'Podcast' selesaikan kes wanita hilang 40 tahun lalu

tatod

Washington: Rangka wanita dilapor hilang lebih empat dekad lalu ditemukan di sungai di Illinois, Amerika Syarikat (AS), dan penemuan itu hasil usaha polis yang melancarkan audio siar bagi mencari jawapan bagi kehilangannya.

Portal Global News melaporkan, rangka itu ditemukan di dalam sebuah kereta yang ditarik dari Sungai Fox, kira-kira 30 kilometer (km) dari Chicago, minggu lalu.

Polis Elgin berkata, rangka itu adalah Karen Schepers, yang kali terakhir dilihat pada April 1983 dan berumur 23 tahun ketika dilaporkan hilang.

Menurut WGN9 Chicago, Schepers dan Toyota Celica kuningnya hilang kira-kira 1 pagi 16 April 1983, selepas wanita itu meninggalkan bar sewaktu keluar malam bersama rakan sekerja.

Kes itu tidak selesai kerana petunjuk awal adalah samar-samar dan tiada maklumat baharu tersedia.

Bagaimanapun, Jabatan Polis Elgin menubuhkan Cold Case Unit dan membuka semula kes orang hilang Scheper pada Mei tahun lalu.

Detektif Andrew Houghton dan Matt Vartanian diberi lampu hijau untuk memulakan audio siar bertajuk 'Somebody Knows Something: The Elgin Police Cold Case' mendedikasikan episod pertama mereka, yang disiarkan pada 20 Januari tahun ini, untuk kes Schepers.

Detektif terbabit dalam audio siar itu bersembang dengan rakan Schepers yang mengemukakan beberapa teori boleh menjelaskan kehilangannya.

Antara teori itu termasuk Schepers mahu meninggalkan kehidupan lamanya dan membina semula hidup di tempat baharu, bunuh diri, diculik atau dibunuh oleh seseorang, dan terbabit kemalangan.

Berdasarkan semua teori berkenaan, detektif membuat keputusan untuk mencari di laluan air, dengan menyatakan bahawa paras air di Sungai Fox adalah luar biasa tinggi ketika kehilangan Schepers.

Polis bekerjasama dengan kumpulan Illinois, dikenali sebagai Chaos Divers, untuk mencari dan meneroka beberapa lokasi dengan menggunakan teknologi sonar.

Pada 24 Mac, seorang penyelam menemukan rangka Schepers di Sungai Fox. Rekod pergigian membuktikan rangka yang ditemukan di dalam kenderaan itu adalah wanita berkenaan, walaupun polis masih tidak jelas bagaimana atau mengapa keretanya terbabas di dalam air. - Harian Metro

aina_shaira

Kena panggil Jack Lester yang selalu post pasal kes Negara luar buat ulasan

plywood

plywood

Karen's fiance still remembers


Posted April 14, 2008 11:00 pm Harry Hitzeman

Karen Schepers' family will always ask themselves "What if?"

Her former fiance, who was supposed to meet her on the night she disappeared 25 years ago, is haunted by the same question.

"I thought a lot about it, if I would have only went there. You can only beat yourself up so many times," said Terry Schultz, who is now 54 and still lives in Elgin.

Schepers called Schultz from a Carpentersville bar on April 15, 1983, and asked him to come out with her co-workers.

But he declined, saying he had to get up early the next day, a Saturday, to begin boiling pasta for a large catering job.

In a recent telephone interview, Schultz recalled being irritated that Schepers didn't show the next morning. He said she occasionally helped out at the pizza place he co-owned with his family.

He reported her missing on Monday after she didn't answer his calls that weekend and failed to show up at work.

Elgin police focused on Schultz, but he later passed a lie detector test.

He also helped Schepers' dad search for her in Utah, where she had some friends, and with the help of a psychic around the Fox Valley area.

Schultz can still rattle off Schepers' license plate number. Part of him wants to think that she ran off on her own instead of being the victim of foul play.

