Joan Bernal

[Lorie Taylor]

Joan Bernal
Missing since December 9, 1988 from Joliet, Illinois
Classification: Endangered Missing



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Circumstances of Disappearance
In December 1988, Joan was slated to go on a trip with her husband to Edinburg, Texas. Investigators said they believe that Gilbert Bernal killed his wife on December 9, 1988, after quarreling about taking her children on a planned trip to Texas. The couple had five children from previous relationships and one child together. Bernal made the trip with their 2-year-old daughter and reported his wife missing when he returned two weeks later. Bernal told investigators that she went on the trip but felt bad about leaving her children and wanted to go back home to see them. Bernal said he gave his wife $1,500 before she boarded a Joliet-bound bus in McAllister, Oklahoma. But investigators found that she never made the trip.
Bernal was charged with Joan's murder in 1993. Before she disappeared, Joan apparently told a relative of her husband's threat. He allegedly said he could kill her and put her in a barrel and make sure nobody would find her. The arrest followed a variety of leads, including information provided by a witness who saw the quarrel that led to the slaying.
Witnesses said Bernal was a violent man. Often, Joan and her children would spend the night in a battered women's shelter. Bernal's son said he saw his father choking his stepmother shortly before she disappeared. According to court records, the son said he, his father, stepmother and infant sister set out on a Texas trip but turned around and returned to Crest Hill on December 9, 1988. He says he waited in the car while the couple went into their house and he watched through a window while his father and stepmother quarreled. He told police that the couple fought and Bernal grabbed his wife by the throat and then put her body on a bed when she appeared to lose consciousness. He said Bernal returned to the car and the three drove away without the woman. Joan Bernal's body was never found.
The indictment hinged in large part on the relative's barrel-related testimony, coupled with other witnesses who said Bernal purchased two such barrels shortly before the alleged murder. Only one of the barrels was found in his garage.
But, charges against Bernal were dropped 11 months later after investigators still couldn't find a body and witnesses said Joan was seen in Chicago Heights and Tennessee. The last alleged sighting was in December 1992. Bernal claims Joan is still alive and that she's living in either Tennessee or Kentucky.

Joan was a driver with the Joliet Mass Transit District.



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Investigators
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:

Joliet Police Department
815-726-2491

[Lorie Taylor]

Found By Sue:

'It sounds so similar' to Peterson case
JOLIET | Mom vanishes in 1988, body never found

December 9, 2007
BY PATRICK FERRELL Joliet Herald News

JOLIET -- Detectives scoured the country, even going so far as Mexico, in hopes of finding a 55- gallon barrel similar to the one in the Stacy Peterson investigation.

Investigators hoped finding the barrel -- with Joan Bernal's body in it -- would be the evidence needed to get a murder conviction against her new husband, Gilbert Bernal.

But 19 years to the day after her friends and family last saw the mother of three, her case remains unsolved, and Joan Bernal's mother can't help but draw a parallel to the case of the missing Bolingbrook mom.

"It sounds so similar."

Before she disappeared, Joan Bernal told a relative about a threat her husband allegedly had made on her life, her mother said.

"He said he could kill her and put her in a barrel and make sure nobody would find her," Florence Wilms of Downers Grove said.

Gilbert Bernal was charged with Joan's murder in 1993, although prosecutors didn't find a body. According to media reports at the time, the indictment hinged in large part on the barrel-related testimony, coupled with witnesses who said Gilbert Bernal bought two such barrels shortly before the alleged murder.

Only one of the barrels was found in his garage. But charges against Bernal were dropped 11 months later, after investigators still couldn't find a body and witnesses said Joan Bernal was seen in Chicago Heights and Tennessee.

Stacy Peterson, 23, was last seen Oct. 28. Authorities have named her husband, Drew Peterson, 53, a suspect, but he hasn't been charged. A nonprofit group helping to search for Stacy has said police asked them to look for a blue plastic barrel large enough to hide a body.
'My heart bleeds . . .'

Wilms said she also knows what Stacy's family and the family of missing Plainfield mother Lisa Stebic are going through.

"My heart bleeds for these families of these missing women," Wilms said. "I have a hole in my heart that can't heal."

Wilms said she fears her daughter is dead.

Joan Bernal was a driver with the Joliet Mass Transit District, a job she adored because she was a people person, her mother said.

"She relied on personal contact," Wilms said. "We called her the family newspaper because she was also keeping in contact with distant relatives."

Joan divorced Larry Stanfill to marry Gilbert Bernal, a mechanic at the bus barn whom she was "enamored" with, her mother said.

Stanfill, 57, of Joliet, said he remained close to Joan Bernal even after she "made a mistake" by marrying Gilbert Bernal.

Stanfill had custody of Lex, Joan's older child with another man, and Larissa, their child together. Every two weeks, Joan Bernal was allowed visitation, which she wouldn't miss for the world, Stanfill said.

In December 1988, Joan was to go with Bernal to his hometown of Edinburg, Texas. Joan's two children and the couple's 2½-• year-old daughter were supposed to go, as well. But Stanfill wouldn't allow the children to leave.

• "I had custody of the children; they were in school at the time, and I said, 'No, you can't leave town,' " Stanfill said. "That's the last time I saw Joan."