Missing Alabama Woman: Police Testing Items In 2008 Case

HUNTSVILLE, AL — Investigators will analyze possible evidence in the case of an Alabama woman who disappeared nine years ago.

Authorities refused to disclose what they discovered Wednesday while looking for the remains of Jennifer Fay Powers in a rural area near Huntsville, Alabama, about 85 miles north of Birmingham. The possible evidence was found inside the home where she was last seen. Sheriff's Capt. Michael Salomonsky told WHNT-TV testing is the next step.

"We are going to submit those items to various labs for analysis and see if they can come back with any hair, fibers, blood, anything that we call trace evidence," said Salomonsky, of the Madison County Sheriff's Office. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Powers' husband told authorities she went outside on July 12, 2008, and never came back. She was 29 at the time, and a married mother of three.

Powers struggled with drugs, family members said, but wouldn't abandon her family. Investigators believe someone killed her, Salomonsky said, and authorities have a person of interest.

"You pray every day that she'll be found, and that's all you can do," said Shirley Locke, Powers' mother. "I just praise the Lord that they're still looking after all this time."

The search concentrated around the house where Powers and her family lived when she was last seen. Another family now owns the house and cooperated with the search, officials said.

Deputies said they used dogs that can detect human remains along with new technology that wasn't available when Powers vanished.

"What we have is ground penetrating radar, which we didn't have nine years ago," said Salomonsky. "It penetrates the ground to a certain distance. It tells you if there are voids, holes, or metal objects."

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