Beth Bentley
CENTRALIA, Ill. - A discovery of what authorities are calling human remains on the Jefferson County side of rural Centralia about a week and a half ago has ramped up the interest in a missing persons case in southern Illinois.
Why the information took 11 days to get out remains a mystery, but it's about par for the course with the situation surrounding Benedetta (Beth) Rogers Bentley, of Woodstock in upstate, who, in May of 2010 at the age of 41, disappeared from the face of the earth.
Her disappearance and the activities of some (not all) of her family in their attempts to find their missing loved on have been chronicled heavily here at the site; you can read about them at this link.
Bentley was one of many who went missing in 2010 in downstate Illinois and have either never been heard from again, or whose remains were later found. 2010 was a bad year for the missing in southern Illinois.
Remains were found in a rural area of Centralia on the Jefferson County side (Centralia zip codes sit in four counties, with JeffCo being the one on the southwest side) on December 4, and Illinois State Police were called and began working the case. Apparently, the remains were charred bones which are believed to be human. Despite the charring, authorities apparently believe they might be able to extract DNA which, if there's anything in the database that will match it, might be used to solve a missing persons case. And because Bentley was last known to have been traveling to the Centralia Amtrak station after having been in the Mt. Vernon, Illinois, area, visiting a friend, any possible identification efforts are of course being done with that in mind.
There for awhile, we were in touch with certain members of the family who have very viable, plausible explanations for what may have happened...and these explanations have to do with a dysfunctional situation up north. In short, it's entirely possible that downstate was nothing more than a dumping ground for her body...the actual crime, these folks allege, occurred up north, and the "missing persons" situation is part of the ploy.
It's hoped that the folks with those suspicions have expressed them to the authorities. If you have any information, feel free to contact the official website for Bentley's disappearance (along with your local authorities). And if anything further develops, we'll bring it...be watching.