The mysterious accident that no one at the sheriff’s department could tell us about, then subsequently not call us back about (as featured here on Sunday last) has been revealed. Turns out the vehicle involved in it was NOT driven by drug cop Mike Bertin, as we speculated in this article, but was instead driven by 47-year-old Beth A Voelkel, of New Athens, Ill., a 2005 Nissan Altima that ran under the back of a Wabash Valley Service Company 2009 International regular cab truck, driven by John E. Watters, 53, of Claremont.

Doesn’t look a whole lot like what we have photos of….

According to the report, Watters advised that he was driving west on U.S. 50 on the afternoon of Sunday, May 5, 2013 and turned on his turn signal and stopped at county road 1760 East to wait for oncoming traffic before turning south onto that road. Three witnesses, Carl Kocher, Una Kocher and Sandy Warren, all advised that he had his left turn signal on and was waiting when Voelkel ran into the back of his tanker truck.

Voelkel advised later, at the hospital, that she had fallen asleep at the wheel.

Voelkel was cited for Failure to Reduce Speed to Avoid an Accident, Too Fast for Conditions and Operating Uninsured.

Doesn’t exactly look like the diagram, does it?

Now. What we’re going to do about the FOIA denial over documents generated by the high-speed pursuit out of Lawrence County and into Richland a couple of days later remains to be seen…but the facts of the matter are that we are no longer dicking around with Andy Hires and his damn denial of FOIAs. We’ve cabbaged on to some of the tactics that the Edgar County Watchdogs are using and we think this is going to cause Dandy Andy a big headache…as well as a big headache for his buddy, David Hyde, the preacher who passes as our state’s attorney in Richland County.

Here’s what Andy said in his letter dated yesterday, May 12:

Per your second request, which is attached and dated May 07, 2013, requesting all documents generated pertaining to the high-speed chase that occurred last night, May 6, originating in Lawrence County and conducted across U.S. 50 from Lawrence County and into Richland, this request is being denied, due to it would interfere with proceedings or reasonably contemplated proceedings.

That’s crap. We got more off the scanner traffic than we do out of what we were requesting from FOIA. So these public bodies need to be turning over information when it’s requested…or it’s going to start costing them when we get denials.

We’ll get more into it as we uncover it. Be watching.

And it even helps if you beat up a second person, because that means that the first offense will be dismissed too.

Such is the case with Jonathan Trout, 20, who has entered an open plea of guilty to an Aggravated Battery case dating back to October 2010.

What took so long to bring the matter to a conclusion remains speculation, but informed sources have been advising Disclosure over the past year that Trout—a member of the vile Earp/Trout bunch that runs in small packs throughout several southeastern Illinois counties—that the violent bunch facilitates the passage of drugs through the area, and if a noob shows up in the mix, the bunch assists local drug cops in their apprehension and charges, thus padding the county’s coffers without any of the law enforcement having to lift a finger.

On several occasions, their scam has almost fallen apart; namely, Lil Nate Turrentine and Jessica Boyd in 2010, Danny English from 2010-12, and Casey King in 2012, all associates of the Earp/Trout bunch and their drug-running escapades (Turrentine/Boyd and English in pot; King in steroids) almost got the Earp/Trout bunch irretrievably busted due to their own missteps or abject stupidity.

Notable screwups

The most notable screwup the Earp/Trout bunch continues to make, however, is their own errant violence toward others…and in the case of Jonathan Trout, underage sex.

Trout was convicted on a plea in 2008 of criminal sexual assault of a 12-year-old Centralia girl with whose brother he, then 16, was on an overnight visit. The family has said that at that time, Trout slipped in to the 12-year-old girl’s room and sexually assaulted her.

In 2010, he moved to Richland County to be with his violent brothers, Flavius Doug and Michael Scott Earp, and failed to register the new address with local authorities, resulting in a felony charge, as convicted sex offenders must register.

The news that he was a sex offender came as somewhat of a shock to the locals, who knew that the Earp/Trout bunch was good at procreating, but didn’t know that one among them was inclined toward pre-pubescent girls.

Worse, no one knew he was a sex offender because since his offense occurred when he was a juvenile, there is no requirement that his name show up on the registry—for life. So had he never offended in conjunction with the sex offense, no one except the victim and her family, as well as whatever select members of the disgusting Earp/Trout bunch he chose to tell, would ever have known.

