Mary Badaracco

Case background and investigation

Mary Edna Badaracco was 38 years old and working as a house cleaner in Sherman, Connecticut, in the summer of 1984. Her marriage to her husband, Dominic Badaracco Sr., had become deeply troubled. Dominic had a history of infidelity and domestic violence, and Mary had recently discovered he was again having an affair. She had decided to file for divorce, a decision that placed her at a dangerous crossroads in a volatile household on Wakeman Hill Road. Friends and relatives later described a marriage marked by fear, and Mary appeared to be preparing to leave for good in the summer of 1984, gathering the resources and resolve she would need to start over on her own.

Mary's adult daughters last heard from her on August 19, 1984. When they could not reach her afterward, they grew alarmed, and on August 31 they reported her missing. Dominic told authorities that he had last seen Mary on August 20, claiming she had packed all of her belongings and left the marriage after he gave her a large cash settlement, an amount he described as somewhere between $100,000 and $250,000. But the scene at the home told a far more sinister story than a simple departure.

Mary's 1982 Chevrolet Cavalier remained parked outside the house, and the windshield on the driver's side had been smashed inward, leaving shards of glass on the front seat. Even more telling, her car keys and her wedding ring had been left behind on the kitchen counter, while investigators found that a woman intent on starting a new life had seemingly abandoned the very things she would need. The car itself later disappeared and was never recovered. In 1990 the case was formally upgraded from a missing-person investigation to a homicide, with Dominic Badaracco identified as the prime suspect in his wife's presumed death.

Despite decades of investigation and a $50,000 reward, no one has ever been charged in Mary Badaracco's disappearance and suspected murder, and her body has never been found. The case took a dramatic turn in 2013, when Dominic Badaracco was convicted not of homicide but of attempted bribery, after he tried to derail a grand jury investigation by offering a sitting judge $100,000. He was sentenced to seven years in prison for that crime. Investigators pursued a theory, based on an unconfirmed tip, that others may have helped dispose of Mary's body, but they were never able to build a homicide case that could be brought to trial. Connecticut State Police continue to list Mary's case as open and maintain a $50,000 reward, and her daughters have spent decades pressing for answers, appearing in the media and pleading for anyone with knowledge to come forward. More than 40 years later, Mary Badaracco's fate remains one of Connecticut's most closely watched cold cases, defined by the haunting image of her abandoned car and the wedding ring she left behind.