Search 'branching out'

Aircraft scour area for carriers missing since Sunday

 JOLIET - Police took to the air again Wednesday, searching by plane for three Herald News carriers missing since early Sunday morning.

The search turned up no sign of the missing woman and her two adult children or the van they were delivering newspapers from when they disappeared.

"We were branching out a bit," Joliet police Chief David Gerdes said of the air search for Karen Bockhol, 49, and her children, Tracy Bockhol, 26, and Thomas Bockhol, 23.

Aircraft flew over rough terrain outside the city and also "checked most of the general haunts where stolen vehicles are dumped," Gerdes said.

The Bockhols vanished while delivering newspapers on a route near their Stone Street home. Police launched the investigation into the mysterious disappearance after Wayne Bockhol, Karen's eldest son, contacted officers about 11 a.m. Sunday.

"We've been treating it since Day One as if there's foul play, although we have no physical evidence," Gerdes said. "If we get lucky and they're safe and sound, we'll be thrilled."

No suspects

Along with a lack of physical evidence, police have no suspects linked to the disappearance.

Detectives located a former boyfriend of Karen Bockhol, a man who was arrested along with her in November 1986 on child pornography charges, but determined he was not involved in the disappearance.

"We talked to him," Gerdes said. "He lives out of state. We verified he was in his hometown Sunday morning."

The criminal charges against Bockhol in the 1986 case were dropped. The former boyfriend pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years probation, 180 days of periodic imprisonment and was fined $1,000.

Police have focused on the whereabouts of a motorist two witnesses reported seeing crash into a white van matching the description of the Bockhols' vehicle about the time they would have been delivering newspapers Sunday.

"We'd really like to talk to the driver of the vehicle that was involved in that accident," Gerdes said.

The vehicle - a red car, according to Joliet police Lt. James Stewart - collided with a white van in the intersection of Bridge and Bluff streets early Sunday.

"There was no argument," Gerdes said. "The drivers went off in their own directions."

Van sightings

Numerous sightings of the white 1989 Dodge Caravan with its distinctive "BEANA 8" handicap license plate have been called into police since news of the vanished family broke.

Callers have said they have seen the van on highways out of state, in the Empress casino parking lot, in Northern Illinois and in Morris, and one man told of stepping out of its way in the Provena Saint Joseph Medical Center parking lot late Monday morning.

The man, who had been at the hospital on business, said he noticed the van because his daughter's nickname was "Beaner," and he thought a vehicle parked in the reserved lot near the employee entrance bore a peculiar tag if it belonged to a doctor or nurse.

"I thought, what kind of doctor would say he's a 'beaner'?" the man recalled. The man spotted the van between 11:45 and 11:55 a.m. and remembered the driver as a "smallerframed person. I believe it was a woman."

He also said the driver's hair tufted out on the sides.

"It was short hair," he said, "hair stuck out on the sides."