Will County officials still have no answers in case of late doctor who kept thousands of preserved fetuses in his garage

Fort Wayne (Ind.) Police officers on Thursday searched the former site of an abortion clinic owned by Dr. Ulrich Klopfer. | Eric Ginnard/The Herald-News, distributed by the Associated Press

JOLIET — Will County investigators said Thursday they still have no idea why Dr. Ulrich Klepfer kept thousands of medically preserved fetuses at his home.

Relatives of Klepfer, who died Sept. 3, have been fully cooperative, investigators said Thursday at a news conference.

After Klopfer died, the fetuses — more than 2,200 of them — were discovered sealed in plastic bags, in 70 cardboard boxes, in a very cluttered garage at his home in unincorporated Will County.

“It doesn’t sound like he was trying to” hide anything, said Sheriff Mike Kelley.

Will County State’s Attorney James Glasgow said there was no evidence any of abortions performed on the property, at the eastern edge of Will County, near the Indiana state line.

Investigators wouldn’t say how the fetuses are labelled.

“There are private aspects that would bar us from talking about that,” Glasgow said.

Earlier Thursday, authorities in Indiana searched two shuttered abortion clinics once operated by Klepfer.

The St. Joseph County (Ind.) prosecutor said authorities found no fetal remains during a search of a shuttered South Bend abortion clinic once operated by a late abortion doctor whose Illinois property was found to contain more than 2,200 medically preserved fetal remains.

Prosecutor Ken Cotter said police, prosecutors and members of the Indiana attorney general’s office served a search warrant Thursday morning at the former South Bend abortion clinic where Dr. Ulrich Klopfer had performed abortions.

Cotter said during a news conference outside the building that boxes of medical records were found inside, but that “based on what we have seen so far there are no fetal remains here.”

He says a vacant lot was also searched in the northern Indiana city. Cotter says the investigation at those properties is ongoing.

Later Thursday, a police spokeswoman in Fort Wayne, Ind., police told The Journal Gazette newspaper that city police assisted the Indiana attorney general’s office in obtaining a warrant for the search of another former clinic where Klopfer once performed abortions.

Dr. Ulrich Klopfer, shown in 2015, died Sept. 3.

WANE-TV showed footage of Fort Wayne officers near the doorway and in the parking lot outside that building beyond a line of police caution tape.

Police spokeswoman Sofia Rosales-Scatena says she doesn’t know what officers found there or what they were looking for.

Klopfer also had operated a clinic in Gary, Indiana.

Contributing: Associated Press