Found Deceased CA - Katherine Schneider, 17, last seen leaving home, Saratoga, 5 July 2023 *car found*

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moreover, she was only there for three minutes, from 1:38 to 1:41 pm. Speculation: It's far too quick to really do anything. Maybe speak to someone very briefly, but not even unless that someone was standing right there.

Maybe she needed to pee really badly?

But very strange that her car was found in the same location.
 
Some strange cases recently. Lara Emanuele parks her car in a lot in NJ, is seen on CCTV leaving it and vanishes, but the car is still there. Now Katherine Schneider goes missing in CA and her car is found not far from where she is seen on CCTV. Both near entrances to wooded state parks. I tend to believe Emanuele's case is either an accident or suicide. KS's case....I don't know. Did she pull over for one reason or another and some opportunistic abductor/killer stopped and got between her and her vehicle? I do wonder that if foul play is involved she didn't park that car where it was found.
 
The comment made by the Finding Katie Instagram page about originally wanting to keep things private because Katie is a shy girl struck me as interesting. Maybe they had some reason to believe that she was voluntarily missing? This could also be why the police weren’t making a huge effort to publicize the case in the first month. The discovery of her abandoned car is obviously very worrying and changes things a lot.

I hope Katie can be safely reunited with her family soon. From what I can see on social media, her mother (and I’m sure the rest of her family) miss her very much and want her back with them.
 
This case is of interest to me bc it's local - Saratoga is about 30 minutes by car from me.

Whenever someone vanishes along with their vehicle, a possibility is that they've left the roadway (usually by accident rather than with deliberate intent) and they and their car have become concealed from view, sometimes in water but more often by terrain: think of the Jolissa Fuentes case. Jolissa vanished almost a year ago to the day last summer, but her car was so far down a hillside it wasn't spotted until October.

That had been my leading theory here, but the discovery of Katie's vehicle would seem to change that. And yet her car was said to have been found "on Skyline Blvd". That's a state route - highway 35. It is almost impossible that her car (or any car) would have remained undiscovered for a month if it was just left parked on the shoulder. Perhaps the stated location is inaccurate; perhaps the vehicle was concealed in some way; or perhaps it was not there for the duration. It's hard to speculate effectively without having those possibilities resolved.

So another factor that we can consider is her cell phone being left behind. The location where she appeared on CCTV is but a short drive from her home. It's the kind of road that local teenagers with cars would know well; secluded but not too far away. But what teenager doesn't chose to bring their phone when driving to meet a friend? Perhaps she wasn't intending to meet someone. Still, rendezvous or not, I think most teenagers would turn around and drive back home to retrieve their phone as soon as they realized they'd left it behind. Yet Katie didn't do that. While it's possible that this was an oversight, it seems more likely it was deliberate. Then the question that follows is, why would someone not want their phone? We could postulate a secret elopement - maybe her parents didn't want her seeing a certain person. So perhaps she felt that taking her phone would allow her to be tracked. But perhaps she left it behind because she felt she would no longer need it. (Both things could be true; maybe she'd obtained a 'burner' phone.)

But it's the possibility that she didn't need her phone that worries me. With the KTVU article stating, "Crews used ropes to navigate the steep and rugged terrain," I've become concerned that suicide is their leading theory. Many of us have wondered about the description of Katie as a "shy, introverted child" and the attempt to "protect her privacy". How would those things be relevant? Could it be that her mental health was believed to be unstable enough that any perception by Katie of critical attention (even if sympathetic, e.g. that from investigators) might have been considered detrimental to her survival? Obviously homicidal violence is not excluded but to date there's been no suggestion of this... and in such a circumstance one would expect the police to put their investigatory focus upon her vehicle rather than nearby hillsides and canyons.

Well, that's a wall of text and a lot of speculation. I sure hope that I am wrong; I hope Katie has run off without realizing how much people cared for her, and without considering how much anguish her unexplained absence would cause. Those are much the same kinds of things I wished for Jolissa Fuentes and her family. It didn't work out that way for the Fuentes family, but I hope it will work out this time...
 
The Instagram account find_kate_schneider posted an updated press release from the Santa Clara Sheriff.

"On 8/07/2023, The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office recovered Katherine Schneider's Honda Accord on Skyline Boulevard near Castle Rock State Park. The vehicle was unoccupied. At this time, there are no further updates."

I am having trouble finding this press release on SCC's website but hopefully someone can find it.
They sure hid this press release. This link:

takes you to this link:

which ultimately leads you to the actual press release:
 
Maybe she needed to pee really badly?

But very strange that her car was found in the same location.
I also thought her car was found very close to where she stopped for a few min. This seems to me to be the residence that must have had the camera that caught her (presumably her) & her car stopped briefly. Google Maps

She reportedly continued south, never turning around and passing by the camera again.

