Episode 2 - Who is Karen Schepers?

Summary

Summary of "Somebody Knows Something" – Episode 2: "Who is Karen Schepers?"

Release Date: February 17, 2025

Introduction

In the second episode of "Somebody Knows Something," titled "Who is Karen Schepers?", Detectives Andrew Houghton and Matt Vartanian delve deeper into the enigmatic disappearance of Karen Schepers, a 23-year-old woman who vanished without a trace on April 16, 1983. This episode focuses on unraveling Karen's personal life, providing listeners with a comprehensive understanding of who Karen was, her relationships, and the circumstances leading up to her disappearance.

Karen Schepers' Early Life

Karen Lee Schepers was born on September 20, 1959, in San Francisco, California, to Elizabeth Paulson and Lauren Sheepers. She was the second of nine children in a large family. The Sheepers family relocated multiple times during Karen's childhood, moving to Iowa in 1960 and later to Sycamore, Illinois, in 1965. These moves introduced Karen to a diverse set of environments and experiences that shaped her character.

Karen's Adulthood and Relationships

After graduating from Sycamore High School in 1977, Karen opted to enter the workforce rather than pursue higher education immediately. She moved to Elgin, Illinois, where she worked as a computer programmer at First Chicago Bank Card, a precursor to Visa. Karen's professional life was marked by her dedication and skill in her field.

Karen's personal life included a significant relationship with Terry Wayne Schultz, whom she met when he delivered pizza to her apartment. Despite their unofficial engagement and shared dreams of marriage, their relationship faced strains. In the months leading up to her disappearance, Karen and Terry reportedly called off their engagement, although they remained in contact.

Timeline of Disappearance

On April 15, 1983, Karen woke up at her apartment on Lovell Street for the last time. She attended a party at P.M. Bentley's that evening. In the early hours of April 16, 1983, Karen vanished without a trace. The following day, her brother Dale discovered that she was missing after receiving a call from Karen's confidant, Janetta’s mother, prompting him to leave a note at Karen's apartment.

Family Perspectives

The episode features heartfelt interviews with Karen's family members, providing intimate insights into her life and the profound impact of her disappearance.

• Liz Paulson (Mother): Remembers Karen fondly, indicating the deep bond they shared before Karen's disappearance.

• Susan Sheepers (Sister): [05:02] “She was very talented singer. She was in musicals, and she played piano... I would listen to her play. And even though my lessons were here, I would play what she was playing to emulate because I wanted to play what she was playing.”

  Susan highlights Karen's musical talents and her role as an inspiration within the family.

• Dale Sheepers (Brother): [06:22] “She was, I mean, really smart, very musical personality... we grew up together, watched out for each other, respected each other to the best of our ability... she was better at everything, she was a better student, a better musician.”

  Dale emphasizes Karen's intelligence, musical prowess, and the close-knit yet competitive nature of their family dynamics.

• Gary Sheepers (Older Brother): [16:05] “You wonder all the time... 'she's somewhere.' I don't know... someone is going to tell us.”

  Gary expresses a lingering hope that someone holds the key to Karen's disappearance, maintaining the family's vigil in preserving their home in the hope that Karen might return.

Emotional Impact on Family

The disappearance of Karen Schepers has left an indelible mark on her family, who continue to seek closure decades later.

• Susan Sheepers: [13:16] “I'd love to have a closure to it. I'd love to have that for my mom.”

  Susan shares the enduring pain and the family's desperate need for answers to move forward.

• Liz Paulson: [15:18] “You don't feel like you can go forward until you fix this. So you're still back here waiting for something to happen.”

  Liz underscores the paralysis and perpetual hope that bind the family, preventing them from moving on.

Ongoing Efforts and Hope

The episode emphasizes the continued efforts of the Schepers family to find Karen, highlighting their preservation of her childhood home and belongings as a testament to their unwavering hope.

• Matt Vartanian: [15:30] “The family has maintained the old farmhouse in Sycamore where Karen grew up... She hopes Karen might just play it again someday.”

  This dedication symbolizes the family's enduring belief that Karen might one day return.

• Gary Sheepers: [16:05] “You know, on my Facebook page... I'm still convinced that somebody knows and somebody is going to tell us.”

  Gary's active engagement on social media platforms like Facebook illustrates the family's proactive approach in seeking information, even decades later.

Conclusion and What's Next

Detectives Houghton and Vartanian conclude the episode by reflecting on the profound impact Karen's disappearance has had on her family. They express their commitment to using the podcast as a tool to gather new information and reignite public interest in the case.

• Matt Vartanian: “In our next episode... we discussed theory number one. Karen made a desperate choice. Did Karen take matters into her own hands and either run away or harm herself?”

  The episode sets the stage for future investigations, promising to explore the various theories surrounding Karen's disappearance in depth.