"Even though I am married with two kids (15 and 17), I'm still hoping she comes back," he said. "I don't want to believe somebody did something to her. She was a good person. If there's anything I can do to help, I'll help. That's what I said back then."

In 1996, Schultz was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had to close his custom woodworking business.

Today, he is in a wheelchair and can't work.

But he still thinks about Schepers, whom he first met when she ordered a pizza delivered to her Elgin apartment. He returned the next day to help fix her car.

Schultz recalled a conversation he had with his father a few months after Schepers disappeared in 1983.

Schultz's dad, whose own wife died in 1982, simply told his son to let it go.

"I said, 'You know where your wife is. I don't know where Karen is,'" Schultz said.

plywood

Police: Skeletal remains found in missing Elgin woman’s car


Posted March 25, 2025 11:10 am Rick West

Authorities say skeletal remains were found inside the car that belonged to an Elgin woman who has been missing for 42 years.

Police announced the discovery after recovering the car from the Fox River on Tuesday.

Hundreds of people watched from both sides of the river throughout the afternoon as Karen Schepers’ yellow Toyota Celica was recovered largely intact.

Schepers was 23 when she disappeared after attending a party with coworkers at a Carpentersville bar in 1983.

Elgin Police Chief Ana Lalley said Tuesday morning that a search of the river on Monday by the department and Chaos Divers, a group that uses sonar to search for people suspected missing in bodies of water, yielded a vehicle with the license plate XP8919, which matched the 1980 Toyota Celica owned by Schepers.

Authorities on Tuesday removed a car from the Fox River that belonged to an Elgin woman who went missing 42 years ago. Brian Hill/bhill@dailyherald.com

Divers worked for several hours to secure the car before attaching it to a tow cable. Shortly after, the car was pulled out of the river largely intact.

The car, which had been sitting upside down in the river, was taken to the Kane County Coroner’s Office, where forensic pathologists found the presence of skeletal human remains inside the vehicle.

Authorities said tests to determine if the remains match DNA samples or dental records from Schepers could take up to several weeks.
Karen Schepers was 23 years old when she vanished on April 16, 1983, after leaving a bar in Carpentersville

plywood

plywood

42 years after Elgin woman’s disappearance, police make startling discovery in Fox River


Posted March 24, 2025 4:49 pm Rick West

Forty-two years after a 23-year-old Elgin woman vanished without a trace, Elgin police and a dive team searched the Fox River on Monday for clues they hoped to find in the frigid, murky water.

They made a stunning find: the 1980 Toyota Celica Karen Schepers owned.

Chaos Divers found a vehicle northwest of the Slade Avenue boat launch, police said Monday night, including a license plate, XP8919, which matched the Celica that Schepers owned.

Chaos Divers, the Elgin Fire Department and the Kane County Coroner’s Office will try to remove the vehicle from the river Tuesday, police said.

They do not know if there are human remains in it.

Schepers disappeared after attending a party with coworkers at a Carpentersville bar in 1983.

Schepers’ case was at the top of the list for Elgin’s new Cold Case Unit, led by detectives Andrew Houghton and Matt Vartanian.

The two meticulously combed the river on Monday with members of Chaos Divers, a dive team that travels the country using sonar to search bodies of water for missing people.

Divers used sonar on Monday to search the Fox River in Elgin to find clues in the Karen Schepers cold case. Rick West/rwest@dailyherald.com

“By checking all these spots and either ruling something in or ruling something out, it gives us a lot of information going forward,” Houghton said. “We’re cautiously optimistic. We don’t want to get our hopes up. But we also want to get answers.”

Police say Schepers was last seen around 1 a.m. on April 16, 1983, at P.M. Bentley’s, a now-closed bar, with about 20 coworkers. Schepers was reportedly the last person from the group to leave. She and her yellow 1980 Toyota Celica were never found.

Related Article

Jan 03, 2025 9:48 am
Where’s Karen? New Elgin Cold Case Unit takes on baffling 1983 disappearance

According to police, she had a brief argument with her fiance, Terry Schultz, after she asked him to stop by and he declined, telling her he had a busy work day ahead.

