10 Years Later, Family Asks: What Happened To Julia Madsen?

SOUTH SEASIDE PARK and NORTH ARLINGTON, NJ — “I’ll see you when I see you, toots.” It was Julia Madsen’s signature sign-off, her farewell message.

It was the last thing Julia said to her daughter, Eileen Tummino, as Julia and Edward Madsen headed out down to the Jersey Shore for what was to be a two-week family vacation for the Madsens, their adult children, Guy and Eileen, and Guy and Eileen's families. It was anticipated to be another happy memory among dozens of memories — anniversaries and birthdays and holidays and parties — that the Madsen clan had made over the years.

It was going to be lovely, until Julia Madsen disappeared without a trace on June 25, 2009 in South Seaside Park after going out for a walk.

On Tuesday, 10 years to the day after Julia Madsen disappeared at the age of 72, her family gathered around a headstone in Holy Cross Cemetery in North Arlington, to not only mark the anniversary, but to try to give themselves a sliver of peace, even as her disappearance remains unsolved.

"This is all we have," Guy Madsen said to 40 or so family members and friends gathered for the memorial service. He gestured to the black granite stone behind him, “MADSEN” in gold lettering, an etching of his parents’ honeymoon photo above their names. The engraving on the stone underscores their reality: Though they were saying a formal goodbye to the beloved wife, mother, grandmother, cousin, and friend, they still have no answers about her disappearance — or even her body to bury.

"'I'll see you when I see you, toots,' she said to me before she left," Eileen said, wiping tears as she spoke at the graveside service about the woman who loved her family and friends, as they stood, clad in pink and white, the colors Julia was wearing the evening she disappeared.

"Thank you for being with us on this journey," Guy said. "Julia loved you all. I'm sure she's proud that we haven’t forgotten her."

The memorial service will be the last formal gathering to mark his mother’s disappearance, Guy Madsen said, unless the $75,000 reward he’s offering prompts someone to finally come forward with information that answers the family's years of prayers for a resolution.

"There isn’t really closure," Eileen said. "But I think this gives her some peace."

A walk on the beach

"The weather was just like this the night she disappeared." Guy Madsen pulls up a chair in the backyard of the little yellow brick home he bought in South Seaside Park in 2001. It is a short walk from the front door of the single-story home to the stairs that lead over the dunes fortified by the Army Corps of Engineers during the recent beach replenshment project, and onto the beach.

It's the walk Julia Madsen is thought to have taken 10 years ago. Dressed in a pink top, white pants and brown leather shoes, she told Edward, her husband of 50 years, that she was going for a walk on the beach, kissed him and headed out the door, as he watched the New York Yankees game that night. Edward had knee problems, so he stayed behind. It was the last time he saw her.

It was 7 p.m. when Julia went out, Guy said. The ocean was calm that day, and the weather was clear, with plenty of sunlight even as the day was winding down. About 8:20 p.m., Edward realized she had not returned, so he started looking for her, checking with friends nearby, checking the backyard, checking the beach. By 9 p.m., when the sun finally set that day, Edward had called police.

Guy Madsen was in Clifton, taking his son, Guy Jr., out for ice cream when he got a call from authorities that his mother was missing.

“It was confusing at first, because they asked me if my dad had Alzheimer’s,” Guy said. Soon it became clear that they were talking about his mother. Julia had been showing signs of Alzheimer’s. He headed to the Shore to join the efforts to search for his mother.

"It was the same day Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett died," Rita said, and remembered wondering who the third death would be. "We never imagined something like this."

"I kept thinking I'd get part of the way there and get a call they'd found her, and I'd be turning around to go home," Guy said.

Instead, he arrived to find four Berkeley Township police cars at his house. The law enforcement presence grew rapidly: Ocean County sheriff’s officers, New Jersey State Police, U.S. Coast Guard. They and dozens of volunteers searched homes, backyards, sheds, garages. They searched Island Beach State Park, which was within walking distance. The Coast Guard searched the oceanfront and searched Barnegat Bay. Police canines were brought in.

