Police still searching in Badaracco murder case

State police executed a search warrant Feb. 8 at the Sherman home where Mary Badaracco was last seen 27 years ago.

The search was an indication a grand jury investigation into her disappearance and presumed murder is still in progress.

Major Crime Squad detectives, accompanied by a state Department of Transportation vehicle designed for concrete work, arrived at the Wakeman Hill Road property owned by Ms. Badaracco's former husband, Dominic Badaracco Sr., about 9 a.m. and departed shortly after 3:30 p.m. without finding her body.

State police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance said investigators had apparently concluded their latest search of the sprawling, heavily wooded property and were not expected to return.

"Normally, if they plan to come back, they leave a trooper overnight," Lt. Vance said.

No police vehicles remained at the residence after investigators left Feb. 8, and no one answered the door when The Spectrum knocked on it shortly after police and DOT workers left.

For more than a year, a state Superior Court judge has been conducting a one-man grand jury investigation into Ms. Badaracco's disappearance.

A source with knowledge of the case has told The Spectrum that Mr. Badaracco and his son, Joseph, are its targets.

"It's not the first time they've been there," Joseph Badaracco said Wednesday about investigators at the Sherman house.

Mr. Badaracco, who has denied any involvement in his stepmother's disappearance, said police were at his father's house three or four months ago, and they searched his own home in Danbury within the past few months.

"They tore the place up," he said.

Mr. Badaracco said police found nothing in the searches and called the investigation "a witch hunt."

Mary Badaracco, 38, was reported missing by her two daughters in August 1984, but her disappearance was treated as a missing person's case for years, until state police reclassified it as a homicide in 1990.

A $50,000 reward posted by the state for information about the case remains unclaimed.

Ms. Badaracco's daughters, Beth Profeta and Sherrie Passaro, have held annual vigils for their mother in Danbury to keep the case in the public eye.

"I just wish they would come clean. Only a monster would do this," Ms. Profeta said last week, with Ms. Passaro at her side. "We need to bury our mother. But we're thrilled with what the police are doing. We just keep praying that today, tonight, tomorrow could be the day this case breaks open. We know it's going to happen."

Dominic Badaracco, who owned a siding business and a bar in Danbury, testified during his divorce trial in May 1985 the couple had discussed ending their 15-year marriage before his wife vanished.

He said he returned home from work to find her gone, along with more than $100,000 in cash and other valuables the two had agreed on as a settlement.

In the years since Mary Badaracco was last seen, the case has periodically flared into prominence, most recently four years ago when state police dug up backyards of homes in New Fairfield and Newtown based on a tip a Danbury contractor who frequently worked for her husband had buried her missing car.

The car wasn't found and, in 2009, the contractor, Ernie Dachenhausen, was acquitted by a Superior Court jury in Danbury of a charge he had interfered with a murder investigation.

Several sources have told The Spectrum the grand jury began hearing evidence in state Superior Court in New Britain sometime late in 2010.

Under state law, investigative grand juries, which operate in secret, are limited to a six-month lifespan, although prosecutors can apply for two six-month extensions.

If the Badaracco grand jury had started in the last months of 2010, it would be in the midst of its second extension and would have to wrap up by late spring.

Assistant State's Attorney Christopher Alexy, who heads the Violent Crimes Bureau in the office of Chief State's Attorney Kevin Kane, has been identified by sources as the prosecutor in the proceedings.

Mr. Alexy declined to comment last week on either the grand jury investigation or the search in Sherman.

Lt. Vance also refused to say whether the search was a result of information from the grand juror.

"As of right now, it's an open and ongoing investigation, and that $50,000 reward is still out there," he said.

jpirro@newstimes.com; 203-731-3342