A body believed to be a Kansas pastor’s missing wife has been found in her car inside a shipping container in rural Arkansas, two weeks after she vanished.
Mother-of-three Marilane Carter’s uncle discovered the decomposing remains when he traveled to Crittenden County to look for her and saw the door of the container open.
The body has not yet been positively identified as Carter, but authorities confirmed the car is hers. A credit card bearing her name was also recovered inside the vehicle.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Leawood Baptist Church in Kansas, where Carter’s husband is a pastor, posted a message on its Facebook page confirming Marilane’s death.
‘It is with very heavy hearts that we share that Marilane Carter has passed away,’ the post read in part. ‘Her vehicle and body were found Tuesday in the West Memphis area. Law enforcement says that foul play is not suspected.’
Carter was last seen on August 2 when she checked into a Quality Inn hotel in Missouri for three hours on her way to Alabama to seek treatment for anxiety and visit relatives.
She later called her parents from the road, sounding confused and telling them she kept getting lost. Carter was never heard from again.
After a frantic two-week search, her gray GMC SUV was found inside a shipping container in a remote field off Interstate 55.
On Tuesday morning, Carter’s uncle, who stayed behind after a weekend search involving other family members, was driving and walking around the area where his niece’s phone was last pinged when he came upon three shipping containers in the field.
Crittenden County Sheriff’s Department Chief Todd Grooms told WREG that officers had searched that field before and seen several shipping containers, but did not think to look inside them.
‘I just never would have dreamed that her vehicle would have been up inside one of them,’ Grooms said.
He noticed that one of the containers was open and decided to take a look inside, discovering his niece’s gray 2011 GMC Acadia with Kansas plates with a body inside.
The sheriff’s chief said no foul play is suspected at this time in connection to the woman’s death.
‘I believe that anything that happened, happened by her own doing,’ Chief Todd Grooms said.
The woman’s decomposing body was taken to the state crime lab in Little Rock for an autopsy.