"The police have done an amazing job," Guy said. The amount of effort that went into searching for Julia astounds him even now. It also makes it more difficult to understand how she could simply disappear without a trace.

"People don’t just disintegrate," he said.

It leaves the family with two possible answers: Foul play, or that her disappearance was related to the Alzheimer’s symptoms she was experiencing.

Julia's symptoms were still mostly mild, Guy said. She was still driving her black Chrysler Sebring convertible, a gift from her son — "She’d drive along with her Jackie O sunglasses and the top down and she was so cool," Rita said — and only occasionally having a problem.

“It was something she was aware of, because her mother had dementia,” Eileen said, adding Julia had experienced some symptoms while the two were on a trip to Florida earlier that year. Eileen also said her mother had expressed the wish of not wanting to go through the decline she had seen her own mother endure. But no one believed Julia's symptoms were so severe as to require intensive supervision, family members said.

Guy said he believes Julia's disappearance was foul play. "Evil came to her that day," he said. His wife, Rita, echoed the sentiment. "I think it’s going to take a deathbed confession" to find out what happened to Julia. "We may not be around to see it."

Missing with no answers

New Jersey State Police estimate between 14,000 and 16,000 people go missing within New Jersey each year. The vast majority of those people are found and families are reunited with their loved ones.

But for nearly 1,000 families in the state, including the Madsens, the search for their missing loved one continues. Julia Madsen is one of eight people who went missing in New Jersey in 2009 and were never found; the state's missing persons database includes cases dating back to the 1960s, ranging from infants to adults.

Each year, the state police Missing Persons Unit holds an event to bring together families whose loved ones are still missing, with the goal not only of making them aware of what resources are available, but also to help them network with other families who understand the unique pain they are facing. Guy Madsen said he attended this year's event, and announced the increased reward at that time.

While every missing person's case is different, they have one thing in common: the uncertainty of unanswered questions.

"Death is hard to take. It's harder to take when there is no closure," said Andrew Tummino, Eileen's younger son. His grandmother's disappearance has brought an already tightknit family even closer.

He and Guy Jr. were both 12 years old that summer, when "Mina" disappeared. "It was just kind of a whirlwind," Andrew said.

Both young men, who graduated this spring from Monmouth University — Guy Jr. with a degree in finance, and Andrew in homeland security — and are as close as brothers, hold onto the memories of the woman who would come to all their sporting events.

"She'd show up to the house wearing those big dark sunglasses and peer in the window, saying 'Anybody home?' " Guy Jr. said, smiling at the memory.

"She would always pick me up at school, and she was always 20 minutes early," Andrew said. "Everyone knew her. 'There's Mina,' or 'Mina's here.' " And she hummed to herself a lot of the time. "I can hear it sometimes," he said. "She was just a happy person."

"It's not how you expect to lose a grandmother," Guy Jr. said. But he realizes her disappearance spared the family the pain of seeing her go through the stages of Alzheimer's that likely would have resulted in her not recognizing family members.

"She's always going to be in my mind how she always was," he said.

"Johnny (Andrew's older brother) says he pictured her just walking off into the sunset," Rita said. John, now 25, works for a television station in Buffalo and was unable to attend the memorial service. But Eileen said his comments, on the first anniversary of Julia's disappearance, have always been comforting. " 'She left us with dignity,' he said."

Guy Madsen isn't so certain of that. No evidence of Julia's body has turned up — not from the ocean, not from the bay, and not in Island Beach State Park.

"Later that summer a surfer drowned and his body washed up three days later, under where Funtown Pier used to be," Guy said. It underscored to him that if Julia had gone into the water — which he believes is unlikely as she was fully clothed, not wearing a bathing suit, and wasn't one for swimming in the ocean — her body would have washed up long ago.

South Seaside Park is a spit of land, three-quarters of a mile long, maybe a third-of-a-mile from wide from the Barnegat Bay side to the beach on the Atlantic Ocean. Most people barely notice it as they pass through it on the way to Island Beach State Park.

