Kristy Kelley Found: Indiana Mom Found Dead, No Foul Play Suspected

Missing Indiana mom Kristy Kelley was found after a month-long search, but sadly the end result was not what family had been hoping to see. Kelley’s car was found in a lake and the 27-year-old woman was inside.

The Courier & Press indicates that Kristy Kelley was found Tuesday afternoon. As was previously reported by the Inquisitr, Kelley had gone missing on August 15. She had last been seen at about 1:30 a.m. at a Boonville VFW. Security video captured her leaving in her 2003 Nissan Xterra, but she wasn’t seen again after that.

Kelley’s vehicle was found after a private sonar search and recovery group detected the vehicle in a lake near the intersection of Yankeetown and Mount Gilead roads. The license plate matched Kelley’s car and a body was still in the car. It has since been confirmed that the body is that of Kristy Kelley.

Warrick County Sheriff Brett Kruse indicates that there do not appear to be any signs of foul play. Kristy’s father, Todd Scales, shared the news on a Facebook page that had been set up to support the search. Tuesday night he posted that Kristy Kelley’s vehicle had been found and that they believed it was Kristy who was inside the vehicle. Clothing on the body found in the car matched what Kelley had reportedly been wearing the night she disappeared. Kristy’s father thanked everybody for their prayers.

Authorities confirmed that the body in the car was indeed Kelley’s. An autopsy has been done and according to The Indy Channel, Kristy Kelley’s cause of death was asphyxia due to drowning. The death has been ruled as accidental according to the preliminary autopsy report released.

WFIE adds that authorities had previously searched the area where ultimately Kristy Kelley was found, but there had been no visible signs of the car being in the lake. Apparently there were no tire tracks or broken tree branches hinting that Kelley’s car had gone off the road and into the water in that spot.

Apparently the family and the authorities had believed throughout the search that something like this was the most likely scenario, but the search had not uncovered anything until now. Warrick County Sheriff Brett Kruse hopes that now, at least, the family won’t have to continue to worry about where she is and what may have happened to her. He hopes that the family can now work on some closure and peace now that Kristy Kelley was found.

[Image via The Indy Channel]