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1979 Schaper, Gayla 6-29-1979; Latah County
Topic Started: Jul 6 2006, 10:11 PM (810 Views)
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PIC: http://www.isp.state.id.us/mp_viewer/showM...n?id=M050133680

GAYLA CHRISTINE SCHAPER
LAST DATE OF CONTACT : 06/29/1979

DOB : 05/01/1951 HEIGHT : 5'08"
GENDER : FEMALE WEIGHT : 135 lbs
HAIR COLOR : BLONDE EYE COLOR : BLUE
RACE : WHITE


CASE INFORMATION :
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Subject was last seen wearing a blue sweater, a gold top and jeans.

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ABOUT THIS PERSON PLEASE CONTACT :
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LATAH CO SO 208 882-2216
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http://www.charleyproject.org/cases/s/schaper_gayla.html


Gayla Christine Schaper

Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: June 29, 1979 from Latah County, Idaho
Classification: Endangered Missing
Date Of Birth: May 1, 1951
Age: 28 years old
Height and Weight: 5'8, 135 pounds
Distinguishing Characteristics: Caucasian female. Blonde hair, blue eyes.
Clothing/Jewelry Description: A blue sweater, a gold-colored shirt and jeans.


Schaper was last seen when her husband dropped her off at a pasture near the family's dairy farm on Lenville Road southeast of Moscow, Idaho on June 29, 1979. When her husband came home, she wasn't there. Some clothing was found in a nearby meadow, but Schaper herself has never been located. She wasn't carrying any identification at the time of her disappearance.

Schaper's husband was initially considered a suspect in her disappearance, but he passed a polygraph in 1993 and was cleared of involvement. He remarried after Schaper went missing and still lives in the local area. Larry Hagedorn lived close to the pasture Schaper disappeared from; his son, Bill, was later convicted in the shooting death of his live-in girlfriend. Bill is presently serving a life term in prison. There were some accounts that his girlfriend was murdered because she knew something about Schaper's disappearance. Larry was considered a person of interest in Schaper's case; he owned a backhoe and was excavating his property and burying trash at the time she disappeared. A search of the Hagedorn property turned up no evidence, however, and Larry passed a polygraph in connection with the disappearance. He died in 2005.

Schaper's case remains unsolved. She was involved with her church and had a stable home life at the time of her disappearance, and isn't thought to have walked out of her life. Authorities believe she was taken against her will.
Latah County Sheriff's Office
208-882-2216



Source Information
Idaho Missing Person Clearinghouse
The Argus Observer
The Olympian
NamUs


Updated 3 times since October 12, 2004.

Last updated July 13, 2009; details of disappearance updated.

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http://z10.invisionfree.com/usedtobedoe/in...opic=7789&st=0&
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This is a printer friendly version of an article from the The Olympian.
To print this article open the file menu and choose Print.

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Published November 24, 2008

Detectives still lack answers in 1979 case
DAVID JOHNSON


There's no crime scene. No real suspect. Little, if any, direct evidence of foul play. For that matter, there's no Gayla Schaper.

"She's still considered a missing person, officially," says Detective Earl Aston of the Latah County Sheriff's Office, but it's presumed she was murdered.

"A horrible crime anyway you put it," says Sgt. Brannon Jordan, a deputy sheriff who last worked the case more than a decade ago.

"It's really hard to pick up a case that's that old and reopen it," Jordan says. "Let's face it, people get older. Memories fade. Detectives retire. It's been 14 years since I gave it a lot of thought."

When it comes to cold cases within the Lewiston Tribune's circulation area, the June 29, 1979, disappearance of 27-year-old Gayla Schaper may be the most puzzling.

"When I came home," recalls Ken Schaper, Gayla's husband at the time, "she wasn't there."

Now 64 years old, remarried and the father of a 20-year-old son, Schaper, of Moscow, hesitates when asked to resurrect the old memories.

"It's just been torture on me, as far as that goes," he said.

After all, Schaper was a suspect at the time of his wife's disappearance.

"Every spouse is generally, statistically, a person of interest after an incident like this," Jordan explains.

Jordan and Aston confirm that Schaper has been cleared.

"He took a polygraph when we reopened the case in 1993," Jordan says. "And he passed."

"They said the town owes me a holiday," says Schaper, recalling how authorities apologized to him. "I said, 'I just want this to be left alone and go on with my life.'"

And that's what he did. Schaper now works at the University of Idaho monitoring electric generators. He and his wife, Marge, recently celebrated their 21st wedding anniversary.

"We talk about it once in a great while when the subject comes up," Schaper says of Gayla Schaper's disappearance. "I just feel strongly somebody abducted her ... and drove off."

As for a motive, Jordan believes it was sexual.

