Akron woman's obsession led to discovery of remains

Stephanie Dietrich said a public plea by Sarah and Philip Gehring's mother motivated her to help.
AKRON (AP) -- The woman who found the bodies of two missing New Hampshire children went out searching with her dog more than 40 times in a personal mission that her friends and family considered obsessive.
Stephanie Dietrich, a grocery store cashier, said Monday she was motivated to search for the remains of Sarah Gehring, 14, and her brother Philip, 11, by their mother's public plea for help.
The children were shot by their father, Manuel Gehring, who told authorities he drove for hours with their bodies in his van before burying them somewhere along 700 miles of Interstate 80. He gave police several clues but said he couldn't remember the location, then committed suicide in jail before a trial.
Ricco's discovery
Dietrich, 44, had been searching since July in various locations near her northeast home in Akron because of clues that the grave site could be in the region. Last week, she began looking in the upscale suburb of Hudson for things like tall grass, sewer pipes and a wood pile that the father described.
She was searching in a remote wooded location with a muddy access road Thursday when her 101-pound mixed breed dog, Ricco, stopped and "just laid down and started looking at me."
"I've been telling people since the day I got him he's special," she told The Associated Press.
Dietrich said she wasn't surprised to see a small mound with twigs covering it, based on her research of the case. She started digging, came upon a plastic bag and pulled out what appeared to be part of a cross made of twigs connected by duct tape.
She then called police on her cell phone. The bodies were exhumed Friday and the identities were confirmed Saturday.
Dietrich said she kept a 2-inch-thick folder of news articles and tips from the Internet that she often woke up in the middle of the night to read. She had been monitoring the Web site of the children's mother, Teri Knight, of Concord, N.H.
"It was like a personal challenge. Not like it was a game. I knew it was serious," said Dietrich, who has a 23-year-old daughter and 21-year-old son. "My family members and friends were like ready to have an intervention because I was obsessed with it."
Dietrich has been staying at the home a friend, attempting to stay out of the media spotlight as the solver of a mystery that had drawn national attention.
Playing a hunch
In July, she began driving to various wooded locations with boxer-Rottweiler mix Ricco strapped into the front passenger seat of her 1992 Dodge Intrepid and shovels and pruners in her trunk.
She focused on wooded areas just west of Akron and made about 30 searches based on a hunch, but turned up nothing. She then began searching areas in and near Hudson, a small town just south of I-80.
While lost on a trip to visit her son at his gas station job last week, she saw an unnamed, unpaved dirt road in a wooded area and decided to explore it with Ricco.
She chained the dog to a shrub so she could concentrate on the search.
"He broke a branch off I had him hooked on and he went and laid under this tree. He found a great big stick to toss around. He kept on looking over to where I was at, kind of waiting for me to get there."
She nudged him aside, took about five digs in the clay-like spoil and found what looked like a black plastic bag. She moved down a few feet and dug again, finding more plastic and twigs bound with duct tape.
"I knew the father had said he made a cross of duct tape and placed it on the kids' chests," she said. "But I thought it meant he pulled off two pieces (of tape) and stuck it onto the plastic."
Later, a Hudson police officer cut a slit in the plastic, revealing the remains.
Helped because was asked
The next day, Dietrich, back at her job in the grocery store, talked with Hudson police detective Kaija Jeantet.
"And that's when I just ..." she paused, wiping away a tear. "And I asked her if they had them both and she said yes. I asked her if they've called the mother and she said yes."
Dietrich is unsure how she will handle her emotions if she gets to meet the children's mother, should Knight decide to come to Ohio.
I just won't know what to say to her. I mean, I helped because she asked for help," Dietrich said.