Call to Action

Chief Anna Lally reiterates the police department's plea for public assistance:

“If you or anyone you know has information about this case or any other cold case in Elgin, please contact the Elgin Police Department Cold Case Unit via email at [e-mail] or call the cold case tip line at 1-847-289-COLD. Your information could be crucial in bringing justice and closure to Karen Schepers and her family.”

Notable Quotes

• Gary Sheepers: [16:05] “You wonder all the time... I don't know... somebody is going to tell us.”
• Susan Sheepers: [13:16] “I'd love to have a closure to it. I'd love to have that for my mom.”
• Dale Sheepers: [14:22] “She was very much a role model... you got to go make your way. You got to go do what you need to do and be successful.”

Final Thoughts

Episode 2 of "Somebody Knows Something" paints a vivid portrait of Karen Schepers, detailing her personal attributes, relationships, and the enduring hope of her family. By weaving together personal anecdotes, emotional testimonies, and investigative insights, the episode not only honors Karen's memory but also invigorates the search for answers in her unsolved disappearance.

Transcript

[Narrator]

This podcast is based on information sourced primarily from police and media reports, but certain names and other identifying details may have been changed or altered for privacy and security reasons. While the events and cases discussed are based on real investigations, some aspects may be simplified for time and for narrative purposes. Voice actors have been used to read from statements or documents. All information presented is intended solely to inform and raise awareness. Hosts may discuss theories regarding the cases examined in this podcast, but such discussions are not intended to and should not be considered by the listener to be legal. Conclusions all persons discussed are considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Listener discretion is advised.

[Chief Anna Lally]

This is Chief Anna Lally. Welcome to Somebody Knows Something, a podcast from the Elgin Police Department's Cold Case Unit. In this podcast, we will shed new light on cold cases in the city of Elgin by sharing untold details and by encouraging anyone with information to come forward. You will come along with real cold case detectives as they investigate active cold cases in real time and seek justice for the victims and closure for their families. We believe that the Elgin Police Department and our community can work together to bring closure to cold cases because we know that in these cases, somebody knows something.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Hello and welcome to Somebody Knows Something, the Elgin Police Department Cold Case Podcast. My name is Detective Andrew Houghton and.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

I'm Detective Matt Vartanian.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Last episode, we introduced our case to our listeners and walked through the six main theories that we're going to investigate as we go through this case. Today, we're beginning our investigation by talking to people who knew Karen best, her family. We want to introduce Karen and her background to our listeners and get a sense of who Karen is as a person as we start thinking about theory number one, that Karen made some sort of choice to either leave or to hurt herself.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

So Karen Lee Sheepers was one of nine total children in her family, and she was born in San Francisco, California on September 20, 1959 to Elizabeth Paulson and Lauren Sheepers. We had the opportunity to sit down with a number of Karen's family members, including her mom, Liz.

[Liz Paulson]

Oh, it was like 7:30 or so in the morning. I just got to the hospital and they took me right in to have the baby because it took us a while to get there. I didn't have contractions, but I had pressure. She was 8, 14, I think.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

You know, Matt, Liz just celebrated her 90th birthday back on September 19th, and that's just one day before Karen would have turned 65. The family hasn't celebrated Karen's birthday since 1982. I mean, that was her 23rd birthday. They never saw her for her 24th.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

Yeah, it's really terrible. Karen was Elizabeth's second child after her big brother, Gary. Less than a year later, her younger brother Dale was also born in California. And then in 1960, the family picked up roots and moved to Iowa.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Yeah.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

Gary recalls that Karen was the first person he ever spoke to.

[Gary Sheepers]

The first two words I ever spoke in my life were to Karen. You know, you used to always talk to the babies and that. The first thing I ever said was I said hello there to her the way that you did.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Yeah, Matt. I mean, Gary talked a lot about Karen. He told us about this Christmas tradition that kind of. I think we both kind of thought encapsulated who Karen was. She just sounded like a really genuinely caring, nice person.

[Gary Sheepers]

One thing I remember is that at Christmas, we all used to get like $5 or something, you know, and, you know, like the Secret Santa thing, and you drew names out of a hat. And every year she would take the $5 and buy something for everybody that's cool. Instead of just for the one person.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

Yeah. I mean, it's tough for the family to think about her. You know, the family is really, to this day, devastated by the entire situation.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Yeah.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

Well, the family lives in Iowa until 1964, adding another girl to the family, Karen's little sister, Susan, before moving again to sycamore, Illinois, by 1965. Then came Ron, Laurie, Sue, Scott, and Mike.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Yeah. Then Liz had one more child, but that was after she got divorced from Lauren. Karen was a teenager, and Lauren moved to Elgin, Illinois, with his new wife after him and Liz split up. And then Liz also remarried, right?

