Lena Chapin

Case background and investigation

Liehnia May Chapin, known as Lena, was born in 1985 and grew up in the Salem area of Dent County, Missouri. According to The Salem News, she attended Salem High School and worked as a cake decorator at grocery stores in Salem and Steelville. By early 2006 she was 20, the mother of a young son, and living with her fiance in an apartment outside Steelville.

The Salem News reports that her fiance told detectives he left for work on the morning of February 14, 2006, and that when he came back that evening Chapin was gone and her mother was at the apartment removing belongings. Chapin has not been seen since. She was not formally reported missing for years: The Salem News states that the Dent County Sheriff's Office opened its file in March 2012, while Oxygen reports that her absence came to official attention in 2008, when she could not be located to testify in a lawsuit.

That lawsuit concerned her stepfather, Gary McCullough, who disappeared on May 11, 1999, from a ranch outside Cassville in Barry County. His truck was found several days later and he was declared legally dead in 2005, according to The Salem News. Relatives have said that Chapin told them she had seen what happened to McCullough. In a recorded conversation with McCullough's brother Albert, she said that her mother had killed him and that she had been made to help afterward, Oxygen reported. These are allegations; they have never been tested in a criminal court.

McCullough's family brought a wrongful-death suit against Chapin's mother, Sandy Klemp, and Kris Klemp. In 2013 a Stone County jury found both liable and awarded $7 million. The Salem News notes that Chapin's recorded statement was not presented to that jury, and that she had been summoned as a witness but was never served. A civil finding of liability is not a criminal conviction, and no one has been charged with a crime in connection with either disappearance. Oxygen reported that Sandy Klemp has declined to discuss the case publicly.

The case was featured in the Netflix revival of Unsolved Mysteries in 2020, in an episode titled Missing Witness. After it aired, a Dent County detective told The Salem News that the office had received new inquiries and was processing the information. The newspaper also reported that ground-penetrating radar had been used to search properties in Dent County.

No trace of Lena Chapin or Gary McCullough has been found, and no later developments were identified during this review. Chapin remains listed as a missing person by the Missouri State Highway Patrol, according to Oxygen. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Dent County Sheriff's Office.