FORT WAYNE, Ind. – Investigators with the Indiana Attorney General’s Office and local police on Thursday began searching the Allen County building where Dr. Ulrich “George” Klopfer operated an abortion clinic until 2013.
Klopfer died Sept. 3, and last week his family discovered more than 2,200 preserved fetal remains stored in cardboard boxes in the garage at his home in Will County. Investigators on his Fort Wayne clinic property Thursday declined to say why they were there.
Representatives from the Indiana Attorney General’s Office arrived about 8 a.m. at the clinic, 2210 Inwood Drive in Fort Wayne. Officers with the Fort Wayne Police Department arrived about shortly after, about 8:30 a.m., with several vans, one of which contained a police dog.
Officers knocked on the clinic door just before 9 a.m. and entered the building when no one responded. Uniformed investigators wearing vinyl gloves passed in and out of the building, but declined to comment.
Cathie Humbarger, executive director for the Allen County Right to Life, which has a building next door to the former clinic, said Klopfer regularly spent the night in the basement of his Inwood Drive office, even in the years since it was shut down.
Thomas Bastress, who owns a Napa Auto Parts store next door to Klopfer’s shuttered clinic, said it was a matter of time before police raided the late doctor’s office.
“I was wondering when this all was going to come down,” Bastress said. “…He was a creepy guy.”
Bastress and his wife have only managed the building next to Klopfer’s clinic for about 1 1/2 years, but saw him regularly.
“He’d come over here every Thursday, and the last two Thursday’s he wasn’t here and we knew something was up,” Bastress said.
Court records show Klopfer lived on Pine Court in Crete Township, about 10 miles from the state line. Neighbors described him as a hoarder, while an attorney for his wife said she had not been in the garage where the remains were found for decades.
An attorney for Klopfer’s family contacted the Will County Coroner’s Office on Thursday about the discovery of what appeared to be fetal remains, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.
Sheriff’s detectives and representatives from the coroner’s office found 2,246 medically preserved fetal remains, according to the release. Authorities plan a news conference at 1:30 p.m. today to discuss what they have found.
The Will County Coroner’s office took possession of the remains.
Source: The Daily Chronicle
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