Burned remains found in a rural Illinois county have been positively identified as a woman who disappeared in 2010 after she went on a secret weekend trip with a girlfriend.
Illinois State Police confirmed Tuesday the remains found in Jefferson County in December 2017 were 41-year-old Benedetta “Beth” Bentley.
New information had led cold case detectives assigned to the missing-persons case to the location where the remains were found, Fox 2 Now St. Louis reported.
Bentley, of Woodstock, Ill., was reported missing in May 2010 after she failed to return home from a weekend trip with a friend, Jennifer Wyatt, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Wyatt told police she last saw Bentley in Centralia, Ill., where she dropped her off at an Amtrak station to catch a train home, according to the paper. She never boarded a train.
The case has perplexed police because Bentley had told her husband she was going to Wisconsin with Wyatt for the weekend, according to the Tribune.
However, Wyatt said they drove to Mount Vernon when they met up with Wyatt’s boyfriend and others, the paper added.
Wyatt was charged in 2012 with lying to police investigating Bentley’s disappearance, the Northwest Herald reported at the time.
A few months later, a judge dismissed those charges on legal grounds.
The paper reported contacting Wyatt in 2017 after the discovery of the remains.
“They told me not to say anything right now,” she said at the time.