Vanished Kansas City woman whose remains were found by woods had ties to FBI drug probe

On May 23, 22-year-old Abbi Schaeffer left her Northland Kansas City home carrying her purse and her black-and-white cat Izzy.

For six hours, a dark gray BMW, its windows tinted black, had been parked across the street in their quiet subdivision. Schaeffer walked out, spoke with the man in the driver’s seat, and got in.

It was the last time her parents knew she was alive.

On April 1, after months of searching, Belinda and Jason Schaeffer received news they long feared.

Their daughter was dead. Her body lay abandoned near an expanse of hiking trails in south Kansas City.

Despite the troubling signs, they had still held hope that she might come home. For months, they fielded tips from social media — some even claimed to have found her.

“You get everybody calling you and messaging you. And it was like, you get this shred of hope, and then it’s not Abbi,” her mother told The Star on Friday.

“It was like the up and down and the roller coaster that was the worst part. The hope, and then the hope’s quashed.”

Since her remains were discovered, Kansas City homicide detectives have been leading a death investigation. The Jackson County Medical Examiner’s Office is tasked with determining the cause and manner of her death. As of Friday, Officer Donna Drake said there had been no changes or updates.

Over the past 10 months, the Schaeffers have been left to wonder what happened to the brilliant, beautiful young woman they remember her as.

But they have long suspected something terrible happened to her. And on May 30, when she had been gone for several days, Belinda Schaeffer walked into Kansas City’s North Patrol station with a story to tell.

Her daughter had recently told her that she had information about a fentanyl trafficking operation, she said, and that she was supposed to talk to the FBI before she disappeared. Her phone had gone silent and dropped off the map, and its last signal had come from an apartment complex in south Kansas City one week earlier.

She gave police the address, along with pictures of her missing daughter. She told them about the cat, too. Abbi never left home without Izzy, she said.

The Schaeffers worried that someone had found out their daughter was preparing to speak with law enforcement — and that she had gotten into trouble. The detectives who were first assigned to investigate the case in June would soon share that concern.

The information Belinda Schaeffer provided would soon lead detectives to connect the dots to a federal probe of a Kansas City area drug ring involving known associates of Schaeffer, whom detectives also described as a “target” of the investigation.

Days later, those detectives located surveillance footage that they believed showed Abbi Schaeffer walking into the same south Kansas City apartment where her phone had died one week before.

But they never saw her walk out.

Alleged fentanyl ring busted

Two months before Abbi Schaeffer went missing, Joseph Burgess, a former boyfriend of hers, was one of four men arrested in an alleged drug trafficking conspiracy that the federal government says began in September 2019. Prosecutors alleged at the time that Burgess and the other defendants were responsible for selling a fatal dose to a 17-year-old girl.

Burgess, who has pleaded not guilty, was charged with conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and possession with intent to distribute. The case was made by the Kansas City Police Department’s Drug Enforcement Unit in partnership with the FBI.

After his arrest, Abbi Schaeffer remained in contact with Burgess, whom she had known since high school. An FBI agent assisting Kansas City missing persons detectives found a recorded jail call between them that occurred on May 23, roughly five hours after she left her Northland home.

During that call, the agent reported hearing the voice of 25-year-old Jacob Block, another target of the federal investigation. It sounded to the agent like they were driving somewhere, and Abbi Schaeffer’s cat was in the car with them.

On June 1, one day after Kansas City police opened their missing person investigation, police officers went out to check a home in the 3300 block of Bridge Manor Drive, a location Abbi Schaeffer’s family provided to investigators.

The officers weren’t able to contact a resident. But they spotted a black-and-white cat on the porch.

They also spoke to a neighbor, who said she knew a bit about the people who lived there. One was a young man who typically drove a gray BMW. Another was an older woman.

The neighbor said she had seen them using a rental truck that had been parked in the lot over the weekend. But it wasn’t there anymore.

Meanwhile, detectives continued the search for the BMW in connection with Abbi Schaeffer’s disappearance. The FBI tip, which came after a review of the Schaeffers’ home surveillance, provided them with a license plate with Kansas registration.

They also got two names. One was Block, and the other was his girlfriend. Both were believed to be living at the address on Bridge Manor Drive.

Meanwhile, another police officer contacted detectives about a BMW with the same license plate.

On May 27, three days before the missing person case was opened, he was surveilling the car in the parking lot of a U-Haul rental agency. A detective following up later confirmed the truck had been rented in Block’s girlfriend’s name.

A stop order was out for the BMW. On June 2, it was spotted near 59th Street and Troost Avenue and pulled over.

Officers asked the occupants, identified as Block and his girlfriend, who was driving, whether they knew Abbi Schaeffer. Block allegedly admitted he knew someone by the same first name, and said he went to “check on her” recently at her ex-boyfriend’s request. But he left after that, he said, and she did not come with him.

Block was released from the scene. His girlfriend was arrested on outstanding warrants. The car was towed.

Detectives described the pair as “evasive” when presented with questions about Abbi Schaeffer’s disappearance. And they came to believe that they were both involved.

That same day, as Kansas City police began to publicly circulate a flyer asking for help to locate the missing 22-year-old, detectives made another visit to the home on Bridge Manor Drive. This time, they spoke with a person who lived there.

He had cameras that they could look at, and signed a consent form for detectives to take the footage. He said that his sister — whom police had arrested earlier — had lived there, too, but that she had just moved out.

