The only thing anyone knows for sure is that on the morning of Tuesday, July 27, Inge Strama never showed up for work.
“I kissed her goodbye as I left for work, and I never saw her again,” said her husband, Frank. “I walked out of the house to go to my own job, and I just had this uneasy feeling. My wife of 22 years, the mother of our sons, simply disappeared from our lives.”
No one else was present at the moment Frank Strama says he kissed his wife goodbye at their home in Plainfield. “She took no money with her,” he said. “No clothing. No identification. She left us no note. The next day the police found her locked car in a small strip mall in Palos Hills. As far as I know, she knew no one in Palos Hills. We have not heard a word from her since.”
Inge Strama, who was 42 years old when she disappeared and who was born in Germany, worked in an administrative position at Elkay Manufacturing Co., a producer of water coolers, in Oak Brook. “She worked here for 12 years and was very well-liked,” said Walter Reilly, an Elkay vice president. “We are all totally mystified by this.”
Frank and Inge Strama have two sons, ages 16 and 15. No one can understand why she would leave without a word of goodbye to them. “My sons are beginning to accept that their mother is gone,” Strama said.
He said he is convinced that she left the family voluntarily. “She was a little melancholy that day,” he said. He said that he veers between pain, embarrassment and terror when he thinks about what happened: “For whatever reason, she walked out and never came back.”
At the Plainfield Police Department, Detective Andy Vanderlei, who has worked on the case from the day she vanished, said there are many more questions than answers.
“To tell you the truth, it’s really up for grabs,” Vanderlei said. “This is a most unusual disappearance. There is no indication of a reason why she would do it, nothing that would lead us to anything.”
One of the most peculiar aspects of the case, he said, is that all of the possessions a person might take if that person was voluntarily leaving her family-clothes, cash, personal papers-were still at the Stramas’ home. Her credit cards, purse and wallet were found stuffed in dresser drawers; $120 in cash had been left on top of a dresser.
“I have no idea why she would leave without taking anything,” her husband said. Neither do the police. At Elkay, her supervisors report noticing nothing unusual in her behavior in the days prior to her disappearance.
She had been called to jury duty in Will County that week; on Monday, July 26, she had been assigned to a trial, and was supposed to show up again at the courthouse Tuesday afternoon. Someone identifying herself as Inge Strama called the courthouse that morning to say her mother had died in Germany, and that she would not be able to serve on the jury. Inge Strama’s mother had not died.
“I think she called the courthouse before taking off for good out of a sense of duty,” her husband said. “She was a very conservative, correct suburban woman.” The police say they have no idea what the courthouse phone call was about, or whether it was, indeed, Inge Strama who placed it.
Frank Strama, 54, a credit manager for a bottling company, said the disappearance of his wife has devastated his life and has left him frantic and confused. “As you can imagine,” he said, “at some point I was considered a suspect as well.” Plainfield Detective Vanderlei said his department has conducted dozens of interviews, and that until the disappearance is solved, “no one is ruled out.”
Strama said he has gone over in his mind all the possible explanations for his wife’s disappearance: “Suicide, just wanting to get away for a while, meeting someone and developing a relationship with that person and letting it overwhelm her. . . .”
Still, neither he nor the police nor her employers can come up with an explanation for the key questions: If she was going to leave, why would she leave virtually everything, from her clothing to her purse to her personal possessions, behind in the house, many of them apparently hidden? And, no matter what her reasons might have been, why would a mother of two teenage sons walk out the door forever without saying a word of farewell to them?
“I lie awake trying to come up with an answer,” her husband said.
“We’ve asked ourselves all of these same things,” Detective Vanderlei said.
She has been gone for more than three months now.