The batteries: Roy, Koehler

Just a month prior to the failure to register offense, Trout had been involved in a brutal brawl up the street from the housing complex where he and the brood were staying in Olney, which resulted in an Evansville man, Heath Roy, being beaten almost beyond recognition.

In what was a clear case of mob action—but in which only Trout was charged—the then-17-year-old was issued a single count of Aggravated Battery at that time, June 2010.

Later that year, Trout again was involved in a brawl, and badly beat David A. Koehler.

In April of 2011, Trout and his pugilistic brothers were also involved in a mob action brawl in the Hamilton County village of Broughton (where Trout ostensibly currently resides); but only one of the brothers, the late Michael Scott Earp, was charged in that.

Later in 2011, Scott Earp was shot to death as he attempted to wrestle a handgun from Texan Brandon Jenkins, which incident garnered Jenkins counts of First Degree Murder.

It was a year ago May 2 that Jenkins was exonerated of all charges, which were generated by a grand jury being lied to by David Hyde’s handpicked witnesses, including the insufferable Flavius Earp.

Favoritism shown to punks

While Jenkins awaited trial, the remaining Earp was charged with multiple felonies for intimidating witnesses in the case—charges which were dismissed against him with no explanation.

Another of their crew, Casey King, has been involved in violence and alleged dealing of steroids, but he too, has been charged and let go, much like a catch-and-release program for repeat offenders.

Catch-and-release Trout

This program was extended to Jonathan Trout, youngest sibling of Flavius and Scott Earp (there is one nasty offspring in between, a female, Breanna) on April 26, 2013, when Hyde, who favors the entire group for whatever reasons he may have, enabled Trout to enter the open plea to the battery of Koehler in exchange for dismissal of the Failure to Register charge and battery of Roy charge.

In accordance with the agreement, Trout gets a cap of three years DOC (which may mean only a year and a half).

And of course, the all-important fines and fees are persuasive to Hyde, as he gauges his leeway in either prosecuting ridiculous crimes or abjectly avoiding very serious ones on this factor. Since the late Scott Earp’s first babymomma, Victoria deWeese, was always able to post bond for each of the Earp/Trout bunch every time they got into trouble, there was plenty of cash on hold: $3,000 altogether.

On an interim (December 2012) misdemeanor charge of being a Felon in Possession of a Firearm (not a gun, but a stun device), there was a bond remainder of $292 to be applied to the fines and fees of that conviction (accomplished in February 2013), $442; on the sex offense registration file, $750; on the Roy beating, $1,208 and on the Koehler beating, another $750.

So the county comes out ahead $3,000 of deWeese funds, and Earp/Trout loathers get to be glad the youngest one is sitting in prison for several months, being made a girlfriend of inmates with names like Bubba and Demetrius.

Noxious deals

However, this doesn’t appease those who have been terrorized by the entire group over the past several years, beginning in late 2005 when the Earp brothers were still in their teens and young Trout was still a larva.

What Disclosure has learned is that the prosecutor, propped up by permissive judges, is being allowed to “make deals” with the Earp/Trout bunch and their hangers-on (such as King) in that if they “go away,” their charges will be dismissed. So apparently Hyde has come to the conclusion that with the death of Scott Earp and the ongoing violence/criminality of the remaining two and their buddies, it’s just not worth the bad public relations…along with the fact that Jenkins still has time to file a civil suit against the county for allowing the monstrosity that is the Earp/Trout bunch to continue to run without any meaningful punishment being dished out.

Currently, Flav Earp was set for yet another pre-trial conference in his witness intimidation case on May 10; it was expected that he will accept a deal to travel “out west” where there’s work in the oil patch in various states (the only thing Earp knows how to do besides be a criminal and procreate), and his charges associated with this alleged crime will be dismissed.

Casey King got a similar deal and subsequently was reported to have moved to Missouri not long ago, this after the death of Scott Earp and King’s charges of battery in an unrelated case, at which the Earps were also present. Those charges were dismissed. However, this didn’t keep King from getting in trouble in the southwestern Illinois area.

Jonathan Trout is to undergo a presentencing investigation to see what options will come his way in his three-year-cap of sentencing, set to take place on June 14, 2013.

Saline County charges…?

In the interim, it appears charges against Trout in Saline County have been resolved after a March 29 last court date, and Saline is $500 to the good over it.

There, Trout also received a Class 3 felony Failure to Report Change of Address as a Sex Offender charge, this coming last summer.

