HUDSON, Ohio – Two bodies have been found in northeast Ohio, bearing duct tape crosses and in an area matching the description from a New Hampshire man who confessed to killing his children and burying them somewhere along 700 miles of Midwest interstate, authorities said Friday.
The bodies were being tested to determine if they were those of the children who have been missing 2 years.
A dog suddenly started to dig near a small woodpile on a walk with its owner Thursday and found what appeared to be a makeshift cross and the remains wrapped in plastic in a wooded area near Interstate 80, also known as the Ohio Turnpike, police and the FBI said.
Scott Wilson, a spokesman with the FBI’s Cleveland office, said he could not comment on the gender or age of the bodies but added, “We’re looking into the possibility the bodies might be linked to those missing kids.”
Sarah, 14, and Philip, 11, were shot to death by their father, Manuel Gehring, as he fled across the country in July 2003. Gehring confessed to the slayings but strangled himself in prison before he could be tried.
He told police he buried the children wrapped in plastic with duct-tape crosses somewhere along a stretch of interstate between Pennsylvania and Iowa, but he could not pinpoint the spot.
In New Hampshire, Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin said that while the identities still must be confirmed, “(The woman) was out there specifically looking for what she hoped would be the burial site for Philip and Sarah Gehring, and it turns out she was correct.”
Strelzin arranged to fly to Ohio on Friday to compare dental records from the Gehring children with those of the bodies found.
Hudson Police Chief David Robbins said officers had a hunch the tip from the woman about the plastic would be productive because the area had several items mentioned by the father as the burial location: a makeshift cross, bell-shaped sewer connectors made of concrete, a fence and a woodpile.
The children’s mother, Teri Knight, told The Associated Press that a woman called her from the New Hampshire attorney general’s office and said the bodies had duct tape crosses on them.
Extensive searches turned up no evidence of the graves, and some officials despaired of ever finding the bodies.
“I’m numb,” Gehring’s ex-wife and the children’s mother, Teri Knight, said from her home in Hillsboro, N.H., where she was watching news reports. “We’ve learned to take things sometimes week-to-week and month-to-month, and today it’s minute-to-minute.”
The bodies were found along a muddy service road near an above-ground gas pipeline about 2 miles from an Ohio Turnpike interchange. Hudson is an upscale city about 20 miles southeast of Cleveland and the burial location is close to two subdivisions with handsome homes.
After investigators left Friday afternoon, a freshly dug area could be seen off the road near a pile of sticks.
Lori Dyer, 37, often takes walks nearby and says not many people go into the wooded area.
“It’s very scary,” she said. “It’s pretty desolate back in there.”
Gehring, an unemployed accountant, had been locked in a custody dispute with his ex-wife, who had remarried. Gehring’s ex-wife and her husband said they searched within five miles of Hudson earlier this fall.
The children were last seen arguing with their father at a July Fourth fireworks display. Gehring said he pulled off the highway later that night and shot the children, then drove for hours with their bodies in his van before he buried them.
He was arrested in California a week after the children disappeared.
In 2004, the U.S. Geological Survey did a pollen analysis on soil found under Gehring’s minivan and near the shovel used to bury the children. It concluded that the soil most likely came from northeastern Ohio.
Teri Knight has endured numerous false reports of bodies that might have been her children. But the call she got from the woman in the attorney general’s office has her all but convinced that her children have been found.
“The duct tape crosses, when she told me that, that’s what did it,” she said.
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