Skeletal remains found in car pulled from Fox River that belonged to Karen Schepers, missing since 1983
Divers at the Fox River in Elgin, Illinois, on Tuesday pulled out a car that belonged to a woman who disappeared in 1983, and skeletal remains have since been found in the car.
The operation to recover the canary yellow 1980 Toyota Celica that belonged to Karen Schepers proved to be a complex one. Crews spent hours trying to properly latch and secure the submerged car before lifting it out of the Fox River with a crane at 2:48 p.m.
On Monday, working with Elgin police, the nonprofit group Chaos Divers – which specializes in searching for missing people in bodies of water – used sonar equipment to spot the car underwater, and quickly realized that the license plate number matched the one on Schepers' Celica.
After being pulled from the river, the car was taken to the Kane County Coroner's office. The coroner's office confirmed with a forensic pathologist that there were skeletal remains in the car, Elgin police said.
The next steps will be to compare Schepers' DNA samples or dental records to the remains found in the car to confirm a positive identification. This could take up to several weeks, police said.
Schepers was last seen on April 16, 1983, when she left a bar in nearby Carpentersville around 1 a.m., after a party with her co-workers.
Neither she nor her car were ever seen again. She was only 23 years old at the time. Investigators believe Schepers might have driven into the water after leaving the bar.
Police credit cold case detectives' podcast with helping generate leads in Karen Schepers' disappearance
Schepers was recently the subject of a podcast called "Somebody Knows Something," produced by Elgin cold case detectives. That podcast is being credited with sparking new interest in the case.
"Through this podcast, the department has received information from many people, and I want to thank everyone who has provided information," Elgin Police Chief Ana Lalley said. "The goal of this podcast was very simple. To generate leads and garner information into Karen's case so that we could eventually provide answers to Karen's family and friends."
The podcast outlined Schepers' case — how the pretty, successful 23-year-old left the Carpentersville bar that early morning, seemingly headed for her home on Lovell Street in Elgin. The site in the Fox River where the car was found was less than a mile from her apartment.
The podcast dove into different theories on Schepers' disappearance, and the tips police got.
"We found two different vehicles, but neither of them were Karen's," Detective Matt Vartanian said in the podcast. "But this just goes to show that the community is still invested in this case, and we do truly appreciate the tip and others that have come in. We are hoping that your tips will help break this case open and finally bring Karen home."
The last episode, released Monday, March 17, would foreshadow the big break.
"We're hoping a more thorough search with this new technology in the coming weeks will lead us to a new vehicle — Karen's missing Toyota Celica — and maybe even lead us to her," Detective Andrew Houten said in the March 17 episode of the podcast.
Schepers' family did not think it realistic that she was still alive.
"I'm convinced enough time has gone by that she is no longer with us," said Schepers' sister, Susan. "I'd love to know what happened to her. I'd love to have a closure to it. I'd love to have that for my mom."
While relatives welcome any new updates on the case, Karen's brother, Gary, said the effort may be a couple of years too late.
"God bless them for that. I wish they had looked this hard in 1983, but they didn't. Their line was, 'She just, she had a fight with her boyfriend, and she just left. She just took off. You know, she'll probably be back,'" he said.
Gary Schepers said he remembers their father searching for her by plane after she went missing, but he doesn't remember investigators doing as much as they are today to find his sister.
"There's no good outcome to this, I don't think, or not 100% good, but one outcome would be better than all the scenarios that I can imagine," he said.
The cold case detectives said looking at the old files, it was unlikely anyone ever searched the river after Schepers' disappearance — but even if they did, the equipment police used in the search that resulted in the discovery of the car this week would not have been available so many years ago.
For reference, April 16, 1983 — the day Schepers was last seen — was a little over two years into President Ronald Reagan's first term, and four days after Harold Washington was first elected mayor of Chicago.
The Elgin police Cold Case Unit has dozens of other cases — including more than 40 murders or homicides.
