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Photos of victim Abbi Schaeffer (Kansas City Police Department).
A Missouri man has confessed to attempting to conceal the body of a woman who vanished following a suspected overdose incident.
Jacob Block, 28, has admitted to charges of abandoning a corpse and tampering with evidence in relation to the disappearance of 22-year-old Abbi Schaeffer, who was reported missing in May 2022. According to documents reviewed by Law&Crime, Schaeffer’s skeletal remains were discovered nearly a year later inside a broken box discarded in a roadside ditch. Although the extent of decomposition prevented a definitive cause of death, investigators did reveal that fentanyl was present in her system at the time.
The Kansas City Police Department has reported that Schaeffer was last seen entering a residence with Block on the day she disappeared—and she was never seen leaving that location.
Details from the probable cause affidavit indicate that Schaeffer’s family observed her departing their home via their Ring camera on May 23, 2022. She left in a gray BMW, accompanied by her cat. The family tracked her movements using the Life360 app until May 24, 2022, when the signal was traced to another house in Jackson County, Missouri.
Police visited the mentioned residence on June 1, 2022, but found it vacant. A neighbor informed authorities that a white male resided there, often seen driving a “dark-colored” BMW. Over the weekend, a U-Haul truck had been noticed in the driveway. The neighbor also recalled seeing a cat that matched the description of Schaeffer’s pet.
While Kansas City police investigated the BMW and connected it with Block, it was also discovered that federal agents were monitoring the same car and the same suspect for an unrelated case. Block was convicted in February 2024 of participating in a conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and distributing fentanyl in connection with an unnamed person’s fatal overdose in 2020.
According to probable cause affidavits, police caught up with Block and Eunice Carlo-Martinez on June 2, 2022. Block denied knowing Schaeffer and denied that she ever got into his car. But when detectives got a hold of surveillance videos taken at the home where Schaeffer’s Life360 app last pinged, they found both Block and Schaeffer walking inside together on the night of May 23, 2022.
Police said Block and Carlo-Martinez were seen going in and out of the house the following day “several times.” Two days after Schaeffer was last seen entering the house, Carlo-Martinez was allegedly seen “moving mops and buckets away from the sliding glass door” at the back of the house. She also allegedly pulled a power cord to deactivate one of the cameras, which came back on about 45 minutes later.
On the morning of May 26, 2022, Block and Carlo-Martinez were allegedly seen loading a “large black box-like object” into a U-Haul truck parked by the home.
Cameras never captured Schaeffer leaving the residence.
Detectives wrote that a search of Facebook accounts associated with Block and Carlo-Martinez indicated that the two allegedly gave Schaeffer fentanyl and she “suffered an overdose” the night she went missing.
A box that resembled the same one Block and Carlo-Martinez were allegedly seen moving out of their home was found in a ditch on the side of a road on April 1, 2023. Inside were skeletal remains that were positively identified as Schaeffer on April 4, 2023. Brain matter recovered from the remains tested positive for fentanyl, THC, and benzoylecgonine, a metabolite of cocaine, but due to the state of Schaeffer’s remains, “other manners of death could not be excluded, and normal toxicology could not be ascertained.”
Block and Carlo-Martinez were both charged with accessory to abandonment of a corpse and accessory to tampering with physical evidence.
Block pleaded guilty to both charges against him and was sentenced on Friday to six years in prison. In January 2025, he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for participating in a conspiracy to distribute fentanyl and distributing fentanyl.
Carlo-Martinez’s case is still open. Her next court date was not available.