Trout was reporting that his residence was with his grandmother, Clara Young, in Eldorado, when he was actually still residing with his babymomma, Kali Royce in Broughton.

No action has been taken on the case since March 29, and records show that his $500 cash bond had been forfeited toward fines and fees.

However, the elder Howser’s machinations may be coming under scrutiny soon when the case is next in court, this time with the younger Howser asking for the elder to explain why the order should be in place since there was never an incidence of violence, threat, stalking or harassment against the aging man by the son he adopted, and multiple instances of harassment perpetrated against the younger Howser and his family by the decrepit old man and his equally-bizarre family.

Whines about name in paper

At issue was never an incident of threat or harm anyway, as the court (represented by associate judge Kimbara Harrell) ruled ultimately: it was the fact that Publisher Howser had written, albeit truthfully, about his stepfather in his publication, and the elder Howser “didn’t like it.”

The elder Howser complained bitterly in court testimony given over ridiculously-drawn-out settings between September 2011 to early 2012 that he “didn’t know what to expect every time he went to the American Legion” (where, shamefully, he has held positions of authority despite his constant attack on the First Amendment freedoms he allegedly fought so hard for during the Vietnam War era), where his buddies would tell him that once again, he or a member of his taxpayer-supported family (his latest wife and one of his sons both work at the Lawrence Correctional Center), or another one of the family members outside of his immediate compound, was “in the paper.”

The elder Howser neglected to note that they were only mentioned in connection with pending court cases (such as small claims or bankruptcies, which Disclosure routinely covers) or in brief passing in opinion pieces (including one letter to the editor that was not written by Disclosure staff, but was instead composed by a longtime acquaintance of the elder Howser’s, who opined how suspicious it was that he married his current spouse so quickly after the death of his wife of more than 40 years, Judith Howser).

He also neglected to advise that he was pulled into the younger Howser’s guardianship case of their granddaughter in an effort to discredit Jack Howser; an effort which failed, as their bogus testimony of what an awful father he was fell flat in the face of first-hand testimony of Howser’s own stepson and his wife, as well as of Angela Howser, who recounted the previous more-than-a-decade of dedication…and of how Howser’s first wife was a nutcase who poisoned his own childrens’ minds against him.

Violent gun-nut claims

An attempt to make Howser out to be some kind of violent gun-nut in order to affect the guardianship case also fell flat with the testimony of Deputy Kevin McCormick, whom Howser’s brother Tom called on March 11, 2011, to report that Howser was “shooting recklessly” on his own property (which sits adjacent to the Dan Howser property). McCormick testified that it appeared all Jack Howser was doing on the day in question was shooting at a fixed target that had sat for months in the same location, and which had old casings nearby, showing evidence of months of use…which negated Tom Howser’s claim that his half-brother was deliberately trying to “intimidate or harass” the combat vet/correctional officer (Tom) on that day by firing at the target, a fraudulent claim as it was a regular practice (and even one that was documented on Disclosure’s website) for Jack Howser to do such a thing.

With a great effort to confuse Harrell in January 2012 testimony—and which succeeded in confusing her—erroneous diagrams were drawn that showed that when Jack Howser was firing at the target, a ricochet could have struck Tom Howser, who happened to be outside on that March 2011 day.

In truth, there was an entire building between the two—a garage/workshop—when the target practice ensued.

Harrell didn’t buy Tom Howser’s story of the target practice being aimed at him when Dan Howser took the initial complaint to the sheriff’s department on March 23, 2011, using the target practice incident as a basis for an emergency order of protection—the EOP was denied, but the old man was allowed to amend his petition.

Publication as basis for ‘harassment’

In the petition was also the complaint that every time his name was mentioned in the paper, it was an “incident of harassment.”

Ultimately, in April of 2012, Harrell ruled that the mention of the name “Dan Howser” in print was the basis of the harassment, and sort of by default…as she could find no other incidents of threats, stalking, violence or harassment (all components of the Illinois Domestic Violence Act the Orders of Protection were designed to uphold in the first place) upon which she could base the OP order.

Disclosure almost immediately discovered, however, that her decision was likely based on the fact that the paper had pissed off her husband Jack Harrell unknowingly when they wrote truthfully about the county looking at Harrell to sell the sheriff’s department new and expensive narrowband radios.

Harrell recused herself from the case in June 2012 when confronted with this in court, and the case went to White County Judge Tom Sutton.

