Leanne Bearden, the world traveler who vanished after leaving her in-laws home near San Antonio, Texas, January 17 for what she said was a short walk, died by suicide, an autopsy has concluded.
A final verdict will not become official until toxicology reports ate complete, but police have closed the case on 33-year-old Leanne Bearden whose disappearance last month baffled her family, who speculated she may have simply run away.
Her family said she was “very anxious and stressed” by the return to everyday life after a two-year adventure that took Leanne and Josh Bearden to dozens of far-reaching locales around the world. The couple were staying in Garden Ridge, Texas, about 25 miles northeast of San Antonio with Josh’s parents after arriving back in the country from their round-the-world jaunt about a month earlier.
They had planned to settle in Denver, where they were married at the Denver Zoo.
But Leanne Bearden had trouble making the transition to normalcy after visiting such places as the Dead Sea, Patagonia and a base camp at the foot of Mount Everest. She left her in-laws’ house January 17 with a backpack and $60, saying she would return in about an hour. But she never did.
The family hired a private investigator even as authorities searched a 23-mile radius for her. But yesterday her body was found behind a home on a 2.4 acre lot just blocks from where she was staying.
According to sources speaking to a local TV station, her body was found hanging from a tree.
The autopsy found the cause of death for Leanne Bearden to be asphyxiation by hanging. Police say she died not long after leaving her in-laws’ house. The body of Leanne Bearden has presumably had been hanging on the Garden Ridge property undiscovered for more than three weeks.