Causes of death confirmed for Atlanta couple who vanished in Lake Oconee

The sheriff of Putnam County, Howard Sills, who investigated the drownings and helped coordinate the monthlong search for Jones’ body, said soon after the man’s body was found in March that he considered the matter closed “unless there’s something strange in the autopsy.”

He said Tuesday there is no suspicion of foul play nor any indication the couple’s boat was struck by another craft.

Sills said he believes the small size of their boat contributed to the accident, as the 11-foot fishing vessel, outfitted with an 18-horsepower engine, tried to navigate the oft-choppy and treetop-laden open water in the 19,000-acre reservoir.

A GBI medical examiner noted in her reports that Wilson’s body showed some injuries — among them a forehead contusion and, in her neck, a fractured thyroid horn — but concluded they “may have been sustained in the course of immersion/submersion in water in close proximity to a boat.”

Jones, whose body is believed to have been underwater four weeks, showed no signs of injury, though a toxicology test put his blood-alcohol level at .038. However, that does not mean Jones had been drinking. There were no alcoholic beverages on the boat.

“Some or all of (the alcohol) may have been produced postmortem,” the autopsy report noted, adding that the level “may be affected” by the condition of Jones’ submerged body when it was finally found.