The Caughlin family has been very cooperative and courageously opened up the lines of communication with me. I have alerted them to every post and and every comment and they have read everything. This message was sent to me and is for all who work on the case, for all DCC readers, and especially for those who commented on Karen’s case.
“How does our family express in words our profound gratitude to perfect strangers, who are unified through their individual fields of expertise in the interest of truth and justice, for our beautiful sister Karen? There are no sufficient words and many tears of appreciation for all that you are doing for our family and for all cold case families who remain trapped in a horrific moment of time, as we continue to search for justice for our loved ones. From the bottom of our hearts…thank you!”
Karen’s sister Kathy generously provided childhood memories. It was written down with love and through many tears. Sharing it even after all these years, was extremely hard for her and I cannot thank her enough for doing this.
“This is where things get deeply emotional for me… remembering our many long nights as we used to stay up and talk girl talk. We always got in trouble for it, as our parent’s bedroom was next to ours. It never failed Karen would get me laughing about something and it would wake up our parents. We loved staying up to watch a good thunderstorm. The storms would scare us but we knew we had each other! When we couldn’t sleep we would take turns writing on each other’s back until we fell asleep. We would always get excited on Tuesday nights because the local arena down from our family home held after school Wednesday public ice skating. Karen and I loved to go ice skating together and would coordinate our outfits every week. For many years our mom dressed us alike and everyone would ask if we were twins. When I reflect back upon these times it seems like Karen and I not long before her murder just shed our interests in playing with our Barbie’s. The borders of Karen’s 14-years of life were home, school, church and ice skating. She was just beginning to discover her new love for roller skating, experiencing the adventure of entering high school and with that meeting new friends and boys. Karen’s favourite song was “If You Need a Friend” by James Taylor and it was played in her honour at her funeral.”
https://web.archive.org/web/20190410104319/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SxToTUoWGM
From now on, every time I hear James Taylor, I will be thinking of Karen. I post James Taylor’s song in tribute to a child on the very threshold of teenage-hood who was excited about life and the adventures it would bring.