The killer captured because he did his victim’s laundry
Dona Bayerl disappeared one night, but where did she go?
It was 1979, and Dona Mae Bayerl, 38, was living in Muskego, Wisconsin, with her husband John and their two children – Jodie, then seven, and Jackie, four.
Dona had always worked before becoming John’s second wife, but once they married, she’d stayed home to be a mum.
The only downside to the role was that it made Dona more dependent on John.
He controlled their money – something that reflected his behaviour in his first marriage, according to his ex.
His first wife would later testify that John had been physically abusive, and it seemed he hadn’t changed.
Dona would write letters to a friend in Michigan and admitshe was afraid of John.
She said John could be abusive and had once thrown her down the stairs.
Dona also said that John had asked to her sign paperwork which would give him sole ownership of their house if she died, but she’d refused to sign it.
Her worried friend had offered her $500 in cash if she’d needed it to leave.
May 6 was the last day Dona was seen.
Three days later, John went to the police and said that his wife was missing.
He explained that they had argued and Dona had stormed out and driven off in the family car to ‘cool off.’
When Dona wasn’t back by 10pm, John said he’d gone to bed and then heard the car pulling into their garage about an hour later.
He assumed Dona had returned, but then he described hearing the car drive away. He said Dona never came to bed, and he later found the car parked in the garage.
When officers asked John why it had taken him so long to report Dona missing, he admitted that the pair had marriage problems and thought that she would return once she’d calmed down.
Is that what Dona had done?
There was only one problem with that explanation.
Friends and family said Dona would never have left her two children.
There was no sign that she had taken any clothes or personal belongings.
Local police started an extensive search.
Landfill sites were scoured with bloodhounds, but Dona couldn’t be found.
Her sister Joan came to stay at the house to look after the children, who were bewildered without their mum.
It was Joan who spotted a blood stain on the wall inside the garage and on a bottle, also in the garage.
She was also suspicious that John had done laundry since his wife had gone missing.
John had never done the laundry before, even when Dona had been ill.
John had even washed a quilt and a rug, although they had strange stains on them.
Police searched the house and took the blood as evidence, and found more in the basement, but because of the lack of DNA technology at the time, they could only determine it was a match to Dona’s blood type – they couldn’t say it was hers.
John claimed the blood was
There was blood on the garage wall
his after cutting his finger on a mower.
But it wasn’t the only reason investigators were focused on John.
When asked by his colleagues about his missing wife, after reading it in the paper, he denied it was even referring to her and said they must have just had the same name– a strange thing to lie about.
On the day Dona had gone missing, John said they had been out for dinner – something the two girls said never happened.
They told officers their mum and dad had been fighting all day and said they last saw their mum when she put them to bed.
With so much suspicion on John, he was pushed to admit that he’d raised his hand to Dona on several occasions.
He also confessed that he’d been sleeping with someone else for almost two years.
It seemed very likely that John had something to do with Dona’s disappearance.
Most people believed she was dead, but without a body, there was no proof of a killing.
The trail ran cold, but John’s photo remained in the case file.
Three months after Dona disappeared, John filed for divorce, and it was granted in 1980 – allowing him to marry again.
Dona was officially declared dead in
1986, but her family never gave up hope that they would get justice. When talking with one of his grown-up daughters in 2009, John admitted something bad must have happened to her mum.
It was an unusual thing for him to suddenly say. In 2017, police released photos of Dona by a forensic artist to give people an idea of what she might look like. In 2018, John admitted to police that he’d ‘misused’ his wife wife, and called himself a ‘bad husband’ husband’. He still denied having anything to do with Dona vanishing vanishing, but police had something else.
With the development in DNA technology technology, they had managed to test the blood found in the Bayerl family home– home it was Dona’s. With that, and the suspicious statements made by John, he was arrested and charged with Dona’s murder.
It was a risk – the evidence was circumstantial, and Dona’s body was never found. But it was the only way a court would ever get the chance to seek justice for Dona and her family.
John pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and continued to insist that he had nothing to do with his wife’s disappearance.
Four decades after Dona had disappeared, John was finally in court in 2019.
Now 79, he was grey and frail, but loved ones hadn’t forgotten the man who had frightened Dona.
The man who had told so many lies to cover up what had really happened that fateful night.
John didn’t testify, but his defence said there was no proof beyond all reasonable doubt that he’d killed his wife.
Prosecutors told the court about the blood in the garage.
His first and third wife testified about the domestic violence they’d both endured at his hands.
John’s first wife said he had a ‘wicked temper’ and had once choked her hard around her neck.
Members of Muskego Police Department took the stand to say that his behaviour was unusual after his wife went missing.
And when confronted about the blood in the garage, John had clearly reacted.
‘He had a white T-shirt on, and the area of his heart started moving when we told him about the blood stains,’ a former lieutenant said.
The prosecutor told the jury; ‘Just because he’s good at concealing the body, doesn’t mean he gets to get away with murder.’
After just five hours of deliberation, the jury found Johnguilty of the first-degree murder of his wife.
Forty years after Dona’s disappearance, her family finally had answers.
John Bayerl was sentenced to life in prison.
He was ordered not to have any contact with his two daughters, and told he had to pay over $7,000 for witness expenses.
The police working on the case said that it was proof that they never quit quit.
They vowed to continue searching for Dona’s body.
Although justice had been served, t the conviction was bittersweet for Dona’s loved ones.
Without John admitting what he did to her, or where he hid Dona’s remains, they will never truly know what happened on the night they lost her.
But as the case shows, eventually time does reveal the secrets of the guilty.
After 40 years, John Bayerl had some questions to answer