Karen Denise Steed, 29 MSG Since 11/25/97 From Piedmont, AL [Archive]

Grande

09-30-2008, 02:24 PM

Karen Denise Steed

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Above Images: Steed, circa 1997

Vital Statistics at Time of Disappearance

Missing Since: November 25, 1997 from Piedmont, Alabama
Classification: Endangered Missing
Date Of Birth: September 8, 1968
Age: 29
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 120 lbs.
Hair Color: Blonde
Eye Color: Green/Blue
Race: White
Gender: Female
Distinguishing Characteristics: Mrs. Steed has worked
as a Certified Nurse's Assistant.
AKA: Some sites list her as "Karren".
NCIC Number: M-079263666

Details of Disappearance
Steed was last seen at her residence in Piedmont, Alabama on November 25, 1997. Her 1982 beige Ford Fairmount with Alabama license plates 11DW289 was discovered abandoned on Interstate 20 in Cleburne County, Alabama on December 18, 1997, nearly three weeks after Steed's initial disappearance. There was no sign of her at the scene and she has never been heard from again.

Investigating Agency
If you have any information concerning this case, please contact:
Calhoun County Sheriff's Office
Investigator Alex Ference
(205) 236-6600
OR
Alabama Center For Missing and Exploited Children
(800) 228-7688

http://www.nampn.org/cases/steed_karen.html

Grande

09-30-2008, 02:54 PM

Former police chief: Disappearances, arrest and trial split Piedmont
By Matt Kasper
Staff Writer
04-28-2008

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A collage of newspaper clippings about two of Piedmont's missing persons Patrick Burrows and Jeff McFry is shown. Photo: Bill Wilson/The Anniston Star

PIEDMONT — The missing people, the arrest and trial, followed by the appeals and questionable testimony from witnesses — all of this split Piedmont, says Rick Doyal.

The former Piedmont police chief says many people in town thought marijuana farming wasn't that bad.

"If that was all that was involved," Doyal speculates, "(David Ronald Chandler) would still be free."

Chandler is in prison at Hazelton, W.Va., for marijuana trafficking and soliciting the murder of Marlin Shuler, who had become an informant for police about Chandler's alleged marijuana operation.

Chandler was convicted under a previously untested federal drug kingpin law. The law allows for capital punishment when an intentional killing occurs in connection with a continued criminal enterprise.

The prosecution from the early 1990s eventually generated so much attention that President Bill Clinton commuted Chandler's death sentence.

To those who doubt Chandler's guilt, Fred Gasbarro, special agent with the Drug Enforcement Agency in Huntsville for 24 years, says the case speaks for itself.

"You don't get that many people lined up saying something if it isn't true," he said, referring to the plethora of people who testified against Chandler during his trial.

"Really and truly, he headed a marijuana manufacturing operation that was very large scale, and if you got in his way, he killed you."

Many have speculated that Chandler's drug operation also connected the disappearances of two other people around the same time.

After so many years have passed without any new information coming forward about Patrick Burrows and Jeff McFry, Doyal says he "challenges the line of thinking" that the missing people were not connected to Chandler.

Preceding the disappearances, a series of threatening acts of vandalism took place against city property, he recounts, incidents that coincided with mounting police pressure on Chandler's operation.

In 1989 and 1990 someone fired shots at the Piedmont High School building, damage was done to the Water Works, Gas and Sewer Board pumping station and equipment at the Piedmont-Jacksonville landfill was set ablaze. The city sports complex was also lit on fire. Several sticks of dynamite were discovered under a Piedmont police car parked adjacent to the Police Department, among other happenings.

In newspaper accounts Doyal referred to the acts as "narco-terrorism" intended to intimidate police and city officials.

No one was ever arrested for the vandalism. After Chandler was imprisoned, two men were convicted in 1991 of throwing a Molotov cocktail into the home of a Piedmont woman cooperating with the conviction of Chandler and 14 co-defendants. It did not ignite, and no one was hurt.

Complicating matters is the fact that another person went missing seven years after Chandler's conviction — Karen Steed.

Though no one has been arrested in her disappearance, Doyal says he thinks Steed went missing because of what she knew about the other missing people.

Karen Steed was last seen by her husband Jimmy Steed as she left their home on Nov. 25, 1997, at 9:30 a.m.

Steed's sister reported her missing three days later.

Karen Steed's 1982 Ford Fairmont was found abandoned the next month along Interstate 20 eastbound, about a quarter of a mile west of Heflin.

Steed maintains his innocence in both the Burrows case and his wife's case.

"I ain't running from nothing. I got nothing to run from," the Piedmont resident says in a telephone interview. Steed says he even talks to detectives about once every two years and tells them, in the case of Burrows, he's as heartbroken as the man's mother about what happened to her son. In the case of his wife, Steed said he was not surprised she was gone because she would often drive away to visit her sister. Still, he never expected her to not come back.

He acknowledges that the fact he is the brother of Piedmont resident Bobby Steed — sentenced to at least 17 years for conspiracy to distribute marijuana and described as Chandler's "right hand man" in newspaper stories — probably makes him a compelling suspect in the minds of police.

During Bobby Steed's 1991 trial, Assistant U.S. Attorney Harwell Davis pronounced at one point, according to a story in The Star: "On May 8, 1990 Ronnie Chandler wanted to show people not to cross him. Shuler found out the hard way, as did Burrows and McFry: Don't mess with Ronnie Chandler," Davis said during his closing arguments. 'And by association with Ronnie Chandler, nobody messed with Bobby J. Steed."

The chatter of a town of around 5,000 people hasn't helped either.

"I've heard a million stories," Steed says. "They ain't got nothing to do but talk and gossip. (But) God only knows what's happened."

Then again, familial coincidence is not enough to arrest somebody when no evidence is available.

"The biggest problem is you don't have a body for either one of them," says former Alabama Bureau of Investigations detective Greg Cole, referring to the case of Burrows and Steed.

Thus, solving the crimes means interviewing the same people over and over again and digging lots of holes whenever a tip comes in. After Burrows' motorcycle was found, the men say the land and surrounding hills were combed with radar tracking used to located cadavers.

"Somebody knows something," says Kirby, who concedes that none of the cases generate the tips they did two decades ago — even 10 years ago.

Investigators urge anyone with information to call the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office at 237-4731.

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