Part of Berkeley Township, the tiny area is the quintessential summer getaway, far enough removed from the bright lights and bar scene that characterizes so many summer nights in nearby Seaside Heights, yet still a mostly reasonable trip for those heading to the Shore from points north.

There are some full-time residents, but the majority are summer transplants. Though the warm June weekends draw increasing numbers of visitors, it’s not until Fourth of July weekend — when the kids are finally out of school across New Jersey — that South Seaside Park reaches its summer population.

Even then, it's mostly quiet. Bum Rogers Crab House and Tavern is popular and draws tourists and locals throughout the summer, and is walking distance from the Madsens' summer home. The stretch of beach from Seaside Park into Island Beach State Park is popular with surf fishermen.

But the dead-end street is hardly a high-traffic area.

"See, it's quiet here," Guy said. "There's one road in and out. Someone had to see something."

Berkeley Township Detective Joseph Santoro, the lead investigator on the case, in 2014 echoed that description of South Seaside Park in an interview with the Asbury Park Press. He told the paper he believed that if Julia's body had been in the park all this time — if, somehow, she had been missed despite intensive searches by law enforcement and volunteers, and drone flights over the area — that Superstorm Sandy would have turned something up, because the storm that devastated so much of the area stirred up so much.

But nothing has been found. Not her clothing. Not her wedding rings. Not her body. Despite six weeks of searching. Despite flyers with Julia's photo posted all over the barrier island. Despite consulting with psychics.

"No one just disappears like that," Rita said. "Was she too nice? Was she too trusting? Someone has to know something."

Guy hopes the $75,000 reward will finally prompt someone to speak up.

"As a son it's painful to not be able to come to your mom's rescue," he said.

Bittersweet memories

The two-week family vacation at the little yellow brick home was expected to be an extension of the celebration that began Father’s Day weekend in 2009. Julia and Edward had been married 50 years on June 20, 2009, and the couple and their children and grandsons had small gathering to mark the occasion.

“My dad doesn’t always like huge gatherings,” Eileen said. “He prefers to keep it small.”

They then celebrated Julia’s birthday, June 21, and Father’s Day. The plan was to celebrate Edward’s birthday, on June 26, when everyone arrived in South Seaside Park ahead of the Fourth of July weekend. Julia and Edward headed to South Seaside Park after Julia’s birthday celebration, deciding to stay at the yellow brick house instead of the condominium across the street where they usually stayed.

They picked up the keys from Guy and Rita, then stopped to see Eileen and Andrew. Eileen has a pair of photos from that day that she cherishes: One of John and Andrew kissing Julia on each cheek, and one of her kissing her mom on the cheek.

"We never take photos like that," Eileen said. "We always just smile for them. It's like something was telling us to do it."

Guy remembers the day he gave his mother the Chrysler Sebring convertible. "I hid it across the street," he said. At his behest, the family gathered out front, and when he got the all clear, he backed the car out and pulled up to where his mother was standing and handed her the keys.

"I had the Beach Boys playing," Guy said. They were Julia's favorite. "She started crying." She loved driving the car, the top down. "She had CDs all over the car," Andrew said.

Letting go of the car, when it was clear Julia wasn't going to be found alive, was difficult, Guy said. "But we had no reason to hold onto it any longer."

For Edward, the pain has been intense. At the memorial service, he said he was fortunate to meet Julia. "She was friends to everyone. She was one in a million," he said. A few sentences later, he amended that. "She was one in a zillion."

Despite her Italian heritage, she left most of the cooking to Edward, who operated several restaurants, Eileen said. "She was the hostess," her daughter said. Julia made great meatballs and chicken Parmigiana, and chicken cutlets with sauteed peppers and onions. But it was her Irish-Norwegian husband who cooked as if he had olive oil in his veins. They were great partners, and loved each other very much.

Guy said his father has refused to stay overnight at the house in South Seaside Park since Julia's disappearance, and he also sold the home the couple shared. "Too many memories," Guy said.