Investigators said he initially was viewed as a suspect. But he cooperated with investigators until he died in 2015 and passed a lie-detector test.

Monday’s search saw the team slowly traverse the river north and south from near the Interstate 90 overpass down to the Kimball Street bridge, using sonar to detect “shadows” in the water that might imply a vehicle.

“You have to go slow, and you have to be thorough,” Vartanian said. “So we want to make sure that we do it the right way.”

plywood

Woman missing since 1983 found in car pulled from Illinois river

ByLissette Nuñez , Michelle Gallardo, and Tre Ward KABC logo
Thursday, March 27, 2025

Human remains found in car linked to decades-old cold case: coroner

ELGIN, Illinois -- Skeletal human remains have been found inside a car linked to a decades-old cold case, the Kane County coroner confirmed on Tuesday evening.

The WLS-TV news helicopter was over the scene as crews removed the 1980 canary yellow Toyota Celica from the Fox River on Tuesday just before 3 p.m. following hours of work.

Search teams with a nonprofit group called the Chaos Divers found the car, believed to have been submerged for 42 years, near the Slade Avenue boat launch on Monday.

"I want to stress that this is an extensive recovery process and it is expected to take some time ensuring the structural integrity of the vehicle remains intact," said Elgin Police Chief Ana Lalley.

Chopper 7 was over the scene as crews removed a car connected to a decades-old cold case from the Fox River on Tuesday.

A license plate match made during Monday's initial search confirmed investigators' suspicions. It belonged to Karen Schepers, an Elgin woman who disappeared more than 40 years ago.

Karen was 23 years old when she was last seen attending a party with co-workers at a bar in Carpentersville in the early hours of April 16, 1983. Neither Karen nor her 1980 Toyota Celica was seen again, until now.

"We were pushing against a brick wall for 42 years, and now, it's starting to give," said Gary Schepers, one of Karen's eight siblings.

Gary spoke with WLS over the phone on Tuesday, after crews recovered Karen's car.

"It adds questions more than it answers them," Gary said. "The only search I know of that was done in 1983 was my dad, who was an airline pilot, rented a plane and flew over the area, hoping he could spot her yellow car."

But police said Karen's car was not easily seen from above. Instead, all this time, it was submerged in the Fox River. WLS's news partners at the Daily Herald shared photos of the teams using sonar technology to locate the now-faded vehicle.

"I wish they looked in the river and found her car 42 years ago," Gary said.

Gary and other family members are now left wanting to know how the car ended up in the river and whether the human remains found inside are Karen's.

Elgin police said the next steps will be to compare Karen's DNA samples or dental records to the remains located in the vehicle. This process could take up to several weeks.

This all comes after the cold case was revived early this year in a podcast launched by the Elgin Police Department called Somebody Knows Something.

Elgin police chief gives an update after a car belonging to a missing woman from 1983 was found in the Fox River.

"We're hoping to use this podcast to help the family understand where Karen is and what happened to her," a speaker in the podcast said.

Karen's family has participated in the podcast, reflecting on her disappearance.

"It changes everything. For many years, when I would see people that would have similar characteristics, I would stop. If I was in a crowded place like an airport or something, and I'd always be looking. Is there anyone that looks like her?" said Susan Trainer, Karen's sister.

"You don't feel like you can go forward until you fix this. So you're still waiting for something to happen," said Elizabeth Paulson, Karen's 90-year-old mother.

The seven-episode podcast is, according to police, what led them to receive multiple tips that helped to pinpoint her vehicle's location.

Lalley said the podcast has involved the community and allowed people to come forward with any leads.

"Our detectives have received a lot of leads in terms of information coming in," Lalley said. "They are focusing on some theories, potentially what could have happened to her and I think the most important thing to is that we are not going to lock in and we are not going to lock out a theory."