---

Gayla Schaper was last seen, according to investigation reports, when Ken Schaper dropped her off at a pasture near the family's Dutch Boy Dairy farm to feed horses.

The site, just east of Moscow on Lenville Road near the intersection of State Highway 8, is still farmed. Schaper Road is also nearby. As is the former residence of the late Larry Hagedorn.

"He's still my person of interest," Jordan says.

But Hagedorn, who died in 2005, also passed polygraph tests. Jordan remains unswayed.

"He surfaced as a person of interest when his son, Bill, killed Joanne Romero."

The younger Hagedorn was convicted of murder and continues to serve a life sentence for the Oct. 27, 1993, shooting death of his live-in girlfriend JoAnn Romero.

While investigating the Romero murder, authorities interviewed and tape recorded an unnamed person, according to records, who said Romero was most likely silenced because of what she knew about Gayla Schaper's disappearance.

"I talked to a family member of JoAnn Romero's and she told me that Larry had done it," Jordan confirms. "We had reason to believe at the time that Larry was our person of interest. He lived right across the street from where she disappeared. He owned an excavation business. He owned a backhoe and he was doing a lot of excavating on the property, burying trash. At one time, he buried a car."

Armed with a search warrant, Jordan and lead investigator Robert J. "Bud" Piel oversaw days of law enforcement excavation around the Hagedorn property, looking for evidence and possibly even Gayla Schaper's body. But the probe failed to turn up any evidence worthy of filing charges.

"We did unearth some clothing that was wrapped in a curtain, and some tennis shoes, a blouse and things like that," Jordan says. "We actually sent that to a crime lab and FBI in Quantico, Va. But nothing ever came back that was substantial evidence."

As for William Hagedorn, Jordan says he was questioned while in jail awaiting trial for the Romero murder. "He was interviewed and he basically, when asked about Gayla Schaper's disappearance, I think his words were, 'I don't want to get my dad in trouble,'" Jordan says. "And then that was it. He teared up and clammed up. And now, of course, he's in prison."

---

So it's been more than a decade since anyone locally has pored over the armload of ringed folders and files that speak to the mystery of Gayla Schaper's disappearance.

"We sent the case (in 2001) to some cold case detectives in California," recalls Jordan, "to an agency down there that has a cold case bureau. And they reviewed the case and had it for several weeks. And then they forwarded the case back with a synopsis that was basically pretty much what we thought."

Might Gayla Schaper have disappeared on her own to assume a new identity elsewhere?

"We've heard rumors like that," says Aston, "but I don't believe that."

"I don't believe it at all," confirms Jordan. "She was involved with her church. She had a stable home life. There's nothing in her personality to indicate she was unstable or anything like that. When people disappear like that, there's usually something traumatic going on in their life and their friends know about it."

Occasionally, says Aston, he'll get word from another law enforcement agency that "Jane Doe" remains have been found. But nothing has been linked to Gayla Schaper.

"I know that we had, at that time, some high-profile serial killers that rolled through the area," Jordan says. "Like the Green River killer. We called and checked on a few other killers who'd been arrested and were now in prison. We'd ask those detectives, where was your guy at about this time?"

But nothing has matched up.

"There certainly was a lot of interest in it," says Jordan, leafing through pages of newspaper clippings from the time of the disappearance, and again when the excavation of the Hagedorn property was being conducted.

"Missing person may still be alive. That was in August of '79," he says, reading from one of the earliest stories.

"Investigators: Puzzle's coming together," reads another headline from January 1995. "Sheriff's department may be close to finding Gayla Schaper's remains and concluding the probe."

Jordan recalls the optimism of the time, and admits to the disappointment that lingers.

"Maybe this story will generate something new," he says.

Hopefully, says Ken Schaper, renewed publicity won't generate renewed pain.

"I hope it doesn't hurt my family. Put something in there that doesn't hurt me or my family, that's all."

http://www.theolympian.com/northwest/v-pri...ory/672888.html
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http://www.argusobserver.com/articles/2008...63047146476.txt

Police wait for hot tips on cold cases


By BRAD W. GARY
Lewiston Tribune
Saturday, October 25, 2008 11:45 PM PDT



Barry Kough | The Lewiston Tribune, AP Lewiston Police evidence officer Brian Birdsell keeps track of row after row of boxes full of evidence in the secure basement of the Lewiston Police Dept.
LEWISTON (AP) — The black binders are loaded with notes, and visible to anyone who peeks inside Lt. Alan Johnson’s office.

Those neatly kept files, with both typed and hand-scrawled notes related to five unsolved murders, will remain in Johnson’s care until he walks out the door of the Lewiston Police Department for good.

