Crime Junkie - MISSING: Mary Badaracco

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

When a 38-year-old woman leaves her home - and a violent marriage - without saying goodbye, her two adult daughters suspect her husband. By the time police take interest in the file and begin investigating, years have passed and the case is cold. If you have any information regarding the disappearance and possible homicide of Mary Badaracco please contact the Connecticut State Police Western District Major Crime Squad at #800-376-1554 or email [e-mail]  For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/. Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/missing-mary-badaracco/ 

Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers. And I'm Britt. And today's story is about a missing woman, the complicated relationship she had with her husband, and two daughters who've spent almost 40 years searching for answers. This is the story of Mary Bartiraco. It's near the end of August, 1984, when 21-year-old Sherry Passaro's phone rings. It's her step-sister, Donna, calling to say that Donna's dad,

who would be Sherry's step-father, wants to talk to both of them about their weddings. And, yeah, weddings, plural, because both Sherry and Donna are engaged at the time. Sherry says, okay, no problem. But in her head, she's thinking, this is super weird, because her step-dad, Dominic Bartiraco, had never asked to meet with her before.

Like, never. And what's even weirder is that Dominic got Donna to call instead of just asking Sherry's own mom, 38-year-old Mary, to do it. But she jumps into her car and heads to their place in Sherman, Connecticut, a small town right outside the New York border. The house Mary and Dominic live in now isn't the one Sherry grew up in. That house had been in Danbury 25 minutes away, but once Sherry and her younger sister Beth and Dominic's four kids

were grown and left the nest, Dominic and Mary bought this place. According to a piece published by Republican American, Dominic paid for the house in cash, almost $115,000, and the two spent a year renovating it before they moved in. Now, the deed to the house was actually in Mary's name, and Dominic, quote, encouraged her to call it her dream home. End quote, which I thought was just worth saying, because, like, she never said it was her dream home.

He just kept telling her it was. He's just like, this is your dream home. I was just going to say, like, that feels weird that he would encourage that if she's not, like, also incredibly enthusiastic about calling it her dream home. I encourage all of you that crime junkies your favorite podcast. Anyways, as Sherry gets closer to the house, she sees her mother's car parked at the end of their long driveway. But when she pulls in and drives past the car,

she notices that the driver's side windshield is broken and the glass is all over the inside of the car. Sherry gets to the house and Dominic comes out to meet her. But instead of wedding talk, he takes her by total surprise and tells Sherry that her mother is gone. He says Mary left her car keys and her wedding ring on the kitchen table and just left. Sherry is shocked, like, what do you mean she just left?

And he basically sums it up like, well, we've been talking about this for a while now and she wanted out of the marriage and I wasn't about to stop her. So according to Rick Green's reporting for the Hartford Current, he goes on to tell Sherry that they made some kind of agreement that basically, like, says he's gonna give her $100,000 so he can keep the house and she could just leave. And Dominic tells Sherry that on August 20th, he came home from work to find that Mary, her things,

and that $100,000 in cash were all gone from the house. Okay, that's like the most under-the-table divorce settlement I have ever heard of. Yeah, the whole thing is bizarre, but at least part of it actually doesn't come as a surprise to Sherry. You see, she knew that their marriage had always been, I mean, in a word, toxic. I mean, Dominic was toxic. He'd been married to her mom for 15 years

and every single one of those years had been violent, like, physically violent. Mary had tried to shield her kids from it. Like, she'd send them off to friends' houses when she sensed an incident was coming so that they wouldn't be there to see it. But Sherry and her sister Beth, they knew. It was impossible not to know.

They'd come home and the house would be trashed and their mom would be covered in bruises. Sometimes the injuries were bad enough she would end up at the hospital for treatment. But it wasn't just physical violence either. Dominic was a classic abuser in every sense. There was emotional and mental abuse. He was controlling, especially with money.

Like, even though he carried a ton of cash around, according to Daniela Forte and Andy Tebow's reporting for the News Times, he'd keep $100 bills in one pocket and small bills in another. And he'd only ever give Mary, like, the exact amount of whatever the bill was or, like, however much he thought it would cost for groceries.

