A 21-year-old woman who went missing in May was discovered buried in a Missouri barn.
Nearly a week after she last saw her daughter at her Millersville home on May 19, Jessi Wilfong’s mother, Kathy Wilfong, reported her missing on May 25.
On the night she was last seen by her mother, Jessi allegedly met up with her uncle Lawrence Schanda and his girlfriend Teresa L. Baumgartner, 59, Kathy stated on The Lawless Files podcast.
According to her mother, surveillance video from a neighbor shows Jessi entering her uncle’s house and never leaving.
According to Kathy, Jessi’s phone died the night she disappeared. As time went on, she became increasingly concerned when her daughter stopped updating her social media accounts, which she thought was “weird.”
Unknown information, according to a probable-cause statement submitted by Det. Jaime Holloway, led detectives at the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff’s Office to a Baumgartner and Schanda residence in the county on June 15, according to The Southeast Missourian.
According to KFVS News, investigators discovered that the living room’s carpet had been removed from the house.
‘From the evidence collected and other information obtained from the investigative process, it was suspected that foul play was involved in the disappearance of Ms. Wilfong,’ Sheriff Ruth Ann Dickerson wrote in a news release.
On June 18, deputies were directed to a barn that was not far from Baumgartner’s home. The area where Jessi’s bones were eventually discovered had recently been tampered with, according to investigators.
Two days later, her death was deemed to be a homicide.
In connection with Jessi’s disappearance, Baumgartner was detained on June 21 and accused with tampering with tangible evidence in a felony investigation. In the barn, an auger that Baumgartner had hired on May 24 was discovered.
Schanda has not yet been detained or accused of a crime related to the incident. But according to media reports, he allegedly admitted to detectives on June 8 that he had argued verbally with his niece on May 19 about her supposedly giving authorities information about his illegal drug operation.
The investigation is ongoing.