On Tuesday, among those who gathered to watch the vehicle being pulled out was Fernando Sanchez, who recalls the stories told by those in the neighborhood dating back to when he was a young boy.

"Back then we heard, rumor, you know, people knew about, somebody ran into with their car in the river," Sanchez said.

Now, the family of the once-computer programmer still must wait while the Kane County coroner works to identify the remains found inside the car.

"The feeling, today, is not that much different from the feeling the day before yesterday. I still don't know where she is. I still don't know what happened to her," Gary said.

Police said the car was taken to a secure storage location for further investigation.

plywood

plywood

Lingering questions: Why wasn’t river searched years ago for missing Elgin woman’s car?


Posted March 26, 2025 5:15 pm Susan Sarkauskas

When Elgin police discovered Karen Schepers’ car in the Fox River on Monday, one question immediately popped into the public’s mind: Why wasn’t it found long ago?

And did authorities even look in the river or nearby ponds nearly 42 years ago?

Two Elgin cold case unit detectives have said as part of their March 17 “Someone Knows Something” podcast episode that they have not been able to find any proof to corroborate anecdotal reports that police searched the river as part of the effort to locate Schepers, who went missing on April 16, 1983, or her car — a canary yellow Toyota Celica.

On Tuesday, police said skeletal remains were found inside the car after authorities recovered it from the river. It will take weeks to determine if the human remains match DNA samples or dental records from Karen Schepers, authorities say.
Karen Schepers of Elgin was 23 when she vanished without a trace in April 1983.

Gary Schepers, Karen’s older brother, said Wednesday that his father did an aerial search a few days after Karen disappeared. Loren Schepers was a commercial airline pilot, and he rented a small plane to see if his daughter’s 1980 Toyota could be spotted from the air.

Schepers said one of his brothers suggested Wednesday that police in 1983 might not have looked in the Fox River because they knew the river was fairly shallow and might have thought a car could not be hidden in it.

But, Gary Schepers said, “When everything in this town is having ‘Fox Valley’ in its name, you (would think police) might have looked at it.”

Elgin police did not respond to questions Wednesday about why the river was not searched years ago.

The 1980 Toyota Celica that belonged to Karen Schepers was removed from the Fox River on Tuesday. Schepers has been missing since April 1983. Brian Hill/bhill@dailyherald.com

On their podcast, the Elgin detectives said they determined the Fox River was running high at the time because of recent rains. In addition, the stretch of the river in Elgin from the Kimball Street Dam to Lincoln Avenue is about 7 to 8 feet deep, drops to 4 to 5 feet, then gets deeper, they said.

They speculated the Toyota could have sunk a foot into the sediment. And that if the car was upside down, the gray underbody might not be visible in the dark river water. Also, brush, branches or other debris could have helped hide the car.

On Tuesday, police said divers had about 6 inches of visibility in the water. The car also was found upside down.

The detectives said they looked at maps of the area from 1983. They learned that locals often took two-lane Elgin Avenue, which turns into Duncan Avenue in Elgin, as a bypass instead of using Route 25. Duncan/Elgin “dumps you out in her neighborhood,” detective Andrew Houghton says in the podcast. The river comes up pretty close to the road; Houghton says there is a spot where the river is about 100 feet from the road.

On a dark road, with possibly wet or ice-covered pavement, on a nearly moonless night, it’s possible she lost control, the detectives theorize in the podcast.

Karen disappeared after celebrating with coworkers that night at a bar in Carpentersville.

Gary Schepers said on Wednesday that Karen’s family and friends were frustrated in the 1980s with how police handled the case and even conducted a letter-writing campaign to the governor. That resulted in a state police report that “was not at all complimentary to Elgin police,” Schepers recalled.

“Their (police) line was, ‘She had a fight with her boyfriend and she took off. What do you want us to do about it?’” Schepers said.

According to a 1990 Elgin Courier-News article, the family had Karen declared legally dead.