So, like, I'm not gonna give you 100 bucks to eat groceries. I'm gonna give you, like, $88 to go get groceries because that's exactly how much it's gonna cost. Right, right. So was he ever violent with the kids, too? Well, that News Times article mentions that Dominic would hit the kids with a belt and that he kept this spanking paddle with their names on it.

But that kind of thing really wasn't that uncommon at the time. Yeah, but that, combined with the tension at home, like, that whole environment, it couldn't have felt safe. No, no, no, not at all. And Sherri even used to sleep in her car sometimes. And basically, the minute she turned 18, she moved out. But her mom, her mom had always been committed to making her marriage with Dominic work,

despite the violence, despite the shady people he had in his life, despite the many extramarital affairs Dominic had over the years. But here's the thing, Sherri had noticed a shift in her mom lately. She'd never been one to pull punches. Mary's a tough lady. But the last time they hung out, Sherri noticed her mother had been off. Off how?

Off like edgy, agitated, like something was wrong. And when Sherri had stopped the house to pick up her mom like a week before this, Mary had told her that Dominic was cheating on her again. And that this time, though, she had just met with a lawyer. So it seemed to Sherri like her mom might finally be ready to divorce him. Now, during this time when Mary is telling her this, like again, this is like a week before, Sherri was still there when Dominic came home.

And as soon as he walked through the door, she said she could like sense the shift in her mom's whole vibe. Like it was immediate. She seemed really nervous, almost like when they'd been kids and that like tension was building. Okay, but meeting with a lawyer isn't piecing out with no word and a hundred grand. Right. Well, and also you said her car was at the bottom of the driveway, right?

Like she packed up her stuff and loaded it into what then? I have no idea. Dominic actually doesn't offer up any kind of explanation for why she left it or the thing that stands out to me, why the window on it was broken. Right. And as I understand it, it was her car, like not a car that they shared between the two of them. So if she truly left, there would be no reason for her to leave it behind.

But Sherri is too stunned to, I think, even ask questions at this point. So Dominic tells Sherri all of this and says, first, would you mind packing up the rest of your mom's stuff? And second, if you could just do me a favor, don't mention anything about any of this to anyone, not even your sister. Like if you could, just keep the whole thing to yourself for now. I'm sorry. He asked her to do what now?

Yeah. Dominic tells Sherri that his lawyer's going to handle everything. And according to John Pirro's News Times coverage, poor Sherri is still so intimidated by Dominic, even as an adult, that she agrees. The whole thing seems sudden for sure, but maybe her mother just finally had enough. Given what she's been through with Dominic, it could make sense. What definitely doesn't make sense, though, is what Sherri finds when she goes into the house. When Sherri comes back later that day to pack up the rest of her mom's stuff from the house,

she pretty quickly realizes that there's nothing left of her mother's stuff in this house. The closets, the dressers, all empty. Sherri told current reporter Rick Green, quote, there was nothing there. I opened drawers, there was nothing. Not one odd sock, not one old shirt, end quote. Even more disturbing, though, is that all of the family pictures with Mary in them are gone. Like I'm talking taken right out of the frame, gone. The only trace that Sherri finds of her mother, the only thing that suggests Mary had ever even lived in this house,

is her art supplies and a few empty perfume bottles. Okay, so let me get this straight. Dominic says that Mary made this kind of rash last minute kind of decision to leave the marriage telling anyone, including her children. And then somehow also had time to move literally every single thing she owned, except for some art supplies. And I'd like to also come back to, she's loading them into, what, a mystery vehicle because her car is still here. Right, it doesn't make sense to Sherri. She and her sister and their mom, they were close.

And she just can't imagine that her mother would leave without telling them. Not only that, but her family had a lot of great things going on at the time. Sherri, remember, was engaged in planning a wedding and her sister Beth just had a baby making Mary a grandmother for the first time. And she loved that. So none of this is sitting right with Sherri, but she knows what Dominic is capable of. And so she still does as he asked and tells no one, not even her sister, while she hopes and prays for a call from her mother. But that call never comes. At some point over the next several days, Beth does find out about her mother being gone.

