She Was Driven to Find Bodies of Missing Kids

The Ohio woman who found the bodies of two New Hampshire children said Monday she had been searching with her dog for months on a personal mission that her friends and family considered an obsession.

Stephanie Dietrich, a grocery store cashier, said she was motivated to look for Sarah Gehring, 14, and her brother, Philip, 11, by their mother’s plea for help.

The children’s father, Manuel Gehring, shot them to death in 2003 and told authorities he buried the bodies somewhere along Interstate 80 in the Midwest. He gave investigators several details about the spot but said he could not remember the location, then committed suicide in jail.

Dietrich, 44, said she went out searching with her dog more than 40 times since July near her Akron home because of clues suggesting the grave site could be in the area. Investigators had concluded that pollen found in dirt on Gehring’s shovel suggested the soil probably came from northeastern Ohio.

On Thursday, Dietrich was looking in the suburb of Hudson for things such as tall grass, sewer pipes and a wood pile that Gehring had described.

She came upon a mound and started digging. She found a plastic bag and pulled out what appeared to be part of a cross made of twigs. She called police, and the children’s bodies were removed from a shallow grave.