By that time, Jack Howser had filed an appeal of the decision, asking for clarification on exactly WHAT it was that constituted ‘harassment’ and what actions he was or was not allowed to take as it pertained to his stepfather…because if Harrell was saying that writing truthfully or in opinion for about Dan Howser was the ‘harassment,’ she was subverting Disclosure’s First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press.

No ‘Prior Restraint’

Since Sutton didn’t know and couldn’t ascertain what Harrell’s reasoning was behind the decision (as she didn’t spell it out clearly in her justification for the OP), he later ruled (in September 2012) that there was no way any judge could restrict Howser from publishing anything before the fact (“Prior Restraint” is illegal), and while he upheld the OP as a matter of deference to Harrell, he clarified that the actual writing about a person in relation to a court case, or a public official (which Dan Howser, as a military veteran, retiree from the U.S. Postal Service and former Richland County Sheriff’s Department employee, clearly was and is), be it recounting of the facts or issuing opinion (especially criticism of how tax dollars are being spent, as in connection with a government paycheck or retirement check), is protected speech and could not be abrogated.

Subsequent factual articles about the case have since been printed since October 2012 with no action taken against the newspaper.

And since it’s now been a year since the OP has been in place, and there have been no incidents whatsoever, the younger Howsers are now pushing for some resolution to some things left hanging in the bogus OP.

No finalization of property-based whines

One of the main issues in Dan Howser’s petition was his claim that junk items placed on Jack Howser’s property, several feet away from the actual property line and clearly on the younger Howser’s acreage, is “harassing and intimidating” the older Howser.

How inanimate objects could “harass and intimidate” a person is one of those great mysteries, but goes a long way toward showing the utter foolishness Dan Howser continues to display.

The younger Howser placed the items on the property line in 2011 because the elder Howser’s freakish family kept trespassing, gouging into the lawn with a lawn mower and other implements and generally harassing the younger Howser.

The elder Howser, pissed off over having to look at it, called a surveyor to inspect the property line without advising his neighbors. The surveyor, Mark Bowlby from Charleston Engineering, was followed around the property by the younger Howsers on April 14, 2011, refusing to state his name, business and bonding agent even when asked, and finally left when the sheriff’s department was called.

However, before he left, he placed pins on the property boundaries, showing clearly that the elder Howser had claimed about ten feet of his stepson’s property as his own.

The elder Howser had griped in his petition for OP that he wanted a survey completed so he could place a fence between the properties, which the younger Howsers have never had a problem with, and even encouraged. But this has never been done, likely because the elder Howser doesn’t want to give up the ten feet he’s claimed, as he and his prison guard boy use it to access the back of the property and the basement dwelling where Tom Howser lives, under Dan Howser’s doublewide.

Therefore a petition has been filed, demanding that the rest of the terms of the OP be met by Dan Howser, or the order be dropped.

Attempts to get Howser to violate

Since the time of the OP, Tom Howser has ignored the basis of it, sending a “friend request” to Jack Howser on Facebook.

It’s unclear of his intentions; it might be that he was attempting to draw his brother into violating the OP, since a year mark was coming up with no “harassment” and the whole bunch are nothing if not drama queens when it comes to the matter. Further, the guardianship case has almost been resolved, with the opposing party running out of money and the Howsers still fighting; so any kind of “violation” could be brought up in that case in order to “show that Jack Howser is violent” (which has been the unproven assertion, although how an OP violation via accepting a Facebook friend request can be considered ‘violent’ is, again, a prime display of the ridiculousness the younger Howsers are having to deal with.)

As well, a request by Dan Howser’s attorney/opposing guardianship party’s attorney Chuck Roberts for Jack Howser to undergo a psychological evaluation for “anger issues” (something else concocted by the dramatists) has never been concluded; Roberts was to have provided a doctor by November, and when none was forthcoming and repeated attempts to bring up the matter were met with silence, Jack Howser has opted to push, through his attorney, the issue…which is immaterial, as Howser will continue to refuse to be examined by any psychiatrist; the request was made on the basis of what Howser has WRITTEN about his stepfather in the past in protected-speech opinion pieces, and to submit to such an evaluation is a dangerous slippery slope, as it opens other journalists up to the same scrutiny and potentially criminalize them, since the whole thing is based on something published as news or opinion.

Updates will continue to appear both at the paper’s website, disclosurenewsonline.com, as well as here in the print version.

