Jeannette and Michael Slover Murder Their Grandson’s Mother
(“Concrete Alibi,” Forensic Files)
Updated on June 30, 2022
Although she liked her job as an advertising sales rep at an Illinois newspaper, Karyn Slover was looking forward to making more of a splash in the world after she clinched her first gig as a model.
But her colleagues at the Herald and Review never got to throw her a going-away party or publish a story about the local girl who made it to the big time. Instead, her co-workers attended a memorial service and wrote headlines about Karyn’s murder — after she turned up dead, her body dreadfully abused, at Lake Shelbyville.
Model citizen. It took more than five years to solve the case, but the justice system convicted ex-husband Michael Slover Jr. and his parents, who probably thought they were too upright-seeming to even be suspected of a homicide.
For this week, I looked into where the Slover gang is today. I also tried to find out whether Karyn was the victim of not only homicide but also false advertising by her modeling agency.
So let’s get going on the recap of “Concrete Alibi,” the Forensic Files episode about Karyn Slover’s short life and horrible death, along with extra information drawn from online research:
Sweetheart’s ride. On Sept. 27, 1996, a police officer spotted an abandoned car on the side of Interstate Highway 72 outside of Champaign, Illinois.
Inside the black Pontiac Bonneville, police found a purse, a half-eaten candy bar, and scattered coins.
The vehicle was registered to David Swann, who worked as a circulation district sales manager.
In the bag. David said he’d lent the car to his girlfriend, Karyn Slover, who was going to pick up her 3-year-old son. Forensic Files calls the little boy Christopher, but newspapers identify him as Kolten.
He had spent the day with his grandparents. They claimed Karyn never showed up to retrieve Kolten.
Two days after Karyn’s disappearance, boaters spotted a gray plastic bag on the shore of Lake Shelbyville.
The float. It contained a female head with blond hair and at least six bullet wounds fired to the back with a .22-caliber gun.
Other bags, found in the water, held the rest of her body. The bags as well as the car had chunks of concrete in them. The killer probably used them to weigh down the bags, but body gasses caused them to rise to the surface (another case of criminals who don’t watch enough Forensic Files).
Investigators believed someone had used a power tool to cut up the body.
Grim news. Dental records confirmed the victim was 23-year-old Karyn Hearn Slover.
She had disappeared after leaving the office for the day.
Publisher Bill Johnston called a meeting to tell employees about the tragedy.
Well-liked. “He did spare everyone the gory details,” former co-worker George Althoff recalled in a Herald and Review story from August 2020. “But the emotion was quite raw and evident around the whole place.”
“Karen didn’t have enemies,” her friend Jill Scribner said in an interview with the series Cold Blood. She “was a very lovable person.”
Her ex-husband, Michael Slover Jr., had been violent during the relationship, but he had an alibi for the night of the murder. He’d been working as a security guard at Cub Foods. A coworker remembered seeing him in his office with a shoplifter the store had just caught.
Conveniently forgotten. After work, Michael Jr. taught a karate lesson, went home to shower, and left for his second job as a bouncer at Ronnie’s Tavern.
Police next turned their attentions toward David Swann, who had been dating Karen for just a few weeks. He had some legal problems in his past, including impersonating a law officer (yikes, David Draheim).
David Swann also had a felony conviction for aggravated battery. (Years later, at the trial, he would claim he didn’t remember what crime he committed.)
Distress call. At first, David couldn’t account for his whereabouts for 45 crucial minutes on the day of the murder. He’d been late to a rehearsal dinner — he was slated to serve as best man — at Tater’s Family Grill. Police interrogated him for four hours before he mentioned that he’d stopped to get money at an ATM during the 45 minutes.
The bank had video footage of David that proved his alibi.
Meanwhile, investigators had appealed to the public for help identifying the place where the murder and desecration happened. Surely, there must have been signs of a bloodbath hidden somewhere.
