A 78-year-old Florida man was arrested after cold case detectives said a probe indicated he killed his wife in Wisconsin on May 6, 1979.
That’s when Dona Mae Bayerl, 38, vanished. Her body was never found.
John Bayerl was arrested on Feb. 19 on a charge of first-degree murder.
In 1979, John Bayerl reported his wife missing, telling police officers that she left the house after they had an argument. But friends and family members said that Dona Mae Bayerl would never have left her daughters, 7 and 4 years old at the time, behind, according to records obtained by CBS 58.
John Bayerl remained a person of interest in the case, which was eventually changed from a missing person case to a homicide.
According to the city of Muskego, John Bayerl said his wife drove away in the family car but the car was returned that night. The next morning, Dona Mae Bayerl was gone.
“Police believe she did not leave of her own free will. Police found blood in the garage, determined to be Donna Bayerl’s. A circumstantial case was developed against a suspect, but no charges were issued, due to a lack of evidence. Dona was declared legally dead in 1986,” it stated.
“This woman basically vanished without any kind of trace evidence,” Detective Steve Westphal of the Muskego Police Department told TMJ in 2017. “Apparently she had an argument with her husband at the time and she returned home after that argument and then at some point either left of something else happened to her and she was never seen from again.”
The disappearance wasn’t reported to the police for three days and detectives found what looked like splattered blood in two places in or near the garage, according to the court records. Dona Mae’s sister, Joan Bourgeois, meanwhile, told officers that it was strange that her sister did all the laundry the day she went missing. She also said that her sister’s marriage had not been going well for some time, which John Bayerl confirmed to the police.
Bourgeois temporarily moved into the Bayerl residence and spoke with officers several days later. She said that John Bayerl didn’t seem overly concerned that his wife was missing.
40 years after a Muskego woman disappeared, 78-year-old John Bayerl has been arrested and charged with the murdering his wife, Dona Mae Bayerl. @CassidyWtv is tracking the turns this case has taken since 1979. https://t.co/02BKoWgvJS pic.twitter.com/JEQsPV4Qu6
— Carl Deffenbaugh (@CarlDeff) February 22, 2019
A former neighbor of the Bayerl family said that Dona Mae Bayerl wouldn’t leave her children no matter how upset she was. She also said that the couple would fight once or twice a week and that John Bayerl was a heavy drinker.
In a conversation several days later, after the blood was found, John Bayerl told detectives that he had struck or pinched his wife on at least six occasions. He also said he was having an affair with a bartender.
When John Bayerl was interviewed in 2018, he confessed that he abused his wife and that he had a girlfriend. His first wife and third wife also said he abused them.
Detectives got in touch with John Bayerl’s first wife, who told them that he had abused her 15 to 20 times, prompting her to file for a divorce and that he continued to harass her after she got the divorce.
Although the investigation continued, John Bayerl was never charged in the missing person case. In May 1980, he was granted a divorce from his missing wife.
#Breaking: Man arrested in Florida in connection with 1979 Wisconsin cold case.
Dona Mae Bayerl vanished in 1979 and was legally declared dead seven years later.https://t.co/keTTdMyLeg pic.twitter.com/8CCV9Nc5Eg
— WISN 12 NEWS (@WISN12News) February 21, 2019
About a year later, his third wife went to the police and said John Bayerl abused her after she got married to him. After another incident, she called the police and said she was leaving him.
Officers conducted a search warrant on the Bayerl residence and found counterfeit social security cards. John Bayerl told detectives that he did get aggressive with some women, but denied having physical contact with Dona Mae Bayerl the day she vanished.
The case went cold for years until his daughter, Jackie Bayerl, recorded an interview with her father in 2009 during which he said that Dona Mae Bayerl was a loving mother but that he didn’t think she was alive. He said he wished he knew what happened.
“I’m sure that her heart’s not beating,” he said. “Because if it was, she would have found her way back, whatever.”
John Bayerl now charged with first degree murder of his wife back in 1979 makes his first court appearance @CBS58 pic.twitter.com/Y7bbMEx9RS
— Tori Bokios (@toribokios) February 21, 2019
Then, in 2018, Detective Westphal spoke with Bayerl to provide him with an update on his investigation into the cold case. Bayerl admitted he cheated on Dona Mae Bayerl and that he wasn’t a good husband. He said that he would get angry at the women in his life. He also admitted that Dona Mae Bayerl would not have left on her own.
Bayerl added that he “knows in his mind he is not guilty of anything other than being a bad husband.”
Westphal pressed him and asked if it was possible that Dona Mae Bayerl would have taken off to start a new life and Bayerl replied, “not on her own.”
“John’s basic words to me were, he thinks something drastic must have happened, because he, too, agrees she wouldn’t have left her kids,” Westphal told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
Based on that conversation and the previous incidents, Bayerl was arrested and charged with his wife’s presumed murder.
John Bayerl appeared in a Florida courtroom on Wednesday and was extradited to Wisconsin. He’s being held without bond.
Jackie Bayerl told the Journal-Sentinel she said she didn’t think her father would be charged with the crime unless her mother’s body was found.
“I deeply feel that if our case is ever solved, it will be because her remains are finally found,” she wrote in 2017. “Or that someone who knows something finally feels the need to share their deep dark secret and get it off their chest.
“I yearn for closure for our case in my lifetime.”
