Replay: Joan Bernal Part 1
The Vanished Podcast
Audible
4.5 • 15.2K Ratings
🗓️ 2 February 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Joan Bernal's episodes originally aired in October 2020. In December of 1988, Joan Bernal, her husband, and their children had plans to leave their home in Joliet, Illinois, and head to Texas to visit her husband’s family for the holidays. Things didn’t go as planned, and they weren’t able to bring Joan’s children from a previous marriage due to custody issues. According to Joan’s husband, Gil, they decided to make the trip anyway. He later told investigators that Joan became upset during the drive and that he dropped her off near a bus stop in McAlester, Oklahoma, and gave her cash so she could return to Illinois. The plan, he said, was for Joan to pick up her other children and then fly to Texas to meet them. Joan Bernal has never been seen or heard from again.
Over the years, this case has been marked by conflicting accounts, unanswered questions, and lingering uncertainty about what truly happened to Joan. Investigators and Joan’s loved ones have wrestled with whether she could still be alive, whether foul play was involved, and why no verified trace of her has ever surfaced.
Update:
In December 2025, 37 years after Joan Bernal was last seen, the case took a significant turn. A Will County grand jury returned a sealed indictment charging Joan’s husband, Gilbert Bernal, with first-degree murder in connection with her disappearance. Stay tuned through the end of Part 2 for more details on the recent developments in this case.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Joan Bernal's episodes originally aired in October 2020. |
| 0:04.0 | At the end of 2025, there was a major development in her case. |
| 0:09.3 | Stay tuned to the end of Part 2 for an important update. |
| 0:19.7 | We canvassed a whole big area around Zeneca, Illinois, and around the rivers because he had friends in that area, you know, around Joliet. |
| 0:30.6 | We consulted psychics. My mother did, my grandmother did. We talked to all sorts of different people. |
| 0:39.0 | Try to get some sort of, if in fact he killed her, where he put her. |
| 0:44.0 | So we were looking for a body. |
| 0:45.3 | We knew that. |
| 0:46.0 | We were looking for certain things. |
| 0:49.2 | Different psychics had told us that she was under a, you know, a silo |
| 0:53.1 | and the property had a red barn or something. |
| 0:55.3 | I don't remember now, but anyway, we looked around Illinois. |
| 0:59.0 | My grandparents went down to Texas to try to reason with the people in McAllen. |
| 1:05.7 | They weren't getting much cooperation. |
| 1:07.5 | We weren't getting any cooperation from the law enforcement down there. We couldn't |
| 1:12.2 | convince the FBI that it was a crime that occurred across states, so they wouldn't get involved. |
| 1:18.1 | The family refused to allow anybody onto the property to search the property. So we just kept |
| 1:24.5 | hitting dead ends wherever we went, but that was why it was Illinois, Oklahoma, and Texas. |
| 1:30.7 | Now, I think Oklahoma was only involved because they traveled through it. |
| 1:35.4 | But I don't remember now if there wasn't some sort of evidence that led us to think maybe Oklahoma was more involved. |
| 1:43.6 | In December of 1988, 34-year-old Joan Bernal and her husband had plans to take their |
| 1:50.8 | children to Texas to visit with her husband's family for the holidays. |
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