On April 20, while driving a black 2007 dodge passenger car, in the 800 block of South Camp St., Olney, David M. Mosbacker, 28, of 303 West St. John St., Olney was arrested and charged with Unlawful Possession of a Controlled Substance after authorities say he had hydrocodone on his person without a valid prescription.

Mosbacker has a colorful felonious past with local law, earning his first felony conviction in 2003.

Originally he was charged with two counts of Unlawful Possession of a Stolen Vehicle, one count of Aiding/Abetting the Selling of a Stolen Vehicle and three counts of Aggravated Fleeing Police 21 mph over the posted limit.

After pleading to two of the fleeing charges he was sentenced October 31, 2003 to 180 days in the county jail, 24 months probation, 12 months conditional discharge, 100 hours public service and ordered to pay $1,837 in fines and fees.

Nearly one year later, on September 30, 2004, after one count of Unlawful Possession of a Firearm by a Felon was dismissed, Mosbacker pled to Aggravated Fleeing Police 21 mph over the posted limit and Unlawful Possession of a Controlled Substance (prescription medication) and was sentenced to three years in the IDOC and ordered to pay $1,343 in fines and fees of which he still owes $1,070.

In 2006 Mosbacker was busted and charged with Unlawful Manufacture/Delivery of Cannabis 30-500 grams, Unlawful Possession of Methamphetamine less than five grams, Unlawful Methamphetamine Delivery five to 15 grams, Unlawful Possession of Anhydrous Ammonia and Aggravated Fleeing.

After pleading to the delivery and possession of meth charge, Mosbacker was sentenced to eight years in IDOC and ordered to pay $3,552 in fines and fees of which he has paid nothing.

Mosbacker was back on the streets long enough in 2009 to be convicted of Unlawful Possession of Methamphetamine less than five grams which earned him another six years in IDOC.

He was paroled July 31, 2012.

His discharge date is listed as July 31, 2013.

As inept as Richland County state’s attorney David Hyde is, it is anybody’s guess what, if anything, will be done about the habitually-offending Mosbacker.

He is currently being held in the county jail on $7,500 cash bond.

$10K & pot plants

Barry R. Godfrey, 64, of 423 Vance Dr., Olney has been charged with one count of Unlawful Production of Cannabis Sativa Plant after authorities say on or about April 15 he was found to be growing 20-50 plants.

Godfrey was released from custody after a $10,000 cash bond, in the form of a money order, was posted on his behalf by Amanda Bower, of 402 South Elliott St., Olney.

Pills and pot

Jane B. Williams, 45, of 309 West Butler St., Olney has been busted in her home on drug charges.

According to court documents, on or about April 20 authorities took Williams into custody charging her with one count of Unlawful Possession of a Controlled Substance after they discovered she knowingly possessed lorazepam without a prescription, and one count of Unlawful Possession of Cannabis less than 2.5 grams.

Williams was released from custody after a $1,500 cash bond was posted on her behalf by Linda Murphy of 829 North Boone St., Olney. As part of her bond conditions Williams is forbidden to return to the Butler Street address.

The case began back in April 2009 when then 35-year-old Kelly Dawn Klingler, of 520 S. Grant, was charged with one count of Aggravated Criminal Sexual Abuse alleging that she “committed an act of sexual conduct with KB” who was 13 years of age at the time “In that the mouth of KB touched the vagina of Kelly D. Klingler for the purpose of sexual gratification or arousal of Kelly D. Klingler and that Klingler was five years older than KB.”

Roberts, who was court-appointed, then spent the next three-and-a-half years filing one continuance after another and sending one bill after another totaling thousands of dollars for taxpayers to pay.

So desperate was Roberts to screw taxpayers that a passing conversation with Disclosure publisher Jack Howser, who was waiting for an unrelated criminal case to begin in the Richland County courtroom, was billed under Klingler’s case.

The entry for May 28, 2009 reads: “conference with Jack of Disclosure and where he got information.”

“There was no discussion,” Howser said after seeing the entry. “He [Roberts] asked me where I got the confession his client gave and I told him to go f*^k himself, I don’t give out sources and he walked away. I can’t believe he would charge voters for that. I think he was just pissed because I published the confession and he had no idea his client had confessed.”

Allowed audio tape

On April 16, 2009, Olney patrolman Mark D. Hackler made contact with Klingler who said she was willing to come to the police department (PD) and speak with detective Larry Knowlton.

Hackler then transported Klingler to the PD.

