“My main suspect at this time is Dominic Badaracco Sr., who is the last person to see the victim alive, had a history of extramarital affairs and domestic violence,” and who gave inconsistent information to police, Bukowski said.

Repeated efforts by The News-Times to reach the senior Badaracco were unsuccessful, and he has repeatedly refused over the years to comment on the case.

Joseph Badaracco said his family is being harassed by Bukowski.

“The guy is out of control,” he said.

A MOTHER VANISHES

Sherrie Passaro and Beth Profeta never believed that their mother ran away.

“Something was not right. She wouldn’t do that,” said Profeta, who now lives in Torrington.

Profeta had recently given birth to Mary Badaracco’s first grandchild, whom she doted on, and Passaro was engaged to be married, an event her mother was happily anticipating.

Dominic Badaracco, who was divorced and had four children, met his future wife, then Mary Smith, also divorced and with two young daughters, at a bar he owned. They married in 1970.

Although the term wasn’t in common use at the time, Mary Badaracco was a battered woman, Profeta said. She had endured years of abuse at the hands of Badaracco.

“Sometimes she would take us and we would leave the house, but Dominic would always find her,” Profeta said.

Both daughters grew up in fear of their stepfather, and they moved out as soon as they were old enough.

“He was always in charge and very dominating,” Passaro said. “If he said not to do something, we didn’t do it. My mom was always trying to protect us.”

About six months before Mary Badaracco vanished, she and Dominic moved into the Wakeman Hill Road home he’d purchased the year before.

She worked part time cleaning houses for a local realtor and spent much of her time painting or working on other crafts.

Passaro, who is a year older than her sister, first learned of her mother’s disappearance a few days after Dominic Badaracco said he last saw his wife and after she received an unusual telephone call from Badaracco’s daughter, Donna.

“We were both engaged, and my stepsister called me and said her father wanted to talk to us about the weddings. My first question was, `Why hadn’t my mother called?’” Passaro said. “It was odd.”

The next day after work, Passaro drove to the house in Sherman, but no one was there to meet her.

As she waited, she noticed her mother’s 1982 Chevy Cavalier parked in the driveway with the driver’s side windshield smashed in.

Much of what happened next is a blur, Passaro said, partly because she was upset, but also because the events happened so long ago.

Dominic Badaracco eventually showed up. As best as Passaro can recall, the conversation went something like this: “Your mother left. She took some money I had buried around the house and she took off.”

He asked Passaro to return to the house later and clear out her mother’s belongings. But when she did, every stitch of clothing was gone and the drawers and closets were bare. All that was left were Mary Badaracco’s art supplies and a few empty perfume bottles.

Badaracco also told Passaro, “Don’t tell anyone. Don’t tell you sister. My lawyer will handle everything,” she recalled.

Naive and still in fear of her stepfather, Passaro kept silent, and Profeta knew nothing about the disappearance until the stepsister also contacted her.

Eventually, concern about their mother overcame their fear and they contacted state police.

A BIKER COMES FORWARD

After the sisters filed a missing persons report, the Sherman resident trooper and a state police detective went to the Badaracco home, and Dominic Badaracco repeated the story about his wife running off.

Her gray Cavalier was still there, and Badaracco admitted smashing the windshield in anger. But because there was no indication at the time Mary Badaracco had been the victim of foul play, police didn’t seize the vehicle.

Eventually, the car also vanished and its absence — along with whatever evidence it might have contained — has handicapped investigators to this day.

Bukowski testified he’d spent “an extraordinary amount of time” trying to locate the Cavalier, but there was no record of it being sold or transferred in motor vehicle department records.

Frustrated by the apparent lack of progress in the investigation, Passaro and Profeta contacted then-state Rep. Lynn Taborsak of Danbury, who in 1990 successfully lobbied state police to classify the case as a homicide. Gov. William O’Neill even offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Badaracco’s killer.

Taborsak said her intervention came with a price.

“I had a brick thrown through my window,” she said, and one of Dominic Badaracco’s sons, who played industrial league softball with one of Taborsak’s sons, told him that his mother should mind her own business.

Taborsak said she reported the incidents to police, but no charges were ever filed.

Despite the apparent lack of progress, police have been active. In 1986, investigators received a tip from a Hells Angels associate in the federal witness protection program.

The witness told police that Joseph Badaracco and another member, Steve Kendall, killed Mary Badaracco at her husband’s request after she threatened to give police incriminating information about him.

Kendall, who at the time was also incarcerated, refused to be interviewed but did take a lie detector test, which he allegedly failed. The polygraph examiner said Kendall lied when he said he never saw Mary Badaracco and didn’t know if any member of the motorcycle gang had killed her.

Profeta said she got that information when an envelope containing the interview reports mysteriously arrived at her home in 1993, while she was pursuing a state Freedom of Information request for documents related to the case.

“It just showed up in the mailbox. But when I finally got the reports I was looking for, all the names were blacked out,” she said.

Kendall was killed in a motorcycle accident 18 years ago, Joseph Badaracco said.

Badaracco said neither he nor any member of his family had anything to hide, and they were also interested in finding out what became of his stepmother.

`ONE PHONE CALL AWAY’

To date, Dachenhausen remains the only person to face criminal charges in the Badaracco case.

In 2003, state police received an anonymous call from a man who said he had overheard the contractor talking about burying a car for Badaracco.

Bukowski, who took over the case the following August, eventually contacted Dachenhausen, who initially denied the tipster’s claim but eventually admitted burying three or four cars on property he owned in Newtown around the time Mary Badaracco disappeared.

One of the cars was a blue Cavalier, he said, a description close enough to the missing vehicle to prompt police to search for it. After several days of digging, police found three cars, but none was the Cavalier.

Dachenhausen, who police said gave them false information about where on the property the cars had been buried, went on trial in April 2009 for interfering with the investigation.

But his acquittal by the jury dealt a setback to investigators, who had hoped a conviction would give them leverage to extract additional information about Mary Badaracco’s death.

Despite their disappointment at the verdict, both Profeta and Passaro remain confident the case will eventually be solved and their mother found.

Major Warren Hyatt, commander of the Western District Major Crime Squad, said the investigation remains active.

“We’re always open to what people can tell us. Sometimes you’re just one phone call away.”

The Queen of Hearts

Mary Badaracco’s photo and a brief synopsis of her case are featured in a deck of “cold case” playing cards that were distributed by the state Department of Corrections last year to the more than 18,000 inmates in the state prison system.

The hope is that the playing cards will generate new leads about the Badaracco case and others. Badaracco is the queen of hearts in the deck.

The CUE Center for Missing Persons, meanwhile, established a website, MaryBadaracco.com, that provides details about the case and allows people to submit tips anonymously.

Anyone with information about Badaracco’s disappearance can also call the state police Western District Major Crime Squad at 800-376-1554.

Contact John Pirro at jpirro@newstimes.com or 203-731-3342.

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