Karen's fiance still remembers

Karen Schepers' family will always ask themselves "What if?"

Her former fiance, who was supposed to meet her on the night she disappeared 25 years ago, is haunted by the same question.

"I thought a lot about it, if I would have only went there. You can only beat yourself up so many times," said Terry Schultz, who is now 54 and still lives in Elgin.

Schepers called Schultz from a Carpentersville bar on April 15, 1983, and asked him to come out with her co-workers.

But he declined, saying he had to get up early the next day, a Saturday, to begin boiling pasta for a large catering job.

In a recent telephone interview, Schultz recalled being irritated that Schepers didn't show the next morning. He said she occasionally helped out at the pizza place he co-owned with his family.

He reported her missing on Monday after she didn't answer his calls that weekend and failed to show up at work.

Elgin police focused on Schultz, but he later passed a lie detector test.

He also helped Schepers' dad search for her in Utah, where she had some friends, and with the help of a psychic around the Fox Valley area.

Schultz can still rattle off Schepers' license plate number. Part of him wants to think that she ran off on her own instead of being the victim of foul play.

"Even though I am married with two kids (15 and 17), I'm still hoping she comes back," he said. "I don't want to believe somebody did something to her. She was a good person. If there's anything I can do to help, I'll help. That's what I said back then."

In 1996, Schultz was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had to close his custom woodworking business.

Today, he is in a wheelchair and can't work.

But he still thinks about Schepers, whom he first met when she ordered a pizza delivered to her Elgin apartment. He returned the next day to help fix her car.

Schultz recalled a conversation he had with his father a few months after Schepers disappeared in 1983.

Schultz's dad, whose own wife died in 1982, simply told his son to let it go.

"I said, 'You know where your wife is. I don't know where Karen is,'" Schultz said.