Episode 2: Karen Schepers and her family dynamic

Yahoo

18-02-2025

ELGIN, Ill. (WGN) — Nearly 42 years after her disappearance, Karen Schepers' family still maintains her childhood home in Sycamore. The piano she used to spend hours on still sits in the same room, where family members hold on to a forlorn hope she reappears and plays the keys as if she never left.
Episode two of the Elgin Police Department's 'Somebody Knows Something' podcast lays out Karen Scheper's childhood, the relationships she had with her family members growing up, and how relationships with some of her parental figures soured in the years before her disappearance.
Previous Coverage – 'Somebody knows something': Elgin Police Department launches podcast aimed at solving cold cases
Schepers was one of nine siblings and the second oldest of her brothers and sisters. The family's first child was her brother Gary, followed by her, then her younger brother Dale, and then Susan, Ron, Laurie, Sue, Scott and Mike in that order.
Gary, Karen and Dale were born in San Francisco before her mother and father, Elizabeth 'Liz' Paulson and Loren Schepers, relocated them to Iowa around 1960, where they lived until 1964. While the Schepers lived in Iowa, Karen's little sister Susan was born before they moved again—this time to Sycamore, Illinois sometime around 1965.
Once the family settled into Sycamore—a town along Route 64 west of Elgin—Ron, Laurie, Sue, Scott and Mike steadily came into the picture.
Growing up, Karen's brothers and sisters described her as a caring sibling, but also one who was talented and well-liked in high school. During the episode, Gary described when they were kids, Karen would use her Christmas Secret Santa money to buy gifts for all her siblings, instead of just the one name she drew each year.
Susan recalled how she was a talented musician and became a cheerleader at Sycamore High School.
'She was on the pom-pom squad. You had crepe paper and you had to sit there and tape them all together to make these things and we thought they were so great—my other sister and I—it meant that you were 'it,'' Susan recalled during the episode. 'She was a very talented singer. She was in musicals and she played piano.
'She was a clear inspiration for me playing the piano and I've played the piano ever since. I would listen to her in what was called 'the piano room' and there was nothing in it but the piano. I'm sure everyone else in the house hated the fact the piano was being played a lot, but I would listen to her play and even though my lessons were here, I would play what she was playing to emulate [her] because I wanted to play what she was playing.'
Dale, who was Karen's closest sibling in age at 11 months younger than her, said Karen wasn't necessarily outgoing, but she definitely wasn't shy. He also said the family wasn't like the Waltons or the Brady Bunch, but he and Karen looked out for each other to the best of their abilities and had what he considered a normal brother-sister relationship.
After graduating from Sycamore High School in 1977, Karen chose to forego college and enter the workforce, getting a job in Elgin at First Chicago Bank Card as a computer programmer.
As a part of picking up the job, she briefly moved in with her father Loren and stepmother Suzette in Elgin, before moving into a second-floor apartment in the 300 block of Lovell Street on the East Side of the Fox River.
Along the way, she bought a canary-yellow 1980 Toyota Celica with distinctive red stripes and began dating Terry Wayne Schultz. The two met after Schultz delivered a pizza to her apartment.
According to detectives Andrew Houghton and Matt Vartanian, the two became unofficially engaged in the spring or summer of 1982. Schultz had yet to buy a ring, but the understanding was they would eventually marry one another.
Karen experienced more than her fair share of drama from 1980 up until her disappearance in April 1983.
As Houghton and Vartanian explain in the episode, Karen had strained relationships with her father, Loren, and her stepmother, Suzette, before her relationship with Schultz became rockier ahead of her disappearance.
Houghton and Vartanian reveal their investigation showed Karen had only spoken to her father over the phone for up to three-plus years before her disappearance. Then, they also talk of how Karen kept the address of her Lovell Street apartment a secret from Suzette, due to strain in their relationship.
A few weeks before Karen's disappearance, she and Schultz reportedly called off their unofficial engagement but were still seeing each other.
Although Houghton and Vartanian didn't reveal any strain the relationship with her mother, Liz moved to Texas in 1981, leading to less contact with Karen, who stayed put in Illinois.
Two of Karen's siblings—Dale and Susan—both recall the last moments they were either in contact with Karen or with her.
After disappearing sometime after midnight in the early morning hours of April 16, 1983, Dale went to Karen's apartment on April 17—a day before her boyfriend filed a missing persons report with police.
Karen called the mother of Dale's now-wife to ask if she could have Dale contact her. According to Houghton and Vartanian, it was common for Karen to call her and leave instructions for Dale because he didn't own a phone at the time.
Dale told Houghton and Vartanian he was picking up a trailer to drop off in Memphis that day. Before departing, he stopped at Karen's apartment and left a note on her door. A day later when he returned to Illinois, he and the rest of his family learned Karen had gone missing.
Susan wasn't in Illinois when Karen went missing, but she recalled the last time she was with her sister.
Karen, her mom and several of her brothers spent a day at a beach in Galveston, Texas. When they returned, Karen and Susan went on a trip to a store in town that turned into an excursion to Lake Ray Hubbard, where the two sat and had a one-on-one conversation about life.
'We were a gaggle of geese most of the time,' Susan said of their family dynamic with nine brothers and sisters, which made the time spent with just one sibling a rare commodity.
More than four decades after Karen's disappearance, her family still maintains the farmhouse where they grew up in Sycamore, keeping details the same way they were before she went missing.
One of those details is keeping the piano Karen practiced on growing up in the same room it's always been sitting in. Gary told Houghton and Vartanian it's all a part of a slim sliver of hope she comes home after all these years.
'You wonder all the time. In my mind, I almost never say the word 'was' about her. It's always like, 'She's somewhere,' and I don't know,' Gary said. 'I mean, mom and I are still in the house waiting for her to show up one day. I would be surprised, but I wouldn't be surprised if that happened. It's one of the reasons the house looks the same and the barn's never been painted a different color.
'If she were driving by and saw the place, she would know it was there … On my Facebook page—the cover photo has been there for years—a picture of [doenetwork.org's] billboard and I get responses to it. I repost it on her birthday [and] every April 15th. People leave comments. I'm still convinced somebody knows and somebody is going to tell us.'Anyone with information on Karen's case or any other cold case in the City of Elgin are encouraged to contact EPD via email at [e-mail] or via phone at 1-847-289-COLD. A list of all cold case missing persons and homicide cases are listed at https://epdopendata-cityofelgin.hub.arcgis.com/pages/cold-cases.
A new episode of 'Somebody Knows Something: The Elgin Police Cold Case Podcast' drops every other Monday, with the next episode coming out on Feb. 17.
With Each episode's drop, an article from WGN News will follow within 24 hours.
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