Charles Parker's Body Found

http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2012-02-20/body... of missing Monroe man found

By Joe Johnson onlineathens.com Copyright
Published Monday, February 20, 2012
Updated: Tuesday, February 21, 2012 - 11:27am

Charles Stephen Parker, 25, of Monroe had been missing for more than a month. Authorities on Monday found Parker's remains in a well in Oglethorpe County.

Richard Hamm/Staff Law enforcement officials from the Georgia Bureau of Investigations and the Oglethorpe County Sheriffs office investigate an abandoned house of of Sandy Cross Road in Oglethorpe County where a person reported a possible body found in a well on the property on Monday, Feb. 20, 2012.

Although authorities couldn’t immediate tell what killed Charles Stephen Parker, investigators are treating his death as a probable homicide, according to Jim Fullington, special agent in charge of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s Athens office.

“This is a suspicious death, and we’re looking at the probability of foul play,” Fullington said.

Parker’s body was at the bottom of a well on abandoned property in Oglethorpe County’s Sandy Cross community.

Richard Benton, who watches the property off Sandy Cross Road for the owner, thought he found a body Friday night, when he smelled decomposing flesh. “I thought it might be a dead animal, but I went to Vietnam, and I know what a dead body smells like,” Benton said.

The man returned with a nephew Monday morning and peered into the well with a flashlight and binoculars, and saw a leg with a boot on, then notified the Oglethorpe County Sheriff’s Office.

Authorities confirmed it was a human body in the well late Monday afternoon, and members of the Athens-Clarke County fire-rescue unit helped to retrieve it.

While Fullington would not say what evidence investigators recovered at the scene, Benton said an investigator asked him if he had cut himself while on the property. “Apparently, they found blood there,” he said.

Parker’s body was found only a few miles from Oglethorpe County’s Smithonia community, where authorities tracked his cellphone after he was reported missing.

Parker, an assistant manager of a Bank of America branch in Athens, attended church on Jan. 15 in Lithonia, the last time family members saw him alive.

He reportedly was last seen by an Athens man, a prospective business partner who told authorities he and Parker went to Madison County to look at investment property. The man told authorities that Parker dropped him off at his home in Clarke County between 4 and 4:30 p.m. Jan. 15.

Authorities later found Parker’s car, wallet and a gym bag containing his clothes, in various locations around where the car was parked on Hoyt Street near College Avenue, authorities said. Authorities tracked Parker’s cellphone to Oglethorpe County before losing the signal, Oglethorpe County Sheriff Mike Smith said.

Still, Parker’s family never lost hope and offered a $10,000 reward to help find him, but authorities Monday night had to break the news to Kenisha Parker that her husband was dead.