Ashley has finally been found after several years of being missing. Forensics will probably be released tomorrow (Monday).
Missing woman's family left to wait
Human remains found along Olentangy River
Saturday, April 5, 2008 3:20 AM
By
John Futty and
Theodore Decker
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Craig Holmandispatch
The remains found this week likely will be identified with a DNA test. Police think they are Ashley Howley's and suspect she was killed by her boyfriend in 2004. He was living near the area where the body was found.
Family and friends have long suspected that Ashley Howley, missing for nearly four years, was buried in woods near the Olentangy River just south of the Delaware County line.
Investigators who unearthed human remains in a marshy spot beside the river this week say those suspicions likely will be confirmed when the remains are identified.
"There is a probability that the remains belong to Ashley Howley," Sgt. Richard Weiner, a Columbus police spokesman, said yesterday.
Robert P. MacMichael II, Howley's former boyfriend, sometimes lived with his father at 8250 Olentangy River Rd., which is next to the property where the remains were found.
Howley, 20, disappeared in June 2004, one day after calling police to her North Side apartment to report that MacMichael had assaulted her. Police have said they are convinced she was murdered.
Although never charged in the crime, MacMichael, 25, was referred to by a homicide sergeant in January as "our only suspect in the case." He has been jailed since then on charges that he killed his mother and her boyfriend in December.
MacMichael's acquaintances often spoke of the marshy area behind the property as "where she's got to be," said Kerry Combs, one of Howley's cousins. "That's always been the talk."
Combs said she is "as positive as you can be without a confirmation" that investigators have found Howley's remains.
"It's like starting the grieving process all over again," she said.
Robert MacMichael Sr. said investigators arrived at his home Tuesday afternoon with a warrant to search his property for Howley's body or her "personal effects."
The investigators, though, spent little time there and took nothing, he said. They instead walked east into the woods, onto another property owner's undeveloped land.
"It looked like they had an idea where they were going," he said. He said they told him only that they had received a tip.
He said he first hoped they had found only deer bones. On Thursday, Assistant County Prosecutor James Lowe and two detectives walked up as he fed the birds in his backyard.
"They just told me that it's now become a crime scene," he said. "I'm hoping it's not Ashley, and I hope my son is not involved."
Search teams scoured the same area with cadaver dogs in August 2004 and found nothing, he said.
Police released little about the latest search but said the skeletal remains were found in a shallow grave near the river bank. They said only that "information received" led them there.
Weiner said the remains were being painstakingly removed and likely will have to be identified using DNA.
"We're treating the area very gingerly right now," he said.
Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien would not disclose what led to the discovery or whether his office had been talking with MacMichael and his attorney about the Howley case.
"We have reason to believe that the remains are those of Ashley Howley," O'Brien said. "The underlying reasons for why that belief is there, I would not want to disclose."
J. Scott Weisman, MacMichael's attorney, would not talk about the case but noted that MacMichael has never been charged in Howley's disappearance.
Although MacMichael occasionally lived with his father on Olentangy River Road, MacMichael Sr. said he didn't live there in 2004 and rarely went into the woods.
His son is awaiting trial in the slayings of his mother and her boyfriend at their home in Minerva Park. Barbara Rush and Greg Bartee were found beaten to death in their bedroom on Dec. 28, and MacMichael is charged with aggravated murder in what prosecutors said is a death-penalty case.
MacMichael Sr. said he visits his son twice a week in jail, but they never talk about the slayings or Howley.
"It's between him and his lawyers," he said. "When she first disappeared, I asked him flat-out: 'Did you have anything to do with this?' And he said no.
"As a parent, it would break my heart if he's involved," he said. "Right now, I'm in shock and I'm waiting to see how it turns out."
jfutty@dispatch.com
tdecker@dispatch.com
