PORTAGE, Mich. (WOOD) — More than five months after she was reported missing, the body of Theresa Lockhart was found Tuesday in a shallow grave in the Allegan State Game Area, Portage police say.
During a Wednesday afternoon press conference, Portage Department of Public Safety Director Nicholas Armold said that after Christopher Lockhart was found dead of an apparent suicide, officers found a note in which he confessed to killing his wife.
Lockhart wrote that he and his wife had argued and he snapped. The note also contained a hand-drawn map to where Theresa Lockhart was buried.
Portage DPS called the Allegan County Sheriff’s Office and around 4:25 p.m. Tuesday, searchers found Theresa Lockhart’s body buried near Swan Creek Marsh in Valley Township, west of Allegan. That’s about 50 miles northwest of the Lockharts’ Portage home.
“It appears as though at one point it was probably fully buried,” Allegan County Undersheriff Michael Larsen said earlier Wednesday, “but due to the immense rain that we’ve had lately and the fact that it was shallow, it was partially uncovered.”
The grave was in deep in the state game area south of M-89 and east of 46th Street, in a wooded area about 60 feet from where some roads cross. Authorities said people go hunting there, so it’s possible that the body may have eventually been discovered even had Christopher Lockhart not directed authorities to its location.
Larsen said there were no obvious signs of stab or gunshot wounds, but the body was heavily decomposed. It body was sent to Western Michigan University, where it was positively identified and an autopsy was conducted. Theresa Lockhart’s cause of death was not released Wednesday.
Allegan County authorities told 24 Hour News 8 that all indications are Christopher Lockhart acted alone in killing his wife.
“I go back and forth between numb, really depressed and denial and don’t accept it yet,” Michelle Addington, a close friend of Theresa Lockhart, told 24 Hour News 8.
She remembered Theresa Lockhart as “a loving, kind person.”
“Nobody deserves to have a violent end like that, but least of all somebody who spends their life trying to help other people,” she said.
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