Charlotte Schilling, Owen Schilling Bodies Found In Iowa State Park

OMAHA, Neb. — Authorities investigating the deaths of a Nebraska woman and her 10-year-old son said Tuesday they are not looking for an “outside” killer or at-large suspect.

“We do not suspect any outside foul play, that is for sure,” said Council Bluffs, Iowa, Police Sgt. Dave Dawson. Asked whether that means police believe 41-year-old Charlotte Schilling, of Plattsmouth, Neb., killed her son and then herself, Dawson replied, “I can’t say at this point.”

Their bodies were discovered Sunday evening in a wooded area of Lake Manawa State Park near Council Bluffs in western Iowa, about 20 miles north of Plattsmouth, but were not identified until Tuesday after autopsies were conducted. The pair had been missing since May 10, when Schilling checked Owen out of his elementary school. Police found Schilling’s vehicle the next day at the park.

Relatives have said it wasn’t unusual for Schilling to surprise her children with trips to nearby attractions but that she always called home and the excursions never lasted long. Her family grew worried when neither she nor her son returned home, and Schilling didn’t respond to relatives’ calls to her cellphone, which was found along with Schilling’s wallet in her car.

A passer-by discovered the bodies in woods about a quarter of a mile from a boat ramp that runs into the Missouri River near the state park. Authorities had to rely on autopsy results to confirm their identities because of the bodies’ advanced state of decomposition.

Dawson said investigators are leaning toward the belief that the bodies had been in the spot where they were found since they went missing.

He declined to release how they died, saying he was waiting for “one last thing” from the medical examiner’s office. He said he expected to announce their cause of death within a couple of days.

Investigators had been treating the case as a kidnapping of the boy, but said they didn’t believe he was in danger. Dawson said the FBI, which became involved when officials first suspected they were dealing only with a missing child case, continue to help local investigators.

Rescue dogs searched the area four days after Schilling and her son went missing, but failed to track the two to where their bodies were found, Dawson said.

“They picked them up to a point, but you have to remember that time had passed,” the police sergeant said. “Actually, from where the car was, you’re talking a good half-mile from where they were found, at least.”

Charlotte Schilling was seen the morning of May 10 at a department store in Council Bluffs around the time she checked Owen out of school. She and Owen also were captured on surveillance video at a Lake Manawa convenience store that day, according to KETV in Omaha.

A neighbor of the Schillings, Athena Meneses, told The Associated Press in a phone interview Tuesday that she and her family moved to Plattsmouth about two years ago, just blocks from the Schilling family. She said Owen soon became a daily presence at her house.

“We had a trampoline, and he would come over almost every day to play on that,” Meneses said.

She said she did not know Owen’s parents well, but did speak to Charlotte Schilling the night before she and her son disappeared. Meneses said she took her son and Owen to a meeting of a Cub Scout group Owen had wanted to join.

“I didn’t really know her very well, but she seemed upset. She had a bump on her head,” Meneses said. “She didn’t seem like she was really happy that night.

“She said she wasn’t feeling well and that she’d like to go home. She told me that she had fallen down earlier that day.”

Meneses said she and her children have been saddened by the loss of Owen, but want to remember him “as a delightful person.”

“I think he was a good boy,” she said.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/22…d%3D163082

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