“There never was a good outcome for this,” Gary Schepers said.

plywood

plywood

Karen Schepers remembered as talented and a good friend: ‘She was a remarkable person’



The disappearance of Karen Schepers, missing since April 1983, was solved by the Elgin police this week after human skeletal remains found in a car pulled from the Fox River were confirmed to be hers. (Elgin Police Department)


Author
By Gloria Casas | Chicago Tribune
UPDATED: March 27, 2025 at 11:46 AM CDT

When his daughter went missing in April 1983, Loren Schepers chartered a plane so he could fly over the Elgin area in the hope he might spot her canary yellow 1980 Toyota Celica from the sky.

The 23-year-old woman disappeared in the cold, dark, early morning hours while driving home to Elgin from a bar in Carpentersville. The temperature was below freezing and roads were slick; Karen Schepers could have easily gone off the road somewhere along the way.

He “felt like it was his job to find her,” Gary Schepers said of his father’s search, but he would die without knowing what happened.

While there are still many unanswered questions, it would seem the mystery of Karen’s disappearance was solved this week with the discovery of her car at the bottom of the Fox River in Elgin. Located in about 7 feet of murky water northwest of the Slade Avenue boat launch, the vehicle was recovered Tuesday afternoon and the skeletal remains found inside assumed to be those of a woman who vanished more than four decades ago.

Despite how distinctive her car was, his father would never has spotted it regardless of how many times he looked, Gary Schepers said. “The … yellow car was upside down,” he said.

Final identification will be made by the Kane County Coroner’s Office in a process that will take several weeks, officials said. But Karen Schepers’ family has been notified and the assumption made that she has been found at last thanks to the Elgin Police Department’s cold case unit and their podcast, “Somebody Knows Something,” which led to the river search.

“This has been going on for so long, and for so long nothing happened,” said Gary Schepers, who lives in Sycamore and is the oldest of nine children. “It’s like you’ve been watching glaciers move, and all of a sudden things are happening every day.”

After Karen vanished — her car gone, her savings and credit cards untouched, her apartment exactly as she’d left it — police were stymied. Did she leave to make a new life for herself? Become despondent over a breakup with her boyfrend? Meet up with the wrong person and become a victim?


Karen Schepers’ Toyota Celica is loaded onto a flatbed truck after being pulled out of the Fox River on March 25, 2025, in Elgin. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)

Police would occasionally revisit the case over the years, once creating a billboard featuring her photo and details about her disappearance, Schepers said. There were countless stories in local newspapers. Elgin residents knew her name.

It’s a relief for the family that she’s been found and they now know what happened, Schepers said.

“She’s not out there wandering around with amnesia or brain damage or any of the scenarios you think of in 40 years,” he said.

Elgin police are keeping mum on what they think happened and what led them to examine the area where she was found.


Elgin police provided this photo of Karen Schepers, an Elgin woman who was reported missing in April 1983. (Elgin Police Department)

What is known is the police never searched the Fox River for her car when she was first reported missing, something that has some people asking why, especially on social media.

But Schepers said he wasn’t surprised by how they handled the case. It was a different time.

“I don’t think they took missing persons cases as seriously as they do now,” Schepers said.

He remembers talking with a journalist friend who had covered the John Wayne Gacy serial killing case.

“What everyone whose kids were missing (had been) told by police was that they took off for some reason; they will probably be back,” he said. Regardless of whether it was wrong or right, “it seemed like that was the attitude at the time,” he said.


Elgin police provided this photo of Karen Schepers, an Elgin woman who was reported missing in April 1983. (Elgin Police Department)

Born just 13 months apart — Gary was the oldest and Karen came next — his memories are the kind any siblings would have, he said.

“We fought like cats and dogs a lot of the time,” but they’d also stay up all night talking from their bedrooms, Schepers said. “It was like anybody’s little sister. She’s your best friend and your enemy wrapped up all in one.

“The thing about her, and it drove me crazy, is whatever you could do, she could do just as well if not better,” he said.


