Sandra Bertolas: Gone but not Forgotten

With white shutters warming under the bright spring sunshine, Dorothy Bertolas’ small one-story home sits quietly along the sleepy residential streets of Menomonee Falls, Wis. The house’s interior is warm, snug, and neat as a pin. Its walls, all painted in a crisp eggshell white, are laden with relics of a time gone by. Years ago, Bertolas and her husband Albert raised a family of eight children in this house, two sons and six daughters. Their faces dot the photographs throughout the home, but none more than their youngest daughter, Sandra Bertolas.

A portrait in the living room shows a large, happy family. Sandra’s picture, taken in the late 1980s, is superimposed in front of her brothers and sisters. In the back hallway hangs a brass picture frame in the shape of a house. Each window and door has a different family member’s picture inside. Sandra’s photo is inside the front door.

The pictures, however, are more memorials than mementos.

Twenty-seven years after Sandra vanished, Dorothy Bertolas and her family have many questions that still need to be answered.

Sandra Bertolas was well known among her family and friends for being a diva, a fashionista, and always on the go and having fun. A part-time beautician at Cost Cutters, the 20-year-old was constantly experimenting with different cuts, colors, lipsticks, and eye shadows. She was perhaps the quintessential girlie girl.

“She always wanted to look perfect, colorful, and glamorous before she left the house,” recalled Bertolas’ eldest sister, Laura Duvernell. “She was always looking for sales and bargains, and always on the lookout for the latest fashions.”

Bertolas had a penchant for shopping, but without a lot of money she had begun sewing up her own creations. She was seldom seen without her large white handbag, the inside housing Bertolas’ large collection of cosmetics and haircare products. She was always ready for a last- minute primp, whether it was a smudge of blush or a squirt of hairspray to keep her dark, shoulder length curls exactly right.

“She was the ultimate socialite; the world revolved around her friends,” Duvernell said. “But she was also a good student with aspirations. As I remember, her beauty skills came out before she even became a beautician. She wasn’t done yet. She thought maybe she wanted to go into fashion design or maybe move to New York. So she went back to school so she could expand her horizons.”

On weekdays, Bertolas attended classes at Waukesha County Technical College, studying business and marketing during her first year. At home, she kept busy with homework and her weekly chores. Much to her displeasure, she was in charge of cleaning the kitchen floors. She doted on her cat, which she affectionately called “Kitty,” and loved playing with her nephews. On the weekends, Sandra hopped into her big white car and was often spotted shopping, gossiping, and stopping for ice cream at Oscar’s Custard Stand on Milwaukee’s South Side. She would frequently travel back and forth from Menomonee Falls to Milwaukee, leaving her car at a local bowling alley so she could carpool.

“I thought she was very funny. She really was a loving kid,” said Bertolas’ sister Paula Patoka, who fondly remembers her sister always tagging along when they were younger. “But she had dreams for her life, and she was starting to make it happen. She was coming around that bend from those crazy teen years and trying to figure out what she wanted to do. That’s when it all ended.”

On April 24, 1988, Bertolas spent the day at a friend’s bridal shower. She arrived home in the late afternoon, going straight to her room to rest and get ready for the night.

“She got a couple of calls, but didn’t say very much that I remember,” said Dorothy Bertolas, who says she was watching TV with family members at the time. “One of my daughters said she’d go get ice cream for everybody while we were watching. She went and knocked on the door of her bedroom and Sandra yelled ‘What!?’ She certainly didn’t want any ice cream and I knew she wasn’t happy.”

That night Bertolas, as she had told friends at the bridal shower that afternoon, was getting ready to see her boyfriend. The two had been dating for three months, but recently Bertolas had a hunch that something was not quite right. For the duration of their relationship, Bertolas and her boyfriend met at halfway points, never stepping foot in each other’s homes. He lived on Milwaukee’s South Side and would routinely meet Bertolas in various hangouts throughout the city. After three months, he had never met Bertolas’ parents or siblings, and Dorothy Bertolas would often hear the two quarreling over the phone.

Hiding the fact that he had a longstanding relationship with another woman in Milwaukee, Bertolas soon allegedly discovered her boyfriend had been using an alias with her.

“Something made her think that something was up with her boyfriend,” Pataka said. “She eventually had his license plate number run through. She had a hunch that something wasn’t right, and she found out what his real name was and where he lived.”

Livid and heartbroken after finding out the truth, Bertolas told friends at the shower she planned to confront him about the lies that night.

“I think she felt that he had made a fool of her,” Dorothy Bertolas said. “She came out about 8:15 p.m.; wearing her black coat with the white threads in it. She said she was going out, and I said goodbye. That was all.”

Bertolas never came home.

Albert Bertolas, Sandra’s father who has died, was alerted to Sandra’s disappearance and became concerned immediately. A longtime grade school teacher for the Milwaukee Public School District, Albert would often stay up into the night and wait for his youngest daughter to come home after nights out with friends. Subsequently, Albert would bear the brunt of the media’s relentless attention, and often became the sole spokesperson for the family.

“She was not the type to not call,” Dorothy Bertolas said. “She always called us because she got grounded too many times for staying out past the clock. Her father always said, ‘I don’t care if you’re going to stay overnight at your friend’s house, but please call us and tell us where you are.’”

