Remains found in July are of KC social worker who went missing from police station
Five months after a Kansas City social worker left a police station and went missing, police say her remains have been identified.
Marina Bischoff, 39, was last seen on May 28 when she was released from the Kansas City Police Department’s Shoal Creek Division around 7 a.m. after police said she’d been arrested on suspicion of impaired driving and leaving the scene of a crash.
Sgt. Jacob Becchina, a Kansas City Police Department spokesman, said on Friday that human remains found in the nearby Shoal Creek in July belong to Bischoff.
Speaking with The Star on Friday, her brother Victor Bischoff said he has long believed the remains found over the summer likely were those of his sister, and he had already traveled to Kansas City to clean out her apartment. But the confirmation, he said, was heartbreaking.
“There is always this human aspect of it — which is hope,” he said. “There is always that piece of it, which is hopefully it isn’t her, by some miracle it isn’t her.”
After months of working with police, and sometimes going around them to learn updates on his sister’s case, Bischoff said Friday he felt officers had lacked compassion and common sense when they allowed his sister to leave the police station in May without a car, a phone, a wallet or a ride.
“It’s just a pure disaster,” Bischoff said. “No compassion, no thought, no care.”
Police previously said Marina Bischoff was released from detention on a signature bond, “per COVID-19 protocols to reduce detention populations of non-violent offenders.”
She did not seem impaired when she left the station wearing a black shirt and blue jeans, according to a department news release which stated staff “deemed her competent to be released.” Becchina previously said it is standard procedure to ensure people leave the police station with all possessions they arrived with.
Victor Bischoff said he will miss his sister for her compassion more than anything else.
“She always put other people ahead of herself,” he said.
Speaking with The Star shortly after his sister went missing, Bischoff had said the events described by police, of his sister driving into someone’s yard and returning only when she saw police approaching, were uncharacteristic.
Furthermore, he said, officers’ belief that his sister was impaired didn’t make sense because she never drank.
On Friday, Bischoff said he is still unsure what happened to his sister. He said he’d been told the area near the Shoal Creek station was known for flash floods and has wondered whether his sister was caught in high water.
“Unfortunately there are no answers, there’s only theories of what could’ve happened,” he said.
In an email Friday a police department spokesman said no foul play is suspected in Bischoff’s death.
The Star’s Anna Spoerre contributed to this report.
This story was originally published October 23, 2020 at 5:31 PM.
