I am Cerilla's daughter. I'll gladly answer any questions about the issue you might have to the best of my ability.
Here's the real story....
In February 2008, my father died after having gone into a diabetic coma. My mom was the one who had to make the decision to pull the plug. The day he went into a coma was also the day my mom's lawyer had filed her paperwork for divorce. Due to this, his entire family said that she killed him for the insurance. My mother loved my dad, but they had their own issues with her job, his hobbies, and his mental problems. After he was gone, we found a stockpile of his medicine he had apparently been storing up and hiding. We also found a large pile of cash, we believe he might have been selling his medicine behind our backs. His brothers wanted the medications, but were told no. They got very upset over that, and I no longer hear from any of them to this day. We turned the medicine into Circle of Life to be destroyed.
A couple months later, my mom began to date another man. She hid this from me for a while, because she knew I would disapprove, and I did. He reminded her of my dad, in way too many ways. He lived in a hotel just up the road for a few months, and then my mother moved him into our house. I very much hated him. He threatened to kill me on multiple occasions.
It was due to him, that she had to quit her job as a police officer. He was the local town drunk and a felon, and she was advised to end it with him, quit, or she would be fired. She decided to quit.
About a month after losing her job, he bought a house down in Ozark, where he lives to this day, as far as I know. Myself and some family and friends and ex-coworkers of hers were doing our best to seperate her from him. He was verbally and physically abusive. He did his best to poison her against everybody that cared about her. He moved her to Ozark and would not let her communicate with us in any way. She finally decided she didn't like that and after they fought called me. I drove down to Ozark and took her and some of her possessions back to Bentonville with me.
A while later, they made up and she went back down there with him. When they fought again, he brought her back up, but refused to bring her home. I was at work this time, and was called by the Bentonville Police to pick her up from their station. They advised that she had put a gun to her head and threatened to kill herself if the boyfriend did not take her home, so he drove her there. They advised that she should be taken to see a psychologist.
My supervisor at the time, refused to let me take the rest of the night off, even tho I had made arrangements for the rest of my shift to be covered. I took my mother back to our house, made sure she had everything she needed and that she would be okay. I then went back to work, tho very upset.
After work my mom was still up, tho she was headed to bed. I then went to bed as well.
When I got up the next morning to head to my part time job, she was already up and dressed. She told me that she was going to run some errands and that she would see me later. I went to work.
My second job was at a gas station. My boss had given me a piece of strawberry bread and let me go home early. When I got home, all the vehicles were there and the bedroom door was closed. Normally, this would mean my mom was taking a nap. I decided that I wanted to share the bread with her and would wake her up.
When I opened the bedroom door, the bed was empty, except for a pile of credit cards, ids, her cell phone, her expensive watch, a power of attorney and a note telling me not to blame her boyfriend.
I called my grandmother first, to see if she had heard from my mother. She had not. I hung up with her and called the Bentonville PD. As I was waiting for them, I called the Pea Ridge PD, family and friends, to see if anybody had heard anything. Nobody had. My grandmother and her husband and some of the Pea Ridge officers came over. Bentonville PD went through everything she had left. They also went thru the files on my computer, which my mother had access to. They found in the history where she had made the power of attorney the night before and also where she had done a search for bus tickets to Tulsa.
One of our friends I had called stated that he had been over around noon to pick up a trailer my mom had been borrowing. He said she seemed happy and was dressed very nicely and had on perfume. She is not the type that typically wears perfume or makeup.
We found a reciept in the trash from walmart. On it was a hoodie, a bag, and some shoes. They have video from walmart from this, and also where she took some cash out of the bank. They verified, with a picture, that she did indeed buy a ticket to Tulsa at the Rogers depot, but unknown if she got on the bus or not. The Chief of Pea Ridge went personally on his own time and searched Tulsa as best he could trying to find her. He found at the Rogers bus depot a piece of paper that looked to be her writing, with the name Diedre on it. It matched her other writing that we had on hand.
Her boyfriend was taken into custody by the Ozark PD that night, on the off chance that he had done something.
For months he would call me and blame me for killing her, to the point I stopped answering. I have not heard from him in over a year now.
Nobody in the family has heard from her since that time. We do hope that she will eventually contact us if nothing else.
Please, if you have any other questions, let me know, and I will try to answer them.
I, myself, think she had a midlife crisis and possibly a mental breakdown. She was the responsible one of the family. She lost her husband and her job, which she loved, in less than a year. Her and I were fighting over her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was abusive. She had been blamed for my father's death. I believe this all contributed to what happened. I think she felt she was sick of it all and had to get away.
Since she left, many thing have happened, that I feel she would be sorry to have not been around for. She is sorely missed, and will be so until she returns.
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