The question her family doesn't want to ask but has to: Will she ever come home?
“I can’t see anyone taking her to murder her. But why would they take her in the first place?” asked her mother, Cara Beckerle, during an Aug. 26 interview. “I have zero answers.”
There were no notes left with threats or ransom demands, Cara Beckerle said. Aleah Beckerle’s wheelchair, her daily seizure medication, her diapers, were all left at the house.
According to Cara Beckerle, Aleah recently had a medical procedure to cut down on her seizures, so she might be okay without medicine.
“But why would they want to take her and take care of her?” she snapped out, angry. Then, tearing up: “That’s why I don’t know if she’s alive or not.”
Cara Beckerle thinks she’s the investigators’ primary suspect but insists someone kidnapped Aleah from her home.
“They keep coming back to me. ‘Are you sure there’s nothing you wanna tell us, Cara Beckerle?’” she said.
Evansville police spokesman Sgt. Jason Cullum said in an email Wednesday that the investigation is still active. No one has been arrested for involvement in Aleah Beckerle’s disappearance.
“As for any specific information related to conversations or other details, we are not discussing that publicly,” he said.
One popular theory on social media, spread in Facebook comments and blog posts, is that Beckerle was involved in Aleah's death or found her dead and tried to cover it up by reporting her missing. Beckerle pleaded guilty in 2007 to child neglect and dealing marijuana, both Class A misdemeanors, which is supposedly the reason she would be afraid of another child neglect charge. She denies that, too.
“I found her dead. That’s what they say. And got rid of her body, me and my daughters,” Cara Beckerle said. “Why would I be scared to give my daughter a proper burial?”
Police would not confirm whether or not family members have been cleared as suspects.
“We have spoken to many people,” Cullum said. “We are not publicly discussing the status of each person we have spoken with.”
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Aleah Beckerle’s mother and grandmother had their own theory on how she disappeared, and they’re not the only ones. Three people close to the family were arrested after allegedly beating a false confession out of a man they believed was involved in Aleah’s disappearance. Deb Wollner, Donna Robertson and James Wilson Jr. all face felony battery charges in connection with the assault, though the man who was allegedly held captive for several hours and beaten up was cleared in connection with the missing persons case.
With zero answers, all the family has is hope. LaRue said she believes God will bring Aleah back in his own time. It’s going to happen.
“We really feel like we’re going to get her back. Right?” she asked Cara Beckerle, sitting on the couch in the living room a few feet away. “We do.”
Beckerle broke eye contact and looked at the ceiling and wall, not as sure. A few seconds late, she agreed, not as adamant as LaRue.
“I do. Yeah,” she said. “But. Sometimes I don’t.”
More quietly: “Most of the time I do. Yes.”
Volunteers are still forming search parties to look for the 19-year-old, including searches set for Saturday and Sunday morning this weekend. Other people have donated money or food and drink, like the hundreds of water bottles that sat on the Beckerles' porch in late August waiting to be passed out to weekend searchers.
Beckerle said she’ll never give up, but the days that pass with no word on her daughter's whereabouts are taking their toll. Some days she doesn’t want to leave the couch. For a while, she resorted to listening to so-called psychics recount their visions, but never heard what she wanted to — that her daughter is safe.
LaRue called Aleah Beckerle’s disappearance a “living nightmare.”
“They say God only puts on you what you can handle,” LaRue said. “But you know what, God, I’m not that strong, OK? You got the wrong person here.”