Joan Bernal Missing December 1988 Illinois
19-Year-Old Unsolved Case Similar To Stacy Peterson's POSTED: 12:27 pm CST December 9, 2007 UPDATED: 12:46 pm CST December 9, 2007 JOLIET, Ill. -- Detectives scoured the country -- even going as far as Mexico -- in hopes of finding a 55-gallon barrel, similar to the one that appears to be the focus of the Stacy Peterson investigation. Investigators hoped finding the barrel, with Joan Bernal's body in it, would produce the evidence needed to secure a murder conviction against her new husband. But 19 years to the day after her friends and family last saw the mother of three, her case remains unsolved, and Joan's mother can't help but draw a parallel to the case of missing Bolingbrook mother Stacy Peterson. Before she disappeared, Joan apparently told a relative of her husband's threat, 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. Joan's husband, Gilbert Bernal, was charged with her murder in 1993, even though prosecutors could not find a body. According to media reports from the time, 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. Wilms believes those witnesses were planted by Bernal. It's similar, she says, to how former Bolingbrook police Sgt. Drew Peterson's attorney said he has a letter indicating his missing wife, Stacy, was seen in a Peoria supermarket. "I swear that Drew Peterson has taken a lesson from" Joan's case, Wilms said. "It sounds so similar." Wilms 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. Though Joan's body has never been found, her mother fears she is dead. Joan 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. Joan divorced Larry Stanfill - the man who would raise two of her children after she disappeared - to marry Bernal, a mechanic at the bus barn with whom she was "enamored," according to her mother. Stanfill, a 57-year-old Joliet man, said he remained close to Joan. Stanfill had custody of Lex, Joan's older child with another man, and Larissa, their child together. Every two weeks, though, Joan was allowed visitation, an event that she wouldn't miss for the world, Stanfill said. In December 1988, Joan was slated to go on a trip with Bernal to 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 the state. "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." According to media reports from Bernal's indictment, a witness said Joan and her new husband got into a fight that evening in their home about the children. "The witness said Bernal struck his wife on the arm and grabbed her by the hair," the Chicago Tribune quoted sheriff’s Sgt. Marty Shifflet as saying. "He yanked her head back and then forward, and at that point, she went limp, her eyes closed and he dragged her out of the bedroom." Bernal told investigators a different story, saying 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, Okla. Stanfill said he later became suspicious after Joan missed her visitation after the planned trip. "She didn't come to pick up the kids on a regular visitation two weeks after this trip," he said. "I called up the house and Gilbert answered the phone. I said, 'Where's Joan,' and he told me this story that he had put her on the bus, and she didn't come back home." Both Larry Stanfill and Lex Stanfill, Joan's first son, said Bernal was a violent man. Often, Joan and her children would spend the night in a battered women's shelter because of him, they said. Bernal declined to be interviewed for this story, but in a conversation he acknowledged that he is violent and that Joan was often the subject of that violence. Bernal said Joan is still alive and that she's living in either Tennessee or Kentucky. Larry Stanfill said he began raising questions about Joan's disappearance again this summer when Lisa Stebic was reported missing and her case garnered the national media spotlight. "I've seen the stories of all these other missing women and the publicity they are getting. I figured maybe it's time to throw Joan's story out there," Stanfill said. Joan's mother said when she first reported her daughter missing, the family was told to keep quiet to avoid jeopardizing the investigation. The first news stories didn't appear until several years later, she said. "If we had been allowed to publicize this like Lisa Stebic's or Stacy Peterson's families, somebody possibly could have come forward with the needed information," Wilms said. Copyright 2007, Chicago Sun-Times Inc. http://www.nbc5.com/news/14808094/detail.html