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Bones found in car pulled from Fox River in Illinois confirmed to be those of Karen Schepers, last seen in 1983

By
Adam Harrington
Adam Harrington
Web Producer, CBS Chicago
Adam Harrington is a digital producer at CBS Chicago, where he first arrived in January 2006.
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Adam Harrington

/ CBS Chicago

The skeletal remains found in a car pulled from the Fox River in Elgin, Illinois this week was confirmed Thursday to be those of Karen Schepers — who was last seen nearly 42 years ago.

Karen Schepers was seen for the last time on April 16, 1983, at a work party at a bar in Carpentersville. She was the last one to leave, witnesses told Elgin police at the time, and she was never seen again. She was only 23 years old at the time.

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 a car underwater, and quickly realized that the license plate number matched the one on Schepers' Celica.  

The car, a canary-yellow 1980 Toyota Celica, was pulled from the Fox River with skeletal remains inside on Tuesday, after a long and complex operation with the help of nonprofit group Chaos Divers.

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 this week.

On Thursday, the Kane County Coroner's office confirmed that a forensic odontologist and dental records provided by Schepers' family have positively identified the remains as hers.

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.

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.

On Wednesday, Elgin police also confirmed the city's fire department sent divers out about three years ago, after a fisherman found an unusual object in the river. The fire department divers found a car during the 2022 dive, but assumed it was either an all-terrain vehicle or a utility-task vehicle and did nothing further.

Elgin police said they had no idea about what the dive team did until Tuesday.

The Kane County Coroner's office emphasized Thursday that both they and Elgin police were still investigating the case.

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