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

Yeah. And while Lauren moved to Elgin, Karen stayed in Sycamore, living with her mom and her siblings, and later attending Sycamore High School, where she was an active member of her school community. Susan remembers this about Karen in high.

[Susan Sheepers]

School, in middle school, maybe it was early 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, like, so great. My other sister and I, because it meant that you were it. She was 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, but I would listen to her, and we had what was called the piano room, and there was nothing in it but the piano. And I'm sure everyone else in the house hated the fact that 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 because I wanted to play what she was playing. So she was in the madrigals in high school, and so she was a very good singer, piano player, instrumentation and all that kind of stuff.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Okay. So Karen had eight siblings, but the closest one to her from everyone we've talked to was her brother Dale. After all, he was closest in age. He was like 11 months younger than her. We did get a chance to sit down with Dale, and he talked a lot about his big sister.

[Dale Sheepers]

Well, she was, I mean, really smart, very musical personality. I'd say she was, I wouldn't say outgoing, but she wasn't shy. So I don't know, kind of normal to the best of my understanding and ability. Okay, well, being one of nine, you know, she's older sister, you know, there's a lot of, I guess, competition in the family. When you got to the dinner table, there was no such thing as seconds, you know, that kind of thing. So, I mean, we. We grew up together. It wasn't like the Waltons or the Brady Bunch or anything like that, but, you know, we. We grew up together, watched out for each other, respected each other to the best of our ability, and, you know, you had your little discussions or disagreements from time to time, but nothing that was malicious by any stretch of the imagination. So I think we were pretty normal. I know that most everything, most everything I was good at, she was better at. She was a better student, a better musician, all that kind of stuff.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

Yeah. After Karen graduated in 1977, many of her friends went off to college, but Karen chose to enter the workforce. She moved to Elgin and lived with Lauren and Suzette for a time. She later rented an apartment for a brief period of time and then moved into the second floor apartment at a house located at 311 Level street right here in Elgin on the east side. Karen also bought herself a canary yellow 1980 Toyota Celica with distinctive red stripes and took it with her during her move to Elgin. This car was the last car that Karen would ever own.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Yeah, Karen had a really good job, too. I mean, while she's living in Elgin, she's living on her own. She started working as a computer programmer at First Chicago Bank Card, which was kind of a precursor to Visa. And she started this relationship with a guy named Terry Wayne Schultz. He met her when he delivered a pizza to her apartment. Terry was six years older than Karen, but they began dating shortly after meeting one another sometime in 1979. And they became unofficially engaged sometime in either the spring or the summer of 1982. There was no ring yet, Terry said, but they had an understanding that they were eventually going to be married. Karen maintained her upstairs apartment at 311 Lovell Street. But she sounds like she frequently spent nights at Terry's or stayed at Terry's. In 1981, Liz moved to Texas, and she kind of had less contact with Karen because Karen stayed up here in Illinois.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

Right. Karen's life was not without drama or problems. In 1983, she had a strained relationship with her father, Lauren, and his wife, Suzette. She reportedly only spoke to Lauren over the phone after about. Probably 1980.

[Dale Sheepers]

Yeah.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

And to add to it, a few weeks before her disappearance, she and Terry reportedly called off their unofficial engagement. But they were still seeing each other.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Yeah, it sounds like they were still kind of hanging out and talking to each other. Multiple family members told us that Karen moved to. To Lovell street, and she kind of kept that a secret from Suzette as well. She didn't want her to know the address. It sounds like she had a pretty strained relationship with Lauren's new wife, Suzette.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

Yeah. Well, on April 15th of 1983, Karen woke up in that apartment on Lovell street for the last time and then went to work. Then on that evening, she attended the party at p.m. bentley's. In the early morning hours of Saturday, April 16th of 1983, she simply vanished. We talked to Karen's brother Dale about how he learned that Karen went missing. And oddly enough, he went to her apartment on April 17 and left a note for her because she had reached out to his now wife, Janetta's mother, asking that Dale contact her. Dale didn't have a phone at the time, and so it was common for Karen to call Jannetta's mom and leave instructions for Dale to stop by or to contact her.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Yeah.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

Here's what Dale and Jannetta had to say.

[Dale Sheepers]

At the time. I was driving a truck, and the weekend that she went missing, I picked up a trailer here in Elgin, going to Memphis. And I thought, well, you know, I don't have a phone. I'll just leave a note on her door.

[Susan Sheepers]

Because she had called you that Wednesday. Yeah, she left the message at Moms.

[Dale Sheepers]

That's true. So, yeah, I was returning a message by just a little note that I put on her door, and I left, drove to Memphis, came back the next day. And I think that next day, that's.

[Susan Sheepers]

When your mom Called.

