Two unsolved slayings in Warner Robins among 2013 homicides
Mother wants to know how daughter ended up dead in vacant Warner Robins home
...Betty Day knew something was up when her daughter didn’t call to wish her a happy birthday in September.
Their birthdays were a month apart, and her daughter, Anita Bergner, would always call and tease her mom about how old she was, recalled the 50-year-old Day by telephone from her mobile home in Lake Village, Ind. Pregnant at 16, Day had worked all sorts of jobs as a single mom to provide for Bergner and another daughter.
Day’s sister, Charlotte Wade, also had not been able to reach Bergner. And police had not been able to find the Warner Robins woman since a missing person’s report was filed Oct. 8.
So when Day’s brother-in-law Doug Wade knocked on her door 10 days after the missing person’s report was filed, he didn’t have to say a word.
She read his eyes.
“In my heart, I knew,” Day said as her voice broke. “But the 18th of October at 3 o’clock is the day my life stopped.”
It was the day and the hour her brother-in-law broke the news that Bergner’s badly decomposed body had been found in a vacant house on Curtis Street in Warner Robins.
Her body was discovered on the day that would have marked Bergner’s 34th birthday. That bothered Day so much that she said she listed Bergner’s date of death in her obituary as Oct. 5.
Police have released few details, including how Bergner was killed and whether detectives have any theories behind the slaying. An anonymous tip led police to her body, said Tabitha Clark, public information officer for Warner Robins police.
Houston County Coroner Danny Galpin estimated Bergner had been dead about two weeks based on the condition of the body and the last time Bergner was seen alive. Galpin said he had not received the GBI autopsy report, which he expects has not been completed. ...