The body of a missing Florida woman was found in a “shallow grave” on an Alabama property with links to her ex-boyfriend, authorities have said.
Cassie Carli, 37, went missing on 27 March after meeting her former boyfriend Marcus Spanevelo for a vistation with their four-year-old daughter near Navarre Beach in Florida.
A major search operation lasting almost a week ended on Sunday with the police finding her body in a barn in Alabama, with identification confirmed through a distinctive tattoo, the Santa Rosa County sheriff’s office announced at a news conference.
“It’s not the ending that we wanted obviously, but we’re hoping to provide a little closure to the family,” Santa Rosa County Sheriff Bob Johnson said.
Mr Johnson told reporters that the Major Crimes Unit had traveled over 1,500 miles (over 2,400 kilometres) looking for Carli and found her body “while executing a search warrant in Alabama”.
The police did not reveal how they found the spot and whether it was directly owned by Mr Spanevelo but said it was linked to him “in a roundabout way”.
Mr Spanevelo was arrested in Lebanon, Tennessee, by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and state troopers the day before, the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post on Saturday.
He has also been charged with tampering and detruction of evidence after he “got rid of” Carli’s phone, the sheriff said, and for giving false information to the police as he refused to cooperate with the authorities.
“He was totally uncooperative, he never cooperated at all with us,” Mr Johnson said. “It’s your baby’s mother and she’s missing and you’re not going to cooperate with authorities -- that’s kind of tell-tale.”
The four-year-old daughter had been found earlier on Tuesday and remains safe, Mr Johnson said, while Carli’s body is scheduled for an autopsy on Monday to investigate the cause of her death.
