Texas authorities believe they have located the remains of a 34-year-old woman who disappeared more than two years ago.
Courtney Martin was last heard from on May 16, 2023, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System. That day, she phoned her mother from an intersection and asked for a ride, the Smith County Sheriff’s Office said, per CBS affiliate KYTX.
“The phone call to her mother was her last, and no one has seen or heard from her since,” the sheriff’s office noted two years after she went missing, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. At the time, investigators said they suspected foul play.
Courtney’s last known location was less than two miles from her mother’s home. When her mom arrived at the intersection just minutes later, Courtney was gone, KYTX reported.
“We looked for her for months and months, exhausted all investigative means of finding her,” Smith County Sheriff Larry Smith said in a video shared by ABC affiliate KLTV.
On July 3 of this year, investigators received a tip that some young men had discovered a backpack belonging to Courtney near a pond in New Harmony, Texas. Sheriff Smith said the department sought assistance from a Texas Department of Public Safety dive team, but those resources were temporarily diverted to Kerr County to respond to flooding along the Guadalupe River.
When the dive team eventually began its search on Tuesday, Aug. 26, human skeletal remains were found “almost immediately,” Smith said. “That is what we believe to be the remains of Courtney Martin.”
“This will be an all-hands-on-deck criminal investigation,” he added.
The remains have been transferred to the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Science in Dallas for identification, according to Smith.
“There’ll be no I undotted or no T uncrossed until this comes to a final conclusion in the investigation as to what happened to Courtney,” he said.
Sheriff Smith also shared that Courtney’s mother expressed both relief and sorrow. “She is glad to have some closure. But, obviously, she wants to know what happened to her daughter, and we want to know as well,” he told KLTV.
The Texas Department of Public Safety and the Smith County Sheriff’s Office have not yet responded to PEOPLE’s request for additional information regarding the investigation.