Not from Sherri, who's still keeping this secret, but from her step-sister, Donna. While the series of events over the next few days isn't, like, clearly outlined in what little is out there for source material, I know two things for sure. One, on August 29th, Dominic files for divorce, citing abandonment. And two, on August 31st, Sherri and Beth, still terrified of Dominic but growing more and more concerned for their mother by the minute, decide to report Mary missing to police. Sherri and Beth tell law enforcement that they last saw their mom on the 19th. This is 12 days prior. And even though Dominic says Mary left on her own, they don't believe it.

They don't trust him. Something is not right. Now, police take down some basic details, but it's clear from the get-go that they are not feeling the same sense of concern or urgency as Sherri and Beth. Sherri told the Republican American that she remembers the officer asking why they picked busy Labor Day weekend to file a report. Reluctantly or not, police get the high-level details from Sherri and Beth about their mother's sudden disappearance and agree to look into it. And on September 1st, they finally make their way to Sherman to talk to Dominic. Dominic says that Mary had met privately with their lawyer and had agreed to the settlement arrangement where she would turn over the house in exchange for about $100,000. Now, police obviously noticed Mary's car right away, especially that smashed and windshield, and Dominic says that he can explain that.

He said he smashed the windshield himself in a rage because his wife had left with another man and his money. Wait, there's another man? That's new, right? That's what Dominic tells police. And as far as I know, they don't challenge him or even ask any follow-up questions. They just take him at his word. I mean, do they search the car or poke around the house or anything like that? Or, I don't know, maybe talk to the lawyer to verify the story? As far as I'm aware of, like, none of that. Because for police, there's no evidence of foul play.

There's not even any evidence that a crime has been committed, which means no probable cause to them for a search or anything like that. Now, granted, in my mind, you don't need probable cause to, like, verify a story, but they're not feeling like they need to. Now, the one thing I will say, the closest they have to a crime being committed and something that they feel like is worth looking into is the $100,000 Dominic says Mary took when she left. But Dominic doesn't want to report that as stolen or pursue any charges or anything. Well, I thought he said it was part of the settlement, like, on the up and up through their lawyer. Yeah, again, I don't think they're saying that she stole it. I think this might be like a Hail Mary pass, like, hey, if you want us to look into anything. We can maybe look into it this way. Right.

Which I think is just bananas. There are years of domestic violence, and that's not enough to start setting off some major alarm bells for anyone. It seems impossible to me that it wouldn't. That Republican American piece mentions that there are three officers who go to the house that day, all state troopers. And I mean, I just really struggle to understand how they could look at a smashed window, a missing wife, a guy with a track record of domestic violence against that wife, and kind of think, nothing to see here, but yet that's exactly what happens. Yeah, definitely nothing whatsoever fishy about that. Yeah, police just take Dominic at his word full stop. There is a teensy little blip a few days after this visit when police hear that Dominic has moved another woman and her daughters into the house.

But when they ask him about it, like, hey, what's this? Some kind of like new wife who dissituation? He's like, no, no, no, no, no. You've got it all wrong. And he's like, you know, I actually moved out of the house to stay with my sister for a while and I'm renting the place to this woman. She's just my tenant. And do the police take his word on that too? Well, I know that the information is notable enough to make its way into a police report, which says to me that they were at least maybe potentially a little suspicious about it. Like, huh, that's interesting. Yeah, but there's nothing that I can find about a follow up. So even if they found it interesting, like you're saying, not interesting enough to really do anything about it. So fast forward, nine months goes by. Nothing really happens. And then in May 1985, Dominic goes to court for a hearing to officially finalize the divorce.

At the hearing, he tells the judge the same story he told Sherry so many months before that he and Mary had been planning for this divorce together, apparently. And she agreed to give him the home in exchange for the $100,000. And when he came home from work on August 20, Mary and her things and the $100,000 worth of quote goods and cash that he had stashed around the house were just gone. And he's like, no one has heard or seen from her since I want this divorce. Now worth noting is as part of these proceedings, he asked the judge to transfer the deed of the house and the ownership of Mary's car into his name. And it happens with that the divorce is complete. No tough questions of any kind just done, which paves the way for Dominic to get married again, which is exactly what he does in July of 1986. And he gets married to a woman named Joan Perone, who, surprise, surprise, also happens to be the woman who, you know, moved into his house with her children a week after Dominic says Mary left him. I mean, of course. Of course.

