Without a trace

On the day after Independence Day in 1975, 14-year-old Robin Pettinato was walking barefoot to a friend’s house in Whitefish.

Then she simply vanished.

Forty years later, Robin’s family and the detectives who investigated her case remain just as puzzled now as they were then about her disappearance.

Robin’s case is still active and posted on missing-person databases such as The Doe Network and The Charley Project. At the time she went missing she was 5 feet tall, 100 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes. She was wearing cut-off jean shorts and a halter top, standard teen attire in the mid-1970s.

Robin was walking along West Second Street to a home just two houses to the north of the Pettinato family home.

Her diary, turned over to law enforcement officers by her older sister, Rhonda Dudis of Kalispell, gave detectives insight into her personal life and a few leads to follow, but they were all dead ends.

“She had kept notes [in her diary] until the day she disappeared. We somewhat followed her trail” from the details in the journal, recalled Whitefish detective Dan Voelker, who dogged the Pettinato case for years and is now retired.

“We polygraphed the boyfriend and he passed,” Voelker. “We interviewed the parents ... they were dealing with it the best they could. They had no idea what had happened.”

Detectives tracked down a young man Robin mentioned in her diary who had left Whitefish for another state around the time of her disappearance, but that was a dead end.

Voelker said he pursued a lead years later when a local teacher took a trip to Alaska and swore she talked to Robin in a bar in Alaska.

“I interviewed the teacher extensively and we got in contact with an Alaska trooper,” Voelker recalled. “He did everything and could find nothing.”

Voelker also checked Social Security and Internal Revenue Service records through the years to see if Robin’s name came up.

Nothing ever surfaced.

There was early speculation that Robin may have run away from home, but Voelker and Robin’s family members agreed that theory didn’t make much sense since she had left her purse behind and didn’t even have shoes on.

Rhonda said to this day she appreciates the amount of time Voelker invested in the case. “He spent a lot of his own time on it,” she noted. “Dan did sincerely take into consideration the feelings of the family. All we wanted to do was find her.”

Robin was eight years younger than Rhonda, a big age gap at that time in a person’s life.

“I was 23. Robin was 14. I don’t think we were necessarily that close,” Rhonda said. “She was a tag-along for a long time. Then I went away to college.”

Rhonda returned to the Flathead Valley the summer of 1975 because she had been offered a teaching job at Flathead High School.

“She was excited I was going to be at Flathead,” Rhonda recalled. “Our relationship was pretty good.”

Through the years Rhonda, one of five Pettinato siblings, became the “go-to” family member who worked with detectives. She was the one who provided a lock of Robin’s hair that continues to be a DNA sample on file. She also was involved when a psychic was hired in the early 1980s to help with the case.

“My parents were both devastated,” she said. “I was going to do anything I could to help alleviate that pain. Mom couldn’t handle any of it; Dad was just shut off from it.”

Robin’s parents, Romolo and Esther Pettinato, settled in Essex after World War II and he worked on the railroad. They moved to Whitefish in 1960 and he continued his career with the railroad until retiring in 1988. Both Romolo and Esther are no longer living.

The small-town gossip mill churned out ugly rumors. A few speculated Robin’s father was involved in her disappearance, but Rhonda said that was a hurtful and false accusation.

“My dad would never, ever hurt one of his children. That’s not a possibility,” Rhonda said. “Robin was not a throw-away child. She had a family who loved her.”

Rhonda also pointed out her father had just gotten back from his shift as a brakeman for the railroad when he came home to learn his daughter had gone missing.

The mid-1970s “were a different time and a different place,” Rhonda said. “It was a different world back then. Everyone chalked it up to [Robin] running off.”

There was no Amber Alert system for missing children in 1975.

Local newspapers didn’t pursue the missing-person case to any large degree.

The front page of the July 31,1975, edition of the Whitefish Pilot has a short story about Robin Pettinato, saying she had disappeared on July 5 “and has not been heard from since.” It gave her description and asked anyone with information to call either the Police Department or the Pettinato family.

Later that summer a quarter-page advertisement was published in the Whitefish Pilot, showing Robin’s photo and offering a $50 reward.

A short story in the Sept. 5, 1975, Daily Inter Lake stated “Police are assuming she is a runaway until future information might prove otherwise.”

The article said police had checked various leads but quoted Whitefish Police Chief Jim Loser as saying “there’s nothing we can do to pin it down.”

Brock Wilson, who worked as a police officer in Whitefish before joining the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office as a deputy, also worked on the case.

“I’m from Whitefish; I knew the Pettinato family. They were a nice family,” Wilson said.

“We hoped [the case] would be solved before we ended our careers,” said Wilson, who also is now retired. “It’s very frustrating to this day.”

Pat Walsh, a sergeant with the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office — also now retired — took on the case in later years. His specialty was pursuing cold cases

“Everything was in a shoe box at the Whitefish Police Department,” Walsh recalled. “I copied and put everything into a notebook.”

Walsh continues to believe the disappearance of Robin Pettinato is connected to the disappearance of Nancy Kirkpatrick from Columbia Falls in April 1976.

“There are commonalities in there,” he said.

In a 2006 Daily Inter Lake profile of Walsh, he listed the two girls’ disappearance at the top of cases he wanted to solve.

Current Whitefish Police Chief Bill Dial said his department has looked into the case several times through the years. Any time a lead would surface, detectives pursued it.

“Every one has turned out a dead end,” Dial said.

Rhonda said a volunteer with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children interviewed her about a year ago.

Forty years is a long time to look for someone.

Still, Rhonda said, “it’s always good to hope.”

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.