Nearly 30 Years Later, Police Know What Happened To Steven Asplund

MOLINE, IL — On Jan. 9, 1994, Moline resident Steven Asplund went to a friend’s house to borrow a caulk gun, left in his black Ford Mustang and was never seen again.

But this week, police announced they had identified Asplund’s remains, which were found hundreds of miles down the Mississippi River in St. Louis County, Missouri.

“We now know what happened, though we may never know ‘why’ it happened,” police said in an open letter to Asplund, posted Monday on Facebook. “We will bring you home soon and you’ll get to rest where your family wants you to, they will be able to visit you and every night they will now know where you are.”

The discovery was decades in the making, according to police, who said no foul play is suspected and no charges are being sought.

Asplund was reported missing by his fiancee the day after he disappeared, police said, adding he was last seen wearing a T-shirt, Chicago Bears jacket, gray sweatpants and white tennis shoes. A few days after he went missing, his car was found at Leach Park across the river in Bettendorf, Iowa, according to police.

Years passed, and then decades, until November 2021, when Moline detective Mike Griffin searched a national database of missing and unidentified people, looking for remains found along the Mississippi all the way down to Memphis, police said. Eventually, Griffin encountered a body discovered March 21, 1994, in the St. Louis area by barge dock workers, who found the remains in a debris field, according to police. The body was wearing gray sweatpants and white shoes, just like Asplund, police said, but the database entry included a dental discrepancy that misled investigators.

After exhuming the remains and comparing a bone sample with DNA from Asplund’s family, authorities learned Sept. 6 that the body was Asplund, according to police.

Asplund likely entered the river in Bettendorf the night he went missing, somehow became tangled up on a barge and was towed downriver, unbeknownst to the vessel’s crew, Griffin said at a press conference published by WQAD, adding he believed Asplund had drowned.

“The news, while bittersweet, will allow us some closure,” Asplund’s brother, Mike Asplund, said in a prepared statement published by KWQC.

“We’ll still think of Steve every day, and miss him just the same, but these answers will provide comfort to us and his friends. We would like to thank the hundreds of people who attended the vigils, and helped with searches we did when he first disappeared. The community support and concern has meant a lot to us, and we appreciate it more than we can possibly express.”