So Dominic probably thought that that was the end. The divorce is final. He's got a new wife and new stepchildren. And since police aren't looking for Mary, they're leaving him alone to live his new life. But it doesn't last long because the very next month, this whole case that wasn't even really looking like much of a case gets shaken up. According to coverage in the Hartford Current in August of 1986, police get a tip from an informant. He's a former member of the local chapter of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang who's now in witness protection. And he tells them that he knows exactly what happened to Mary Bararaco. And she didn't just leave her husband and kids on her own. The informant tells police that Mary had been killed, a contract hit by two members of the gang, and turns out the Bararaco family definitely had some ties to the Hells Angels. Specifically, Dominic's son Joey, who Rick Green reported is an acknowledged member. Police go interview the informant and sure enough, he says Joey and this other guy killed Mary at Dominic's direction. To make way for this new wife?

So that's what I would have guessed, but no. Apparently, the informant tells them that Mary had threatened to tell the police incriminating information about Dominic. What kind of incriminating information though? No idea. But police take the informant's tip and interview Joey, or should I say they try to interview Joey? As far as I can tell, he doesn't do more than deny having anything to do with any of this before his lawyer basically cuts the interview short. Okay, but you said the informant named Joey and another guy. Who's the other guy? So it's this other guy named Steve, and they do track him down. I mean, it's not hard since the guy's in prison at this point, but he refuses to talk to them. He does, however, agree to take a polygraph, which he fails. According to the Republican-American piece I mentioned, the examiner finds he was lying when he said he'd never seen Mary, and he was lying when he said he didn't know if a member of the Hells Angels gang had killed her.

Even with this failed polygraph though, no one's really talking, so it doesn't take long before police are out of leads again. But Sherry and Beth aren't just about to give up, because they know in their heart of hearts that their mom didn't just walk away from her whole life for $100,000, away from her children, her grandchildren, everything that mattered to her. They know that something happened to their mom, and they are more certain than ever that Dominic is behind it. But again, what they face is that police aren't investigating at this point. Mary is a missing adult, and so her case to them is pretty low priority. And it's going to stay low priority as long as there are other murders and other sexual assaults and other high-profile crimes out there to try and solve. So Sherry and Beth know that if they're going to find out what happened to their mother, they're going to need to do something. So they start to lobby the government, hard, looking for support to get Mary's case reclassified from a missing person to a homicide. Now, it's not easy. The state representative who steps in to help them ends up having a brick thrown through her window and gets threats through her son from the Bataracos that she better mind her own business.

But she and Sherry and Beth stay focused. And finally, in 1990, six years after Mary supposedly walked away from her home, never to be seen or heard from again, Sherry and Beth succeed in having Mary's case reclassified as a homicide. And along with that reclassification comes a new $20,000 reward for information. So did anything change during that time to really convince police that they should be investigating this as a murder and not a missing person? So nothing changed. But I think the fact that nothing changed is also pretty telling. This is six years without contacting your family, not even one time. Right. So for someone like Mary whose entire life had been about her children, I think the fact that that continued on for so long had to have played a role in what made them do this reclassification. And another thing to point out in this six years, the Hartford current piece that Rick Green did says that there was never any trace found of the $100,000 that Mary supposedly took, which to me means like it wasn't deposited into her bank account. She didn't open a new account. So it's weird that she, nor the money, never popped up anywhere.

Right. And I mean, the entire premise of this disappearance is so, so shady to me. You have a missing woman, a husband with a history of domestic violence, the smashed windshield on the car that was left behind, and then the brand new living girlfriend a week later that he marries a year later, two years later. Less than that. Yeah. I'm not sure how no one looked at all of this and thought, I wonder if maybe we should, I don't know, search the house. Yeah. Enter the car as evidence, something other than ask a couple questions and do what seems like zero follow up. Right. I don't understand it either. Now, despite no movement in the case or evidence to suggest otherwise in 1991, Mary is declared legally dead.