Unlikely suspects. A law enforcement taskforce including FBI agents said they suspected Karyn met her grisly end in a location with tall grass and a gravel or rock base. They asked owners of remote properties matching that description to look around for signs of foul play.
“Because the offense was so odious, it also left an entire community clamoring for vengeance,” according to Dusty Rhodes, a reporter for the free weekly newspaper the Illinois Times.
A former FBI profile cautioned that individuals “can commit these horrendous crimes yet they can act like the person sitting next to you in church.”
‘Feudal’ family. The newspaper offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the killer or killers. Funds were set up for a memorial to Karyn and an education for Kolten.
By now, police had found out that Karyn and her ex-husband’s family didn’t get along.
Mother-in-law Jeannette Slover reportedly hated Karyn.
Tight grasp. Jeannette enjoyed an excessively close relationship with Kolten and acted as though she were the mother.
Karyn had won custody of Kolten in the divorce, but the court ruled that Jeannette and husband Michael Slover Sr. would have the right to babysit him while Karyn was at work.
An ex-boyfriend of Karyn’s would later explain that Karyn sometimes had to physically pry Kolten away from Jeannette and that she had told her grandson that “one day you’ll be all mine,” the Herald and Review reported.
Lot of trouble. Karyn’s father-in-law, Michael Sr., who worked as a pipe insulator at the Clinton Powerhouse, claimed that he’d gone to Kmart and bought a Play-Doh Factory for Kolten around the time of the murder, according to Cold Blood. But the store said that it had never carried that particular toy.
Jeannette, whose occupation has been described as either full-time homemaker or employee at a drive-through liquor business, lacked an alibi.
Investigators couldn’t find a blood-splattered murder scene, so they concentrated on Miracle Motors, a poorly maintained Mount Zion used-car lot owned by Jeannette and Michael Sr.
Fasten down the case. The lot had concrete and cinders that resembled remnants used to weigh down the bags with Karyn’s body.
Authorities called in the U.S. Army to help sift through the soil on the 5,000-square-foot expanse — despite that the Slovers had given the property a makeover shortly after the murder (FF red flag).
Six months into the forensic archaeological dig, the taskforce hit a small but valuable piece of pay dirt: a metal button that matched the ones on Karyn’s jeans. They later found rivets from the jeans and a fabric-covered button that appeared to come from her blouse.
Relocation rebellion. Authorities uncovered evidence that Michael Jr. had participated in the planning and cleanup — he and his folks talked on the phone 12 times on the weekend of the murder. One theory was that Mary Slover, Michael Jr.’s sister, babysat Kolten while her parents “performed the gruesome work necessary to dispose of Karyn’s body,” prosecutors would later allege.
Friends said Karyn was thinking about moving away from Illinois to pursue her modeling career after she landed a job in Georgia (more about that in a minute). The Slovers reportedly feared she would move there and take Kolten with her.
Police arrested Michael Jr. and his parents and charged them with first-degree murder.
Car trouble. Prosecutors made a case that Jeannette shot Karyn in the back of the head when she showed up to get her son.
The loving grandparents dismembered her body at the car lot, bagged the pieces, and weighed them down with concrete from the property, then threw the bags in Lake Shelbyville, the prosecution maintained.
The presence of the Pontiac on the Slovers’ property would have raised suspicions, so they abandoned it along the highway.
Doggone killers. Neighbors remembered seeing Michael Jr. trimming weeds along the Miracle Motors parking lot around the time of the murder, important because investigators believed tall grass grew at the scene of the crime. Witnesses also remembered that the Slovers had been burning items at the lot during the same period.
And as though we needed more reason to root against the Slovers, Jeannette and David Sr. euthanized their dogs after a laboratory matched DNA from Cassie — one of the couple’s black Labradors — to a hair that was found stuck to tape on a bag from the lake, according to Cold Blood.
In 2002, the loathsome trio were convicted of first-degree murder.
Buh-bye. Jeannine got a 60-year sentence. The men got 65 years each.
