Sheriff’s office hopes reward will help find Penngrove woman missing since 2014

Annie Bailly disappeared just days before her 64th birthday in 2014.|

The last sign of Annie Bailly, a Penngrove woman missing since 2014, was an entry she wrote in her diary.

Diligent about recording her weight each day, Bailly went into a bathroom Dec. 4, 2014 of the Davis Lane home she shared with her husband and weighed herself. She wrote it down: 131 pounds. It was five days before her 64th birthday.

The next morning, her husband Kerry, left the house for a weekend seeing friends in Belmont, San Mateo County. The couple was estranged and divorcing.

Kerry Bailly later told investigators he assumed she was in her room as usual when he left without saying goodbye.

Annie Bailly was gone when her brother showed up the next day, a Saturday, to take her out for lunch, having driven up from his home in Carmel Valley. The house was locked. Her car was in the garage.

“Everything was closed up, the blinds were drawn and I was freaking out,” Daniel Bleman said. “I called the sheriffs and they came out to the house.”

Her purse and keys would later be found inside, but her driver’s license, a credit card and health insurance card were gone.

Two years later, Bailly’s family and Sonoma County sheriff’s investigators still have found no sign of the 5-foot-4 woman with hazel eyes and curly gray hair. The Sheriff’s Office announced a $10,000 reward for information about her whereabouts this month. The money was provided at her brother’s urging by lawyers representing her estate.

With no sign of Bailly, her family is left wondering what happened. She could be living a secret, new life. She could have taken her own life. She could have been a victim of foul play. Investigators said they’ve found no evidence to suggest a particular outcome. Meanwhile, her small estate and savings are on hold.

Detectives checked taxi companies, airport manifests and border crossings for any sign Bailly left on her own. They found nothing.

They brought search and rescue volunteers and trained dogs to look for signs of Bailly at the property and neighborhood. They’ve interviewed, family, neighbors and friends.

Kerry Bailly said he feels certain his estranged wife took her own life. He declined to say more because he said it was painful and “I don’t see what it would accomplish.” Detectives checked Golden Gate bridge records and confirmed Kerry Bailly’s and his friends’ accounts of his travels to and from Belmont.

“It’s her brother’s desperate effort to get closure and I think, for him, he will never achieve closure,” Kerry Bailly said. “I’m trying to get closure. I probably never will, either.”

Blemen, a psychiatrist and older than his sister by just 11 months, said he feels certain something troubling befell his sister and that someone must know something about her fate.

Detectives have said they hope the reward will help direct people’s attentions and memories to December 2014 when Bailly was last known alive. They first put out a missing person’s alert in January 2015, and later debunked a possible sighting in Cotati.

“We want any information that will lead to her whereabouts or information of substance about her,” said Sgt. Shannon McAlvain, who oversees the sheriff’s violent crimes and missing persons investigations.

Bailly was born and raised in New York City, and went to high school in Queens. She followed her brother after he moved to San Francisco in the late 1960s. Bailly met her husband in the 1990s and they lived in San Mateo until moving to Penngrove about 15 years ago.

Belman said his sister had at least one psychiatric-related hospitalization. She took medication for depression and used marijuana daily. Yet, he believes she would not take her own life.

Bleman said at first he assumed she left home to run away. During their last conversation, a phone call about a week prior to her last diary entry, she told her brother she was thinking about getting a job. Bailly had worked as a bookkeeper, and was currently living on her savings and spousal support, he said. She paid her husband rent to stay in the home they shared, he said.

“She was talking about getting through the divorce, she didn’t want to die, she wanted to live, she wanted to go up to Oregon...she wanted to move on with her life,” Bleman said.

Bailly’s brother said she wasn’t in good health and was unlikely to walk somewhere on her own. She had few friends apart from a group of elderly women she spent time with each week through the B’nai Israel Jewish Center in Petaluma, her brother said.

Bleman said he was frustrated that the Sheriff’s Office didn’t appear, from his perspective, to treat the case with urgency from the outset. He’s met with Sheriff Steve Freitas and pressed for more attention to his sister’s case.

McAlvain, the sheriff’s sergeant, said they receive sometimes multiple missing person reports each day, and the cases rarely last beyond the week. Most involve adults who leave of their own accord. From June 2015 through July 2016, they received 679 missing person reports. Of those, only 270 cases weren’t resolved by the end of the assigned deputy’s shift. The bulk of those were resolved within about a week, McAlvain said.

Bailly’s case is unusual because it has gone unresolved for so long, he said.

“The case will be open for years,” McAlvain said. “As new information comes forward, just like any cold case, we will work those leads to exhaustion.”

About four months after she was last seen, Bailly’s estate lawyer hired private investigator Mike Morarity to look into her disappearance.

By then, Kerry Bailly had sold his wife’s car and canceled her gym membership - actions Bleman said irked him greatly. Morarity said he found the car’s new owner and even used a luminol test to look for blood. There was none. He said the Sheriff’s Office investigation was thorough and he, too, found no clear evidence of foul play. Morarity said his investigation only confirmed the case’s mystery.

“The story is about how many people fall through those cracks and you never hear or see anything about them,” Moriarty said. “She’s out there somewhere.”

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