Body found near man’s home along Ocmulgee River leads to arrest, but mystery remains
For more than a month now, investigators have searched for clues in the December death of a woman whose body was found in a ditch near a man’s house in the Ocmulgee River plain a few miles east of Bonaire.
The woman was soon identified.
The man who reported finding her body was arrested on unrelated methamphetamine possession and distribution charges after Twiggs County sheriff’s deputies allegedly happened upon the drugs while searching his pickup truck the night the woman’s body turned up.
The deputies were also said to have unearthed something else in the man’s pickup: an ID card that belonged to the dead woman.
Late last week, the man, Stacy Gene Wehunt, 52, a truck driver who has been jailed on the meth charges since the night Carrie Elizabeth Burke’s body was found, was further charged with concealing Burke’s death. He also faces accusations of tampering with evidence and making false statements. He has not been charged with harming Burke, who was 44.
Investigators say they learned early on that Burke had been staying with Wehunt — perhaps since early December — but the investigators did not divulge the nature of the pair’s relationship.
Wehunt’s 1,500-square-foot house is built on stilts. The deep-brown dwelling with wood siding resembles a hunting lodge. It sits at the edge of a treeline in the river bottom, overlooking Ga. 96 near some railroad tracks that cross the highway between Bonaire and Tarversville.
Burke’s body was found an hour or so after sunset on Dec. 19 after Wehunt dialed 911 and reported seeing a dead body near the highway and his own driveway. How or when the woman died has not been determined.
Twiggs sheriff’s deputy William Blake Scott’s report mentions a somewhat curious exchange he had with Wehunt after the deputy arrived at the scene on the night Burke’s body was found. The deputy asked Wehunt, who was sitting in a Chevrolet Avalanche in a field on Wehunt’s property, where the remains were.
“Wehunt,” the deputy’s report said, “stated that if you go to his driveway she was there and had been there about two weeks.”
Officials have since said that from the looks of her remains, Burke had been dead for about two weeks. Investigators have not said whether Wehunt actually knew the body had been on his land that long. He may have merely been speculating.
All investigators have said publicly is that they have learned Wehunt and Burke were acquaintances.
Sheriff’s officials — if they know — have declined to say how the two met.
According to online records, Burke had most recently lived in Butts County near a truck stop off Interstate 75 west of Jackson.
Wehunt, who in recent years opened a small trucking company, once lived in Bonaire and in Kathleen. Tax records show that he bought the house along Ga. 96 four years ago this month. His secluded, 35-acre tract is bounded by Savage Creek, the state highway and a north-south rail line that runs between Macon and Cochran.
Burke’s remains were about 50 yards east of Wehunt’s driveway, which leads into a his land there just north of Ga. 96 beneath a stand of high-tension power lines that parallel the highway.
Sheriff Darren Mitchum at a news conference on Tuesday said a preliminary autopsy report “did not reveal any obvious signs of trauma or cause of death.” He said investigators were awaiting toxicology and other test results.
Additional meth charges against Wehunt came when investigators searched a semi-truck on his property and his home, where the sheriff said drugs were found “bagged” as if for distribution.