OSHKOSH, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – If you live in the Fox Valley, or really anywhere in Wisconsin, the name Laurie Depies is likely one you remember.
Nearly three decades since Depies’ disappearance, that name is surfacing yet again, and that’s because of one professor at UW-Oshkosh.
Depies – a 20-year-old woman who went missing in August of 1992, never to be seen again.
Her mother is still waiting to hear what happened.
“I would just like to know what happened and why it happened just to know that she’s at peace, because you can’t even, you know, have a funeral, or a memorial, or anything, because there’s nothing other than her car and a coffee cup, or a soda cup and no story just, you know, off the face of the earth,” Laurie Depies’ mother Mary Wegner said.
Depies worked at the Fox River Mall, finished her shift and drove to her boyfriend’s apartment in Fox Crossing. He and her friends heard Depies pull into the parking lot, but she was never seen.
“They went out to see if she was at her car, and when they went out there, she wasn’t there,” UWO professor of anthropology Jordan Karsten said.
Many pointed fingers at Depies’ boyfriend.
And, despite the case making national news and with even a confession, the case came to a stalemate.
“This Larry Hall said he did something, and somebody else said they did something said, ‘Well, I know the story,’ but there’s never been any conclusion, any real, you know, validity to their stories, so it would be nice to know,” Wegner said.
The Laurie Depies disappearance haunts a lot of people, none more than those closest to the case.
“You always think about this so, I mean, seriously, every day,” former Menasha public information officer Jason Weber said. “I think about this definitely every year in August.”
And, while answers are few and far between, the case is now being revisited.
“You never know by telling the story again, you know, if you can kinda jog somebody’s memory or get someone to come forward that might just provide a little more information to help with this kinda thing,” said Karsten.
Karsten is starting a podcast and examining the Depies case. The hope is that maybe, more information will come to light.
“Of course, that’s ultimately the goal – to find something and bring answers, but I think a more realistic expectation is, first to hope to tell the story as accurately and honestly and as openly as possible, and do so in a way that’s responsible,” Karsten’s Cold Case Frozen Tundra co-host Matt Hiskes said. “Secondly, hopefully find a piece of information that aids the law enforcement aiding the case to make a breakthrough.”
Karsten did the same in the case of Starkie Swenson, who had gone missing in August of 1983.
He and his class began excavating areas Swenson’s remains were thought to have possibly been.
Karsten would eventually be the one to help recover Swenson’s remains found at High Cliff State Park by hikers last September.
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