But even with these milestones, even with the reward for information, the case still doesn't heat up. It's cold and it stays cold all the way through the 1990s. But maybe all it would take to see some movement is more money, because in October of 1999, the state increases the reward for information to $50,000. And then just two months after that, police announced that they've reopened Mary's case because of some new information, information that they say could be the most significant development so far. Oh, like what? Oh, they don't say what it is. Come on now, that would be too easy. Oh, why do you do that to me? I know, I know, but it's likely this new information is coming from someone talking because in August of 2000, Rick Green's story runs in the heart for current. And in it, he says this, quote, for years, police have felt there are those that know exactly what happened to Mary, but remained silent out of fear, end quote.

But the case being more active doesn't quite mean as much as Mary's daughters wished it would, because after this, three more years passed before police can shake a viable lead. This is now September 2003. That's when they get an anonymous call from a person saying that he has information on Mary's car. The one with the smashed windshield. That's the one. Yeah. So apparently at some point after Mary disappeared, and it's not clear exactly when, but her car disappeared as well. I mean, Dominic probably just sold it, right? So that would have been my first guess. But here's the thing, there's no record of it being sold. And that might be, as this anonymous caller says, because the car has actually been buried. Specifically, this caller says that a weird looking guy with white hair buried the car for Dominic.

I'm sorry, buried it? Where? We don't know, not yet anyway. As far as I understand it, that tip isn't investigated or followed up on until the next year, when a new detective takes over the file and starts trying to figure it out. So that detective traces the cell phone used to call in the tip to this guy who, at this point in our story, is behind bars. The detective has several conversations with this man who says that he overheard a man talking about burying the car for Dominic. Ethan Fry reported for The Times News that the conversation happened at this bar called Abe's, where Dominic was known to take bets on sporting events. And the person he was said to be talking to is this guy named Ernest Dachenhausen. And is this the weird looking guy with white hair? Apparently, yes. And it seems to take some time, but eventually the informant tells police where exactly Mary's car is supposed to have been buried on Ernest's property.

So they call him up and ask, hey, did you bury any cars? And at first Ernest says, I don't remember burying any cars. But eventually he comes around and says, you know what, you know, I might have actually buried four cars. Okay, Ashley, my dad wasn't excavating for a very long time. He's dug up and buried a lot of things in his life. He probably doesn't remember all of them. I'm pretty sure he'd remember burying four cars. Yes. Who forgets something like that? Yeah. So the detective hears this and he asks him, okay, well, you might have buried four cars, which cars? And Ernest shares the details of three of them. But he's like, I just can't remember anything about the fourth car I buried.

How incredibly convenient. Isn't it though? Now eventually his memory fires back up and he says, Oh, shocker. Yeah, it's funny how this keeps happening with Ernest, but he's like that fourth car, I think it was a blue Chevrolet Cavalier. And while Mary's car was gray, it too was a Cavalier. And here's the thing, Ernest kind of like chimes in and he's like, don't worry though, there were no dead bodies in any of the cars. Did anyone ask what? Isn't that strange?

Yeah. Also, because it's so strange in September 2007, police start digging. Thank God. The property that police are excavating is the one where Ernest lived in the 1980s around the time Mary disappeared followed by her car. Ernest isn't thrilled about this development, but he agrees to meet police at the site to help point them in the right direction in terms of where they should dig. I'm sorry, going from I never buried a car in my life to hey, to like it's over there. Oh my God. In the course of a week, police excavate six feet down into the earth on this property using sonar and heavy equipment, and they uncover all kinds of treasures.

Like you want to talk about a guy who buried some stuff. There's a fridge, there's two ovens, burnt wood, clothes, bags of garbage, and sure enough vehicles, at least three of them. Some of them are in pieces. Obviously we're looking for the car, but you're saying clothing and bags of garbage, like did any of this stuff belong to Mary? Unfortunately, not. In fact, nothing police find during that search has anything to do with Mary's death or disappearance. But that doesn't mean the lead was a dead end. According to Ethan Fry's reporting, when the investigator tells Ernest that they didn't find a Chevy Cavalier during the search after all, his response was quote,

If you ain't got it, I don't remember, end quote. Oh my God. It was just one of several statements Ernest made to police during the murder investigation that were, at the very least, cagey. But in some cases, flat out misleading. I would say cagey is generous, honestly. Yeah. But if his plan was to send police on a wild goose chase as a way to, like, take the heat off of him, it doesn't work. Because in April 2008, police charge Ernest with interfering with their investigation.

