What happened to Veronica Blumhorst?

Editor’s note: This is the second story in a three-part series about unsolved mysteries in the Illinois Valley.

MENDOTA — Veronica Blumhorst had just finished a late shift at the Supervalu grocery store on Sept. 20, 1990.

Before leaving, she rented the movie, “Stella,” which she planned to watch the following day. She and a co-worker walked out to their cars together. The co-worker witnessed Veronica pull away in her Chevrolet Corsica and head toward home — four blocks away.

It was the last definitive sighting of the 21-year-old Mendota woman.

The nightmare begins

The following morning, Veronica’s family spotted her car parked in the unattached garage.

“I had told my son, Todd, that Veronica would take him to school that day,” remembers Veronica’s father, Paul.

When Todd discovered his sister was not home, he called his dad, who was finishing a shift at the fire station.

Together they figured Veronica had forgotten to take her brother to school and went out to breakfast with her boyfriend. Paul told Todd to drive himself to school.

A while later, Paul returned home and noticed Veronica was still not there. It was only around 10 a.m., so there was no reason to suspect anything out of the ordinary.

It wasn’t until Veronica’s boyfriend called asking to speak with her that Paul began worrying in earnest about Veronica.

He decided to drive to nearby Van Orin to see if Veronica had decided to visit her sister but found out she hadn’t when he arrived.

In the meantime, Veronica’s boyfriend drove to the Blumhorst residence. After speaking with a neighbor, he decided to call police and report her missing.

By the time Paul made the trip back from Van Orin, the police were already at his home. It was just before 11 a.m. at that point — less than 10 hours after Veronica was last seen.

Sgt. David Lawson, who had just joined the Mendota Police Department months before that day, remembers her disappearance well.

“She was just nowhere to be seen,” he recalls.

Neither was the movie she rented, the purse she carried, the glasses she wore or the keys she would have been carrying to unlock the family’s back door.

A search party ensued, but no trace of Veronica was found.

With no signs of a struggle or foul play, no other missing girls in the area and no ransom note, authorities had to consider the possibility Veronica ran away.

“So many things run through your head,” Lawson said. “I don’t know what the family dynamics were at home.”

Police also considered the possibility that Veronica was seeing someone on the side.

“Did she have another boyfriend?” Lawson said.

Interviews with Veronica’s friends and co-workers were conducted. Veronica’s boyfriend was also questioned, but he eventually asked for an attorney. After that, police weren’t able to obtain any other useful information and didn’t have the evidence to charge him with anything.

Another stumbling block in the investigation was Veronica had been adopted, which made it hard for DNA purposes. Lawson said police attempted to unseal Veronica’s adoption papers but never could get a court order from a judge.

What was helpful, however, was Veronica’s extensive dental work, which made her records unique. The records have since been added to a national database and can be used for comparison if an unidentified female body is uncovered.

Following Veronica’s disappearance, Mendota Police received numerous tips from people who thought they’d spotted Veronica.

“We got a lot of sightings at truck stops, in stores and highways,” Lawson said.

After investigating them, none turned out to be the real Veronica. Lawson said as the years went on, leads dried up, but the search hasn’t stopped.

Life without closure

Although Veronica vanished without a trace 24 years ago, her memory looms large for those who knew her.

Her family, devastated by her disappearance, has continued to search for her. They maintain a Facebook page called Remember Veronica Jill Blumhorst, which has more than 1,400 members. Her family hopes keeping her memory alive will generate new leads, or perhaps the perpetrator — the family does not believe Veronica is alive — will develop a conscience and confess.

The family’s dedication to recovering Veronica have supplied the only leads in the past several years. The family contacted psychics to see if they could provide any information about what had happened to Veronica.

Famed Illinois psychic, Greta Alexander, was one of the psychics involved. Alexander, now deceased, had built a solid reputation as a psychic, helping various police departments locate missing bodies.

Alexander directed Veronica’s family from where she was last seen to a nature preserve area at Bartlett Woods/Knox Grove in Lee County, southeast of Sublette.

“We had a couple of psychics that, as far as we knew, had never been to Mendota. Both of them directed us to that area,” said Paul, who now lives in Yuma, Ariz.

Cadaver dogs have been brought to that site multiple times, and they have had hits there, indicating there are signs of a cadaver possibility. The most recent search, just last month, was the first search there that included the authorities. The Lee County Sheriff’s Department, Illinois State Police Crime Scene Investigations Unit and the Mendota Police Department were all involved.

Because the search took place on a nature preserve, there were specific rules authorities were forced to follow, making the work much more difficult.

“We couldn’t remove anything. We couldn’t cut down anything,” Lawson said. “No machinery was allowed. Everything was searched by hand. They did core samples every foot.”

Despite the hits from the dogs, no human remains were found. But just because the dogs had a hit doesn’t mean a body is there, Lawson said.

“They say it (the hit) could be as small as hair,” he said.

The hits also aren’t necessarily coming from Veronica — Native Americans could have settled there previously or deceased wagon travelers could have been buried there, Lawson said.

As of right now, there’s no plans to go back there, he added.

Lawson still holds out hope Veronica left of her own volition — although he acknowledges there hadn’t been any indications she would.

“We never had any instances in which she’d run away,” Lawson said.

Paul is adamant, however, Veronica would not have run away.

“She had probably less than 10 dollars in her billfold. The next day was pay day. She hadn’t touched her savings,” he said.

In addition, the movie rental casts doubt on the runaway theory. There would be no point to renting a movie if she had plans to run away that night, he said.

With how kind-hearted Veronica was and how close the family was, there was no way Veronica would simply vanish and let her family agonize over her whereabouts for years, he said.

As for the possibility of Veronica juggling relationships with other men behind her boyfriend’s back, Paul said that wasn’t the case.

Veronica had been seeing her boyfriend for two years. Although she had dated other guys in the past, none had been serious.

Even though Veronica was quite taken with her boyfriend, Paul wasn’t as enamored.

“I had my doubts. Let’s put it that way,” he said. “But she seemed to be happy with him.”

They had even talked of marriage down the road, he said. Veronica and her boyfriend hadn’t been having any fights at the time of her disappearance, according to Paul.

But he did find the boyfriend's behavior strange following Veronica's disappearance.
For instance, the fact the boyfriend contacted police raised a red flag in Paul's mind.

“I thought it was very odd (the boyfriend and a neighbor had called the police),” Paul said.

His subsequent behavior was also a little unusual, according to Paul.

“The boyfriend stayed at our place for three days after,” Paul said. “Every time the phone rang he would try and answer it.”

Punishing the person who took Veronica away from the Blumhorst family is not the family’s priority.

“If the person who did it would contact me and say this is where Veronica is located, I don’t care if they are punished,” Paul said. “I feel like the man upstairs is going to take care of that.”

Whoever did it could have a family of their own to think about now, Paul said.

“Just give us Veronica,” he said. “That’s all we’re looking for is some closure.”

Comment on this story at www.bcrnews.com.

See Part One: Who killed 'Trader Jack' Redshaw