Elgin police provided this photo of Karen Schepers, an Elgin woman who was reported missing in April 1983. (Elgin Police Department)

Karen could play the saxophone and the piano. She loved the long motorcycle trips she’d take with her boyfriend to places such as Utah, he said.

They grew up in Sycamore, and graduated from high school there. When their mother remarried and relocated the family to Texas, Karen moved to Elgin to live with her father and stepmother, Schepers said. Later, she rented an apartment in the 300 block of Lovell Street.

Despite the broken romance, things were going well, her brother said. She had paid off her car, and was working as a computer programmer at First Chicago Bank Card in Elgin and taking classes at Elgin Community College, Schepers said.


Elgin police have been seeking the whereabouts of Karen Schepers, 23, since she went missing in April 1983. Her car and human remains inside were removed Tuesday from the Fox River. (Elgin Police Department)

Her friendships were deep, he said. People, even those she met at summer camp, still remember her, he said.

“I don’t think it’s just because of the disappearance. There are just some people that you remember. She was a remarkable person,” he said.

While their father died a few years ago, their mother, Liz Paulson, is still alive and living in Sycamore. They’ve told her about the police finding Karen’s car and the human remains found inside, information that has left her overwhelmed, Gary said.


Elgin police provided this photo of Karen Schepers, an Elgin woman who was reported missing in April 1983. (Elgin Police Department)

“But this is a woman who raised nine children and was a nurse in a maternity ward for almost 50 years. If there’s anyone who can handle it, it’s her,” he said.

Schepers commended the police department and the cold case unit for reopening the investigation, noting that they always treated his mother well.

Karen was declared legally dead years ago, but the family never had a memorial service. It’s something they will be discussing, he said.

Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.


Elgin police provided this photo of Karen Schepers, an Elgin woman who was reported missing in April 1983. (Elgin Police Department)

Originally Published: March 26, 2025 at 6:33 PM CDT

plywood

Rip Karen ...

KBW2

Kat malaysia ada tak cold case unit? Ke dibiar je frozen membeku sampai bila-bila.

dani-rox

Pada 24 Mac, seorang penyelam menemukan rangka Schepers di Sungai Fox. Rekod pergigian membuktikan rangka yang ditemukan di dalam kenderaan itu adalah wanita berkenaan, walaupun polis masih tidak jelas bagaimana atau mengapa keretanya terbabas di dalam air.

hilang sekitar 1pagi katanya kan? akak syak jalan gelap. agaknya masa thn 1983, kawasan tu sunyi dan takda/kurang lampu jalan.

byk jugak kes org yg dikatakan hilang, lepas berpuluh2 thn dijumpai terbenam dlm sungai, tasik, parit etc kesian jugak la makpak, ahli keluarga dan org tersayang sampai akhir hayat tak tahu apa jadi dgn dia org. yg sedih anak2, mesti ingat ayah atau mak lari jauh2 sbb dah bosan dan takda perasaan sayang lg. rupa2nya dah mati sbb terbabas dan lemas. entah2 benda terakhir dlm pikiran mangsa adalah nasib anak2, pasangan dan ahli keluarga yg 'ditinggalkan'.

venom1

Boleh cuba juga cara ni kat Malaysia. Mungkin boleh jumpa kes-kes macam ni kat dalam tasik, sungai.

B40tastePosh

Nama penyelam tu tak dinyatakan langsung.

Tu la kalau kita kerja sebagai orang bawahan....yang atas dapat nama.

edayildiz

tiap kali keluar perkataan kehilangan..i akan teringat kes aizam yg diselesaikan oleh acikporem dahulu kala.

Freezies

edayildiz replied at 7-4-2025 04:23 PM
tiap kali keluar perkataan kehilangan..i akan teringat kes aizam yg diselesaikan oleh acikporem dahu ...

Safe and sound dengan keluarga angkat....
Mintak jangan diganggu..

edayildiz

Freezies replied at 7-4-2025 04:33 PM
Safe and sound dengan keluarga angkat....
Mintak jangan diganggu..

hahahaha saja nk trobek bertapak acikporem hebat hebat