He’s not the first officer to investigate the cases, but Johnson hopes to be the last. His department reopened a series of murder cases in 1997, continuing an already decades-old investigation into the deaths of Christina White, Kristin David, Steven R. Pearsall, Kristina D. Nelson and Jacqueline (Brandy) A. Miller from 1979 to 1982.

Investigators at the time believed all five cases involved the same ‘‘person of interest.’’ No arrest has ever been made.

‘‘You’re always hoping to find that one piece of evidence that either puts it over the top or identifies the criminal suspect, or provides closure to the family,’’ Johnson said.
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They aren’t the only unsolved murders in Lewiston. And Johnson’s list isn’t the only one that has aged in the depths of detective offices around the region. As many as 19 suspected homicide cases, going back to 1961, remain unresolved in southeast Washington and north central Idaho.

Police suspect homicide in many of the cases, even when a person is still legally declared missing. Bodies of others have turned up years after the initial reports were made.

‘‘It’s really important that these folks are not forgotten,’’ said Nez Perce County Chief Deputy Bill Madison. He has two cases on his department’s evidence shelf.

Johnson admits the days in which new notes are added to his binders have winnowed. Working a two-decades-old murder case can often lead to dead ends, detectives say.


‘‘It’s true — 48 hours are the most critical hours in a homicide, witness interviews, that’s when the information is going to be at its best,’’ Johnson said.

But the boxes of evidence have swelled since he took on the investigation that began when 12-year-old White disappeared from the Asotin County Fair on April 28, 1979.

In June 1981, David, 22, was last seen riding her bicycle from Moscow to Lewiston. Her remains were found dismembered in the Snake River days later, and no killer has been found.

And in September 1982, Nelson, 21, Miller, 18, and Pearsall, 35, disappeared from the Lewiston Civic Theatre.


Nelson and Miller’s bodies turned up two years later at the bottom of a hillside near Kendrick. Pearsall has never been found, but police suspect him to be a victim in the case.

Witness memories fade over time, and family member addresses spiderweb across the country. Some interviews are now conducted by phone, Johnson said. Decades-old cases often don’t get the resources of a full-time detective, and often take years to work through.

That is why former Lewiston Police Chief Jack Baldwin made contact with a group of retired detectives in 1997. Then living in northern Idaho’s Kootenai County, the retired Los Angeles-area officers had formed a group to aid peace officers in their investigations.

Officers Without Legal Standing, as the group is called, looked over the Civic Theatre murders and White’s disappearance. It was the only such instance Johnson can remember his department sharing an investigation with an outside agency.

Tom Johnston, a retired lieutenant from Los Angeles County, was the lead on that investigation, Johnson said.

‘‘In his opinion, the investigations were looking at the right individual,’’ Johnson said. That individual is the ‘‘person of interest’’ in both cases, and the case of David, he said.

That person of interest has never been named publicly, Johnson said. While not officially classifying the man as a suspect, Johnson said there were inconsistencies in his statements to investigators.

‘‘That is why he has never been removed as a person of interest in our case,’’ Johnson said. ‘‘He was also one of the last individuals to be seen with Christina White.’’

He was later one of the last to be seen at the Civic Theatre before Nelson, Miller and Pearsall disappeared.

David’s case was eventually taken over by the FBI, Johnson said, primarily because of the jurisdictional issues regarding her disappearance and subsequent discovery.

Follow-up interviews suggested by the law enforcement group led to the use of cadaver dogs, and excavation of separate sites in Asotin and Clarkston. The city contracted with a geophysics expert to conduct ground-penetrating radar at a few locations.

‘‘There was never any physical evidence recovered at any of the sites,’’ Johnson said.

Their efforts left the murder investigation open for eight years. Investigative efforts continued intermittently until 2007.

The cases were reopened without much fanfare — the same as many investigations throughout the region. Unsolved cases are periodically reviewed by the region’s detectives in an effort to find any potential information.

Idaho County sheriff’s Capt. Skott Mealer brought in the help of the state police, FBI and even psychics in efforts to help detectives solve the murders of Lynn and C. Bruce Peeples. The Grangeville couple was found strangled in their burned home on April 1, 1994.

Mealer said he’s still collecting pieces of a puzzle that could one day lead to a resolution in the case.

‘‘There are victims out there, and we have an obligation to do our job,’’ Mealer said.

The Peeples homicide is routinely investigated, he said, as is the 1982 disappearance of 2-year-old Ricky Barnett, who was visiting his grandparents near Grangeville.

‘‘Every time we have something new we check it,’’ he said, noting calls do come in occasionally on both cases.


Sgt. Earl Aston also gets calls about missing persons. The Latah County Sheriff’s Office detective is trying to find Gayla Schaper, a 27-year-old who was last seen feeding her horses on Lenville Road, southeast of Moscow, in June 1979. Clothing was later discovered in a nearby meadow, but Schaper has never been found.

