“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.

More Information

http://www.newstimes.com/policereports/article/27-years-later-Badaracco-case-still-haunts-1420286.php#ixzz1P8QCbNeY

SHERMAN — Nearly 27 years after Mary Badaracco vanished from her Sherman home, investigators are using a one-person grand jury in hopes of unraveling one of Fairfield County’s most enduring mysteries, The News-Times has learned.

Joseph Badaracco of Danbury, the son of the man state police said is their top suspect in Mary Badaracco’s presumed 1984 murder, said Thursday he has been subpoenaed to testify before the grand juror who he said is sitting in New Britain.

“I’ve got nothing to hide. My family has nothing to hide,” said the former Hells Angel motorcycle gang member, who at one time had been fingered by another Hells Angel as one of his step-mother’s killers.

Mary Badaracco was 38 when she was reported missing by her daughters on Aug. 31, 1984. State police said she was last seen by her husband, Dominic, a Danbury businessman and bar owner, 11 days earlier.

Dominic Badaracco told investigators that his wife was gone from their Wakeman Hill Road home when he returned from work, along with more that $100,000 in cash he had stashed around the house.

Badaracco subsequently filed for divorce from his wife of 15 years, and the divorce was granted in Danbury Superior Court nine months later.

For years, state police considered Badaracco’s disappearance to be a missing persons case, but in 1990, at the urging of her two daughters, Beth Profeta of Torrington and Sherrie Passaro of Danbury, then-State Rep. Lynn Taborsak prevailed on Connecticut State Police to reclassify the case as a homicide.

Despite the offer of a $20,000 reward, raised in 1999 to $50,000, the mystery remains unsolved and Mary Badaracco’s body has never been found.

Joseph Badaracco, now in his 50s and recovering from cancer, isn’t the only person familiar with the case to have testified before the grand jury. Another person involved in the investigation, who asked not to be identified, told The News-Times they testified about a year ago.

Joseph badaracco said a former neighbor who used to baby-sit for him and his siblings, now 90 years old and living in Pennsylvania, had also been called.

Mary Badaracco’s daughter, Sherrie Passaro of Danbury, reacted cautiously to the latest development.

“I can’t comment. Grand juries are supposed to be secret,” she said.

Mark Dupuis, a spokesman for the Chief State’s Attorney’s Office, also said the office would have nothing to say.

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

NEWTOWN — The Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner has officially confirmed what the Newtown and state police have been saying all along: Elizabeth Gough Heath’s death was a homicide.

Heath’s death was caused by “blunt traumatic head injury, a homicide,” a spokeswoman for the office said Wednesday afternoon. She was unable to say when the cause of death was determined.

Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, who performed the autopsy, was not available for comment.

Heath’s remains were discovered April 14 under the subfloor of a basement apartment in a former barn at 89 Poverty Hollow Road. Elizabeth Heath lived on the property with her husband, John Heath, in April 1984, when she mysteriously disappeared, leaving behind a young daughter and all of her belongings.

At the time Heath was 30, and the couple was in the beginning stages of a divorce. John Heath reported her missing April 6, 1984. He received a divorce about a year later and married a woman named Raquel.

Heath’s family had her declared dead in 1991.

The current property owners found Heath’s remains while renovating the kitchen of the apartment.

Elizabeth Heath’s sister, Helen Gough of Bridgeport, told The News-Times her former brother-in-law built the apartment.

John Heath lost the Newtown property to foreclosure in 2005, according to town records, and subsequently moved to Bridgewater.

Newtown officers and the Connecticut State Police searched John Heath’s Bridgewater home April 29.

Chief of Police Michael Kehoe said numerous items were taken and some were sent away to be processed. Others were kept in case they are needed in the future.

Phone calls to the Heath residence were not answered Wednesday.

Contact Melissa Bruen at mbruen@newstimes.com or 203-731-3350.

NEWTOWN — Almost four months have passed since the skeletal remains of Elizabeth Gough Heath were found, and there is neither a cause of death nor a suspect in the case.

“We don’t have anything yet,” an official at the state medical examiner’s office said Tuesday morning.

Heath was reported missing from her 89 Poverty Hollow Road home by her husband, John Heath, on April 6, 1984. She was 30 years old at the time.

The remains of her skeleton were found April 13 by the current owners of the property, who were ripping up the subfloor in the basement of the barn to renovate a small apartment and opened a hatch to the dry well.

The bones were in pillowcases and trash bags, along with bedding that appeared bloody, according to one of the homeowners.

By the evening of April 14, police called the case a homicide.

Police searched the residence of Heath’s ex-husband, who now lives in Bridgewater, but have not declared him a suspect.

Chief of Police Michael Kehoe said bags of evidence were seized from John Heath’s house, but not all have been sent to state police for analysis.

“You keep some and you leave it there because you never know what could become useful,” Kehoe said. “You send some for forensics, but you don’t want to inundate our forensic partners at this point.”

He would not say whether any of the evidence has come back with useful information. No restrictions have been placed on John Heath at this time and he is free to leave the country as he wishes, Kehoe said.

On Tuesday, Kehoe reiterated that the case is continuing and is “a very high priority for the department.” He also said, “There is nothing to release, nothing relevant to report, unfortunately.”

Contact Melissa Bruen

at mbruen@newstimes.com

or 203-731-3350.

http://www.newstimes.com/local/article/No-cause-of-death-for-Heath-after-almost-four-601020.php