As the detectives were investigating, Belinda Schaeffer and family were continuing to look for and provide police with leads. On June 6, another proved significant.

On Facebook, they got a tip from another resident on Bridge Manor Drive where they suspected Abbi Schaeffer had last been. The neighbor had seen a picture of the cat, and it resembled a stray she’d recently found wandering the complex.

The information was passed on to the police. Detectives brought animal control officers to examine the cat. A microchip confirmed it was Abbi Schaeffer’s Izzy.

Once Izzy was home, the pet Abbi Schaeffer was inseparable from was acting odd. Although never the kindest to strangers, she even hissed at them.

“I knew that Abbi was not OK at that point,” Belinda Schaeffer said. “Because she wouldn’t have just left that cat in that neighborhood.”

“That was confirmation for me that my daughter was not OK.”

Search warrants served

Beginning two weeks after Abbi Schaffer left her Northland home, detectives obtained a new series of warrants — including one that provided the authority to search the residence on Bridge Manor Drive where her phone last pinged.

They were relying on new information that came through a June 7 review of the video footage that was handed over to them five days earlier. On it, they said in court documents, they saw footage of the woman they had been looking for all that time.

The cameras were pointed toward the front entrance and walkway, and the rear entrance and patio. Based on timestamps the detectives recorded, Abbi Schaeffer was seen getting out of a gray BMW around 11 p.m. on May 23. She and Block were seen going inside together, the investigators determined.

On May 25, around 11 p.m., Block’s girlfriend was seen moving mops and buckets away from the sliding glass door at the rear entrance. Then a cord is pulled and one camera goes dark for an estimated 45 minutes.

On the morning of May 26, a U-Haul truck pulls into the parking lot and backs into a space.

Within five minutes, Block is seen pushing an orange dolly with a “large black box-like object” with the assistance of his girlfriend. They get in the truck and drive away before returning three hours later.

Detectives noted they never saw a recording that showed Abbi Schaeffer leave the residence.

The information gathered was compelling enough for the detectives to secure a series of search warrants through Jackson and Clay counties.

The other warrants were served on the BMW that Block was alleged to have driven and the U-Haul truck that was seen on cameras that day. Detectives also sought evidence from cellphones recovered during the searches, and from the personal accounts for Abbi Schaeffer.

In identifying their probable cause for searches, detectives said they feared Abbi Schaeffer may have been the victim of foul play or a violent crime.

Photographs, swabs and an assortment of items — including two buckets and a mop — were collected as evidence. Other swabs and photographs were taken of the U-Haul, and another vehicle associated with Block’s girlfriend was searched.

Drones were put up in an effort to locate her. Among the clues observed by police were tire tracks apparently made by a large vehicle on a private property nearby, that was also searched.

But Abbi Schaeffer would not be found for nine more months, roughly two miles to the north near the Blue River Parkway Trails.

Before then, authorities would get word that both Block and his girlfriend had left the state.

In August, Block was arrested and brought before a judge in southern Florida to face one count of participating in a conspiracy to distribute fentanyl. He was charged alongside seven others in a superseding indictment returned by a Kansas City grand jury.

‘Tough as nails, but wonderful’

From the day she came to live with her parents, Abbi Schaeffer was their daughter.

She first came to stay full time when she was 12 years old and finished high school there. Before then, she had a difficult upbringing. Sometimes she wore a tougher exterior, her mother said, but she believes that was really a facade.

“I don’t think she ever felt truly accepted. And loved. Like a child should feel. Like a person should feel,” Belinda Schaeffer said.

When she turned 18, they asked if she wanted to be formally adopted. She decided she did, her parents said, and she changed her last name to theirs.

She moved away for a bit before returning in early adulthood. At the time of her disappearance, she had been back home for about a year.

Belinda Schaeffer said part of her daughter’s childhood exposed her to people suffering from addiction. Her daughter never wanted that for herself, she said.

In life, she had close relationships with a small group of friends, and with her siblings. She struggled sometimes to find a path, but she always mastered the tasks she set her mind to.

She wasn’t really a “mushy” person, and she could be sassy at times. She was always creative. And she had a natural culinary talent her family still misses — like a knack for making a meal without ever cracking a cookbook.

“At heart, Abbi was a wonderful person. Whether or not she had done bad things, I think everybody has, but she always, always would help you out if you needed help. Always,” Belinda Schaeffer said.

“She would spend all the money she had to get somebody a birthday present. When they wouldn’t even give her one. Like, friends or whoever.”

She also gave the very best presents for Father’s Day. She crafted a wreath featuring the hand prints of all the kids. It sits on Jason Schaeffer’s work desk.

When he stops to reflect on all that’s happened since she left, and all the pain they’ve been through, Jason Schaeffer said it is difficult to put into words.

“It’s been a constant weight,” he said. “I keep looking around and seeing all the places that Abbi is supposed to be.”

As the Schaeffers are now processing her death, they’re still awaiting answers from police. They’ve learned little since their daughter’s body was found. And no one has been charged with a crime directly related to her disappearance.

Over the past year, the holidays have been marked by the fact that she’s gone. If they did not have other children to care for, the Schaeffers wonder if they would bother with Christmas or Thanksgiving. And they see how her absence has affected their youngest children.

“They miss their big sister,” Belinda Schaeffer said, recalling the recent sadness her 9-year-old shared. “They’re never gonna get to know her now.”

“She was just a generous, beautiful girl,” she said. “Tough as nails, but wonderful.”