Hope fading in carrier disappearance

Hope fading in carrier disappearance

 JOLIET - Three days after his family's disappearance, Wayne Bockhol has hit rock bottom.

"I'm thinking there's no hope," Bockhol said, "basically no hope at all."

But police said Wednesday they are investigating a possible link between Wayne's mother, missing Herald News carrier Karen Bockhol, and a former boyfriend who was convicted on child pornography charges 14 years ago.

"We're aware of it," Joliet Chief David Gerdes said of Karen Bockhol's former boyfriend. "We're certainly looking into it."

The man and Karen Bockhol were arrested in November 1986 and accused of running a child pornography ring out of the Stone Street home where the whole Bockhol family resided until three of them vanished Sunday. The boyfriend reportedly lived with the family during his involvement with child pornography.

The couple reportedly was arrested after picking up developed film from a Crest Hill camera store. The photographs "depicted a young girl between 10 and 12 years old in sexually explicit poses," Crest Hill police said at the time.

The charges against Karen Bockhol, now 49, were later dropped. Prosecutors at the time said she was supposed to testify against the boyfriend. But he pleaded guilty and her testimony was not needed. He was sentenced to four years probation, 180 days of periodic imprisonment and fined $1,000.

Bockhol's three children, Wayne and the son and daughter now missing - Thomas, 23, and Tracy, 26 - were taken into foster care after her arrest but later returned to their mother. Wayne Bockhol said the former boyfriend was "very abusive" to his mother in explanation of any involvement she may have had in the crime.

Wayne Bockhol did not know where the man now resides, but said he had heard that his mother's former boyfriend was seen in town recently.

Friends and family have supported Wayne Bockhol since his mother, brother and sister vanished in the middle of their paper route early Sunday morning. They also stood by him when the birth mother of two young girls Karen Bockhol took in years ago showed up to reclaim the children and take them back with her to Indiana.

"I said, 'Oh, you want to play mother now,'" family friend Vicki Brisco recalled of her parting conversation with the mother of the two girls, Sabrina, 4, and Tabitha, 5.

Wayne Bockhol said his mother has cared for Sabrina since infancy and took Tabitha in about two years ago. His missing sister, Tracy, was trying to legally adopt Sabrina and hoped to have the process completed by May.

Sabrina attended Catholic Charities Head Start and Tabitha was a student at Farragut elementary school, Wayne Bockhol said.

Catholic Charities social workers went to the Bockhols' Stone Street house when the mother was taking the children away, Wayne Bockhol said.

"They tried to reason with her," he said. "It didn't work.

"I've talked to a lawyer," he added. "He said there's nothing I can do."

Bockhol said his missing mother first started baby-sitting for Tabitha, then was made godmother of her younger sister, Sabrina. Karen Bockhol watched the two girls for increasingly long periods that stretched into what she understood to be a permanent living arrangement, he said.

"A few days turned into four years," Wayne Bockhol explained.

Brisco spoke of the birth mother taking away the children as just another blow to a staggering family.

"It's ignorant," she said. "These people have enough on their shoulders."

And with little to pin his hopes on, the weight on Wayne Bockhol's shoulders seems to be pushing him steadily down.

"I'm trying to (remain hopeful)," he said, "but it's hard."