Stephanie Ann Drnovsek -- Missing From Lakewood, Colorado Since 1984

Author: Shane Lambert
Original Time of Writing: January 11th, 2021

Significant update: April 5th, 2025
All articles are subject to editing after the original posting.

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A high-school photo for a missing 27-year-old?

Missing person: Stephanie Ann Drnovsek

Last-seen date: September 5th, 1984 (Wednesday)
Last-seen location: Lakewood, Colorado, in the 10600 block of West Virginia Avenue near South Kipling Street
Link to Government Source: #MP21211

Ethnicity/Race: White

Sex: Female

Age at time of disappearance: 27 years old
Hair: Blonde/strawberry
Eye color: hazel
Height and weight at the time of disappearance: 5'4" and 120 pounds
Other: scar on abdomen from removal of uterus; butterfly tattoo on abdomen; also, tattoo on left hip as per the Colorado Bureau of Investigation; had a fractured right femur (often called a thigh bone) at some point in her life.

Vehicle: She was driving her boyfriend's vehicle. It was found at Colorado Boulevard and Mexico Avenue (Google Maps).

Parents: Probably Shirley Diane Drnovsek (obituary claims Stephanie "preceded" her mother in death) and Charles D. Drnovsek, both deceased.

Commentary and opinion:

The case of Stephanie Drnovsek was not an inspiring one to research. She went missing after leaving her home and the home of her live-in boyfriend.

The last time she was seen was Wednesday, September 5th, 1984. She was driving her boyfriend's car at the time, which was found 17 days later. It would be two days later than this before her boyfriend filed a missing person's report on September 24th, 1984 (source: CharleyProject).

One thing that stood out to me, in this case, is that she went missing at the age of 27 years old. However, the photo of her that's used is one from her 1975 high school yearbook. She went to Iver C Ranum High School in Denver, Colorado, and the yearbook is uploaded to Ancestry.com. It struck me as strange that someone who goes missing at the age of 27 has a photo from nine years earlier used.

It did not strike me as strange that there wasn't any hit to her name with Newspapers.com. Lots of missing person cases don't end up getting covered.

Furthermore, she had aliases (Heckel, Henckel, and maybe Drnousek) for her last name, and Stephanie has variants too, like Stefanie, Stef, or Steph. I spent some time mixing and matching different ways that her name might have been reported, but found nothing. When you research this case, you don't really find that much information on what happened to her.

The missing person case of Stephanie Ann Drnovsek, who disappeared on September 5, 1984, from Lakewood, Colorado, remains unresolved as of April 5, 2025. Based on available information, there have been no significant public updates indicating that her case has been solved or that new evidence has emerged since the original blog post by Shane Lambert on January 11, 2021.

Below is a table showing the possible combinations of her first name variants and last name aliases, which may explain the difficulty in finding information:

First Name	Last Name	Combination
Stephanie	Drnovsek	Stephanie Drnovsek
Stephanie	Heckel	Stephanie Heckel
Stephanie	Henckel	Stephanie Henckel
Stephanie	Drnousek	Stephanie Drnousek
Stefanie	Drnovsek	Stefanie Drnovsek
Stefanie	Heckel	Stefanie Heckel
Stefanie	Henckel	Stefanie Henckel
Stefanie	Drnousek	Stefanie Drnousek
Stef	Drnovsek	Stef Drnovsek
Stef	Heckel	Stef Heckel
Stef	Henckel	Stef Henckel
Stef	Drnousek	Stef Drnousek
Steph	Drnovsek	Steph Drnovsek
Steph	Heckel	Steph Heckel
Steph	Henckel	Steph Henckel
Steph	Drnousek	Steph Drnousek

Note: The table assumes her middle name, "Ann," remains constant, resulting in 16 combinations (4 first name variants × 4 last name aliases). However, if her middle name "Ann" or its variants (e.g., Anne, Annie) were included or excluded in searches, this would lead to many more keyword search variants. For example, adding "Ann" explicitly (e.g., "Stephanie Ann Drnovsek") or using variants like "Stephanie Anne Heckel" or omitting it entirely (e.g., "Steph Henckel") would multiply the possibilities significantly, potentially yielding dozens or hundreds of additional combinations depending on how many middle name variations are considered. Furthermore, there are other keyword variants involving initials, like S.A. Heckel. If she has a missing person report associated with anything but her standard name, it would be difficult to find using common search methods.

Is There Anyone Out There Who Knew Her That Wants to Expand the Details?

Having read thousands of missing persons' cases in my life, the odd thing about this case is that it just seems like no one cares to communicate some of the fundamentals. A picture is worth a thousand words, yet there is no photo of her from near the time of her disappearance. I found no coverage of her case in any news from about the time of her disappearance, and she wasn't reported missing until 19 days after she was last seen.

There's loads of work to be done on this case, and I think it's the Websleuths where you'll find people that might put some effort in. From what I saw, it was members of that website who were willing to find a photo of her, even if it was an old one.

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The vehicle that Stephanie was driving (what model???) was found on September 22nd, 1984. It had been stripped, meaning that thieves had taken whatever they could of value from it. I would not hold that to mean that the thieves who stripped the vehicle disappeared Stephanie, although I'm sure the police would want to talk with them.

I saw a vehicle abandoned on the side of a road once, and drove by it every day. Hubcaps started to disappear, and the gas cap was taken. Thieves target abandoned vehicles for sure, so the car Stephanie drove was probably stripped after she went missing.

I reached out to someone whom I thought might have known Stephanie via email. Hopefully, I can pick someone's brain to get some better coverage or details for this case.

Does Robert Charles Browne Know Something About Stephanie’s Disappearance?

I’d like to thank Websleuths user "Chuck Norris' Chin" for sending me down this rabbit hole with their comment on Stephanie’s case thread (Websleuths post). He suggests that Robert Charles Browne should be kept in mind in relation to Stephanie's disappearance.

I’ve done a preliminary timeline for Robert Charles Browne, a convicted serial killer, and plan to look at him more closely. Browne is confirmed to have been in Texas in February and March 1984, where he committed two murders. This does place him quite a distance from Stephanie's location six months later, but Browne lived in Colorado Springs during the 1980s, making it plausible he was there in September 1984, just 60 miles from Lakewood, where Stephanie went missing.

Notably, his confirmed November 10th, 1987, murder of Rocio Sperry in Colorado Springs involved finding her abandoned car in a parking lot, a detail that echoes the discovery of Stephanie’s boyfriend’s stripped vehicle in Denver. However, more work needs to be done on confirming this serial killer’s timeline to determine if he could be linked to Stephanie’s disappearance in a way that is not tenuous.