Va. Mom Missing Since Tuesday Is Found Dead — and Man Who Led Police to Body Is Suspect

A Virginia man is in custody after leading investigators to the body of a mother-of-two who went missing Tuesday, PEOPLE confirms.

Alvin B. Keyser, 23, has been named a suspect and is currently being questioned by Middlesex County investigators in the death of TerriLynn St. John — though he has not yet been charged. Investigators are treating her death as a homicide.

St. John was last seen and heard from on Tuesday. Her father reported her missing when he learned she never showed up to work.

On Thursday, investigators were led by Keyser to a woman’s body about one mile from St. John’s Wake home. The body had been lightly covered in leaves and left in a patch of woods 20 feet off the side of a road, Middlesex Sheriff’s Major Michael Sampson said at a press conference. The body was later identified as St. John.

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On the morning of her disappearance, St. John’s father, Terry, stopped by his daughter’s home in Wake to check on her. There, he found the door open and her children alone inside. He then called the sheriff’s office.

Terry told local station WTVR that he believed his daughter had struggled with someone in her front yard as she was getting ready to drive her children to daycare.

“They looked through the woods and you could definitely tell there has been a struggle beside my daughter’s car,” he told the station. “Jewelry was all around, like it had been broken off, her cell phone was found in the bushes.”

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It is unclear how St. John died, Sampson said Thursday. Her body has been sent to the medical examiners office in Richmond, where an autopsy will be conducted.

Keyser has been cooperating with investigators, Sampson said. Last night, detectives reached out to Keyser after seeing social media posts online, Sampson said. He would not comment further on what the posts contained.

This morning, Keyser called detectives and led them to the body.

Keyser is an acquaintance of both St. John and the father of her two children, who lives in the area, Sampson said. The father is believed to have not been in the Middlesex area at the time of St. John’s disappearance.

It was not immediately clear if Keyser has an attorney who could comment on his behalf.

“The closure on this is not good closure, but it is closure,” Sampson said.