Posted on 02/04/2004 7:30:06 AM PST by jtminton
Investigators searching for a retired TCU professor converged Tuesday afternoon in southern Oklahoma, where a woman's body was found at the bottom of an embankment along an Interstate 35 service road in Murray County.
Law-enforcement agents acting on information provided by two people arrested early Sunday in the disappearance of Laura Lee Crane, 77, found a body wrapped in a sheet about 1 p.m., officials said.
"A body has been recovered, and an investigation is under way to determine if it is Mrs. Laura Crane," Fort Worth police Lt. Roger Dixon said. "We have a lot of work in front of us."
The steep, overgrown embankment is about 50 miles north of the Texas border along a stretch of interstate that cuts through the Arbuckle Mountains.
Murray County Sheriff Marvin McCracken said the woman's body was taken to the Oklahoma state medical examiner's office in Oklahoma City for identification and an autopsy.
Lt. Abdul Pridgen, a Fort Worth police spokesman, declined to give specifics, such as the body's age and sex and whether the search for Crane, missing since Friday, is over.
"As you can imagine, the family is very sensitive to this," Pridgen said. "We don't want to make any prejudgments."
According to her family, Crane left her home on Bellaire Drive South in Fort Worth about 11:30 a.m. Friday to go to a nearby Tom Thumb grocery store. Police have said she stopped briefly at a friend's house and has not been seen since.
Allen Walker, Crane's daughter, said late Tuesday afternoon that police had given the family details about the body in Oklahoma that the family declined to discuss at the request of police.
The family remains hopeful, Walker said, but realizes that the body in Oklahoma could well be Crane's. If so, they would take some comfort in getting a swift answer about her fate, she said.
"The most important thing to us at a time like this is to get to a positive resolution. So often you go for weeks and weeks without an answer," she said.
Investigators from Fort Worth, the FBI's Fort Worth office and the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation worked several hours combing the area surrounding the embankment, near the Washita River. Thick shrubs, trees, knee-high grass and the embankment's slope would have made it impossible to see the body from the road. The northbound access road is about 75 yards from Interstate 35.
On the other side of the highway is Turner Falls Park, with a waterfall and picnic tables popular with traveling families. A YMCA camp for children is not far up the road.
As investigators examined the scene, Fort Worth homicide detectives headed for Oklahoma City, where the two people who told police about the body remain in jail.
Early Sunday, Edward Busby and Kathleen Latimer were arrested in Oklahoma City after being pulled over for a traffic violation. They were driving Crane's Nissan Sentra.
Both suspects face aggravated kidnapping charges in Crane's disappearance. Also, Busby faces charges of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, driving with a suspended license and making an improper right turn.
Latimer is accused of possession of a controlled/dangerous substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
Oklahoma City officials have said police found a crack pipe with white residue along with other items in the Sentra.
Staff Writer Bill Teeter Contributed to This Report.
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Are they EVERYWHERE??!?
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