A young teacher was found dead 33 years ago. Why did police reopen the case?

They discovered her at evening on the steps to her father’s home in a bit of city known as Hope, legs tucked beneath her and burned face tilted towards the sky.

Below her physique, right here on a lonely stoop on the sting of New York’s Adirondack Park, lay the bottom of a kerosene-style lamp. Her brand-new Oldsmobile sat within the driveway close by, the within of its home windows blackened by soot and the rear passenger window kicked out.

The glass chimney of the hurricane lamp remained contained in the automotive close to the charred entrance and rear seat cushions; her eyeglasses, lined in ash and soot, sat on the again ledge beneath the rear window.

This was the scene of a horrific thriller, a case opened and swiftly closed three many years in the past. A case re-examined years later and turned on its head. 

And now, greater than 10 years after the case of Karen Mason’s loss of life was reopened, investigators are making a renewed effort to unravel the thriller of the hearth and the younger lady on the steps, to look at the dramatic days that led to that horrible discovery and seek for a connection. 

Karen Rew Mason died on Mom’s Day 1988. She wasn’t a mom herself, although at 32 she would have nonetheless had time for that if she’d needed. She was a highschool well being instructor dwelling in Queensbury, New York, and searching for her “ever after,” a liked and well-respected younger lady on the sting of a contemporary begin.

In the course of a Friday evening, it is believed, Karen left her sleeping boyfriend and drove her new automotive an hour from her house to her father’s distant house, not removed from Nice Sacandaga Lake. Mason’s boyfriend mentioned she left a word, one he discovered Saturday morning, Could 7:

Gone as much as Dad’s for a bit of R&R.

Nobody would hear from her once more.

In 1974, 14 years earlier than she died, Karen Mason was a senior set to graduate second in her class from Schuylerville Excessive College, roughly 35 miles north of Albany, New York. She wrote a yearbook bequest meant to indicate her playful, inquisitive nature, her endless thirst for information:

Karen Rew leaves with another query.

Greater than 47 years later, her identify – as Karen Rew, or by her married identify, Karen Mason – is inextricably linked to 1 query: What occurred?

That query is a Pandora’s field that opens to disclose so many others.

There are questions on the New York State Police, the place her loss of life was rapidly thought-about solved, a tragic accident, solely to be reopened 20 years later after the unique forensic conclusions have been disputed. There are questions within the solitary newspaper story from that point, which documented police reflexively ruling out foul play or suicide inside hours of her physique being discovered.

Reporters and editors for the USA TODAY Community New York have spent a 12 months poring over intensive paperwork and proof, conducting interviews and strolling the grounds Karen as soon as knew. They’ve assembled an intensive have a look at not solely how Karen died, but in addition how the messy, turbulent, anxious days main as much as her loss of life unfolded.

Even nonetheless, questions stay.

Karen was going by way of a divorce and instructed a good friend that issues weren’t figuring out together with her new boyfriend, who had a checkered previous. She was considering of ending that relationship, too.

Then she was swept up in a dizzying sequence of occasions involving a hit-and-run automotive crash and an try and cowl it up and report her automotive stolen.

These occasions ate at her, say individuals who have been there on the time. The whip-smart youngster of divorce – who preferred to maintain issues neat as a pin, for worry of disappointing her mother and father – was upset in her closing days, fearful about what would possibly occur to her and whether or not her job might be in jeopardy.

She drove 20 miles to Hope, to her father’s home, however he and Karen’s stepmom have been touring. The house was empty, lonely and darkish when she arrived that evening.

What occurred then remains to be not totally identified, 30 years later.

Karen Ann Rew Mason was laid to relaxation in her household’s plot in Edinburg Cemetery, subsequent to the household farmland the place, at 3 or 4 years previous, she had met the person who would turn into her husband.

Investigators on the time concluded Karen’s loss of life was an unlucky accident: She had locked herself out of the home, been fumbling for her keys contained in the automotive, misplaced her glasses and knocked over a lamp, releasing fumes that burst into flame.

Others weren’t so certain.

Karen’s loss of life devastated her mom, who was by no means the identical. Karen’s finest good friend says if Lorena Rew may have gone into the grave with Karen, she would have. 

However the lingering questions surrounding Karen’s loss of life weren’t borne through the years simply by those that liked her. For 20 years, the conclusions that closed the case by no means sat proper with at the very least one investigator, whose nagging questions bought the case reopened in 2011. And a contemporary forensic assessment put Karen Mason’s loss of life in a completely new mild.

For the primary time, it grew to become clear that the hearth that led to her loss of life was no accident.

Leap to Chapter 1: ‘If anybody didn’t should die, it was her’: Karen Mason’s life was altering earlier than mysterious loss of life

The case stays open 10 years later, and in 2021, police issued a “chilly case” plea to the general public searching for leads. The clock is ticking: Investigators are nonetheless hoping to jog the reminiscences of those that knew Karen, or these in her orbit in these days, a lot of whom at the moment are of their 60s and 70s.

Karen Mason lived for 32 years; it has been greater than 33 since she died. The thriller of her loss of life has endured longer than she did. 

It is clear when and the place her life ended. However how she bought there, who may need been together with her in these closing frantic moments, and the chain of disturbing particulars create a boggling labyrinth of prospects.

Every bit of proof, each perception, each element from the times earlier than she died results in new questions:

Why did police shut the case so rapidly?

What made them reopen it 20 years later?

And what actually occurred to Karen Mason?

Some persons are already certain they know what occurred and who was accountable. However for the investigators working all these years later to unravel Karen’s loss of life – and for many who liked her, who carry her reminiscence, who nonetheless ache for closure – time is operating out.

It is attainable there are solely two individuals who know the solutions. One has been useless for 33 years. The opposite – if there’s one other – hasn’t come ahead. 

But.

That is Half One among NEW LIGHT, a five-part investigation into the life, loss of life and reopened case of Karen Mason; the whole venture is offered to our subscribers.

This installment was written by New York State Workforce reporter Peter D. Kramer and Atlantic area storytelling editor Kristen Cox Roby.

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1:49 pm UTC Mar. 18, 2022
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