KAREN ANN SPENCER - (MISSING ALERT)

KAREN ANN SPENCER





The disappearance of 17 year old Karen Spencer has led to 20 years of her parents' grief and investigators' frustration. That may soon end. A prosecutor is finding new meaning in old clues. Local 12's Deborah Dixon tells us a grand jury may sort out the evidence.

A red 1982 Dotsun B-310, red in color, is what a mustached young man said he was driving when he stopped on I-275 to see if two girls needed help. It was about three in the morning on December 30th, 1989.

Karen Spencer had just gotten out of her sister in law's car near the Loveland Maderia exit because the two were arguing. Karen walked south. Did she accept a ride with the stranger in the red car... a car that disappeared the next day? Her father, Richard Spencer, thinks so. "That might be her casket. We don't know."

Clermont County Prosecutor Daniel Breyer knows the stories the Dotson driver told over the years don't add up. Police stopped considering him a suspect when he passed a polygraph, or did he? Now, FBI profilers have taken another look. "Behavioral scientists now say he did not pass he was manipulating the test. If they had those tracings they would have said he failed."

A friend told police the suspect talked about the girl who went missing from I-275, hours before Karen Spencer was even reported missing. "We're curious what would make him think something happened to her."

And there's something else. Karen's sister in law said she blew off the Dotson driver's offer to help and she never saw him again. So why when questioned by police did he know the subject matter of the argument between Karen and her sister-in-law. Did Karen tell him? Diane Spencer is Karen's Stepmother: "She would not have been an easy victim. She would never have been submissive. She would have fought with everything she had."

Whatever happened that morning, the Karen Spencer case is a murder investigation which could end up going to a grand jury. So far this is a circumstantial case: evidence is presented then to a jury, which is asked to use its common sense. Here's how its explained. If you leave a cake on the table, and go to bed, come down the next day, a piece is missing and your daughter has chocolate on her face, it is circumstantial evidence she at the cake.

Like the Carrie Culberson case, evidence does not include a body. Prosecutors didn't need it to convict Carrie's killer of murder. Prosecutor Daniel Breyer doesn't think he needs a body either. "I don't believe I'll have trouble convincing a jury she's dead, the task here is to convince a jury who did it."


CONTACT
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children 1-800-843-5678 (1-800-THE-LOST)
Miami Township Police Department (Ohio) - 1-513-732-2231