Missing Lamar County woman’s body found

The body of a missing Lamar County woman was found in a wooded area of Monroe County late Monday afternoon.

Lori Williams, 39, was reported missing May 3. Her body was found near Tobler Creek about 4 p.m., about a mile from where authorities found her car a day earlier in a heavily wooded area off Klopfer Road.

It is unclear whether Williams death was because of a homicide, suicide or natural causes, Monroe County sheriff’s Sgt. Lawson Bittick said.

Her body was sent to the GBI crime lab in Atlanta for an autopsy.

Bittick said Williams probably had been at the site since May 2, the date she was last seen alive, or May 3.

Williams, a traveling nurse, had left for work that day, and later called her husband, Robby Williams, to ask him to bring gas for her car, he told Lamar County deputy sheriffs.

She sounded “disoriented and slurring with her speech,” Robby Williams told the deputy. “When he asked her where she was, she stated that she didn’t know.”

Cellphone service was spotty and the call dropped, he told police. He also said he called her workplace, but no one there knew where she was.

Robby Williams told the deputy that he and his 16-year-old son tried to use an app to find her phone. The app indicated her phone was in Gainesville, so Robby Williams called to ask police there to help look for her, the deputy’s report said.

Then, the father and son drove up to Gainesville where they “searched throughout the night ... without success,” the report said.

Lori Williams’ phone was found on her person Monday, Bittick said.

On Thursday, Lori Williams’ cellphone pinged in Bolingbroke, in south Monroe County near the Interstate 75 and Interstate 475 split.

Authorities searched the area, but they didn’t find her 2013 silver Nissan Maxima until Sunday afternoon, when the Georgia Department of Natural Resources reported that it was in a heavily wooded area. Authorities had contacted Apple and used the “Find my iPad” app to locate the car.

The Georgia State Patrol used a helicopter to look for Williams on Monday and landed near an area being circled by buzzards, Bittick said.

Lori Williams’ body was found about 1.5 miles into the wooded area off Klopfer Road.

Lamar County sheriff’s investigators spotted Lori Williams on surveillance footage, from either May 2 or 3, at the Publix on Bass Road in Macon, Bittick said. She was wearing the same clothes.

Since Thursday, family and friends have been riding around the area looking for Williams and posting signs at gas stations.

Kevin Chrisley, whose wife is Williams’ niece, told a Telegraph reporter that Lori Williams married Robby Williams last year. Chrisley also said one of Williams’ sons, 21-year-old William Zachary Bryan Chambers, was killed in a car crash March 19 on High Falls Road.

Chrisley’s wife said her aunt was “sweet and kind.”

“I don’t know why anybody would want to do this to Lori,” she said through tears.

This story was originally published May 8, 2017 at 5:01 PM with the headline "Missing Lamar County woman’s body found."