CHILLICOTHE – Authorities say search teams are combing the land in southern Ohio where the body of a missing woman was found over the weekend.
READ MORE: In the Columbus Dispatch
Teams from multiple agencies were searching on land and by air for any other bodies and evidence after the body of Tiffany Sayre was found in rural Highland County on Saturday, Ross County Sheriff George Lavender said on Monday.
Sayre, 26, had been missing since May 8.
Authorities haven’t said how she died.
That brings to four the number of women who have been found dead from the Chillicothe area since May of last year. Two other women remain missing.
The latest discovery on Saturday only added another layer to an already-complicated mystery in southern Ohio, where the FBI has stepped in to lead a task-force investigation into the cases of at least six women — all who have battled addiction, all who fit a similar profile of a rugged life on the streets — who have disappeared or been found dead since May 2014.
Investigators don’t know if the cases are connected. One death was a homicide, another was ruled a suicide and the other was an overdose authorities called suspicious.
Sayre’s body was partially wrapped in a sheet, and there was duct tape at the scene, Highland County Sheriff Donnie Barrera said. But what Sayre died of and how long her body had been there, no one has yet said. Barrera said he’ll know more once toxicology reports come back, which generally take several weeks.
But what investigators do know is this: Her body was discovered in the same general area – within a few miles as the crow flies – of Rocky Fork and Paint creeks along the county line as that of 30-year-old Tameka Lynch.
Lynch had been missing nearly a week when her body was found May 24, 2014, on a sand bar at Paint Creek. Her death was ruled an overdose.
Authorities already were looking for a potential link.
Now, Lavender said the fact that two bodies were found in the same general area of what he called a nature preserve, “causes worry.”