Stephanie Ann Lyng was 39 and a mother of four when she disappeared from Palatine, Illinois on October 25, 1977. That morning she left a neighbor’s home at 9:15 a.m. to meet carpet installers at 10:00 a.m., driving her blue 1975 station wagon. The installers arrived at the house, but Stephanie never did; her fifteen-year-old daughter reported her missing later that day.

Four days after she vanished the station wagon turned up in a remote lot at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport. Investigators found a few spots of blood in the car matching Stephanie’s blood type and plant buds and seeds from a wet, marshy area. Edward Lyng, her husband, returned home the night she disappeared and reportedly reacted without visible concern and later forbade the children from mentioning her name.

Grand juries met in 1977 and 1982. In 1992 Edward Lyng was arrested; testimony from a former secretary who later recanted an alibi alleged he confessed to killing Stephanie, that he buried her in a damp area near a culvert and later removed her teeth, and that she helped move the car to the airport. Edward Lyng was convicted of murder in 1994. Stephanie’s body has never been found and her remains are believed to be somewhere in Lake County, Illinois.

Did anyone in the Palatine or Lake County area have contact with Stephanie in the days before October 25, 1977?