Illinois Woman's Car Found in River Over 40 Years After She Disappeared During Night Out

The car belonging to a woman who disappeared more than 40 years ago has been found in an Illinois river.

Karen Schepers disappeared on April 16, 1983, at the age of 23, according to the Elgin Police Department.

Schepers was last seen inside P.M. Bentley’s, a Carpentersville bar, with about 20 of her coworkers, and left around 1 a.m. local time, police said.

No further activity was found on the Elgin woman’s bank accounts and credit cards after she vanished, and her yellow 1980 Toyota Celica with license plate XP8919 had not been seen since her disappearance, according to the department.

Related: An Oregon Family Went Missing During Car Ride in 1958. Police Believe They Just Found Their Vehicle in a River

On Monday, March 24, a diver located the Toyota in the Fox River northwest of the Slade Avenue boat launch, police said in an update.

Crews are waiting for more favorable diving conditions to remove the car from the water, they added.

It is unclear if there are any human remains located inside the submerged vehicle. “This will be confirmed once the vehicle is removed from the Fox River,” police said.

Schepers is a graduate of Sycamore High School and worked as a computer programmer at First Chicago Bankcard at the time of her disappearance, according to The Charley Project, which collects and shares information about missing persons cases.

She was reportedly “unofficially engaged” for about a year but called things off with her fiancé about two weeks before she vanished.

Schepers had asked her former fiancé to the bar the night of her disappearance, but he declined. He later passed a lie detector test, and as of January 2025, was not considered a suspect.

Additionally, Schepers lived in an apartment previously rented by Thomas Urlacher, who was a suspect in the 1976 disappearance of Barbara Glueckert, according to The Charley Project. But Urlacher, who died in 2004, was not named as a suspect in Schepers’ case.

One week before Schepers' car was found, Elgin Police detectives Andrew Houghton and Matt Vartanian discussed the theory that she and her car were submerged in a body of water in their Cold Case unit's podcast.

Police worked with an Illinois group, known as Chaos Divers, to locate and explore “several sites of interest” using sonar technology before the car was found.

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“We want to thank Chaos Divers for their assistance in this case, along with the public, for supporting this endeavor and with these efforts, helping to provide the Schepers family with the answers that they have been searching for the past 40 years,” police said.

Anyone with information on the case is asked to contact the department at ColdCaseTips@elginil.gov or 1-847-289-COLD.

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