http://nwitimes.com/...export69604.txt
The Glenwood mysteries. "Missing woman" still
By RANDY RICHARDSON
Sunday, March 05, 1995
GLENWOOD - Glenwood police were playing catch-up from the moment they were notified that Vikki Vukelich was missing.
It was not the fault of police. Vukelich, then 32, had not been seen for five days before a friend finally filed a missing-person report with police.
The delay in filing the report would later be a point of controversy; Vukelich's friends blame her then-husband, David, for failing to go to police sooner.
Adding to the difficulty of the case was that police didn't know whether they were dealing with a missing person or a homicide. As time passed by with no word from Vikki, psychics were called into the case to try to find her body. An extensive search in Glenwood, and around the massive Material Service Corp. quarry in Thornton, turned up empty.
Four years have now passed, yet the mystery remains: Did Vikki abandon her family, or was she a murder victim?
Vikki's family and friends are certain the answer is the latter, and they blame Glenwood police for failing to put the case to rest. They argue that Vikki would not have left behind her two daughters, Ashley, now 8, and Jill, now 16. No friends or family have been contacted by Vikki since she disappeared on Feb. 23, 1991.
"This is not a disappearance case," said Dixie Reeds, Vikki's mother. "There is nobody in the world who could make me believe that. There is no way my daughter would have left her children."
Vikki's best friend, Mary Prskalo, agreed. "That was not in her character.
She would have called me if something happened, and she wouldn't leave her children," she said.
The Glenwood Police Department's handling of the case is now the subject of an Illinois State Police inquiry, requested by Mayor William Asselborn. At least three other Glenwood cases are included in the state police investigation.
Prskalo said that Vikki called her from her South Holland beauty shop on the day she disappeared and sounded upbeat. She said Vikki had taken a second job as a waitress and was talking about divorcing David.
Talk of divorce was nothing new.
Vikki and David's relationship was tumultuous from the day they met at a Calumet City dance club, Prskalo said. Nevertheless, Vikki was optimistic that she could make things work and married David in a Munster church in 1986.
Prskalo was Vikki's matron of honor.
"She was just so happy to be married," Prskalo said. "She kept saying, 'I can make it work, Mary. This is it.' "
But the marriage soon turned sour, Prskalo said. Vikki filed for divorce in November 1988 and again in October 1989, but never went through with the legal steps required.
There also were six calls to Glenwood police for domestic disputes. David twice filed complaints against Vikki for battery and Vikki once filed a complaint against David for battery, according to court documents, but each of the charges were eventually dismissed.
Prskalo said Vikki never went through with divorce because she didn't think she could make it financially without her husband. So Vikki thought that taking on a second job would allow her to finally make the break, Prskalo said.
"She said, 'I'm really going to do it this time,' " Prskalo recalled Vikki saying during their last phone conversation.
David would later tell police that his wife did finally leave him. His statements to police, however, were not made until one of Vikki's friends reported her missing on Feb. 28, 1991.
David told police that his wife had taken off five days earlier and that he had not heard from her since. He told them the two had argued on the last night he saw her, and that he went to bed alone.
He said his wife stayed up watching television and drank a bottle of wine, police said. She was gone the next morning, and so was $8,000 in cash he had stored away in the house, he told police.
Attempts to contact David for this story were unsuccessful.
Thomas Rowan, who was Glenwood's police chief at the time, said David took a lie-detector test, but he termed the results "inconclusive."
Rowan, now a detective with the Chicago Police Department, blamed the detective in charge of the case, Det. Sgt. Brian Meyers, for failing to follow up on the test more expeditiously. David soon hired a lawyer, who advised him not to take a second test, Rowan said.
Prskalo points to other indications that Vikki did not just walk away. For instance, she said, Vikki's clothes, shoes and eyeglasses were left in the house. Prskalo further noted that David did not report that Vikki was missing, or call any of Vikki's friends.
Two months after Vikki disappeared, David filed for divorce, Prskalo added. During divorce proceedings, he testified under oath that Vikki would regularly take off for periods of time without telling him where she was going or when she would be returning. When she returned, he claimed, she would give no explanation to where she had been.
The two were legally divorced in August 1991. Prskalo was particularly critical of Meyers' handling of the investigation.
"I was thinking they (Glenwood police) would look into their past, and see that they had been to her house before for domestic disturbances," she said. "But it didn't happen.
"I don't believe Glenwood did the right thing from the very beginning," she added. "When I reported her missing, and begged and pleaded for them to do whatever they could to find her, it seemed like they were ignoring me."
Not long after Vukelich's disappearance, Rowan took Meyers off detective duties and put him on patrol.
"I didn't think he was performing the way a person in charge of a detective division should perform," Rowan said.
The former chief said he received numerous complaints from residents about Meyers' professional manner. "Meyers, at times, was very callous in the way he talked to people, which was inappropriate," Rowan said.
Meyers was lifted back to chief of detectives by current police Chief Russell Schoeneck. In February, Schoeneck placed Meyers on paid administrative leave based on questions raised about his handling of several cases.
Meyers could not be reached for comment for this story and did not respond to messages left at the Police Department.
Prskalo, of Whiting, has refused to let the case drop. She has accumulated a large pile of documents from her own investigative work, which she plans to turn over to the state police.
"I feel as if I've been working on this case for four years," she said. "I feel as if I've been the detective assigned."
The case has often caused disruptions in her career and strained her family, said Prskalo, a mother of three.
"I miss her," Prskalo said of her best friend. “I have to live on the memories of her. Many nights I cannot sleep. I lay there at night, and I think about her.
"It's a four-year nightmare and I want to wake up," she added. "It has consumed my life."
Prskalo said she relentlessly pursues the case because she wants to see the case solved and Vikki's daughters reunited.
According to Prskalo and Vikki's mother, Dixie Reeds, David has custody of Ashley, while Jill lives with her natural father.
David rarely allows the two sisters to see each other or even to speak to each other, according to Prskalo and Reeds. Jill is a close friend of the Prskalo family and maintains close ties with Prskalo and her daughters. Prskalo brought Jill along with her when she met recently with Mayor William Asselborn.
"I think that Jill is very lonely and sad," Prskalo said. "She's lost her mother and her sister."
Reeds said she hasn't seen her granddaughter, Ashley, in nearly a year and doesn't even know how to contact her.
Prskalo said Vikki told her what she "feared what her fate would be." She said the two even talked about what she was to do if something bad did happen.
"I don't believe that I would be a good friend if I didn't do this," Prskalo said.
"A lot of people think you should forget about it," she added, "but it's real hard when it's not finalized. I think any human being with any kind of heart could not turn their back on this."