake up every single day and I miss her. But I know deep in my heart (police) are within reach of breaking this thing wide open.

"If the right person would just come forward and give us what we need, I could bury my mother and move on. Until then, it's just hard. It's the hardest thing I've ever faced.

"Every day I think, this could be our day for a miracle. And then I try to think what I can do to speed up the process."

On Sunday, Profeta and her family will hold a memorial service at the Lourdes Shrine in Litchfield. The event is billed as a healing service, a chance to get the word out about Mary Badaracco and the thousands like her who are missing -- and feared dead -- in the United States.

The service is one of 30 stops that representatives of the CUE Center for Missing Persons will make on a two-week tour. The North Carolina-based organization, founded in 1994, gives grieving families a reason to believe beyond the odds, beyond the years.

According to Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance, Mary Badaracco's case is very much open. There's no reason to give up now.

"We are actively working on this case and following each and every lead that we receive," Vance said Tuesday in a voicemail to The News-Times.

There were no hiccups of hesitation in his voice. Vance spoke with the kind of quiet confidence that comes when leads turn into interlocking pieces, even after 24 years.

Granted, there are still holes in this puzzle. But not for long, not if witnesses with good eyes and better ears finally show the courage to step forward.

"We believe there are people out there with information," Vance said succinctly.

Profeta believes it, too. And the admission is tearing her up inside.

"To know people can actually live with themselves without coming forward, to know they can actually look at themselves in the mirror, is very hard for me to deal with," she said.

A year ago, the state police dug a hole in a Newtown backyard as part of their investigation into Badaracco's murder. Vance called it "a rather large excavation" in his voicemail Tuesday.

When the job was completed, state police had pulled out at least one motor vehicle and several pieces of physical evidence. At the time, they said "detectives have developed several leads and have developed information in this homicide as a result of that excavation."

And yet, the Newtown excavation is nothing compared to the hole in Profeta's heart, the one that never seems to heal.

In April, police moved another step closer to solving her mother's murder when they arrested Danbury's Ernest Dachenhausen and charged him with interfering with an officer in relation to the 2007 excavation. Dachenhausen owned the Newtown property at the time Badaracco disappeared.

The state police are getting closer. Beth Profeta can feel it.

Next August will be the 25th anniversary of Mary Badaracco's disappearance. The acknowledgment is nearly too much for Profeta to bear. But the alternative -- the questions, the emptiness, the uncertainty -- is even worse.

Beth Profeta deserves better. More importantly, so does her mother.

Contact Brian Koonz at bkoonz@newstimes.com or at (203) 731-3411.
Name -- Mary Badaracco
Last seen -- August 1984 in Sherman
Age at disappearance -- 38.
Anyone with information -- Call the Connecticut State Police in Southbury at 1 (800) 376-1554 or 1(203) 267-2200
To text an anonymous tip -- Text 274637 (crimes), use the Connecticut State Police code "TIP 711," and leave details.

http://www.newstimes.com/ci_10250618?source=most_emailed

http://4yourinfo-finder.blogspot.com/2008/08/what-happened-to-mary-badaracco.html

http://peace4missing.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=2153128%3ABlogPost%3A6882

http://rewardfund.yourtribute.com/_w3/rewardfund102820044915/-vid-/thepage/Homepage/template/dbox/w3_/template_src/templates/dbox/home

http://websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53816

http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/b/badaracco_mary.html

http://www.projectjason.org/forums/index.php?topic=1681.0