Real Name: Judy Rodencal
Nicknames: No known nicknames
Date: October 30, 1956
Location: Auroraville, Wisconsin
Case[]
Details: Judy Rodencal was a sixteen-year-old high school student of Auroraville, Wisconsin, located ten miles west of Oshkosh. On the morning of October 30, 1956, Judy left home for where her school bus would pick her up, but she never made it to school. It was not until evening when her boyfriend arrived at the Rodencals' house to take her out on a date that anyone realized something was wrong.
Police and search teams didn't even know where to begin looking until Halloween day dawned. Judy's socks and handkerchief ended up being found on a bridge near Mill Pond a mile north of her home. Bloodhounds were brought to the creek, but they could not track her beyond the bridge.
On November 2 at 7:30PM, farmer Edgar Timm found Judy, alive, barefoot, cold and unconscious in a shack on his property. She woke up in a state of shock and was taken to a hospital and released after about a week. Afterward, she could not account for her actions over the course of those missing three days. Doctors suggested that she had suffered a "blackout."
Amateur sleuths noting her resemblence to Evelyn Hartley have long speculated she was almost abducted by the same person who abducted Hartley, but that she might have escaped. The local police never did any follow-up and closed the case. The identity of Rodencal's abductor has never been revealed.
Suspects: In November 1957, after the murder of Plainfield store owner, Beatrice Worden, the Wisconsin authorities confronted her killer, Edward Gein, with a list of missing persons cases that had occurred between the death of his mother and Mrs. Worden. Their suspicions were aroused after the discovery of the body of Mary Hogan, another local missing persons cases. Several theories have made to try and connect Gein to both the Hartley and Rodencal cases. Auroraville was only 33 miles east of Plainfield. However, lie detector tests seemed to exonerate Gein of any other murders, and his doctors decided his violence was only directed to women who looked like his mother.
Extra Notes: This case has not aired on Unsolved Mysteries.
Results: Unsolved
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