Remains of two missing since April found in Kentucky

The elderly women
apparently missed their exit on their way to an
outlet store.

LEBANON, Ohio (AP) — It’s no wonder the remains of two residents of an Ohio retirement community and the car they went missing in sat undiscovered in a Kentucky field for nearly six months.

They were so well hidden that a hunter who found them Sunday says he walked right past the car in the pre-dawn darkness on his way to a deer stand and only realized when daylight came that the car wasn’t a typical, abandoned junker.

“I could tell it was a newer model and the doors were open,” said Larry Tuggle.

He and his son, Ethan, 10, had walked by the car about 6 a.m. It was youth-only deer hunting weekend, and this was the Tuggles’ first trip of the year to the deer stand.

During the next three hours, they watched for deer from the elevated stand about 70 feet from the silver, 2000 Chevrolet Impala that belonged to Ada Wasson, 80. Finally, they decided to look closer.

They approached the car from the passenger side and found the skeletal remains of Mary Ellen Walters, 68.

“She laid right beside the car,” Tuggle said. “There was a blanket there.”

Wasson’s remains were found later, about 600 feet away, where authorities assume she collapsed while trying to walk to Interstate 71 for help.

The women had been missing since leaving Otterbein Retirement Living Communities near Lebanon, outside Cincinnati, on April 19 for a shopping trip to an outlet mall. No trace of them had been reported despite thousands of volunteers searching thousands of square miles in a three-state area.

Friends knew the women planned to visit a J.C. Penney outlet, but they didn’t know if the women meant one near Columbus, Ohio, or Carrollton, Ky.

Investigators studied store videotapes, checked under bridges and passed out thousands of fliers. Police consulted with FBI experts and sent alerts across the nation.

Authorities believe the women never got to the outlet store in Carrollton, Ky., because they missed their exit, turned onto a narrow road to look for a way back onto I-71 and got lost while trying to turn around in a field near Campbellsburg, Ky.

The Henry County, Ky., coroner identified the women Tuesday, using medical and dental records. But authorities did not know how the women died, or how long they held on, waiting for help.

The remains were found less than a mile from the home of Gregg and Jeri Fuller and their two children, who returned from churchSunday to find police and rescue vehicles on the one-lane road where they lived.

Jeri Fuller said she and her daughter had gone horseback riding three weeks ago onto the deserted farm at the end of the road, were the women’s car was found. But they stopped halfway down a grassy lane and saw nothing.

Maj. John Newsom of the Warren County sheriff’s department said the car was in a rut of a dry creek bed at the bottom of an embankment that was too steep for the car to climb.

Sounds from I-71 could be heard from were the car was found, Newsom said, and the highway could be seen from where Wasson collapsed. But weeds and other foliage obscured them from sight.

Investigators said there was no evidence of foul play. Tuggle said the car didn’t appear damaged, although it looked like it had been sitting open for a long time, and the women’s purses were still in the car and the gas tank was half full.