And then, a few months later, in September, police are back out searching another property associated with Ernest. And this time, it's a home that was built just after Mary disappeared in September of 1984. Dirk Parrafort covered the search for the news times and said Ernest was one of a small group of subcontractors on that house building project. Surprise, surprise, he did the excavation work. And it turns out Dominic's stepson's subcontracted on that job, too. Wait, he has stepson's? I thought Mary only had two daughters. So Dominic had actually been married once before Mary.

And I assume that these are his, like, first wives children. Again, I'm not 100% sure, but what I do know for sure is that Dominic, along with a business partner named Rocky Richter, owned a roofing and siding business at the time. While the source material doesn't connect the dots precisely, Dirk Parrafort's piece says that the stepson's did the siding work. Anyway, despite extensive search of the land that includes using ground penetrating radar and electromagnetic imaging, police turn up nothing at this site, either. Ernest goes to trial on those interference charges the next spring. This is now 2009.

And he's acquitted. And while the searches of his properties, the arrest, the trial, don't get Sherry and Beth any closer to finding out what happened to their mother, it's not a complete wash, either. Because during that trial, for the first time in 25 years, police finally name a suspect in Mary's murder, Dominic Bararaco. He's named because he was the last person to see her alive, because of his history of domestic violence and infidelity,

and because of the inconsistent information he'd given police over the years, according to the news times. So what you're saying is because of all the stuff they knew 25 years ago? Bingo. Naming Dominic as a suspect out loud is hardly a surprise to anyone, really, but definitely not to Sherry and Beth, because, like I said earlier on, they have believed all along that Dominic was behind their mother's disappearance. And the fact that he hasn't spoken to them, period, since they reported Mary missing all those years ago, for them is just further proof of his guilt.

But again, I feel like this is something people have known, you know, in their gut for decades. Is there any way they can actually prove it now? No, they're gonna need more, which is why, quietly, sometime in 2010, a grand jury begins an investigation into Mary's murder, with Dominic as their main suspect, and his son, Joey, not far behind. Now, this isn't your typical federal grand jury with members of the public being called in to determine whether or not the state can bring charges. That's the kind we talk about most on this show.

This is a state grand jury led by a single appointed judge. I don't know if I've ever heard of this before. Apparently, they used to be pretty common in Connecticut, but at the time, this one begins like it's pretty infrequent, actually. Now, because grand juries are supposed to be secret, we don't know a whole lot about what happens over the next year, year and a half. But apparently, over 60 people were called to testify, including Dominic's son, Joey, Mary's daughter, Sherry and Beth, and a 90-year-old neighbor who used to babysit for the

Bataraco kids, according to John Pirro's News Times coverage. And did Dominic testify? Apparently, he was never called. And even though Joey was called, it seems that he didn't end up actually testifying in the end because of an illness. Again, the whole thing is like very cloak and dagger. Like, the prosecutor's office won't confirm or deny the grand jury's existence, even. But if it's true that Dominic was never called and Joey was called but never testified,

then I'm not sure how the grand jury could even wrap up its work. Like, that feels very incomplete to me. Yeah, like especially when you could reschedule Joey's testimony. You'd think? That seems really bizarre. Yeah, but ultimately, they do wrap up their investigation. And what was the result? We don't know.

As soon as the final report is filed by the judge, it's sealed. Seriously? Yeah. So that means no charges then, right? No murder charges, no. But in April 2012, police do actually arrest Dominic. Again, not for murder, but for bribery. What?

Yeah, apparently back in November 2010, Dominic called a sitting judge, asking for, quote, help with the whole grand jury situation. And that help, according to court documents referenced in an NBC Connecticut story by Leanne Gendro and Jeff Saperstone was, quote, worth 100 Gs, end quote. Okay, so is this just some random judge or what's the story? So this judge is Superior Court Judge Robert Brunetti, who'd acted as counsel for Dominic and Rocky for their roofing and siding business. And apparently used to like golf with the guys sometimes too.

