Disappearance Of Lena Chapin

2021-06-07 17:20:10 Written by Jones Jay

Details of Disappearance: 

Lena Chapin was last seen at her flat outside of Steelville in Dent County, Missouri on February 14, 2006. Her fiance claimed they said goodbye when he left that morning, and when he came back in the evening, Chapin was nowhere and her mum was cleaning out her flat.

 

Chapin's mama, Sandra Klemp, claimed Chapin had left for Florida with another man in a black 2000 Chevrolet Cavalier. She has never been seen again. She wasn't noted missing until November 2008, and the Dent County Sheriff's Office didn't start reviewing her case until 2012, six years after she was last noticed. Her mum has never supported the investigation into her daughter's disappearance.

Chapin's fiance walked out of the flat about a month after her disappearance. When cleaning out the unit, the flat building's owner reported that a window was cracked and there was a large dark-colored tint on the cover that couldn't be cleaned out. The flat owner didn't believe foul play at the time and threw the covering away. 

 

The unit was later destroyed in an unexpected fire.

Chapin's stepfather, Gary McCullough, vanished in 1999 when Chapin was thirteen years old. In 2003, Chapin went to Gary's brother Albert and said him her Sandra had shot Gary three times in the skull and then made her support for cleaning up the crime scene.

Chapin told she and Sandra cleaned the blood, pulled up the covers, and washed out the floor, and they covered Gary's corpse in plastic and burned it in a brush fire until only bone fragments remained. She had said the same story to one of her sisters. She told she did it because she didn't want her mama to go to jail and leave her five sisters without a guardian.

Albert recorded Chapin's message without her permission and sent the tape to the police. When the sheriff's office called Chapin, still, Sandra hired an adviser for her, and she taught her right to remain silent and declined to speak to the authority. She did not recant her testimony, however.

 

Sandra said her marriage to Gary was a happy one, but Gary's colleagues declared the relationship was very disturbed and he scheduled to leave her and was moving his belongings into a friend's home. She was in a relationship with Kristopher Klemp at the time of Gary's disappearance, something Kristopher confessed to the police. Gary was allegedly aware of the relationship.

 

Within a few days of Gary's disappearance or murder, Kristopher had moved in with Sandra. In June 1999, police arrested Klemp for a crime to commit murder; he allegedly attempted to hire someone to murder Gary. The charge was declined because of a lack of proof in August 1999, however.

 

Kristopher and Sandra wedded each other in May 2000, one month after she received a divorce from Gary. Kristopher was Sandra's 4th spouse. Gary's brother Albert had been her 2nd, and Gary was her 3rd.

 

Chapin vanished almost three years after she made her statement. She left a young son under Sandra's supervision. Sandra had wished for legal custody over Chapin's son, but Chapin rejected this and said it would happen "over my dead body." She wished to take the son with her and shift to Arkansas. Sandra has since adopted the kid.

 

Gary was confirmed legally dead in 2005. In 2012, his two daughters filed an unlawful death lawsuit against Chapin, Sandra, and Kristopher, as well as Kristopher's former spouse, Jennifer Lee Brattin-Klemp. The lawsuit declared Sandra and Kristopher co-operated to murder Gary. Jennifer allegedly picked Kristopher up outside the McCullough estate in the early morning hours around the time Gary vanished, and Kristopher had a pistol with him at the time.

 

Although a summons was issued for Chapin to prove in the civil trial, it was never provided. The tape-recorded testimony she made was not played before the jury, although Chapin's sister confirmed that Chapin had made a similar announcement to her.

 

Two of Sandra's kids claimed they had seen Gary's truck still parked at a residence on the evening of his disappearance after Sandra told them that he had already left.

 

In the summer of 2013, the civil jury unanimously gave $7 million in damages to Gary's daughters in connection with his illegal death. Kristopher and Sandra divorced in 2014 and Sandra has since wedded her fifth husband and lives in Mount Vernon, Missouri.

Chapin visited Salem High School but did not graduate. She got involved with drugs while she was still young and got into a slight problem with the law, but she was close to her family and her sisters said she attempted to be a good mama to her son and would not have freely abandoned him.

 

There has been no action on Chapin's Social Security number since her disappearance, and she left all her belongings behind. It's unclear whether Gary and Chapin's disappearances are related, but foul play is believed in both cases.