Woman missing for four years found dead, stuffed in manhole at her house

The body of a woman who had been missing from her house in Colorado since 2018 was found stuffed in a manhole at her own house.

The 82-year-old woman named Sylvia Fren had gone missing from her house four years ago. Her remains were discovered by the family that currently lives in her house.

The person who now owns the house had called police informing them of discovering a trash bag inside a manhole on the property. The cops later found out that the bag contained remains of Sylvia Fren.

They have now charged her 54-year-old son, Richard Vandervelde with first-degree murder, tampering with a deceased human body, fraud-identity theft, motor vehicle theft, and abuse of a corpse.

Her son used to live with her at the time of Fren's disappearance. He had then said that his mother had left for California with a friend, insisting that he did not know anything else. Merely a week after his mother went missing, Vandervelve was pulled over by police in Missouri while driving his mother's car, per a report in The Independent.

Police then questioned him and found that he had been using his mother's debit cards, withdrawing more than $10,000 in cash from her bank account. He told the police that his mother had authorised him to use the debit cards.

His phone search history from 2018 revealed that he had searched for "knocking someone out with a blow to the head," "knocking someone unconscious," "how to knock someone out without killing them," "how to knock someone unconscious safely for a long time," "5 ways to knock someone out in under 10 seconds," and "how to knock someone out quickly and quietly."

An autopsy concluded she died from blows to the head and the manner of death was ruled a homicide. The four years of investigation concluded with Vandervelde's arrest in May. He is currently in Mesa County Detention Facility, awaiting arraignment on a $1 million cash-only bond.