By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
While the sheriff’s office says it won’t speculate if the body found outside of Morton is missing teenager Austin King, the woman who has headed up the search spoke this morning as though it is Austin.
“I can’t say much because of the integrity of the investigation, but I know law enforcement spoke with Christy last night and she has accepted the fact and come to terms with it,” said Jennifer Mau of Morton.
[1]Austin King
About 25 individuals, mostly family, are gathered in Morton’s Gus Backstrom Park this morning including Mau and the 16-year-old boy’s mother Christy Harper. Harper and others have been staying day and night at the park which has been serving as a central point for the search.
Austin was last seen by his mother almost a month ago, when he said goodnight early in the morning of June 23. He was classified by the sheriff’s office as a runaway, and since been labeled endangered-missing.
The Lewis County Sheriff’s Office sent out a short news release last night, saying they got word at 2 p.m. yesterday the body of a male was found near a logging road outside Morton.
“There’s no way we can put a positive identification until we get dental records or even DNA,” sheriff’s Cmdr. Steve Aust said this morning.
Aust said he doesn’t have an idea of the age of the person found. The Lewis County Corner’s Office described the individual as a young adult.
Detectives were at the scene about 10 miles from the boys’ Chapman Road home until 9:30 or 10 p.m. last night. Aust said they are in Morton again today and hope to have some more answers by the end of the day.
“We’re treating it as a suspicious death until we know otherwise,” Aust said.
Aust said the remains were found on the ground, but not in plain sight. He declined to say how far off the logging road the find was made.
Mau, a 30-year-old Centralia College student, who organized searches for Austin, said the candle light vigil scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday in the park is still on. Anyone who wants to come is welcome, she said.
Austin, who his mother said is home schooled, is one of four children who live with her in the Tilton River Mobile Home Park. His mother has described him as a boy who never took off without telling family where he was going, didn’t go out after dark or often even alone, and liked to spend time playing video games, listening to music and watching movies.
He slept in a small detached building he called his apartment, and that’s where he went off with two buddies to watch television a month ago after he said goodnight to his mom.
Mau said she wasn’t part of the search party of five who discovered the body, and attributed the find to the fact the search was moving to increasingly farther away areas, as well as a Portland woman she called a medium, or “an intuitive” named Sonya Grace.
“She worked with me on a map and came up with that point, that road.” Mau said. “She said that’s the road where we should send searchers.”
Mau got involved with the case because she is founder of the Mount St. Helens chapter [2] of a Texas-based group called Guardians of the Children, an organization she says help with abused and missing kids.
“I really have a hard time because law enforcement stereotypes kids as runaways” she said this morning. “I don’t have any reason to think Austin ran away.”
The Camas-native, who moved to Morton 10 years ago, said she founded the local group in the fall of 2008 with her boyfriend.
“I have two children of my own,” she said. “I would be completely devastated if this was my kid, that’s why I’m out here.”
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Proceeds from T-shirts available Friday night will be used for funeral expenses, according to Mau.
Accounts had already been set up at Sterling Savings Bank in Austin’s and his mother’s names for a reward fund and to help pay for food for the people who have been searching.