After receiving an alarming message over a mobile payment application, the daughter of a 59-year-old Clarke County woman reported her mother missing earlier this month, an incident report shows.
Less than 24 hours later, on Sept. 11, Debbie Collier’s body was found down an embankment in some woods more than an hour north of her home in Habersham County, the sheriff’s office said.
Police met with Collier’s husband Sept. 10 shortly after 6 p.m. at their Athens home, where he told an officer he had not seen his wife since the night before, an incident report obtained Monday by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution states. When he left for work that morning, Collier’s car was still in the driveway and he assumed she had been home, he told the officer.
The woman’s daughter told police that at about 3:15 p.m. that day, Collier sent her $2,385 through Venmo with the message, “They are not going to let me go love you there is a key to the house in the blue flower pot by the door,” according to the report.
Collier’s daughter told officers the message worried her, so she tried calling her mother, but no one picked up. On Wednesday, the sheriff’s office said there was “no evidence to suggest or support that this incident was related to a kidnapping or that this was a suicide.”
According to the daughter, Collier only had her driver’s license and a debit card with her. She also told officers Collier had left the house in a rented black Chrysler Pacifica because her own car was damaged from a wreck.
About 12:30 p.m. the following day, Habersham County dispatch was contacted by a Sirius XM Service representative, who received an alert that the vehicle of a missing person out of Clarke County was in the area of Ga. 15 and Victory Home Lane, according to the Habersham sheriff’s office.
The vehicle was found directly off Ga. 15 northbound on a pull-off that led into an old logging road, an incident report obtained by the AJC on Wednesday states. The vehicle was unlocked and unoccupied.
Deputies, alongside a K-9 unit, went to the location and found a red tote bag and a partially burned blue tarp. The body of a partially nude and burned woman was found down the embankment, near the bag and tarp, the sheriff’s office said.
“The female was laying on the ground, her feet facing downhill, her head up. She had no top on, her skin appeared black, and bright red in places as if she was burnt,” the report states. “A couple of feet up the hill was a hole underneath a root from a downed tree where it appeared as if a fire has been burned in the location very recently.”
The Habersham coroner’s office eventually took Collier’s body to the GBI for an autopsy. The sheriff’s office said Monday they have processed the rented Chrysler, executed numerous search warrants and conducted interviews in Habersham and Clarke counties.
No information has been released about Collier’s cause of death, and no arrests have been made.
Anyone with information on the incident is asked to contact Investigator Cale Garrison at 706-839-0559 or Investigator George Cason at 706-839-0560.