Eileen said her father has struggled with the pain of losing the love of his life. It's only recently, she said, that it has seemed to ease. At the repast following the memorial service, Guy Jr. and Andrew flanked their grandfather, making sure he had what he needed.

"I have three grandchildren that I live for," Edward said at the memorial service. "My grandchildren are a lot like Julia."

Eileen said all three boys are sensitive and caring, a characteristic she attributed in part to Julia's example and also to the impact of her loss. "She was a simple woman. She loved her family," Eileen said. If a family member needed help, Julia was there.

"When my mother was dying, she took care of me and my girls," said Linda Mullins, whose mother was one of Julia's many cousins. "She went above and beyond."

Rita recounted that story as well. Julia spent a great deal of time with her grandsons, but told Rita that Linda needed her help. "She doesn't have a grandma to help her out," Rita recalled Julia saying.

Guy Jr. and Andrew remembered her as fun-loving and a constant presence in their lives.

"She was such a vibrant woman," Guy Jr. said. "I remember staying over at her house and spending a lot of time with her."

"She taught me how to curse," Andrew Tummino said, eliciting laughter from his aunt, uncle and cousin. The lessons in profanity aside, he said, "there wasn’t a bad bone in her body."

"She loved everyone and everyone loved her," Rita said. "She would hang out with me and my friends and was always a joy to have around. How many people can say that about their mother-in-law?"

"Whatever we were doing, she would go along," Guy said. A trip to Yankee Stadium to celebrate Guy Jr.’s 8th birthday with a flock of his second-grade pals — "It was like herding cats," Guy said with a laugh — brought out Julia's protective side. "We had all the boys in neon green T-shirts to keep track of them, and she was the hawk. Nothing could happen to them."

Guy said the aftermath of his mother's disappearance left him feeling anxious for a time.

"It was this constant thought of what bad thing could happen next," he said. He found solace in work, and even moreso in the extended family who have continued to be a support.

Edward's mother, KC, was one of 16 children, Guy's cousin, Kevin Askew said, so there's an extensive extended family of about 200 people. But they are very close. "Whenever we get together, you can pick up right where you left off the last time you saw each other," he said. Everyone is cousins and aunts and uncles, even if by strict genealogy standards they wouldn't wear those labels. "It's a family that takes care of each other."

That was the lesson Julia taught her family, Father Mike, the priest who officiated the memorial service, said. "She and all her love and all her ideas live within you," he said.

The headstone is one row up from where Julia's parents are buried. A number of members of the extended family are buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, so placing a stone for Julia there gave them a place to go to remember her, even if she is not physically buried there right now.

Guy Madsen and Eileen Tummino hope that will be rectified someday. Julia's missing persons file remains active with the New Jersey State Police, and her DNA and dental records are on file in a national missing persons database. There have been a few false alarms; a piece of a skull found on Island Beach State Park a few years ago was checked out but the DNA was not a match.

"I promised myself I would do something for the 10th anniversary," Guy said. "I wanted to have some sense of closure," though he admitted it's still somewhat artificial.

"It was really a good beginning to closure," Eileen said during the repast. "I've been feeling her spirit with me a lot recently and hopefully this will give her some peace."

"You always hope you might find something out," she said.

Guy hopes the reward and the reminder that Julia still hasn't been found will make someone, somewhere, remember something about her, about that calm, pleasant June evening, about something they saw then, or even heard later.

"We know in spirit where she is," Guy said. "We'd still like to get her back."

They'll see her when they see her, and she'll probably be humming her favorite happy tune. Just like she always did.

Julia Madsen was last seen wearing a pink shirt, white pants, brown leather shoes and she had reddish brown hair, blue eyes and moles on her cheeks. Anyone who may know something should call the New Jersey State Police Missing Persons Unit at 609-882-2000 ext. 2554, or email the unit at missingp@gw.njsp.org.

Have a news tip? Email karen.wall@patch.com Follow Toms River Patch on Facebook.