BUXTON (AP) – Officials awaited the results of an autopsy Sunday on a body found floating in the Saco River, about six miles downstream from the spot where a 15-year-old girl was last seen six months ago.
Several teenagers spotted the body shortly before midnight Friday in an area off Warren Road. Investigators said the body was that of a female but withheld details pending the autopsy at the state Medical Examiner’s Office in Augusta.
After completion of the autopsy, the medical examiner’s office said the results would not be released until the victim could be positively identified through dental records, a process expected to be completed no earlier than Tuesday.
The discovery raised questions as to whether the body was that of Coreen Wiese, the Buxton girl who vanished six months ago after being seen near the Route 25 bridge that crosses the Saco between Standish and Limington.
Searchers there had found Wiese’s cell phone and an apparent suicide note scratched into a steel beam, with the letters “RIP” and “CW.”
On Saturday, after the body was found, the Maine Warden Service canceled the search for Wiese that had been scheduled to resume May 20.
“There is only one missing person in that area,” said Mark Latti, Warden Service spokesman. “We uncovered a body that preliminarily matches the description of the missing person, and right now, there’s no need to do it.”
Wiese’s disappearance Nov. 8 has baffled more than a dozen FBI agents, Buxton police and psychics working the case. An offer by her father, Wesley Wiese, of up to $20,000 for information about his daughter turned up no leads.
The discovery of the body came just days after he organized a candlelight vigil that marked the six-month anniversary of Coreen Wiese’s disappearance.
During that period, divers and pilots have been out on dozens of occasions combing the same area in which the body was found, Latti said.
A body sometimes turns up long after a person is lost in the water, Latti said. “Unfortunately for families, it can take months,” he said.
“It’s not unusual for something like this to take that much time.”
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