In the winter of 2006, a 20-year-old woman named Liehnia 'Lena' May Chapin vanished from Dent County, Missouri, leaving behind a young son and a story entangled with another family disappearance. The last confirmed sighting of Liehnia was on February 14, 2006, at her apartment near Steelville. According to her fiancï , he said goodbye to her that morning before he left for work.
When he returned that evening, Liehnia was gone, and her mother, Sandra 'Sandy' Klemp, was cleaning out the apartment. Sandy told him that Liehnia had left for Florida with another man in a black 2000 Chevrolet Cavalier. Liehnia was not officially reported as a missing person until November 2008, and a formal investigation by the Dent County Sheriff's Office did not commence until 2012, six years after she was last seen.
The circumstances surrounding Liehnia's disappearance are deeply unsettling, primarily due to events that transpired years earlier. In 1999, when Liehnia was a teenager, her stepfather, Gary McCullough, also disappeared. In 2003, Liehnia confided in Gary's brother, Albert, alleging that her mother, Sandy, had shot and killed Gary and that she had been forced to help clean the scene and dispose of his body. This confession was reportedly recorded. Though she later recanted her statement to law enforcement, this account cast a dark shadow over her own subsequent vanishing. Friends and family expressed that Liehnia was a devoted mother who would not have willingly abandoned her son. Prior to her disappearance, Liehnia and her mother were reportedly in a custody dispute over the child, with Liehnia vehemently opposing her mother gaining legal guardianship. After she went missing, Sandy adopted Liehnia's son.
More than a decade and a half later, Liehnia's case remains an unsolved and troubling mystery. No one has been charged in connection with her disappearance, and her mother has reportedly not cooperated with the investigation. A month after she was last seen, the owner of her former apartment discovered a broken window and a large, dark stain on the carpet that could not be removed; the carpet was discarded, and the apartment building was later destroyed in a fire. A civil lawsuit filed by Gary McCullough's daughters against Sandy Klemp, her new husband, and Liehnia resulted in a multi-million dollar judgment in the daughters' favor, though Liehnia disappeared before she could be subpoenaed to testify. The lack of any financial or social activity from Liehnia since 2006 strongly suggests she did not start a new life. The prevailing theory among those close to the case is that she met with foul play to prevent her from testifying against her mother, a secret she may have carried about the fate of her stepfather.Last Seen: Jan 1, 2006
