Oct 31, 2007 4:35 pm US/Central
Family Identifies Body Of Missing Woman
Autopsy Reveals Alma Mendez Victim Of Assault
SOUTH CHICAGO HEIGHTS, Ill. (CBS) ―
Family members of a missing woman have identified a body found in a forest preserve lake as that of Alma Mendez.
An autopsy Wednesday revealed Mendez died from a vicious assault. Her head was badly beaten, and her throat was slashed. Authorities tell WBBM Newsradio 780 her left ankle had also been fractured. Mendez' body was fully clothed when it was discovered. In fact, preliminary identification Tuesday was made from those clothes.
Cook County Sheriff's Police have ruled her death a homicide. Wednesday, they were back searching for evidence at the scene where her body was found one day earlier.
"We do extensive searches of areas. Now that we've found a body, we're concentrating on this area," First Deputy Chief John Palca said.
Mendez, 38, had been missing since she went jogging on Sunday in the Sauk Trail Forest Preserve in South Chicago Heights. She was well-acquainted with the 3-and-a-half mile path there because she rain it almost everyday. Relatives say she had been jogging there for about a decade and was headed out for a routine run. First, she called her sister.
"It was just a normal conversation, you know, we're very close sisters, so we would speak every day on the phone, so it was just one of our usual conversations throughout the day telling each other what we'd done and what we were going to do later on in the day," said Mendez's sister, Jessie Ledezma. She said when Mendez did not return, relatives became concerned.
"After one hour, my cousin tried to call her back and got no answer," Javier Mendez, a cousin, said.
Relatives went to the Sauk Trail Woods and found her sport-utility vehicle there, locked and undisturbed. Her cell phone was tracked to an area about 10 miles away from where her car was found.
On Tuesday morning, friends, family members and volunteers went to the forest preserve to search for her. The call for volunteers to search for Mendez drew scores of people from around the south suburbs. They also passed out flyers around the area.
The brutality of the crime and the vulnerability of the victim has hit investigators hard.
"Very tough. A mother of three. Today's Halloween. It's hard for us sometimes to do our job," Palca said.
Mendez and her husband, Conrado, separated about three weeks ago. Authorities say her husband has been cooperating in the investigation. She worked as a receptionist at a Steger dental practice and had three children, ages 5, 14 and 18.
CBS 2's Derrick Blakley, Dana Kozlov and Kristyn Hartman, the STNG wire and WBBM Newsradio 780 contributed to this report.cbs2chicago.com's Most Popular Pages
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