A young teacher was found dead 33 years ago. Why did police reopen the case?
Introduction: Part 1 of a 5-part series
They found her at night on the steps to her father's house in a little town called Hope, legs tucked beneath her and burned face tilted toward the sky.
Under her body, here on a lonely stoop on the southern edge of New York's Adirondack Park, lay the base of a kerosene-style lamp. Her brand-new Oldsmobile sat in the driveway nearby, the inside of its windows blackened by soot and the rear passenger window kicked out.
Karen Mason's story
Explore the events of Karen's life and the investigation into her death in this timeline.
The glass chimney of the hurricane lamp remained inside the car near the charred front and rear seat cushions; her eyeglasses, covered in ash and soot, sat on the back ledge beneath the rear window.
This was the scene of a horrific mystery, a case opened and swiftly closed three decades ago. A case re-examined years later and turned on its head.
And now, more than 10 years after the case of Karen Mason's death was reopened, investigators are making a renewed effort to solve the mystery of the fire and the young woman on the stairs, to examine the dramatic days that led to that terrible discovery and search for a connection.
Karen Rew Mason died on Mother's Day 1988. She wasn't a mother herself, though at 32 she would have still had time for that if she'd wanted. She was a high school health teacher living in Queensbury, New York, and looking for her "ever after," a loved and well-respected young woman on the edge of a fresh start.
In the middle of a Friday night, it's believed, Karen left her sleeping boyfriend and drove her new car an hour west from her apartment, to her father's remote home, not far from Great Sacandaga Lake. Mason's boyfriend said she left a note, one he found Saturday morning, May 7:
Gone up to Dad's for a little R&R.
No one would hear from her again.
Unanswered questions
In 1974, 14 years before she died, Karen Mason was a senior set to graduate from Schuylerville High School, second in her class. She wrote a yearbook bequest intended to show her playful, inquisitive nature, her never-ending thirst for knowledge:
Karen Rew leaves with one more question.
More than 47 years later, her name — as Karen Rew, or by her married name, Karen Mason — is inextricably linked to one question: What happened?
That question is a Pandora's box that opens to reveal so many others.
There are questions at the New York State Police, where her death was quickly considered solved, a tragic accident, only to be reopened 20 years later after the original forensic conclusions were disputed. There are questions in the solitary newspaper story from that time, which documented police reflexively ruling out foul play or suicide within hours of her body being found.
A forgotten death
New York State Editor Michael Kilian writes about how the Karen Mason project came to be.
Reporters and editors for the USA Today Network New York have spent a year poring over extensive documents and evidence, conducting interviews and walking the grounds Karen once knew. They have assembled a thorough look at not only how Karen died, but also how the messy, turbulent, anxious days leading up to her death unfolded.
Even still, questions remain.
Karen was going through a divorce and told a friend that things weren't working out with her new boyfriend, who had a checkered past. She was thinking of ending that relationship, too.
Then she was swept up in a dizzying series of events involving a hit-and-run car crash and an attempt to cover it up and report her car stolen.
Those events ate at her, say people who were there at the time. The whip-smart child of divorce — who liked to keep things neat as a pin, for fear of disappointing her parents — was upset in her final days, worried about what might happen to her and whether her job could be in jeopardy.
She drove 20 miles to Hope, to her father's house, but he and Karen's stepmom were traveling. The home was empty, lonely and dark when she arrived that night.
What happened then is still not fully known, 30 years later.
Karen Ann Rew Mason was laid to rest in her family's plot in Edinburg Cemetery, next to the family farmland where, at 3 or 4 years old, she had met the man who would become her husband.
Investigators at the time concluded Karen's death was an unfortunate accident: She had locked herself out of the house, been fumbling for her keys inside the car, lost her glasses and knocked over a lamp, releasing fumes that burst into flame.
Others weren't so sure.
Karen's death devastated her mother, who was never the same. Karen's best friend says if Lorena Rew could have gone into the grave with Karen, she would have.
But the lingering questions surrounding Karen's death were not borne over the years just by those who loved her. For two decades, the conclusions that closed the case never sat right with at least one investigator, whose nagging questions got the case reopened in 2011. And a fresh forensic review put Karen Mason's death in an entirely new light.
For the first time, it became clear that the fire that led to her death was no accident.
The case remains open 10 years later, and in 2021, police issued a "cold case" plea to the public looking for leads. The clock is ticking: Investigators are still hoping to jog the memories of those who knew Karen, or those in her orbit in those days, many of whom are now in their 60s and 70s.
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Karen Mason lived for 32 years; it's been more than 33 since she died. The mystery of her death has endured longer than she did.
It's clear when and where her life ended. But how she got there, who might have been with her in those final frantic moments, and the chain of disturbing details create a boggling labyrinth of possibilities.
Each piece of evidence, every insight, every detail from the days before she died leads to new questions:
Why did police close the case so quickly?
What made them reopen it two decades later?
And what really happened to Karen Mason?
Some people are already sure they know what happened and who was responsible. But for the investigators working all these years later to solve Karen's death — and for those who loved her, who carry her memory, who still ache for closure — time is running out.
It's possible there are only two people who know the answers. One has been dead for 33 years. The other — if there is another — hasn’t come forward.
Yet.
This is Part One of NEW LIGHT, a five-part investigation into the life, death and reopened case of Karen Mason; the entire project is available to our subscribers.
This installment was written by New York State Team reporter Peter D. Kramer and Atlantic region storytelling editor Kristen Cox Roby.
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New Light: Karen Mason's Story
NY State Editor Michael Kilian writes about the Karen Mason Project
Timeline: Karen's life and investigation into her death
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Karen Mason cold case: Looking for answers to teacher's 1988 death
