Kylee-Ann Schaffer: Sister of missing woman campaigning to ‘put her to rest’
The sister of a missing Kempsey woman who disappeared from a party 17 years ago has reignited a campaign to try and find answers into her unknown whereabouts.
Mid-North Coast
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The sister of a woman who went missing 17 years ago has been spearheading a renewed push for information into the then 19-year-old’s whereabouts.
Details about how, or why Kylee-Anne Shaffer went missing from a house near Willawarrin north west of Kempsey are scarce, other than some unconfirmed reports she left to walk home the morning after a house party at Midnight Creek without her belongings.
The only clue found since that September 11, 2004 day are a pair of shoes she may or may not have had on her feet that were located on a walking track some days after it had already been searched.
Kylee’s sister, Karen Schaffer, was 32 when she went missing.
For years Karen said their father, who has since died, controlled what could and couldn’t be said publicly about Kylee’s disappearance in order to prevent the people or person responsible from ‘going to ground.’
But now 17 years on, Karen is taking complete control to help bring awareness to Kylee’s disappearance in the most public way possible, social media.
“I can’t understand why we weren't shouting this [Kylee’s disappearance] from the rooftops,” Karen said, at the time of her disappearance.
“What happened was my Dad [who has since died] was a bit of a control freak. He was really concerned that people from the outside including the media would cause whoever was responsible to go to ground and disappear.
She said he wanted the investigation to take its course, naturally.
“This was right around the time of Daniel Morcombe’s disappearance, and the Morcombe’s did everything right … they did everything that I believe should have been done.
“But my Dad didn’t let me do that. I didn’t understand, I couldn’t comprehend it and I was told in no uncertain terms ‘look, we don’t know what happened, we’re trying to find out what happened.’
“I was working seven days a week and I didn’t really get that involved. It just became this sort of, have we heard anything have we heard anything … it sucks, but I had virtually no involvement.
Emergency services combed the area where Kylee was last seen clues, but there was little in the way of leads found until the search was suspended about five days later.
She was last seen wearing a dark blue or black T-shirt and brown pants.
There’s a few theories about Kylee’s disappearance that haven‘t been substantiated or confirmed by police, and to this day remain just that – theories.
Every year between Missing Persons Week in August and Kylee’s disappearance date, which is about six weeks, Karen is bombarded with emails and calls about these theories which involve some strongly worded allegations about people in the community and their possible involvement.
As Karen was living in Sydney at the time she went missing, some of them are known to her while others are not.
She said she’s not interested in false accusations that lead nowhere, she just wants to collate plausible and logical pieces of the puzzle and provide that information to police.
Social media, she said, is helping her do that.
“I created a Facebook page in 2009 against my Dad’s wishes, and the page started very very slowly … after my Dad passed away five years ago, it sort of gave me Carte Blanche to do whatever I wanted,” she said.
While the page remained active, it wasn’t until about 18 months ago when things started to really ramp up.
“A friend of mine who I had visited on a trip up north had a copy of the police statements, which I had never seen.
“My Dad didn’t want me to know and I think it was just because he was trying to protect me, so I didn’t know the gravity of the situation, I didn’t know how she’d been treated, and I was just under the impression she was at a party, she walked away something happened, and that’s it.
“I didn’t know there were altercations at the party … I didn’t know anything about it.
“When I saw the statements I lost my mind. There are so many things that don’t add up.
“The story is that she went missing in the morning, she got up, had a shower, and she left.
“She left her personal belongings behind. After the alert was put out, she’d been gone quite a few hours, so if she was travelling or leaving, she could have made some headway.
“There were some suggestions that Kylee had been struggling with some mental health issues preceding the party, and some allegations from people that she killed herself, well, you can’t bury yourself.“
The police statement played havoc with Karen’s own piece of mind, and she put those thoughts to one side for six months until she was adequately prepared to start fresh and read it with some clarity.
“Seeing the statement changed everything for me,” she said.
Kylee connected with a TikTok user called Sarah Turney, from the US, who had a very similar story of a disappearing sister who had vanished from a high school in Phoenix. With more than one million followers, Karen thought she too could harness the power of social media for a worthwhile cause.
“I thought, hang on a minute I can use this,” she said.
“So then I made a little video and it blew up a little bit and I thought I need to harness this properly.”
She now has close to 10,000 followers on TikTok, and is also active on Instagram and Facebook where she has her own group ‘Help Find Kylee Ann Schaffer’. There are about 4000 people now part of that conversation.
“Someone has to know something,” Karen said.
“It doesn’t have to be someone at the party, it could just be that they saw someone walking along Armidale Rd and saw a girl who was kicking rocks and they recall that.
“I’m trying to establish a timeline so that at some stage I can go to the authorities and say ‘this is the work I have done … this is what I think this equates to, please investigate.’
“I want to be able to put my sister to rest and bury her.
“I have no doubt she is deceased, I may be wrong, and God knows I hope I am, but raising awareness will hopefully help because I don’t want anyone to go through this ever again.”
Anyone with information into Kylee’s disappearance is urged to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
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