The 1980 Toyota Celica driven by Karen Schepers, a 23-year-old Elgin woman missing since 1983, was found Monday night at the bottom of the Fox River by divers using specialized sonar equipment.
Elgin police confirmed the discovery in a Facebook message posted about 8:50 p.m. after a full day of searching done by Chaos Divers, a nonprofit organization that specializes in finding missing people in bodies of water.
The license plate on the car, XP8919, matches that of the vehicle police have been searching for since Schepers disappeared in the early morning hours of April 16, 1983, after leaving a bar in Carpentersville.
“Due to current diving conditions, efforts to safely remove the vehicle from the Fox River will be conducted (Tuesday),” the post said. “Currently, there is no information available as to if any human remains are in the vehicle. This will be confirmed once the vehicle is removed from the Fox River.”
The car was found at a location northwest of the Slade Avenue boat launch, near the Fox River Trail. Because the area is now considered a crime scene, access is being limited to police and fire personnel, the post said.
A media briefing will be conducted at 10 a.m. Tuesday, according to the post.
Schepers had been missing for nearly 42 years and was the subject of a podcast, “Somebody Knows Something,” put together by Elgin Cold Case Unit detectives Andrew Houghton and Matt Vartanian, who looked at different theories about the unsolved mystery.
One premise was that Schepers accidentally drove into a body of water, something supported by the fact that her canary yellow Toyota Celica was never found, her credit cards and bank account remained untouched, and nothing from her apartment taken.
Divers brought in Monday morning by the police focused on Duncan Avenue, which runs alongside the river for part of the way between Carpentersville and Elgin and was one of two routes Schepers likely would have followed to return to her Elgin apartment.
However, the spot the car was found is more than a dozen blocks away from Duncan Avenue.
Chaos Divers owner Jacob Grubbs, manager Lindsay Bussick and diver Mike McFerron were on the scene and looked at several locations where an accident could have occurred, Bussick said.
“There are so many spots where it is so close to the river,” she said.
The crew uses three types of sonars, including one with a scope that provides a live feed that’s almost like an ultrasound, Bussick said. “There are times we can get such a clear image where we can almost tell what make and model the vehicle is,” she said.
“With this case and with her being missing for so long, we are kind of looking at it differently,” she said. “We are looking for shadows because we have to take into account deterioration and that kind of thing just being in the water and the flow of the water over that vehicle.”
Elgin Police Chief Ana Lalley said earlier in the day that they were committed to the search.
“If it takes us a day, or if it takes us a couple of days, we’ll be here,” she said. “We have an opportunity to do this and want to do it the right way.”
In the podcast, Houghton and Vartanian outlined the reasons why they’re looking at the river and other bodies of water. Chief among them were the road and weather conditions in the early morning hours when she left the bar as well as the river’s high water level at the time, they said.
There were two routes Schepers could’ve taken to return to her apartment in the 300 block of Lovell Street on Elgin’s east side, the detectives said. One was driving south on Route 25 and the other was Duncan Avenue, which would have been the more common route, they said.
Houghton and Vartanian researched the phases of the moon to determine how dark the road would have been, and learned there was a crescent moon that night in which only 10% was illuminated.
“It would’ve been pretty dark,” Houghton said in the podcast.
There also would have been less light pollution because Elgin’s population was only about 60,000 and the town not as built up as it is now, he said.
Temperatures were below freezing and there were gusting winds, data shows.
Additionally, the Fox River was at a record high level that week, much higher than the normal eight feet it would have been along that stretch of road, the detectives said.
Water or ice on the roadway could’ve caused Scheper’s car to slip or crash and, if it did, her response time might have been affected by any alcoholic drinks she’d had at the bar, they said. If she was incapacitated by a crash, her car could’ve veered into the river.
Houghton and Vartanian said they also planned to explore other theories, such as Schepers decided to leave Elgin, may have intentionally hurt herself or encountered someone who did her harm.
A fight Scheper had with her boyfriend before she went to the bar over his not wanting to meet her there could have been a factor, they said, but he cooperated with police and passed a lie detector test.
“Everybody has their theory. This is one of the many theories of what happened to her,” Lalley said. “It’s important we exhaust all investigative methods, including this, because there are always going to be questions. The purpose of the Cold Case Unit is to find answers and, more importantly, bring some peace and closure to the family, if we can.”
Bussick said being part of a mission to locate a family’s missing loved one can be “incredibly rewarding.”
“It’s heartbreaking at times because when we do locate someone, you are taking that hope away from them that their loved one may pull back into the driveway,” she said. “At the same time, you can watch this weight be lifted off them.”
To listen to the podcast, go to www.spreaker.com/podcast/somebody-knows-something–6488643?fbclid=IwY2xjawJObEtleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHeKlroZ7h4xXkGeVcFPIj8afouDUBdCQ7-WwSPHdZXTc4myKWwBr9NVu1Q_aem_q3BeoMYI38AzqPqAtWalJQ.
Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.
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