#RememberThem: Bertha

The saddest part of Bertha's story is how her partner, William, saw her footprints trailing off in the snow outside their home on the night she disappeared. That's how he told it to police.

Bertha and William had four small kids – three boys and a girl who were age 1 to 4 at the time of this story.. When Bertha was out, William would stay at their house on Josephine Street in Detroit with their kids. 

The last time William saw Bertha was at home on Saturday, December 14, 1991, around 6 p.m. He was upstairs and she was downstairs. Then the kids came upstairs crying, telling him that their mom was gone again. William went downstairs, checked the front door, which was locked. He checked the side door, and it was cracked. When he looked out the door, he saw her footprints leading out the driveway in the snow. 

He tried to follow the tracks for a while before they faded. They went toward Holbrook Avenue, which was one block south, on the east side of Detroit's historic Woodward Ave. 

Sometime later, Bertha encountered Benjamin Atkins. Her body was discovered on December 30. Of all the family members of the women who were assaulted by this fast-moving serial killer, William was the one who had the most accurate recall of what Bertha was wearing the night she disappeared: Jogging pants and a white shirt with multicolored stripes, along with white “British Nikes.” She owned a black coat that she would also be wearing that night, and that coat would become evidence in the case.

We remember Bertha in this installment of the #RememberThem series. 

Bertha was found at 12 Alger in Detroit, a three-story, brick, commercial building behind a check-cashing place on Woodward Ave. This is Detroit Police's sketch of the scene.

This post is part of a series on this blog that I am calling #RememberThem, a chance to honor the women who encountered the two Detroit serial killers I have researched, John Eric Armstrong and Benjamin ("Tony") Atkins. In this continuing series, with installments dropping every week or so, we first learn more about the women Armstrong was known to have killed in Detroit, plus two of his survivors, then we turn to the women who encountered Atkins. Click on the "Honoring the Victims" label on the left to see all of the parts in the series. Also see the #RememberThem series on YouTube.

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Above photo is a copyrighted image of a case file and specifically for use in The Crack City Strangler: The Homicides of Serial Killer Benjamin Atkins; any other use prohibited without permission.

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Murders in the Motor City Series

(And yes, that photo on the book's cover is actually a photo of Atkins; see this blog post on the confusion over his photos.)