Tim Ryan, tryan@wolfrivermedia.com
Heather Szekeres
The body of a woman discovered in Shawano County nearly a year ago has been officially identified as Heather Szekeres, of Shawano, who was last seen in a tavern in the city in June 2013.
The badly decomposed remains were discovered on Mother’s Day weekend in May 2014 by a group of young adults along the south side of Peach Road near County Road MMM in Richmond.
Szekeres, who was 32 at the time of her disappearance, was last confirmed to have been at the former Final Lap Sports Bar and Grill in downtown Shawano at 11 p.m. June 21, not far from the apartment she shared with her husband, Robert, their 11-month-old daughter and Heather’s mother.
Shawano County Sheriff Adam Bieber said the cause of death has not been determined.
“We’re treating it as a murder case,” he said, “only because we don’t know.”
The investigation is being led by the state Department of Criminal Investigations.
Speculation about the identity had run rampant in social media since the remains were found, along with criticism that the identification was taking so long.
The remains were initially sent to the State Crime Lab in Madison but tests failed to produce a positive ID.
They were subsequently sent to a lab in Texas, where more specialized testing could be done, Bieber said.
The lab was able to extract a DNA sample that was compared with DNA taken from family members, he said.
In the months following Szekeres’ June 2013 disappearance, police followed numerous leads.
Various reports placed Szekeres on the Menominee Indian Reservation, in Michigan and in Texas, but none of those reports turned out to be accurate.
“We continued to follow all leads and all reports,” Shawano Police Chief Mark Kohl said.
Police contacted other law enforcement agencies regarding any unidentified bodies recovered across the U.S. to make sure they weren’t Szekeres, he said.
By the time the remains were found in Shawano County, the missing person case “wasn’t closed, but was stagnant,” Kohl said.
“There was very little going on,” he said. “We exhausted all of our leads.”
Kohl said the investigation never determined Szekeres’ whereabouts after she was last seen at the Final Lap.
The missing person case remained open after the remains were found, even though authorities suspected from the outset that the remains were of Szekeres.
“We had some indication, but not 100 percent confirmation,” Kohl said.
Kohl said he was sympathetic to community concerns over the lack of information being released about the remains.
“To maintain the integrity of the investigation, we couldn’t release updates or progress reports, because that could corrupt our leads,” he said.
“There were a lot of high-tech investigative strategies being used and many law enforcement agencies involved,” Kohl said.