The Slovers lost a June 2003 appeal.
Nonetheless, Mary Slover continues to fight for brother Michael Jr. and their parents — who probably still can’t believe an outwardly respectable couple like them got caught.
Got the blues. According to an article in the Illinois Times from 2005:
“’Homebodies’ is the word Mary and Michael Jr. use to describe their parents. A night out meant dinner at a fast-food restaurant and maybe a movie. Usually, they were happy to simply hang around their Mount Zion home, grill some pork chops, and watch PBS or the History Channel.”
In 2008, a court filing mentioned an untested human hair found at the scene as well as a fingerprint near a spot of the victim’s blood on Findley Bridge — and ordered a hearing to consider potential new evidence in the case. The Slovers’ camp also called attention to unidentified short blue wool fibers found in Karyn’s car and with her body parts.
Prosecutor’s vow. In an impressive development, the Slovers garnered the support of the Illinois Innocence Project, a legal studies seminar sponsored by the University of Illinois at Springfield. (It’s not clear whether the group is affiliated with the better-known Innocence Project founded by Barry Sheck.)
In 2014, they won a ruling allowing DNA testing on fingerprint evidence from the case.
But that went nowhere, and Assistant State’s Attorney Jay Scott, who prosecuted the Slovers, pledged to work to keep the conviction in place.
Locked up. So where are the Slover three today?
Well, two of them are still behind razor wire, but with some chance of release in the next decade.
Jeannette Slover, 72, resides in Logan Correctional Center, with a parole date in 2029 and projected discharge date of 2032. Apparently, she’s been visiting some version of Laverne Cox’s beauty shop, because she now sports blond hair.
Hail Mary play. Michael K. Slover Sr., 74, occupied a bunk at Pontiac Correctional Center. He had a date with the parole board in 2032, but he didn’t need it. According to a reader (thanks for writing in, Steph Nihi), he died in June 2022. Good riddance.
Mike Jr., 50, is incarcerated at the Illinois River Correctional Center, with a parole date of 2031 and projected discharge in 2034.
As for Kolten, Mary Slover adopted him in 1999 — but that was before authorities had charged Mary’s parents and brother with murder.
Custody contest. And there were allegations of abuse and neglect, according to court papers.
Kolten spent some time in a foster home. After a legal battle, a Macon county judge ruled Mary unfit as a parent because the judge believed she took part in concealing her sister-in-law’s murder.
At some point, cousins of the Slovers also threw their hat into the ring in the custody competition.
Reason to smile. Ultimately, Karyn’s parents, Larry and Donna Hearn, won custody of Kolten. (He must have been a sweet little guy — everyone wanted him.)
“We’re goofy,” Larry Hearn told the Herald and Review after defeating Mary in the battle for Kolten. “We’re just both giddy as a couple of kids.”
So, what happened to Kolten?
Today, he’s in his late 20s and uses a different name. According to a social media account, he works in the home-improvement industry as a flooring remodeler.
Runway ruse? And on the subject of occupations, as previously mentioned, I was curious about the legitimacy of the agency that supposedly snagged Karyn a modeling engagement — there are so many scams associated with that industry.
Paris World, the Savannah-based agency, “would seek applicants through newspaper ads and then sign potential models and place their photos on the internet,” according to testimony from Paris World owner Alan Tapley at the 2002 murder trial.
Tapley said that he couldn’t remember any of the particulars about the modeling job his agency secured for Karen except for the fact that it was temporary, not longer than a month.
Not fee-free. Karyn paid $92 in processing fees in order to get the modeling gig, Tapley said, adding that he returned the money to her family after the murder.
Paris World no longer exists and Yelp didn’t saunter onto the stage until 8 years after the murder, so the modeling agency’s repute remains hazy.
(BTW, the Federal Trade Commission offers guidelines to help prospective catwalkers avoid scams.)
More in store. Whatever the case, Karyn Hearn Slover was a lovely person who never got the future she deserved.
That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
