Body identified as missing Buckhead woman
The Fulton County Medical Examiner's office said Wednesday that the body of a woman found under a tree in south Atlanta has been identified as Stacey Nicole English, the Atlanta bank employee reported missing last month.
English's Volvo S260 was discovered, with the engine running, on Dec. 27 less than a mile away from the wooded area where two men searching for scrap metal located the body Monday. The 36-year-old SunTrust instructional designer was reported missing by family members on Dec. 31.
Atlanta police spokesman Carlos Campos said authorities received a 911 call about the discovery shortly before 3 p.m. Monday. The body was located off St. Johns Avenue near Aaron’s Amphitheater at Lakewood “in an advanced state of decomposition,” Campos said.
English's family was notified of the discovery.
Atlanta police, with the assistance of Georgia State Patrol dive teams, had conducted massive searches of the area around Lakewood Fairgrounds in recent weeks but turned up no sign of English.
Monday, Campos could not say if police had canvassed St. Johns Avenue on Jan. 6, when K-9 units and officers on horseback combed the area.
Robert Kirk, of St. Louis, was the last person known to have seen English. He told detectives the woman began “acting peculiar” the night of Dec. 26, asking him if he was Satan. She told him to leave her apartment and Kirk told police he did, checking into a hotel, according to the incident report.
Police said there is no evidence linking Kirk to English’s disappearance.
Investigators have said there also was nothing to indicate English met with foul play, though they acknowledged “suspicious circumstances” in her disappearance.
According to the incident report, English’s mother, Cindy Jamison, told investigators her daughter, a Fayette County High School graduate, had attempted suicide nearly three years ago and said she was taking an undisclosed medication.
“We don’t know if she may have taken something else that caused a bad reaction, but the prescription was for something that has nothing to do with any mental illness,” Charlie Garnett-Benson, a longtime friend of the missing woman, told the AJC earlier this month.
About the Author
A native Atlantan, Boone joined the AJC staff in 2007. He quickly carved out a niche covering crime stories, assuming the public safety beat in 2014. He's covered some of the biggest trials this decade, from Hemy Neuman to Ross Harris to Chip Olsen, the latter of which was featured on Season 7 of the AJC's award-winning "Breakdown" podcast.
