The vanishing of a promising Wisconsin teen
"Don't worry, Dad. All the people up north are good."
"Don't worry, Dad. All the people up north are good."
"Don't worry, Dad. All the people up north are good."
Stream full episodes of “Hometown Tragedy” now by downloading the Very Local app for free.
On a summer day in 1990, 18-year-old Berit Beck prepares for the few-hours drive to Appleton, Wisconsin.
The recent high school grad is set to attend a computer training seminar for her summer job with a construction company. She says goodbye to her boyfriend and her family, telling her father, "Don't worry, Dad. All the people up north are good."
But she never makes it to her hotel in Appleton, and her worried family contacts police.
"My first job out of college was in a small market radio station in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, maybe half an hour from Fond du Lac," said WISN reporter Nick Bohr, who covered the case extensively. "In the first month I was working there, the report came out that they were searching for this young woman who was traveling from Racine to Appleton, and she vanished. It was the first real big story in that area back in 1990 that I actually remember."
A few days later, her family's conversion van is found in the town of Fond du Lac, a small lakeside town on her route up north.
Beck, however, is nowhere to be seen. What happened in that van is a mystery that persists for decades, with the case seeing renewed interest more than three decades after she went missing.
"This particular case assignment was not something I would have ever envisioned," said retired Fond du Lac detective Nate La Motte, who took over investigating Beck's disappearance in 2013. "I wouldn't even call it a case. It's more of an endeavor, a journey to help a family attempt to get some justice as to what happened on that day when they lost her daughter."
"Hometown Tragedy" is a Very Local original series that investigates true crimes that rocked communities across America and explores the impact on those left to seek justice. Stream this episode, "The Vanishing of a Promising Wisconsin Teen," on Very Local.
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