What Happened to Zachary Bernhardt?

Zachary Bernhardt was sound asleep in his bedroom when his mother left their Clearwater apartment to go out for an early morning walk.

When she returned around 4 a.m., her 8-year-old, third-grader was missing from his bed. Zachary was nowhere to be found. Clearwater Police were called in to investigate the boy’s disappearance from his 2690 Drew St. home.

That disappearance occurred on Sept. 11, 2000.

Fast forward 15 years, and Clearwater Police continue to follow leads in the case. What happened to Zachary, however, remains a mystery to this day.

The blonde haired, blue-eyed boy’s picture hangs in Det. Thomas Dawe’s office as a reminder of the questions that remain unanswered, the work that still needs to be done.

After 15 years, the paperwork related to the case is staggering. Dawe said there are 20 or so 4- to 5-inch binders containing information related to Zachary’s disappearance. When he was assigned to the city’s robbery and homicide unit about six years ago, he began the process of going through the reams of data related to the case and many other cold cases like it.

Following a Cold Trail

Working cold cases, Dawe said, requires backtracking through time – and all the paperwork – to gain a feel for what’s been done, who’s been interviewed, what evidence should be reprocessed using more modern techniques and so on.

“We have a process that we look into each case individually,” he explained. “We’re already behind the eight ball.”

Coming in cold or not, the goal is the same for an old case or a new one: to bring closure.

The Clearwater Police Department’s team of five homicide and robbery investigators are assigned plenty of new cases, but follow up on those gone cold with a passion, Dawe said. With some help from a $29,036 grant received in 2014 from the National Institute of Justice’s Solving Cold Cases With DNA program, there’s a little extra funding to cover the costs.

The money is used to cover overtime for detectives and other related expenses, such as travel necessary to bring that sought-after closure. Travel, for example, was required earlier this year when Clearwater detectives made an arrest in a 15-year-old homicide. The suspect in that case, Rodney Dean Manley, 61, had long since moved to Weaverville, Calif.

Detectives linked Manley to the 2000 murder of Marion Cato. The 31-year-old’s body was found behind the Rio Hotel on Gulf to Bay Boulevard.

“This arrest shows what a new set of eyes and dogged determination can mean to a cold case like this,” Police Chief Dan Slaughter said at the time of Manley’s April arrest. “For 15 years, our suspect thought he got away with murder. Our detectives made sure that wasn’t the case.”

Detectives, Dawe said, are currently working 37 cold case homicides and five missing persons cases in addition to their regular workload. They approach it as a team with detectives drawing as heavily on each other as they do forensics technicians and other partners. The collaboration, he said, is crucial.

The agency has solved seven cold cases in the last three years with warrants for two others out. There’s hope that a few others will soon be resolved, as well, Dawe said.

“That’s a pretty good dent,” he added.

Finding Zach

While closure has come in the Cato case, it remains elusive in the search to determine just what happened to that 8-year-old boy who would now be 23. Leads still come in, keeping the case very much active, Dawe said. Hope remains, as well, and Dawe said he’s confident one day the mystery of just what happened will be solved.

“I don’t think there’s anything more important than a missing child,” Dawe said. “We’re not going to rest until we solve this. If it’s not me, it will be the detectives after me. This case will always be open until we find Zach.”

Anyone with information related to the 2010 disappearance of Zachary Bernhardt is asked to call the Clearwater Police Department at 727-562-4242 or email tips@myclearwater.com. Tips may also be submitted to Crime Stoppers by calling 1-800-873-TIPS.

Clearwater detectives plan to travel to Tallahassee on Monday to be with Zach’s family during the 2015 Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Florida Missing Children’s Day Ceremony.

Photo of Zachary at the age of 8 and an age progression of him courtesy of the Clearwater Police Department