Police announced on Sunday that authorities in Alabama have found the body of a northwest Florida woman who went missing about a week earlier.
Authorities discovered Navarre resident Cassie Carli’s body in a shallow grave on Saturday evening and identified her by a tattoo and information provided by her family, according to Sheriff Bob Johnson in Santa Rosa County, Florida. The grave was inside a barn on a property where authorities were carrying out a search warrant.
Citing an ongoing investigation, Johnson would not say what information led authorities to search the property nor where in Alabama the barn is located. The sheriff did name the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office and the Springville Police Department in Alabama as assisting in the search.
The sheriff also said the property is linked to Carli’s ex-boyfriend, Marcus Spanevelo, but declined to say how. Spanevelo had been living and working in the Birmingham area in recent months, specifically as a subcontractor with an audio-visual company in the Springville area, according to AL.com. The St. Clair County coroner told Florida’s WEAR-TV that the property was in Springville.
Carli was last seen at Navarre Beach on March 27 when the 37-year-old met with Spanevelo for a scheduled custody exchange of their daughter Saylor. Carli’s father reported his daughter missing to Santa Rosa County authorities the next day, and on March 29 investigators found her car containing some of her personal belongings in the parking lot where she had met Spanevelo to hand off the 4-year-old child.
Sheriff’s investigators interviewed Spanevelo on March 30 after locating him and the child in Birmingham, after which they announced the daughter was safe. Johnson said Sunday that Saylor is unharmed, and officials are in the process of putting her in the custody of Carli’s family.
The detectives initially returned to Florida without arresting Spanevelo but teamed up with Tennessee Highway Patrol and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations to conduct surveillance on him before arresting him during a traffic stop on Friday night. Alabama court records showed an arrest warrant for Spanevelo was issued in March after he failed to show up in a St. Clair County court on a Dec. 15 speeding ticket, according to AL.com.
“He was totally uncooperative. He never cooperated with us,” the sheriff said. “And that goes a long way. It’s your baby’s mother, and she’s missing ― and you’re not going to cooperate with authorities?”
Spanevelo is being held in Tennessee on charges of tampering with evidence, destruction of evidence and giving false information about a missing persons investigation.
Johnson said Sunday that the evidence cited in the charges relates to Spanevelo reportedly taking Carli’s phone and getting rid of it, though authorities are now in possession of the phone. When asked by a reporter at the conference what Spanevelo lied about, Johnson said only that “he lied a couple times in different scenarios.”
The sheriff added that he thinks Spanevelo acted alone, adding that he has continued to be uncooperative since Carli’s remains were found. It’s unclear whether Spanevelo has a lawyer.
Spanevelo is awaiting extradition to Florida and is expected to face additional charges after an autopsy on Carli’s remains on Monday in Huntsville, Alabama.
“She’s been telling me since before I got out,” Carli’s brother Anthony Carli said in a Facebook video posted Saturday by sister Raeann Carli. “She said if anything ever happened to her, she told me it was him.”
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.