A Missing Model & Doggy DNA - Mt Zion, Illinois

Karen Slover was twenty-three, an advertising consultant at the Herald Review newspaper in Decatur, Illinois, and the mother of a three-year-old son, Colton. this part of the story is covered for now By September 1996 she was living in an apartment in Decatur and dating David Swan, a man she had known for about a month.

On Friday 27 September 1996 she woke at Swan's home, borrowed his black 1992 Pontiac Bonneville, registration CADS 7, and drove to her father Larry Hearn's house, where he kept a home office, arriving about 8.30 a.m. She stayed forty-five minutes to an hour and then went on to the Herald Review at East William Street; she had a sales meeting in Springfield that day. Swan saw her again in the newspaper's car park at about 1.20 p.m. She had signed with a modelling agency called Paris World, run by Alan Tapley out of Savannah, Georgia, in July, and that afternoon she posted them a signed contract and ninety-two dollars; the postal receipt was timed 3.14 p.m. A co-worker, Christine Quintez, said Karen was in a good mood between two and three, then took a phone call and came back shaken. Her face changed, she began to shake, and as she passed the desk she mouthed the word Mike. details of the account remain covered until revealed She left the office at 5.05 p.m. Witnesses placed her and the car in Lovington and Cerro Gordo between 5.30 and 6.30. She bought an ice cream cone at a restaurant, and a packet of chewing gum at the grocery store across the street.

She never collected Colton. At 9.57 p.m. the Bonneville was found on Interstate 72 with its engine running, the driver's door open and her purse and belongings still inside.

On Sunday 29 September, Tracy and Sherry Sebaw, fishing near Finley Marina on Lake Shelbyville, saw a grey plastic bag lying in about two inches of water. Sherry pushed at it and thought it felt like a head, and they called the sheriff's department. Chief deputy Jeff Thomas cut the bag open and found a human head, double-bagged in grey plastic with duct tape around the outer bag and a knot in the inner one. The head went to a local funeral home and was kept in the embalming room. On the Monday morning a conservation officer, Greg Roe, found a second bag floating in a cove north-east of the marina; it held two hands. Other searchers found a bag containing the right chest area and upper right arm against a tree trunk about a mile north of Finley Bridge, a left thigh lying loose on the shore, and a bag containing two feet. Blood was found on the north rail of Finley Bridge.

An autopsy identified Karen by her dental records. She had been shot seven times in the head with a small calibre weapon, once to the back of the head and six times on the left side, all from inches away, and then dismembered with a power saw. At least four bullet fragments were consistent with a .22, though the type of weapon could not be fixed. Her feet were still in socks, and a piece of broken concrete had been used to weight the bag holding her hands, another in the bag with her shoulder. A tampon and a large quantity of sand, gravel and rock were found in her vagina; a pathologist later said the position of the body and the closed nature of the vagina meant the material could not have washed in from the lake.

The police looked first at David Swan, because he had known her only a month and had been telephoning her family repeatedly. the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it He could not account for forty-five minutes of the day, and he had been late to a wedding rehearsal dinner. But bank video showed him at an ATM, and his account of the evening checked out.

this part of the story is covered for now On the Friday he finished at Cub Foods about six, gave a private karate lesson at a house on Tanager Drive, arriving late at 6.10 p.m. and leaving at 6.45, stopped at a road accident to speak to Officer Willary, and arrived at Ronnie's about eight with freshly washed hair. details of the account remain covered until revealed His time card had been adjusted by a payroll clerk because he forgot to clock back in after his break, and a shoplifter he detained kept him at the store until he left at 6.30.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now

In early October police searched the family's used car lot, Miracle Motors in Mount Zion. In a burn barrel they found buttons from the kind of jeans Karen had been wearing. details of the account remain covered until revealed the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it The search became a careful dig, with soil sifted in two-inch layers and the US Army brought in to help over a 5,000 square foot area. In March 1998 it produced a metal jean button, two rivets and a cloth button matching Karen's blouse, along with bone chips. Botanists matched plants from the lot to weeds in Karen's hair, a forensic geologist matched concrete from the bags to concrete at the lot, and cinders in the body were matched to cinders spread across the lot by trucks from a nearby Staley plant.

The most striking evidence was a dog. Several dark hairs were stuck to the duct tape on one of the bags. DNA was extracted from one hair, and the odds of another animal sharing its genetic markers were put at one in 56,000 against a database of 470 dogs, a figure a North Carolina State statistical geneticist later adjusted to one in 1,680 because of inbreeding in the database. The hair matched Kagny, a black Labrador mix owned by the Slovers, and the tests excluded the other family dog and a blond dog near the car lot. this part of the story is covered for now

details of the account remain covered until revealed They said the body was taken to the car lot, dismembered behind the building, bagged, weighted with concrete from the yard, thrown into Lake Shelbyville from the shore or the bridge, and the car abandoned on the interstate to suggest she had been taken by someone on the road. The defence attacked the dog DNA, the changing accounts of the co-worker, the tinted windows of the Bonneville, and the cinders and concrete, and argued that even added together the evidence did not prove first-degree murder.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now details of the account remain covered until revealed She had adopted Colton in 1999 and moved with him and her brother to Hornbeak, Tennessee, choosing a state with restricted grandparent visitation. In 2003 a judge found her unfit because she had known of and concealed the killing, though there was insufficient evidence that she was complicit in the murder itself. Colton went briefly into state guardianship and then to Karen's parents, Larry and Donna Hearn.

the rest of this account is covered until you choose to reveal it this part of the story is covered for now In 2014 the Slovers won a ruling allowing DNA testing on fingerprint evidence, but it led nowhere. details of the account remain covered until revealed Colton, in his late twenties, had changed his name and was working in home improvement.