Missing Northport woman Karen Hollis found dead in Greene County

Karen Hollis’s search ended with the worst possible outcome for her family: relatives and friends found the 23-year-old Northport woman’s remains in Greene County, but investigators have still only charged one man, Randall Lendell Dejourney, with abuse of a corpse. The case now sits in a stark gap between what police can prove today and what the autopsy may yet establish.

Hollis was reported missing to the Northport Police Department on May 8, and local reporting said she was last seen near the Georgetown Apartments in Northport, with one account placing her disappearance around midnight that same night. By May 16, family members and friends had located her remains in Greene County, where the sheriff’s office, coroner and district attorney were brought into the investigation.

Police said they suspected foul play early and asked the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit to help. Jack Kennedy said the investigation produced multiple search warrants and a large amount of physical, witness and electronic information before detectives developed a person of interest. The search area that led to Hollis was built from recovered electronic evidence, and authorities said the body was found along the Interstate 20/59 corridor.

Dejourney, 44, was detained immediately after the remains were found and later booked into the Tuscaloosa County Jail on a $15,000 cash bond. For now, the only publicly filed charge is abuse of a corpse, a crime Alabama law defines as knowingly treating a human corpse in a way that would outrage ordinary family sensibilities. Investigators have said additional or upgraded charges may follow once the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences determines the cause and manner of death.

That distinction is the center of the case. A corpse-abuse charge can move quickly when remains are found and evidence points to improper handling, but a homicide case still depends on what forensic examiners can say about how Hollis died. Until the autopsy report comes back, police are working with a charge that addresses the aftermath while the bigger question remains open: what actually killed Karen Hollis?

The loss has already pulled the case out of the abstract. One family member described Hollis as “a free spirit,” a line that now hangs over a search that began with a missing-person report and ended with relatives finding her remains themselves. The arrest is on paper, but the death investigation is still the part that has to catch up.