A young mother’s murder horrified central Illinois. Decades later, the family convicted in her death says DNA proves they’re innocent
Over years spent boating on Lake Shelbyville, Tracy Seabaugh developed a habit of picking up trash left behind by visitors to the heavily trafficked central Illinois reservoir. That habit ended on a Sunday afternoon in September 1996.
Seabaugh, then 36, and his wife Sheri were walking along the shore that afternoon when he spotted a gray garbage bag in shallow water. Angered at the brazen act of littering, he planned to take the bag with them to deposit in the nearest trash can.
All these years later, he can remember everything about the moment. The bag tied with a knot, heavy, sagging as he lifted it. He felt the thin plastic, grasping for some clue to its mysterious contents.
His stomach climbed to his throat.
Oh my God, he thought. What is this?
Seabaugh’s discovery would spark a multi-agency investigation into one of the region’s most horrific crimes, the murder of 23-year-old Decatur mother Karyn Hearn Slover. Four years and thousands of tips later, authorities homed in on her suspected killers: ex-husband Michael Slover Jr., and his parents, Michael Slover Sr. and Jeannette Slover.
Macon County prosecutors built a case entirely on circumstantial evidence, some of it considered at the time to be cutting-edge forensics — dog hair DNA analysis and comparisons of concrete and cinder samples. In the end, they convinced a jury that the elder Slovers murdered their former daughter-in-law, with their son’s tacit approval, to stop her from taking her 3-year-old son and moving out of state.
In the two decades since the Slovers were sent to prison, the salacious details of their case have become fodder for the burgeoning true-crime entertainment industry. All the while, the Slovers have insisted they’re innocent and fought in court to clear their names.
For Michael Slover Sr., that fight ended with his death in prison in 2022. But his wife and son have continued to push for a new trial, aided by the Illinois Innocence Project, a nonprofit based at the University of Illinois at Springfield that works to overturn convictions in a state infamous for sending innocent people to prison.
Earlier this year, IIP attorneys launched what could be the best, and last, attempt at exonerating the Slovers. In a sweeping, nearly 2,000-page amended petition for post-conviction relief filed in February in Macon County court, attorneys say DNA testing previously unavailable during the initial trial “conclusively demonstrates the Slovers’ innocence.”
“Disturbingly,” attorneys wrote, authorities have not run the new DNA evidence through a federal database that could identify Karyn’s real killers, which, they added, could be three men whose names first surfaced as possible suspects days after Karyn disappeared.
The petition also mounts a detailed attack on the state’s evidence in the case, calling it a “junk science house of cards” that “completely collapses when subjected to scientific review and modern understandings of forensic science.” It goes on to accuse prosecutors of using false and misleading witness testimony to win a conviction.
Macon County State’s Attorney Scott Rueter did not respond to multiple messages seeking an interview for this story. Karyn’s family declined to be interviewed.
The question of whether the Slovers should receive a new trial now falls with 6th Judicial Circuit Associate Judge Rodney Forbes. The next status hearing is scheduled for July 11.
“The murder of Karyn Hearn Slover was a terrible tragedy,”