So a buddy? Sounds like a buddy to me. Now, this whole thing happened just as the grand jury was starting its investigation, about two months in. And Judge Brunetti says that Dominic was 100% trying to influence the outcome of that investigation and more specifically trying to just make it go away. Now, Dominic denies that there was ever any bribery, but his bank records say otherwise. They show that Dominic withdrew about 185,000 from two retirement accounts

two days before Judge Brunetti says that he got the call. And a month later, the money went back into the retirement accounts. Okay, so how does he explain that? Well, Dominic's now wife, Joan, testifies at trial that she didn't want Dominic to just sit in jail while she got money together to like bond him out. So in addition to the 185,000 that they pulled from the retirement savings, she also had the house appraised and called a bail bondsman. She says after a month with no charges, they went ahead and put the money back into the IRA.

So she was like getting things lined up in case things went south or something. That's what she testifies, right? But Judge Brunetti says that Dominic and his business partner Rocky called him several times in September of 2010 looking for more information about the grand jury investigation. But it wasn't until November when that conversation happened about the 100 grand that the judge reported the call to police. And actually, he worked with police to set up a meeting and try and get Dominic on the record, but the meeting ended up like falling through.

Ultimately, though, even though like they couldn't record him or like set up this, I imagine this meeting was like a sting operation. Yeah. But even though it didn't happen, the judge's testimony was enough for the jury. And after just three hours of deliberation, they find Dominic, 77 years old at this point, guilty of trying to bribe a judge and they sentenced him to seven years in prison. That's something, I guess. It is something.

And truly, the hope for investigators is that with this guy behind bars, maybe people who weren't willing to come forward before may possibly feel safe to do so now. But that still doesn't happen. And in July 2016, after serving less than half of his sentence, Dominic is granted early release for good behavior. And because at 80 now, they think he's at low risk to reoffend. So that's it? Like the investigation is just over? The investigation isn't over, per se.

It just hasn't been super active. I mean, not for a lack of trying. Over the years, both the police and Mary's daughters have explored all kinds of avenues to try and generate leads. They've consulted psychics. They've done television appearances, gotten the case literally featured on like America's Most Wanted. They put up billboards and featured Mary's case in a deck of playing cards that goes out to inmates. But none of it has led them to Mary, not to her body, not to her car, and not to the truth about what happened to her in August of 1984.

Okay, so I have one last question. I'm sure you guys all heard how incensed I was about Ernest. Did police ever go back to Ernest's place to dig again to see if they could find that fourth car? As far as I can tell, they didn't. The only other physical searching they did was at that other property the second time, the one that Ernest worked on as the house was being built or whatever. But I'm with you. He to me is still the piece that sticks out. All of the information he was giving to police was inaccurate. Starting with that wishy-washy, like, I don't bury cars, a way that I buried four, one's over there, one's over there.

All the way to pointing police in the totally wrong direction in terms of where to dig. He was trying to stifle them all the way through. So I don't know if they just don't believe there is even a fourth car or if the digging they did was enough to confirm that there is. Or is not, I don't know. Like, I don't know if they have enough or if they've just kind of given up on that lead because, like, we've dug in all the places we know, where else would we look? Right. I guess I'm stuck on, like, what now?

The police, the family, they all have this really strong and I think fairly valid suspicion of what happened, but they're just waiting for someone to come forward with information? That seems like exactly what's happening. Police aren't even ruling out a possible deathbed confession in this case at some point, but in the meantime, Sherry and Beth are still waiting for answers about what happened to their mother all those years ago. There is still a $50,000 reward out there that's up for grabs.

So if anyone listening has any information, no matter how big or how small or where to freaking start digging, please contact the Connecticut State Police. We're going to put all of that contact information on our website at crimejunkiepodcast.com and right here in the show notes for this episode. Again, if you want that contact information or any of the source material for this episode, you can find that on our website crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. And we'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production. So, what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?