Wendy Aldrich | Forest Lawn South Cemetery (July 31, 1988)

[Chris]

From 1988 Article:

disappeared from the Houston, Texas, cemetery she regularly visited to place flowers on the grave of a longtime friend brutally murdered last May.
The discovery of Aldrich's dismembered body last month in a lake 80 miles north of Houston, has provided few answers to the mystery of her disappearance —
and has done little to ease the anguished uncertainty suffered by her family.

"You re-live it every time you hear about someone being killed," said Robin Aldrich, 29, of North Ridgeville.
"There's the same unanswered questions for my mother, my father, and me. We may never know what happened, what was done to her," said the older sister of Wendy Aldrich, who was born in Elyria and reared in North Ridgeville. She was 27 at the time of her death.

On Oct. 3, fishermen found the jeans-clad lower torso of a woman floating in the waters of Lake Somerville, about 80 miles northwest of Houston. A human foot clad in a tennis shoe, found at the lake prior to the grisly discovery of the partial torso, was determined to be the foot of Wendy Aldrich.

The remains were so badly decomposed that it was three weeks before they were identified by the Harris County Medical Examiner's office.
The lake is 100 miles west of Livingston State Park, where Aldrich's 1986 Chevrolet Cavalier was discovered three days after she disappeared July 31.
The identification of the remains was made largely on the strength of keys found on a key chain attached to a belt loop of the jeans, which matched to Aldrich's car, her apartment.

[texaskowgirl]

Remains ID'd as friend of slain woman
ALAN BERNSTEIN, EVAN MOORE Staff
FRI 10/28/1988 HOUSTON CHRONICLE, Section A, Page 1, 2 STAR Edition
Body parts found in a lake about 90 miles northwest of Houston are those of a Harris County woman last seen in July at the grave of her slain friend, authorities said Thursday.
The remains of Wendy Aldrich, 27, were identified after detectives determined early this month that keys found with the torso fit doors at the neuropsychiatric therapy office where she worked, Harris County Sheriff's Department officials said.
An official determination was withheld until the medical examiner's office made a "presumptive identification," Sgt. Bill Olive said.
Other clues on the remains included blue jeans similar to ones owned by Aldrich and "a unique item" she was known to carry, Olive said, declining to identify the item.
Aldrich's mother, Shirley Snodgrass of Kentucky, said police told her the key to Aldrich's car also was recovered.
"They told me that in all probability, it's her (and) I suppose it is her," Snodgrass said. "They are issuing a death certificate and everything else.
"We are going to have the body cremated and sent here, then take it north to Ohio where she was born. We just want to lay her to rest."
Aldrich, who lived in the Bear Creek area, was the longtime close friend of Giti Hariri, also 27, a Gemcraft real estate saleswoman whose stabbed body was found May 12 in a model home in the 16500 block of Battle Creek.
In the following two months, Aldrich spent hours at her friend's grave, relatives said. She visited the grave at Forest Lawn South Cemetery at 8701 Almeda-Genoa in southeast Houston on July 31, then disappeared.
No one has been charged in Hariri's slaying or in Aldrich's disappearance.
In August, Aldrich's car was found in Lake Livingston State Park in East Texas.
On Sept. 29, the lower portion of the jeans-clad body was found dozens of miles west of the park, in Lake Somerville. A foot was discovered earlier in another part of the lake. Detectives theorized the body came apart through deterioration.
The Harris and Burleson county sheriff's departments are continuing to investigate the case.
Aldrich and Hariri were college roommates from 1981 to 1986, when they moved to Houston to find jobs.
Aldrich's disappearance stymied investigators for weeks. Puzzled detectives even consulted a psychic, who told them only that he believed Aldrich "was in a small, closed space."
Hariri's husband, Behrooz Juneghani, has declined to comment on Aldrich's disappearance and refused to cooperate with authorities in the search for her.

[texaskowgirl]

8/9/1988, Galveston Daily News

Victim's friend missing
HOUSTON (AP) — The parents
of a Houston-area woman are appealing
for help in finding their
daughter who disappeared last
week after arranging to meet
another woman at the grave of the
victim of an unsolved murder.
Robert and Shirley Snodgrass
said their daughter, Wendy
Aldrich, 27, told friends she
planned a late afternoon meeting
on July 31 at Forest Lawn South
Cemetery in southeast Houston
and then would return home,
Ms. Aldrich, who lived alone,
did not return that night and
failed to show up for work. The
woman who had planned to meet
Ms. Aldrich at the cemetery said
she had been unable to keep the
appointment.
Polk County authorities recovered Ms. Aldrich's car last
Wednesday in Livingston State Park,
nearly 100 miles from her home.
The car was locked and the
woman's purse was on the floor
with its contents apparently undisturbed, detectives said.