For almost a year, friends and family of Trisha Ann Autry held out hope that the teenage girl remained alive somewhere after her bizarre disappearance from her Hyrum home last June.
That hope evaporated this week, however, when investigators discovered Autry's remains buried 10 to 11 feet below the ground in an area south of Logan.
"Foul play is suspected, and this is now being investigated as a homicide," Cache County Sheriff Lt. Von Williamson said.
Williamson would not comment on how Autry was killed or how long her body had been buried.
The Utah medical examiner used dental records to confirm the remains unearthed Monday afternoon were Autry's, Williamson said.
"We don't have a whole body," Williamson said. "We recovered enough to be able to positively identify her from her dental records."
The grisly discovery was a difficult one for family members, who had worked doggedly with Cache County detectives to find the girl. Hundreds of tips were followed from all over the country, psychics joined in the search and a $7,000 reward from the Carole Sund/Carrington Foundation was also offered.
It's still unknown if the tips police received will lead to the reward being paid.
The past year has been especially taxing on the Autry family. While they've searched for their daughter for 11 months, Autry's father battled cancer. He died of complications from the disease just weeks ago.
Autry's mother, JoAnn, said she believes her daughter and husband are together again. Still, dealing with this week's gruesome discovery has been heart-wrenching.
"We feel relieved but also angry and anguished that such a thing could happen," JoAnn Autry told reporters during a press conference Tuesday evening.
Investigators are interviewing a handful of people they believe have information on the murder, but authorities refused to release further details.
"We do have some good, solid leads," Williamson said. "Up to this point we've never had anything to indicate the family knows anything about (the murder)."
Autry was 15 years old when she was last seen June 24, 2000. Her family speculated she may have left with a man she met on the Internet. For the past several months, investigators have followed numerous leads in that direction.
"We are still looking at the Internet," Williamson said. "There is still a possible connection there that we're digging into. We haven't discounted that yet."
Williamson said remains of a body were found late Monday afternoon on part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Research Facility south of Millville, about three miles southeast of Logan, with the help of Duchesne County's Uintah Mountain Search Dog Team. The body was positively identified Tuesday afternoon, and the sheriff's office announced its discovery Tuesday evening. Authorities did not say what led them to burial site.
The last time JoAnn Autry heard from her daughter was early in the morning June 24. It was a Saturday morning, and JoAnn Autry heard her daughter in the bathroom at 4:30 a.m. It was one of the few times she didn't go check on her, though.
When she awoke again at 6 a.m., JoAnn Autry couldn't find her daughter.
"Immediately I was concerned," she told the Deseret News during a February interview.
Family members hopped in four cars and drove around searching for Trisha. Even stranger, $70 in cash was still sitting in the kitchen, and the girl had taken nothing with her when she disappeared.
"If she'd have planned on being gone, she'd have taken that money," JoAnn Autry said.
An exhaustive search over the next several months yielded few results, and family members said they believed Autry was still alive, being held against her will.
"Our deepest sympathy goes out to the Autry family," Cache County Sheriff Lynn Nelson said Tuesday. "They have been waiting and hoping for almost a year that Trisha would be found alive and well. We are saddened that this was not the case."
Contributing: KSL TV
E-MAIL: lhancock@desnews.com ; djensen@desnews.com