NEW BERLIN, Wis. (CBS 58) — It has been more than 48 hours since a New Berlin father and husband left an Illinois restaurant. He has not been seen or heard from since.
Forty-five-year-old Ben Oberto’s family is still holding out hope he’s ok, but they call his disappearance “baffling.”
His wife, Laura Leatherberry, said she knew right away something was not right.
Ben is a wine salesman. He was checking in on a client restaurant in Illinois Wednesday night but never made home.
His car went through a toll a half hour south, and his phone went dead even further away.
Laura told us Friday, “I miss my husband, and I want him home.”
So much of Oberto’s disappearance does not make sense to Laura.
The happy couple has been married for 11 years, they have a 3-year-old son together, and they were trying for another child.
Ben and Laura last spoke Wednesday night on the phone at around 6 p.m. He told her he would be home in a couple hours, hopefully before their son’s 9 p.m. bedtime.
Ben was in Crystal Lake, Illinois at the 1776 Restaurant. He left at 8:56 p.m. and drove out of the parking lot at 9:02 p.m. He hasn’t been seen since.
The restaurant’s wine director told us Ben is a friend, and he’s “pretty broken emotionally at this point.”
Ben did not respond to Laura’s calls or messages the rest of the night Wednesday.
She said, “This was different. It was just different. And I just knew. I had a little bit of panic at first.”
24 minutes after leaving the restaurant, phone records show he called a colleague. And a moment after that his iPASS went through an Illinois toll to the south, near the city of Elgin, though it’s not confirmed Ben was in the car at that time.
The last time his phone pinged was at 9:47 p.m. in Rosemont, Illinois.
Laura has not slept much and is trying to care for their son and Ben’s older daughter. She said it’s tough balancing “the logistics of finding him and that being my number one priority and then managing the emotions of two children.”
She and a team of friends and family have done their best to look into phone and bank records.
She explained, “I will take something as far as I can and hand it over to police and ask them to take it to the finish line.”
Laura said police showed Ben never entered O’Hare airport or got on any flights, and they checked all the businesses, hotels, morgues, and hospitals, but found nothing.
All New Berlin police could tell us is the case “is still under investigation and we are working with multiple different jurisdictions”.
Laura said, “I think they’re doing everything they can. I would like to escalate to getting more support, though.”
She told us she still has some hope. “I think my hope was there yesterday. I have to. But the more time that goes by, the harder it is for me.”
But when she put their son to bed Wednesday night, before Ben was missing, the boy asked her out of the blue about heaven, and what would happen to him if anything happened to them.
“I was like, ‘That’s not going to happen, you don’t need to worry about it. There’s so many people who love you, don’t worry about that,'” she said.
That was before Ben stopped responding.
Laura said, “And now I’m in a situation where I might have to tell him that his Daddy went to heaven. Like, two days later. He’s three.”
Police are still looking for Ben’s car.
And right now, Laura is trying to get records of Ben’s text messages to see if there was anything sent or received that would cause him to not head straight home from the restaurant.
“I want people to know how loved he is. By family, by friends, and the community coming together,” she said.
Next Sunday, Ben and Laura were planning a 10-day trip to Maine to see his family over Thanksgiving.
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