Out Of State Leads Being Pursued After Woman's Body Found In Kankakee River

Karena McClerkin has been missing since October

JOLIET, IL - The Illinois State Police said it continues to diligently investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding the discovery of a young woman's body last weekend. The body was found on late Saturday morning in the Kankakee River in Wilmington. That area of the river, however, was not particularly deep.

"We're working on it, and we've got leads coming in every day," Illinois State Police Master Sgt. Patrick Callaghan of Zone 3 Investigations said Wednesday. "As of now, we have not made an ID, and we still don't have a cause of death. We're awaiting the toxicology from the autopsy."

On a positive note, Callaghan said, the Illinois State Police is pursuing a couple of leads from outside of Illinois. The most critical aspect of the case is determining the woman's identity, he said. For now, it remains an undetermined death, he stressed.

That the woman's body was found with no identification was extremely unusual, and it makes for a more difficult investigation, Callaghan said.

"It's very odd," he said, adding that the location where the body turned up was "a very shallow" part of the Kankakee River in Wilmington.

On Tuesday, the Kokomo Tribune in Indiana published a story indicating the body found in Wilmington may be a local teenager, Karena McClerkin. The 18-year-old Kokomo resident vanished without a trace back on Oct. 11, 2016.

The distance from Kokomo to Wilmington is 160 miles.

According to the article, Karena's father planned to travel to Illinois this week to identify the body. The missing Indiana woman's grandmother told the paper that the general description of the body found in the Kankakee River resembled Karena.

Earlier this week, police indicated that the body was that of a light-skinned female who was about 5 feet tall and 100 pounds. The woman had red and brown hair, brown eyes, two piercings in her right ear and one piercing in her left ear. She wore a black, one-piece Forever 21 bodysuit, size small.

The National Missing Persons online database describes McClerkin as wearing glasses and having red/auburn hair, but it also indicates she had two tattoos, including one that says, "RIP." However, for clothing and accessories, the website indicates that the missing Kokomo teenager was wearing ripped denim jeans, brown sandals and a black half-top.

Image via National Missing Persons database