A Sleepy Hollow woman paid for billboards installed Monday in Algonquin and Cary seeking answers in her 19-year-old daughter’s 2009 death.

“We are hoping it will reach more people and hoping it will help bring up some tips,” Martha Schneider, 73, mother of Anna Mary Schneider, said Monday. “If you know something, say something.”

The billboards offering $30,000 for information leading to a conviction in Schneider’s death were posted Monday morning at Route 31 north of the bypass in Algonquin and at Route 14 and Three Oaks Road in Cary. On Dec. 29, another billboard is due to go up on Route 22 near Gardner Road in Fox River Grove. All three will remain until Jan. 31, according to the family.

In January, additional billboards will go up at Route 31 near Klasen Road in Algonquin and another nearby location along Route 14, Steve Weber, owner of Liberty Outdoor Advertising in Cary, said.

Weber said he has been in the billboard business in McHenry County for 24 years but has never had such a request as this.

On July 4, 2009, the day Anna died, she was home on summer break after her first year attending the University of Hawaii. She was studying music and marine biology. She was a lifelong competitive swimmer and avid scuba diver. So, her family said it was shocking when they were told she died from drowning in their backyard pool while hanging out with a friend.

The popular, Dundee-Crown High School grad’s death certificate initially read that her cause and manner of death was an undetermined drowning.

But after her remains were exhumed in 2020 and a new investigation was conducted by a national cold case team, the Kane County Coroner’s Office and the Kane County Major Crimes Task Force, that was changed in 2022. The death certificate now shows her death as homicide by chloroform. The new findings were presented to the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office. But, to the family’s frustration, that is where things stalled.

No arrests or charges have come in the three years since the death certificate was updated, prompting the family to break their silence. New media attention has led to new tips, Sleepy Hollow police and the family have said.

In a recent interview with Shaw Local, Martha Schneider recalled being startled awake before 5 a.m. on July 4, 2009, by Anna’s friend screaming for help because Anna was by the pool and wouldn’t wake up.

Martha Schneider said she and her husband, Lawrence “Larry” Schneider, found their daughter partially out of the pool with her face on the concrete. She was later pronounced dead at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Elgin.

Martha Schneider said she never accepted that her daughter died from drowning.

Earlier this month, Sleepy Hollow Police Chief Sam Parma asked that anyone with tips about Anna Mary Schneider’s death email him directly at sparma@sleepyhollowil.org or call the police department at 847-426-4425 “and ask to be sent to my direct voicemail” – do not leave a message in a general voicemail.

Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser has urged anyone with information about Anna’s death to contact her office as well.