Who Is Stephanie Casberg? New Details About The Unsolved Murder Of A Milwaukee Teen
It's been 50 years.
Milwaukee Police Department A grisly Milwaukee murder of a 17-year-old girl still remains unsolved 50 years later.
Stephanie Casberg was last seen going to Marc's Big Boy, a restaurant where she worked, in the early morning hours of Sunday, July 7, 1969. It was the last time she was seen alive.
Two days after she went missing, police found her body in several pieces spread out miles from her family's home in Milwaukee. Her "severed head, arms and a leg" were found in the Root River, which sits on the Milwaukee-Racine County line.
"Some kid found her head,” said Eric Casberg, who is one Stephanie’s brothers. “She'd been dismembered. He was fishing with his father or uncle or something down in Racine."
To this day, police have not made an arrest in Stephanie's murder — leaving her family to wonder for all these years what happened to their sister and daughter.
"It's been 50 years. What makes you think they're going to catch the guy that killed my sister?" Kevin Casberg, another one of her brothers, said.
So who is Stephanie Casberg, and how did she die? Here's everything we know.
1. She was loved.
Stephanie was a well-liked and popular teen who was living the all-American lifestyle in July 1969. She had her job at a local restaurant and had just graduated from Riverside High School.
“Neighborhood kids just loved her,” said Romayne Casberg, who has been a family friend of the Casbergs since she was a child. She even later married one of Stephanie’s brothers. “She was very popular, did a lot of dating. Very good student.”
Her youngest brother, Kevin, says he still feels the loss of his sister and keeps a photo of her on his mantel.
“It hurts,” he said. “Hurts to this day.”
2. She was dismembered.
When police found Stephanie's body two days after she went missing, she had been dismembered and parts of her were spread out in an area along the county line. Her father had to help police identify her.
"The dismemberment was professional which really stuck out to me,” Romayne said. “Kind of freaked me out."
Steve Spingola is a retired Milwaukee police detective who was one of the people tasked with solving the crime years after it happened.
"It is definitely one of the most gruesome and bizarre cases I've ever seen," Spingola said.
3. No suspect was ever determined.
Spingola said that no serious suspect was ever named in the case. And even with the updates in technology, they haven't made any progress in solving the murder that's haunted her family and Milwaukee for decades.
"Fingerprint technology, DNA, it's been checked, and there's been no links to the forensic sciences to this day,” he said.
He said that investigators main — and possibly only — hope to solve Stephanie's murder is if someone comes forward to confess or to share a key piece of information. Still, he believes a conviction is unlikely.
But he did say that "the lion hunts in his own backyard," meaning that he believes that if Stephanie's killer is alive, he's still in the Milwaukee area.
4. Some evidence was found.
Miles away from Stephanie's dismembered body, police found her pink purse along with a torn-up photo of her. Still, nothing was found that could link the evidence to her killer, who remains unknown.
"The detectives were at a standstill even back in '69," Kevin said.
Stephanie's case is the oldest in the MPD database, and her family is ready for it to be solved.
"Let her finally rest in peace,” Romayne Casberg said. “We need to know who did this awful thing to her because she was wonderful."
5. She was born in Colorado.
Though Stephanie grew up in Milwaukee, newspaper reports say that she was born in Colorado on July 11, 1951. Her father was an employee at Fisher Body until he moved the family to Milwaukee in 1957.
She was about to celebrate her 18th birthday when she was murdered.
It's not clear who was the last person to see Stephanie alive.
Emily Blackwood is a writer and editor living in California. She covers all things news, pop culture and true crime.