HICKORY HILLS, Ill., April 10 (UPI) -- Investigators say that a woman's body found in a Chicago-area forest has been positively identified as the remains of Martha McLees, who vanished two years ago.
McLees was beaten to death, police told the Chicago Sun-Times.
McLees disappeared on Mother's Day in 2003. Two days later, her husband, Thomas Yohe, stabbed himself as police approached him.
Yohe, a paroled killer, had married McLees three weeks earlier.
Hickory Hills police said that Yohe killed McLees, and the case is now regarded as closed.
The search for McLees' body came to an end last week when a passer-by found human remains in a garbage bag in a forest preserve near her Hickory Hills condo.
Juanita McLees, her mother, told the newspaper that the family knew she must be dead because of the blood in the condo and because she would never go away and leave her children behind.
"We were really giving up hope that she would be found in our lifetime," Juanita McLees said.
