A month ago, Tanya Shannon and her husband Dale left a holiday party in rural Streator, Illinois. Their car slammed against a utility pole on a country road -- Dale was found dead in the driver's seat, but Tanya had disappeared almost without a trace into the snowy night.
Now, officials in LaSalle County have discovered a body that appears to be hers, ending a weeks-long search and bringing closure to a mystery that had baffled authorities.
The search for Shannon was at its most intense in the hours and days following her disappearance, but with a good deal of fresh snow on the ground, it proved impossible to turn up any evidence of her whereabouts. Investigators found only a few footprints in the snow leading away from the car.
But as weather warmed up across the state this week, the search began again in earnest, and it wasn't long before the thaw turned up results.
The Chicago Tribune describes one local's reaction to the discovery:
Bill Durdan owns land nearby and was driving near the field today at about 9 a.m.
"We took a ride and my granddaughter said 'Look at that red thing in the field,' " Durdan said, "and then we saw the helicopters on top of it."
The body found in the field near the crash site matches the description of Shannon, and "that red thing" refers to the red party dress that Shannon was last seen wearing.
As yet, there is no official confirmation that the body is Shannon's, but LaSalle County Sheriff Tom Templeton told the Tribune that the search was "pretty well resolved as far as we're concerned."
As the LaSalle County Coroner's Office discovered shortly after the crash, Dale Shannon was driving drunk at the time of the wreck, with a blood-alcohol content over three times greater than the legal limit. Authorities are calling the crash "alcohol- and weather-related."