More than 27 years after a Coweta County woman disappeared, her common-law husband was arrested in California on Friday in connection with her death, officials said.
Kevin James Lee, 53, was charged with murder and concealing the death of another person after being found in Richmond, Calif., Heather Petty of the Coweta County Sheriff’s Office said. His common-law wife, Ann Berry, went missing in 1991. Her remains weren’t discovered until 20 years later.
The couple lived together with their two young children on Glover Road. Officials said Berry called her sister in a panic one night and asked if she and the kids could live with her. The sister offered to pick her up, but Berry said she would drive over soon. After she never showed up, she was listed as a missing person.
A year earlier, Lee had been charged with battery against his wife, but the charge was dropped for an unknown reason, an arrest warrant states.
Twenty years after the disappearance, children digging in the woods found human bones, later determined to be Berry’s. They were located in a shallow hole about 95 yards from the couple’s home.
But Lee didn’t live there any more. After an arrest warrant was issued against him in 2012, it took the U.S. Marshals Service years to track him down in California.
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