Upon arrival Klingler met with city officer Holly Hamilton and Det. Knowlton.

When Knowlton asked if he could record the conversation Klingler said she had no objection.

“I told her she didn’t have to speak with us if she didn’t want to and that she could leave any time she wanted to,” Knowlton said in his report. “I told her that at the end of our conversation she would be free to leave.”

Klingler said she was willing to talk.

Had sh*t kicked out of her by vic’s mom

Apparently when Klingler arrived she looked rather battered.

“I noticed that Ms. Klingler had a dark bruise on her nose and around her left eye,” Knowlton said. “She also had a large band aid on her forehead and I asked her what had happened.”

Klingler told Det. Knowlton that Beth Elmore had come to her house and accused her of having sex with her daughter.

“Ms. Klingler said she denied this and Beth then battered her, causing injuries to her face,” Knowlton said.

The confession

Knowlton then said he asked Klingler if she had any type of sexual contact with Elmore’s daughter.

“Ms. Klingler denied doing anything at first,” Knowlton said. “She later said that she has had sexual contact one time with the girl.”

Klingler told Knowlton that approximately one year before at 601 E. Monroe St., Danny Elmore was out of town and she was watching the girl.

“Ms. Klingler said the girl was the instigator and that the girl kept telling her it would be all right,” Knowlton said. “Ms. Klingler said that the girl performed oral sex on her and also put her fingers inside her vagina.

“Ms. Klingler said it only lasted a couple minutes and that she was uncomfortable with it and she really did not like it.”

The legal community doesn’t have much use for him either

After nearly three years of continuances and a couple thousand dollars billed to the county, the charges were just up and dismissed in November 2012: No explanation, no “I’m sorry, this didn’t really happen” from the young girl who was at one time considered a victim…and about two years too late for Klingler to file a civil lawsuit against anyone who put her into a position where she might’ve felt like she had to lie to police in order to just get them to stop questioning her, if in fact she DID lie.

“It’s not just fellow attorneys that are disgusted by Chuck Roberts dragging his feet in court, clogging up court calendars and having his work shoved off on others to clean up,” said one critic of the has-been lawyer and former Richland County state’s attorney. “There are a lot of judges who have stopped appointing him to cases because he doesn’t represent the interest of his clients, but has no hesitation taking the taxpayers’ money.”

In the case of the confessed sex abuser it appears to have worked out well for the accused, but it wasn’t because of anything Roberts did, but rather what he didn’t do.

Legal sources indicate that Roberts’ criminal defense days are behind him and he now focuses on soaking as much money as he can out of people in family cases, divorces, child custody and orders of protection.

“And he’s not very good at those either,” the source said.

LAWRENCE/RICHLAND Cos.—There was indeed a high-speed chase last night (May 6, 2013) between Lawrence County and Richland County, this according to those who live off U.S. Route 50 that cuts across both counties; we had eyewitnesses giving us a play-by-play account at one point (shortly before midnight).

However, because of the silence of law enforcement authorities, who are beholden to both the media and the public who pay their paychecks to advise when something of this nature has occurred, we don’t have very many details.

What we do know is that the chase was initiated by Lawrence County deputies at around 11:30 p.m. The suspect lead pursuing Lawrence officers into Richland, at times reaching speeds in excess of 80 mph. They passed Claremont Road with three to four law enforcement officers in pursuit.

At some point either just past Meridian Road or between Meridian and Ste. Marie Road, the suspect vehicle ended up in a ditch.

Illinois State Police reported to be enroute and were told that their assistance was not needed; that a female was in custody of Richland County and that another person was with her; however, who was the driver, as well as the gender of the other person, remains unknown presently. Identities are, of course unknown at this time.

Richland County has been FOIA’d over the incident.

Wreck on U.S. 50 at the Claremont turn

That FS truck would have gone UP if there had been a fire any bigger than perhaps a spurt of flames.

Our photog also advises that this wreck occurred well before 5:30, in clarification to what was originally published about it Sunday evening, 05.05.13.

We have more photos and are considering holding them for the print version.

We have NOT heard from Richland County authorities, even after requesting numerous times the information from the wreck.

More as we get it.

Benedetta (“Beth”) Bentley

Here’s what we know about her case:

Benedetta (‘Beth’) Rogers Bentley, 41, is from Woodstock, Illinois and went missing from either Jefferson County (where she was reportedly visiting, thus the reason for her train trip down from Woodstock) or Marion County.

