Marilane Carter found dead in West Memphis, Arkansas. Missing Overland Park, Kansas woman body found in car driven in storage unit. Death by suicide?
A Kansas pastor’s wife and mother who vanished nearly two weeks ago while en route to Alabama in a bid to seek mental health treatment was found dead Tuesday, Arkansas authorities revealed on Tuesday.
The Crittenden County Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday they found the vehicle Marilane Carter was driving when she left Overland Park, Kansas, on August 1. Inside, they found remains they believe to be that of the missing woman, WMC Action News reports.
Chief Todd Grooms said the GMC Acadia, registered to Marilane and her husband Adam Carter, was found in an empty storage container on private property. It wasn’t clear, authorities said, how the driver made it onto the property and into the container.
Sheriff Mike Allen said a family member helping search the area found the vehicle at about 11 a.m. It was hidden from view and appeared to have been driven into the container. Allen said the medical examiner will confirm the identification and the cause and manner of death, but he added that it did not appear suspicious. It remained unclear whether authorities had determined Marilane Carter’s death the result of suicide.
Marilane Carter’s purse and credit cards were found inside the SUV, Grooms said.
Missing JOCO woman Marilane Carter believed to have been found west of Memphis, in Arkansas.
No foul play suspected. https://t.co/yIZmIxoIEm— 98.1 KMBZ Kansas City (@KMBZradio) August 18, 2020
Mental illness as a precursor towards death?
Carter original bought a ticket to fly to Birmingham, Alabama, where her sister was about to give birth and where she hoped to get mental health treatment. But she changed her mind and decided to drive the distance, leaving Overland Park at about 8:15 p.m.
The last pinged location of her cell phone was at 8:02 p.m. as she neared the Mississippi River into Memphis, Tennessee. When she hadn’t arrived in Birmingham at 3 a.m. Monday, Adam Carter, pastor of Leawood Baptist Church, filed a missing person’s report.
The sheriff’s department said several members of Carter’s family were in the area over the weekend, but all had returned home except for an uncle, according to 3KSN. He was driving and walking in the area where Carter’s phone last pinged and saw three shipping containers in a field.
When he approached, he saw the door was open on one of the containers. When he saw the Acadia with the body inside, he called the sheriff’s department.
It remained unclear how or why Marilane Carter may have sought her own suicide death.
