Stacey Nicole English's parents watched in silence Wednesday as Atlanta police chief George Turner confirmed to the media that their daughter's body had been identified, a month to the day since they last spoke with her.
It could be another month before they learn what caused the 36-year-old Buckhead woman's death.
The initial autopsy of English's body did not reveal a cause of death, the Fulton County Medical Examiner's Office said Wednesday. No signs of trauma were found, Turner said, but that doesn't mean police have ruled out the possibility she met with foul play.
English's body, discovered Monday in the divot of an uprooted tree off St. Johns Avenue near the Lakewood Amphitheatre, was in an advanced state of decomposition. Nearly a month earlier, her Volvo had been found, with the engine running, less than a mile away.
Police conducted several searches of the surrounding area after English was reported missing Dec. 31, Turner said. On Jan. 6, K-9 units and officers on horseback were dispatched for the largest coordinated search for the woman but turned up no evidence.
However, Turner said, "I cannot say for sure that we searched that particular area" where the woman's body was found.
One relative told the AJC the search was not thorough enough.
"If it had been thorough, her body would've been found within a week," said Elaine English, the dead woman's aunt.
Neighbors on St. Johns said police searching in the area never looked in the section where English's body was discovered.
"They didn't come all the way to the end of the street on the [the north] side," Warren Blackman said.
St. Johns runs west from Pryor Street, just across from the southwest corner of the Lakewood Amphitheatre, and dead-ends near the interchange of Langford Memorial Highway (Ga. 166) and I-75/I-85.
Fewer than 10 homes line St. Johns, which was paved only three years ago, neighbors said. English's body was found in a kudzu-covered corner that backs up to Ga. 166.
According to the man known to have last seen English alive, the woman, a SunTrust bank employee, was "acting peculiar" on Dec. 26, the night of her disappearance.
Robert Kirk, visiting from St. Louis, told police English asked him if he was Satan before asking him to leave her Lenox Road condominium.
An Atlanta police spokesman said recently there was no evidence linking Kirk to English's disappearance.
According to the incident report, English told another friend, Michelle Strothers, she felt as if someone was trying to hurt her, citing Biblical passages and "discussing the end of the world." Strothers considered English's behavior that day out of character, the report states.
English was taking an undisclosed medication at the time of her disappearance. Her mother, Cindy Jamison, told police her daughter had attempted suicide nearly three years earlier.
In an interview with the AJC on Jan. 6, Jamison said that she had talked to her daughter by phone on Dec. 25, and that she was "very jovial" and in good spirits. English's stepfather, Keith Jamison, said English had razzed him about the outcome of an NBA game played that day.
The Jamisons did not take reporters' questions at the police news conference Wednesday.
Turner said that people may have theories about what happened to English, "but we want the facts to lead this investigation. ... We continue to pursue all the leads that we get."
Police would not go into specifics of what they do know, such as whether English's body was clothed when she was discovered Monday by two men searching for scrap metal.
"I think it's important we go back and try to develop the timeline ... from the time Miss English went missing to the time we discovered her body," said Atlanta Police Maj. Keith Meadows. "There are some gaps in the timeline, and that's what we're asking the public to help us with."
Anyone with information is asked to call Atlanta Crime Stoppers, 404-577-8477.
Definitive answers await the conclusion of the autopsy. That could take up to a month, according to Mark Guilbeau, an investigator with the medical examiner's office.
"It's been exhausting, and it's going to continue to be," Meadows said Wednesday. "Even though we're tired, we're going to continue to work this case as vigorously as we have."
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