Bentley, who is an exotic-looking, 5-foot 6-inch, 165 pound, brown-eyed platinum blonde, was said to have been visiting a friend in southern Illinois over the weekend of May 22-23, 2010.

When she was last seen (by whom is unclear, as is much of the story surrounding her disappearance) she was wearing a black tank top, blue denim miniskirt, flip flops, a Pandora bracelet, a wedding ring, and was carrying a large white purse and a pink and orange Vera Bradley overnight bag. She was with an unnamed friend whose purpose in traveling to Mt. Vernon was to visit the friend’s boyfriend, who was in a rehab program in a halfway house there.

It is thought that Bentley was going to the Amtrak train station in Centralia to catch a 6 p.m. train to Union Station in Chicago. The train she was supposed to be on arrived at Union Station around 11 p.m. that Sunday night. It has never been confirmed that she actually boarded the Amtrak train from Centralia to Union Station as planned. She did not arrive home as expected, and a missing person’s report was filed by her husband on Monday, May 24, 2010, with Woodstock Police. Search areas of concentration included Mt. Vernon, Centralia and Chicago. Some say it’s possible she was never in southern Illinois. At the time she went missing, it’s been revealed she was allegedly pregnant.

Disclosure was encouraged to call her husband, Scott Bentley, an attorney whose practice is in Woodstock, being told he was anxious to discuss his wife’s disappearance. Disclosure did so, leaving many messages, but no calls were ever returned.

It was later reported that the husband had moved “a love interest” into the house with him and the children.

There has been no serious investigation into Bentley’s downstate disappearance, including attempting to learn if she ever really was in southern Illinois, since that time.

There are many others missing in the Midwest and they are featured at the Facebook page Illinois Missing. Bentley’s is the latest up top there because the anniversary of her disappearance is coming up. Others featured in the past have been Ed Hataway (whose disappearance has been resolved with the finding of his body in November 2012, but has never been explained) and Joel Moore.

Ed Hataway, who was missing for weeks from Olney before his body was found in Lawrence County

Anyone who has ANY information on the whereabouts of Beth Bentley is asked to contact the Illinois State Police, who maintains a registry of missing people in the state. The state police will have the advantage of side-stepping local and county authorities in the matter, as they are sometimes the reason why people can be harmed after not taking a missing persons report seriously enough.

The collision happened at about 5:45 today (Sunday, May 5, 2013) according to best estimates of those who reported it to Disclosure. Eyewitnesses advised that a vehicle was following a tanker truck that was making a right turn onto the Claremont blacktop off 50, and that the vehicle subsequently crashed into the tanker, and was actually pinned under it.

To exacerbate the situation, flames erupted from the collision point.

Emergency response was swift and reportedly included local fire departments, ambulances and the Richland County Sheriff’s Department.

However, calls to the department at 6:09 p.m., 6:49 p.m. and again at 8:58 p.m. produced “no one available” to give information to media about the accident. During the second phone call, Disclosure was advised that deputies were at the hospital in Olney in connection with the wreck. Promises to have deputies return Disclosure‘s phone call were met with no reply at all.

This comes on the heels of Wayne County promising to have a deputy return a call from Disclosure about the Joel Boulds accident that occurred yesterday morning. No call has yet been received about the incident, which was not worked by state police but worked only by local sheriff’s department authorities.

These follow a disturbing trend wherein publicly-supported agencies simply “neglect” to give information when it’s directly requested. Saline County found out the hard way in February that there were actually LAWS on the books in Illinois as they apply to release of information when it’s requested, on an ongoing basis or on an isolated incident basis. So now, it looks like Wayne and Richland are going to find themselves in the same position.

We’ll keep you updated on what we’re going to do with these counties; in the interim, be aware that ANYONE seeking public information (and a car wreck, house fire, arrest, high-speed chase, etc., IS public information because your tax dollars are funding it; ergo, you are the source of funds for all of the response to all of the above) must be given it. The counties may have certain protocols by which they release information, but when it’s requested, it MUST BE RELEASED. DON’T let anyone tell you otherwise…and if they do, tell us about it. Because there’s a movement on in our country to clamp down on even the most miniscule of information being released to the public, so that when something big happens—something like a ‘mandatory roundup of all weapons’—you’ll already be desensitized to being told “nothing’s going on.” Something is ALWAYS “going on.” Support your independent media so that you can always be informed of what it is.