[Dale Sheepers]

Yeah. When my mom called my mother in law's house to say, we don't know where Karen's at. Do you know where she is?

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Yeah. For her part, Susan wasn't in Illinois when Karen went missing. She was down in Texas. But she remembered the last time that she saw her big sister when Karen came down to visit in the fall of 1982.

[Susan Sheepers]

She came down to Illinois or, sorry, to Texas. She wanted to go to the beach. And so I was. I was at home. I did not go to Galveston with the. The rest of you guys. I think just you, Scott, Mike and Karen probably went to Galveston and maybe John.

[Liz Paulson]

That'S when she's laying out on the beach.

[Susan Sheepers]

Yeah, yeah. So she wanted to go to the beach. So she came down. We had moved to Texas, and so she came down to go to the beach. And I remember that they went to the beach. I remember when she was still at the house in Texas. And that was when we were on Stroud Lane in Garland and we went for a drive. And I was dating a guy in high school at the time. And so I remember going out to Lake Ray Hubbard with her. And I think maybe we were going to the grocery store to get something, but we kind of diverted and we went out by Lake Ray Hubbard and we just sat in the car and talked. We went to the little island between, you know, the two sides of the lake, and we just talked about things. I don't remember really much in particular about that conversation, but I do remember we had it. I remember doing that with her because that was unusual. We didn't really have really one on one conversations because, I mean, we were. We were a gaggle of geese most of the time, I mean. But yeah, that's the last time I saw her. Last time I talked to her as well.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

You know, one of the harder things we did is when we're talking to the family is we kind of talked to them about how this disappearance has impacted them. And as you can imagine, it's been a really difficult time for them. Even though it's been over 40 years, it changes everything.

[Susan Sheepers]

For many years, when I would see people that had similar characteristics, I'd stop. Or if I was in a crowded place, an airport or something, and I'd always be looking. Is there anybody that looks like her? You know, am I gonna see her? Is she gonna come out of the woodwork? I always think about her when I'm playing songs that she played. And that'll never change. I'd love to say that she's still around. And for years, I was just, you know, you hope and you hope and you hope that she's still around. I mean, I'm convinced enough time has gone by that she is no longer with us. 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. I mean, for of all people.

[Dale Sheepers]

Well, she was my sister. Less than a year's difference. We had a lot of, you know, similar kinds of values and thoughts and ambitions in life. We didn't have. We didn't have things handed to us. Had to go out and earn it. And, I mean, she was. She was very, very much, you know, a role model for just about anybody to you know, go. You know, you got to go make your way. You got to go do what you need to do and be successful in what you're doing. And, you know, that's something that I. Something that I value, but something that you miss because, you know, those milestones, that would be her successes along life. You don't have that to share.

[Liz Paulson]

You don't feel like you can go forward until you fix this. So you're still back here waiting for something to happen.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

You know, I'm struck by the fact that even after all these years, the family has maintained the old farmhouse in Sycamore where Karen grew up. Susan kept Karen's piano for years, then returned it to Liz, who placed it in the piano room in Karen's childhood home. She hopes Karen might just play it again someday.

[Detective Andrew Houghton]

Yeah. So we're hoping to use this podcast to help the family understand where Karen is and what happened to her. And for his part, Gary, her older brother, still holds out a small sliver of hope that he might see his little sister again and that he will somehow learn where she is.

[Gary Sheepers]

You wonder all the time. And, you know, in my mind, I almost never say the word wonder was about her. You know, it's always like she's somewhere. And, you know, I don't know. I mean, mom and I are still in the house. We're waiting for her to show up one day. You know, I wouldn't. I would be surprised, but I wouldn't be surprised if that happened. I mean, it's one of the reasons that the house looks the same and the barn's never been painted a different color. And all that is so that if she were driving by and saw the place, she would know it was there. And, you know, I mean, I don't know. I have no idea. I You know, on my Facebook page, the COVID photo for years has been a picture of Brian Gorkowski's billboard and I get responses to it. I repost it on a birthday. I repost it every April 15th. You know, people leave comments. I mean, you know, I'm still convinced that somebody knows and somebody is going to tell us.

[Detective Matt Vartanian]

In our next episode of Somebody Knows Something, we discussed theory number one. Karen made a desperate choice. Did Karen take matters into her own hands and either run away or harm herself? We will investigate this theory with Karen's family and introduce some of her close friends and co workers to get their take on this theory as we continue our search for Karen Shepers.

[Chief Anna Lally]

If you or anyone you know has information about this case or any other cold case in Elgin, please contact the Elgin Police Department Cold case [e-mail] or the cold case tip line at 847289 cold. You can also review cold case information on the Elgin Police Department's Transparency Hub by going to elginil.gov and navigating to the Elgin Police Department's Transparency Hub, where every cold case, homicide and missing persons case is listed with photographs and information about each case.