Whenever an unidentified person is discovered that could match Schaper, a description is sent to the sheriff’s office for review, he said.

‘‘Generally it happens less and less frequently,’’ Aston said. ‘‘It can go in spurts, you might get a few inquiries, or you might get a few pieces of information.’’

As time passes, the frequency of inquiries lessen. An inability to give closure to the families can also be difficult, Aston said.

‘‘You try to think what it would be like for you if you were in their shoes,’’ Aston said. ‘‘I think it would be extremely difficult. Hopefully it gets dulled by time, but I don’t know.’’

In Pullman, Police Chief Ted Weatherly said the investigation of a 2004 serial rapist has run cold. Police have collected DNA from three suspected rapes in the city, and a warrant has been issued using the DNA signature absent a name. A suspect has not been identified, but may if the DNA ever gets a hit on national databases.

While DNA has proved a useful tool for today’s homicide investigations, it might have to be ruled out in cases opened at a time when detectives never thought of collecting such evidence.

Prior to DNA’s commonplace role in investigations, many detectives didn’t seek it out as evidence that would be material to their case. Some evidence has been destroyed over the years, Johnson said, while other DNA evidence was just never collected.

‘‘At the time the evidence was processed, people didn’t know about DNA, and you can’t make up 15, 20 years later, and can’t anticipate what to do 15, 20 years later,’’ he said.

But departments do keep the evidence they have, Johnson said. Laws require police to maintain evidence in a murder until either the perpetrator has served his sentence, or dies.

Investigative reports into the Civic Theatre murders have swelled into three binders of reports and notes, each three inches thick. The David case consists of two such binders. Boxes of evidence from the crimes fill shelves in the department’s basement.

‘‘They are inactive,’’ Johnson said, a labeling that allows a case to be reopened but in which no current leads are being explored. When new information does come in, it typically passes over Johnson’s desk.

And new leads often aren’t publicized, in part to keep family members from building anticipation in the event detectives come up empty handed. Detectives say they also don’t want to ruin a criminal case, and note that same feeling of cracking a case often ebbs and flows among themselves.

‘‘You get that anticipation or that feeling that something’s going to happen, that’s going to clobber this,’’ Johnson said. ‘‘That doesn’t happen, so it goes back to inactive status. It’s disappointing, frustrating.’’

Still, investigations continue, but slowly. Johnson said those efforts will continue even after he leaves his office.

‘‘If and when I leave, somebody will inherit these books,’’ he said.

But he likes to think the murders will be solved before then.

———

Information from: Lewiston Tribune, http://www.lmtribune.com

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Agency Case Number: C79-0122

NCIC Number: M-050133680

bob.taylor@isp.state.id.us
Latah County Sheriff's Office
208-882-8580
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http://www.theolympian.com/northwest/story/774391.html

Cold case series yields a few new leads

The Associated Press - Published March 02, 2009

LEWISTON, Idaho - "Law enforcement officials in northern Idaho, Washington and Oregon say a Lewiston Tribune's series on unsolved homicides has led to new tips."

The "Awaiting Justice" series over the last six months profiled 19 cases dating back decades, prompting some agencies to take another look at unsolved cases.

"We've also had leads where people would come up, and give us information that at least they felt might be pertinent at the time - they just never said anything" previously, Latah County Sheriff's Sgt. Earl Aston said.

Aston would not discuss the tips, which involved the death of Hazel Martin of Princeton in 1996 and the disappearance of Gayla Schaper of rural Latah County in 1979.

In neighboring Asotin County, Wash., Randy Martz, a retired police officer from Pullman, Wash., comes twice a week as a volunteer to help give a fresh take on the disappearance of 12-year-old Christina White in April 1979.

"He's been able to go through the file that we have and look at new information and new ideas that we didn't have in the past," Asotin County sheriff's Detective Jackie Nichols said.

Nichols and Martz have started interviewing people in hopes of finding clues that might have been overlooked earlier. They also hope DNA testing not available in 1979 might help solve the case.

"The two of them have been doing a great job on it," Sheriff Ken Bancroft said. "They're still hitting a wall, but at least they're looking."

The Nez Perce County Sheriff's Office is working with police in Portland, Ore., to follow up on a license plate found in northeast Oregon that might be connected to a man whose remains were found in 1982 in the Snake River south of Lewiston.

"I don't know if that's going to be anything," said Sgt. John Hilderbrand. He said a recent review of evidence led police to examine whether the license plate could help identify the man, who was shot twice.

Lewiston Police Capt. Roger Lanier said his agency used a cadaver dog last month in January to search a property for a woman who disappeared in 1976.

Authorities said some tips are repeats of information offered given at the time of the homicides or disappearances and some appear to be intended merely to cause problems for other individuals, but some may prove helpful.
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