Couple Vanished at Supermarket Lot in 1992 — 26 Years Later, Bones Found in Elevator Shaft

It was an ordinary Tuesday evening—March 10th, 1992—in a quiet Illinois town. George Parker, 32, a steady assembly line worker, and his wife Kelly, 29, a gentle librarian, lived a simple, predictable life. Married for six years, they had no children yet and were saving for a house of their own. Every Tuesday, like clockwork, they went grocery shopping together.

That night, after a quick dinner, they drove their old Ford to the sprawling Super Save Supermarket on the edge of town. Security footage captured them entering at 7:12 p.m.: George in his work jacket, Kelly in a light-colored coat. They laughed, took a cart, and melted into the aisles. That was the last time anyone saw them alive.

Hours passed. The store closed at 10:00 p.m. Employees went home. But the Parkers’ Ford remained, keys left on the driver’s seat. The next morning, the manager noticed the abandoned car and called police. There was no sign of struggle, no wallets or purses, no groceries. It was as if the couple had simply vanished.

Detective Miller, assigned to the case, considered every angle: Did they run away? No—there were no large withdrawals, no signs of planning, and all their belongings were left behind. Kidnapping? No ransom demand ever came. An accident or random crime? There were no clues, no bodies, no witnesses.

Police combed the store, reviewed the grainy security tape, and interviewed every employee. The only camera—at the entrance—showed George and Kelly going in, but never coming out. Dogs traced their scent from the car to the supermarket entrance, then lost it completely. It was as if the couple had been swallowed by the building itself.

The store, built in the late 1970s, was a maze of storerooms, service corridors, and technical areas unknown to customers. Maintenance staff, including a quiet, long-serving repairman named Alan Richards, were questioned. He claimed he’d been fixing a freezer that night and had seen nothing unusual. With no evidence, he was dismissed as a suspect.

Weeks turned into months. The Parkers’ faces faded from missing posters. Their families pleaded for answers on local TV, but nothing surfaced. The case went cold—a haunting mystery that became local legend: the couple who vanished at the supermarket.

Years passed. In 1995, new owners took over the store, but no clues emerged. By the early 2000s, the supermarket closed for good, the building left abandoned. Time moved on. The Parkers’ Ford was long gone, their story a ghost in the town’s memory.

Until February 2018.

A demolition crew arrived to tear down the old Super Save. In the basement, behind forgotten storerooms, they found a thick steel door marked “Emergency Elevator—Do Not Use.” The elevator had been out of service since 1985, sealed and forgotten. Using heavy tools, the workers pried open the door. A wave of stale, rotten air hit them.

Shining flashlights down the shaft, they saw not just debris—but bones. Human bones. Two sets, tangled among rags and dust. A gold ring. Decayed clothes. A rusted Ford key. The site became a crime scene overnight.

Forensic teams identified the remains as George and Kelly Parker. DNA matched family samples. Their cause of death: multiple bone fractures from a fall. They hadn’t simply fallen—they’d been thrown, murdered, and hidden where no one would look. The elevator, disconnected from power but still accessible by manual winch, made the perfect tomb.

Detectives reopened the case. They pored over old employee records. One name stood out: Alan Richards—the repairman with keys to every door, the man who knew the building better than anyone. He’d made a log entry about checking the elevator shaft just a week before the Parkers vanished. He was the only one who could have lured them into the service corridors, and the only one who could have hidden their bodies so well.

Now in his seventies, Alan Richards was living quietly in another state. When confronted, he claimed to remember nothing. But the evidence was damning: only he had access, and only he knew the elevator’s secrets. The likely motive—robbery. Perhaps he lured them with a pretense, attacked, then disposed of them in the shaft.

Richards was arrested and charged with double murder. The town’s oldest mystery was finally solved. After 26 years, the Parker family could finally lay George and Kelly to rest, and the town could close the chapter on a story that had haunted it for a generation.

Sometimes, the darkest secrets hide in the most ordinary places—waiting for decades, just beneath our feet, to finally come to light.