The Will County Sheriff’s Office says more fetal remains have been found inside a vehicle belonging to a doctor who had stored over 2,000 fetal remains inside his home in unincorporated Crete Township.
According to a press release, the fetal remains were found in the trunk of a Mercedes-Benz belonging to Dr. Ulrich Klopfer. The vehicle was one of several that Dr. Klopfer kept in a gated lot of a business located in suburban Dolton, according to the Will County Sheriff's Office.
Authorities had been in contact with the family to search the vehicles, and after family members were able to locate keys to the cars, the search was conducted this week, officials said.
“Today we were notified by authorities in Illinois that family members this morning found additional fetal remains as they continued to sort through the late doctor’s belongings,” Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill said in a statement. “We have dispatched investigators to Illinois to gather facts.”
The vehicles have been stored at the location for at least six years, authorities said. Arrangements were made between police and the Klopfer family to search the vehicles, and on Wednesday authorities revealed that one of the cars contained five plastic bags and a box that contained “under 100” medically preserved fetal remains.
The remains were preserved, packaged and labelled similarly to the fetal remains discovered at the doctor’s residence, according to the Will County Sheriff’s Office.
At that residence, the doctor's family discovered hundreds of fetal remains shortly after the doctor had died earlier in the month. After authorities were called to the scene, they found a total of 2,246 sets of fetal remains on the property.
The remains date back to a timeframe spanning from 2000 to 2002 when Klopfer was performing abortions in the State of Indiana, and were all individually marked and preserved.
Those remains were returned to Indiana, according to the Attorney General’s office, and Hill’s office expects the newly-discovered remains to also be returned to the state as the investigation continues.
