Valasca
November 21st, 2009, 12:33 PM
Gail Schoening's family spent 12 years scouring Broward County and chasing leads around the state for signs of the missing woman.
She had not gone far.
Plantation police found Gail Schoening's body entombed in her car at the bottom of a lake, only about 100 yards from her front door.
Although some questions remain, family members said they are pleased to finally have learned what happened to Schoening, they said Friday.
"We're happy she was found, but sad about the circumstances," said her mother, Arlene Schoening, of North Brunswick, N.J. "We'd been going through all the possibilities."
Gail Schoening was a month shy of her 36th birthday when she vanished in April 1997.
Her family said she left her apartment in the Gatehouse on the Green complex to catch a flight for a job interview in North Carolina. Recently divorced, she was hoping to be hired as a computer database analyst in that state. But she never made it to the airport.
Gail Schoening's parents worked with police to try to find her. A year after Gail Schoening's disappearance, an unknown caller requested a PIN number on her 401(k) account in Orlando, but the lead didn't pan out. Other tips and sightings proved fruitless.
The case did have one big clue: Her 1997 Mitsubishi Eclipse also was missing. Early on, the Shoenings suspected their daughter might have driven into a canal or lake. They hired a pilot to fly over bodies of water.
Police checked that possibility and sent dive teams to dredge several bodies of water, said Detective Robert Rettig, a Plantation police spokesman.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/plantation/fl-plantation-woman-found-20091120,0,5572904,full.story
She had not gone far.
Plantation police found Gail Schoening's body entombed in her car at the bottom of a lake, only about 100 yards from her front door.
Although some questions remain, family members said they are pleased to finally have learned what happened to Schoening, they said Friday.
"We're happy she was found, but sad about the circumstances," said her mother, Arlene Schoening, of North Brunswick, N.J. "We'd been going through all the possibilities."
Gail Schoening was a month shy of her 36th birthday when she vanished in April 1997.
Her family said she left her apartment in the Gatehouse on the Green complex to catch a flight for a job interview in North Carolina. Recently divorced, she was hoping to be hired as a computer database analyst in that state. But she never made it to the airport.
Gail Schoening's parents worked with police to try to find her. A year after Gail Schoening's disappearance, an unknown caller requested a PIN number on her 401(k) account in Orlando, but the lead didn't pan out. Other tips and sightings proved fruitless.
The case did have one big clue: Her 1997 Mitsubishi Eclipse also was missing. Early on, the Shoenings suspected their daughter might have driven into a canal or lake. They hired a pilot to fly over bodies of water.
Police checked that possibility and sent dive teams to dredge several bodies of water, said Detective Robert Rettig, a Plantation police spokesman.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/plantation/fl-plantation-woman-found-20091120,0,5572904,full.story