DETROIT, Maine — A skull found near a California river has been identified as part of the remains of a former Maine woman reported missing 15 months ago, according to her mother.
Billie-Jo Dick of Plymouth said Thursday that she received the news the day before that her daughter, Danielle Bertolini, was deceased from Officer Brian Taylor of the Fortuna Police Department in Humboldt County, California, one of the investigators assigned to the case.
“He called me yesterday, and he said, ‘Well, I have some news. You might want to sit down.’ And he said, ‘You did it. You didn’t give up,’” Dick said during a news conference at a park in Detroit, where she displayed a quilt and a poster made from photographs of her daughter.
“I knew this was going to be hard because I knew the outcome the first time I set foot in California [in February 2014]. I knew my daughter was gone, but it wasn’t until yesterday that it was actually confirmed,” she said.
Dick said that the skull, found in March along the banks of the Eel River, near Ferndale, California, initially was not believed to be that of her daughter because attempts to match it to Bertolini’s dental records were not successful. That, she said, is because several teeth and the jaw were missing.
The confirmation was the result of DNA testing, she said.
Calls made to Fortuna police and the Humboldt County coroner’s office Thursday afternoon were not immediately returned.
Bertolini, 23, was last in contact with her family on Jan. 29, 2014, Dick said.
After days went by without word of the 23-year-old, her family began to grow more and more worried. Dick said at the time that this was unusual behavior for Bertolini, a former Nokomis High School student who usually maintained daily contact with her sister Mariah Bertolini, who lives in the Seattle area.
Family members reported Danielle Bertolini missing to Fortuna police on Feb. 19, 2014.
Police initially told Dick they considered her daughter a “voluntary” missing person because of her age, and as such, their ability to assist was limited.
However, in early July 2014, police confirmed that they considered Bertolini’s disappearance suspicious.
That’s because Bertolini disappeared at about the same time as another area woman, 37-year-old Sheila Franks of Rio Dell and Loleta, California, who was last seen on Jan. 11, 2014, according to a missing person flier posted on the Internet by her sister Melisa Walstrom of Alaska.
Both women had blonde hair and blue eyes, were similar in appearance and build, and traveled in the same social circle.
Family members of both women, who joined forces in the search effort, said earlier that police told them that they believe the two missing person cases are linked because Bertolini and Franks are believed to have last been seen with the same 44-year-old Fortuna man before they vanished.
Dick said Thursday that she was told that the person of interest is in jail for an unrelated offense and has yet to be charged in connection with the death of her daughter.
Dick flew to the West Coast in late February 2014 for a two-week search effort coordinated from Maine by Richard Bowie, operations director for the Down East Emergency Medical Institute, a volunteer search and rescue group to which Dick belongs.
Members of the search party put up fliers, knocked on doors and followed up on leads they generated, Dick said. They also visited a couple who were among the last people to see Bertolini alive.
A man who lived there told her that he believed something bad had happened to her daughter, Dick said.
“This man cried and gave me a hug, and he said, ‘I’m really sorry about this,’” she said. “I got in the vehicle with my family, and we drove down the road, and I had asked them to stop because I didn’t want to get sick in the vehicle. I was pretty nauseous.”
When they got out of the vehicle, Dick saw small footprints and followed them because her daughter had small feet.
“It was then that we discovered her clothes,” she said.
Among the clothing was a shirt she says belonged to Bertolini.
“I know because it was mine. I had given it to her,” she said. “It had been sitting out in the rain. It appeared to me that it had blood all over it.”
The group photographed the shirt and called police to gather it as evidence, she said.
Dick said that the ordeal has been hard on her whole family.
“They have been through so much. You see all these things for missing people, and you never think in a million years that you would be doing it for your own child, let alone somebody that you know, and this has been 15 months too long for me,” she said.
“This is really just the beginning because there’s so much still that’s left unsaid,” she said. “There’s so much more to find out, and I won’t give up. I’ve taught the kids to never give up. Never give up. If you believe in something, do it and fight for what you believe in.”
Dick said Thursday that she is planning another trip to California in early July and that she will be accompanied by Julie Jones and her tracking dog, Quincy, of VK9 Scent Specific Search and Recovery.
Jones and Quincy went to California to pursue leads in the case in May 2014, according to Bowie.
Dick said her goal is to find the rest of her daughter’s remains and bring them back to Maine.
“I’m not going to quit because I don’t want just a skull from my daughter. I want everything,” she said. “I want her whole being to rest in peace, not just part of her.”
Dick and her family and friends have been holding fundraisers — including a recent bottle drive and bake and yard sale — to cover the roughly $2,000 cost for the July trip to California, but as of Thursday, she was about $500 short of the amount needed.
Donations can be made via DEEMI’s website, its PayPal account at rescue11@juno.com or sent to DEEMI at P.O. Box 268, Orono, ME 04473.