If her car was found on Skyline Blvd. it had to be pretty obvious. There doesn't seem to be anyplace you could pull off and not be easily visible.

I think she was looking for a particular address on Skyline Blvd. There is a pillar with 16161 indicating the address. I think it wasn't what she was looking for, so she kept going a bit further. There's a house at 16169 and one at 16177. I'd be interested in the people living at those addresses.
 

At ~2:10, the reporter says the Sheriff's deputies told her "this is still an active investigation but, at this point, they do not believe that foul play was involved." I don't know what to make of this. This may explain the apparent lack of urgency with the Sherriff's Office.
 
LE does not believe 'foul play' is involved? I always question that statement. Does this mean LE has evidence that something other than foul play was involved OR do they just not have evidence of foul play and assume it is something else? This is really strange given where the car was found and she apparently is a good student with no mental health issues being noted. If that news clip above really does show the actual spot where her car was found how did it sit there for a month and not be reported? OR was it really there the entire time?
 
LE does not believe 'foul play' is involved? I always question that statement. Does this mean LE has evidence that something other than foul play was involved OR do they just not have evidence of foul play and assume it is something else? This is really strange given where the car was found and she apparently is a good student with no mental health issues being noted. If that news clip above really does show the actual spot where her car was found how did it sit there for a month and not be reported? OR was it really there the entire time?
Because it was crashed down a canyon as far as 75 feet down in a ravine.
 
Maybe she needed to pee really badly?

But very strange that her car was found in the same location.

To clarify, because i misread it, her car was there at 1:34 pm. Someone believed to be her got out at 1:38 pm and then reentered the car at 1:41 pm.

but if she didn't have her phone with her, what was she doing? It would make sense to stop to text or call someone, but her phone wasn't with her.

I know this gets brought up a lot on other missing persons cases, but I am seriously wondering if she had a burner or second phone.

Even if she was just meeting up with someone at one of the houses, you'd still want a phone to call or text that person.

I hope I'm not wildly off track here.
 

At ~2:10, the reporter says the Sheriff's deputies told her "this is still an active investigation but, at this point, they do not believe that foul play was involved." I don't know what to make of this. This may explain the apparent lack of urgency with the Sherriff's Office.
LE does not believe 'foul play' is involved? I always question that statement. Does this mean LE has evidence that something other than foul play was involved OR do they just not have evidence of foul play and assume it is something else? This is really strange given where the car was found and she apparently is a good student with no mental health issues being noted. If that news clip above really does show the actual spot where her car was found how did it sit there for a month and not be reported? OR was it really there the entire time?

The police may have evidence that she ran away. This reminds me of a case I was deeply involved with regarding a missing girl from my town. Websleuthers and her Dad were sure foul play was involved. She had been at a party with sketchy people the night she disappeared. Her car had been found in a town about an hour away with damage and apparent drops of blood on the console. But local LE was sure she was a runaway. They were right. She disappeared Nov 29 and called her Dad in early March. Here’s hoping that Katie is just taking some time off from her family.
JMO




 

At ~2:10, the reporter says the Sheriff's deputies told her "this is still an active investigation but, at this point, they do not believe that foul play was involved." I don't know what to make of this. This may explain the apparent lack of urgency with the Sherriff's Office.

There's a video at the link above re: the location of her car
 
Because it was crashed down a canyon as far as 75 feet down in a ravine.
According to this article, and others, "Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office investigators found Schneider’s Honda Accord abandoned on Skyline Boulevard near Castle Rock State Park." There is no hint that the car went down a ravine.


"According to Santa Clara County sheriff's investigators, Schneider's car was located in the vicinity on Monday, showing signs of damage to the surrounding brush and rocks, presumably caused by a vehicle." There is no mention of damage to the car that would be expected if it crashed or went off that road.
 
The find_katie_schneider insta updated on 8/11 with this:

"The SCC Sherrifs have not requested volunteers in this search and we understand this can be frustrating. Findingkids.org has been extremely helpful. For those looking to help, we encourage donations to findingkids.org. "

(Findingkids.org an organization of private Investigators, not the center for missing and exploited children)

MOO: If the family is relying on Private Investigators s then this kind of tells me local PD is seeing this as something a bit different than someone they think was kidnapped or worse on 7/5 in the moments she went missing (no public news/announcement until August 5 or so, as we recall.) I live about 40 miles way and never heard about this until about a week ago.
 
Last edited:
August 13, 2023 sad update - found decreased.


[…]

The body of 17-year-old Katherine Schneider has been found in the Santa Cruz mountains, just over a month after she was reported missing from her Saratoga home.

[…]
 

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