The cold case concerning the disappearance of 23-year-old Karen Schepers of Elgin in April, 1983 has potentially gotten one large step closer to resolution.
On Monday, with the use of sonar technology, non-profit Chaos Divers had located several sites of interest in the Fox River and, at a location northwest of the Slade Avenue boat launch in Elgin, a vehicle was identified which bore the license plate XP8919, which matched the license plate of the 1980 Toyota Celica investigators believe Schepers was driving on the evening of her disappearance.
Tuesday, according to the Elgin Police Department, Chaos Divers, along with the Elgin Fire Department, extracted the vehicle, after which it was brought to the Kane County Coroner’s Office for further analysis. There, a forensic pathologist confirmed that skeletal human remains were present inside the vehicle.
EPD has indicated that the next step will be to compare DNA samples or dental records of Schepers to the remains located in the vehicle to confirm a positive identification, a process that could take several weeks.
On an early Monday morning in April, 1983, 23-year-old Karen Schepers of Elgin left a bar called P.M. Bentley’s in Carpentersville at roughly 1:00am after a party with her co-workers. She got into her yellow Toyota Celica and was never seen again.
Detectives Andrew Houghton and Matt Vartanian from the Elgin Police Department Cold Case Unit have interviewed members of Schepers’ family, her close friends, and her co-workers to get a sense of who she was as a person; have tracked down an employee of P.M. Bentley’s who was never interviewed who reveals new information about a man who stalked Schepers and her in the parking lot and followed her home in the months leading up to Schepers’ disappearance; have had discussions with a witness who claimed he saw Schepers with some bikers both inside and outside the bar and another witness who detailed her interaction with a man who allegedly claimed he was involved in her disappearance; and reviewed the cases of serial killers who were active in the Elgin area during the early 1980s.
As a result, Houghton and Vartanian have developed various theories about what actually happened to Schepers that mid-spring morning. The search of the Fox River follows from one theory that Schepers and her car are submerged in a body of water, as new tips have come in and new technology has become available. The detectives identified the routes that Schepers would have likely taken, travelled those routes, and have followed-up on new tips about a car recently discovered in the Fox River, leading to this week’s dramatic discoveries.
