In the late evening hours of May 11, 1978, in Morgan City, Louisiana, fourteen-year-old Bertha Gould and her friend, Judy Ann Adams, who was fifteen, were enjoying a spring night at the Central Catholic High School fair. The fair was being held on the grounds of the Morgan City Municipal Auditorium. After leaving the event, the two girls began their walk home. Around 11:30 p.m., a witness saw Bertha and Judy get into a white car driven by an unknown man.
This would be the last time either of the girls was seen. Initially, there was speculation that the teenagers may have run away, but that theory was soon dismissed as the silence from their disappearance grew.
The case took a grim turn two weeks later, on May 25, 1978, when the body of Judy Adams was discovered in a septic tank in Bayou Vista, Louisiana. Alongside her were the remains of another young woman, nineteen-year-old Bridget Cantrell Sons, who had been abducted during a grocery store robbery in April of that year. Both had been bound and strangled. The body of seventeen-year-old Gordon M. Canella Jr., who was abducted with Bridget, was later found in a cane field. Despite the tragic discoveries, there was no sign of Bertha Gould. The series of abductions and murders had cast a dark shadow over the small Louisiana community, leaving families devastated and a town gripped by fear.
Authorities ultimately identified their main suspect as Robert Carl Hohenberger, a former sheriff's deputy from California who was living in Louisiana under an alias. Hohenberger had a history of violent crimes, including the abduction and rape of four women in California, from which he had escaped prison. Investigators believe he may have used his old police badge to lure his victims into a false sense of security. Before he could be apprehended in June 1978, Hohenberger took his own life as police closed in. He is the prime suspect in as many as seven killings over a three-month period. While the deaths of Judy Adams, Bridget Cantrell Sons, and Gordon M. Canella Jr. were tragically solved, the fate of Bertha Gould remains an agonizing mystery. She and another presumed victim of Hohenberger, Mary Leah Rodermund, who vanished in March 1978, have never been found. The case of Bertha Gould is a haunting story of a young life cut short, a night of innocent fun at a fair that ended in an unthinkable tragedy, leaving her family with unanswered questions that have endured for decades.Last Seen: May 11, 1978