Bertolas’ sister Laura remembers their father’s reaction the day after she went missing.

“It would have been totally uncharacteristic of her to not call at all, even if sometimes it was to see if someone had called while she was gone,” Duvernell said. “Within 24 hours, my dad was calling every hospital in the area. He already felt immediately that something was terribly wrong.”

At first, the Menomonee Falls Police Department brushed off the disappearance. Bertolas was nearly 21-years-old; surely she forgot to call home and would arrive in the coming days.

But Bertolas did not did not come home.

Three days later, on April 27, 1988, a girlfriend discovered Bertolas’ car, her prized possession, abandoned in the parking lot of the Red Carpet Lanes bowling alley in West Allis. No evidence of Bertolas’ disappearance was found. Not a drop of blood, no signs of a struggle in the car, no evidence in the trunk. With the car, however, the police now had a case.

Family members started distributing posters throughout the community, each with a picture of Bertolas, a phone number, the offer of a $1,000 reward, and the promise of anonymity for anyone with information. The media soon began following the story, propelling the family into the public eye.

“Once the media got involved it all changed,” Duvernell said. “Sometimes you’d get a prank call, and they’d say, ‘Hi Daddy, I’m your little girl,’ and hang up. It was awful. You’re wondering then for real, is she being kept in any way? That thought of being kept, that was something I couldn’t tolerate in my mind.”

In an interview with police, Bertolas’ boyfriend allegedly denied he had given her a fake name and insisted he had spent some time that night with his longtime girlfriend at her family’s home on Milwaukee’s South Side. His girlfriend’s statements were allegedly similar. The boyfriend, who at the time worked as an ambulance driver, was scheduled to take his agility test that week to become a Milwaukee County firefighter.

Nearly a week after Bertolas went missing, the boyfriend allegedly called the Menomonee Falls Police Department, saying he wanted to change certain pieces of his original statement. He also allegedly said he had remembered some additional details regarding Bertolas’ disappearance. A second interview with police was scheduled for the following Monday, this time including a polygraph test. On day of the interview, however, the police department received a call from the boyfriend’s lawyer. He allegedly would not be speaking to the police any more.

In June 1988, an anonymous tip led police to the Mount Olivet Cemetery at 3801 W. Morgan Ave. in Milwaukee. The family later found that the cemetery’s caretaker was the boyfriend’s father, and that the boyfriend had worked there in the past.

“The cadaver dogs were alerted to Sandra’s scent from her hairbrush around a plot which had recently been used,” said Patoka, who notes how hard it became to get permission from both religious and city organizations to investigate within the cemetery. “They dug it up and didn’t find anything. He worked there, he knew all the ins and outs.”

A napkin recovered from Bertolas’ room was also found the day of her disappearance, a Milwaukee County address scribbled across it in Bertolas’ handwriting. The address proved to be that of the Mount Olivet Cemetery.

“That’s when the Alfred Hitchcock story started,” Patoka said.

From that point on, searching for their missing daughter and sister became a new reality for the family. After police would search an area, a few friends and family members would go and double check the space, making sure there was never a stone left unturned. The Bertolas family would test bones they discovered, which would always come back as animal remains.

“Without a body there is no crime,” Duvernell said. “Those are the words I remember the most.”

One of Patoka’s most vivid memories involves seeing her mother and father, shovels in hand, digging for their daughter in a wooded area.

“It was terrible; I didn’t want to leave the house because the phone might ring,” Dorothy Bertolas said. “All of us would go out shoveling together.”

Bertolas’ disappearance also affected other aspects of her family’s lives.

“At night you felt guilty falling asleep,” Patoka said. “Eventually your body gives out on its own but you felt guilty laughing; you felt guilty doing anything for fun.”

Shock turned to anger, which then turned to grief. The disappearance of Bertolas became an all-consuming presence in the family’s lives, including their spouses and children. Two of the family’s daughters held off their weddings for years, waiting for their sister to return.

“I’ve tried over the past couple of years to put closure to it, but I can’t,” Dorothy Bertolas said. “Every now and then something comes up; it’s like an old wound to us.”

Now, nearly 30 years after her disappearance, the search for Bertolas goes on. The Menomonee Falls Police Department continues to assign a detective to the case, and is ready to go forward if Bertolas’ remains are ever found. In 2001, a Jane Doe investigation was opened regarding the disappearance. The family, especially Dorothy, continues to show support for other families of missing persons.

“It’s a cold case, but not a closed case,” Patoka said.

Back in the kitchen of Bertolas’ Menomonee Falls home, the afternoon sun trickles through the small kitchen window, bathing the room’s large wooden table in golden, honey light. A small makeshift memorial sits atop the table. A full vase of roses and baby’s breath stands next to one of freshly cut tulips. A little vanilla candle burns beside a smattering of sympathy cards, all wishing Dorothy and her family final closure for their missing daughter and sister.

Adorned with soft pink stripes, one of the Dorothy’s cards seems to jut out from the rest. Its cover dons the silhouette of a young girl, her hair done up in a large fluffy ponytail.

“This card reminded me of Sandra,” the inside reads. “Her life is just a shadow of what could have been.”