Insets: Michel Fournier, Susan Lane-Fournier and her two dogs (Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office). Background: Susan Lane-Fournier’s abandoned truck in Mount Hood National Forest (KOIN/YouTube).
An Oregon woman who disappeared last month with her two dogs was found dead on Friday, with cops accusing her estranged husband of murdering her just weeks after she filed to divorce him, according to court records.
Michel Fournier, 71, is being held without bail on a charge of second-degree murder for the death of 61-year-old Susan Lane-Fournier, who was reported missing on Nov. 22 after her truck was found abandoned in Mount Hood National Forest. Deputies with the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office discovered Lane-Fournier’s body on Friday in the Welches area near East Highway 26 and East Miller Road. Fournier was arrested “shortly after the discovery,” according to police officials. Lane-Fournier’s death was ruled a homicide on Saturday by the Oregon State Medical Examiner’s Office.
It was initially thought that the woman was a “missing hiker” who had gotten lost with her two Malinois-mix dogs — both of which are still missing — after the discovery of her truck, according to Clackamas officials. Authorities had called off their search for Lane-Fournier last Tuesday after four days of looking for her.
“From Saturday through Tuesday, dozens of search volunteers, drone teams, and air-scent and trailing K9s spent more than 800 search hours looking for Ms. Lane-Fournier,” the sheriff’s office said. “Based on weather conditions and the likelihood of survivability, the decision was made to suspend operations after all four volunteer search teams returned from the field.”
Lane-Fournier’s friends and family, however, suspected something more sinister.
“She’s ex-search and rescue in California, so she’s well aware of safety procedures when it comes to being out in the woods,” Lane-Fournier’s son, Dakota Lane, told Portland CBS affiliate KOIN last week while authorities searched for his mother. He added that “short of a large pack of coyotes or a very large angry bear, there’s nothing that will get between her and those dogs.”
“I don’t think she’s a missing hiker at all,” said James Evans, a friend of Lane-Fournier’s who spoke to KOIN during the search. He wound up being the one who found Lane-Fournier’s body on Friday, according to the station, hidden underneath a tarp.
“When I reached down to pick up the tarp, I looked up and I saw a pair of boots,” he told KOIN on Saturday.
It’s unclear what led Evans and other searchers that he was with on Friday to the area where Lane-Fournier — Fournier’s wife of 12 years — was discovered. Court records show that she had filed for divorce from Fournier on Oct. 31, citing “irreconcilable differences” that caused an “irremediable breakdown of their marriage,” according to local NBC affiliate KGW.
Online filings viewed by Law&Crime show there was an unsuccessful attempt to serve Fournier on Nov. 8. The couple had been married since May 2012.
Friends and family of Lane-Fournier’s created Facebook groups during the initial search for her last week, which now say things like “the mission for justice has begun” and “Always Our Phoenix” following Fournier’s arrest. “Always Our Phoenix” is a reference to the nickname that Lane-Fournier went by — “Phoenix.”
“We have all been quiet, we are all processing our grief,” a post reads from the “Team Phoenix” page. “This is not the outcome we had hoped for, but we were under no delusions that this might not be the outcome.”
Lane-Fournier’s brother, Steven Lane, wrote that her family had early suspicions about what had actually happened to her, as did friends — with countless people making posts about Fournier online — but they didn’t want to speak out about them and still don’t due to the possibility of tainting the police investigation and murder case.
“Let us all not go crazy with speculation,” he said Sunday. “I know you’re all anxious to get things done. The wheels of justice grind slowly. We do not want the bad guys [to] slip through the cracks.”
A post on the “Always Our Phoenix” page describes Lane-Fournier as “an artist, a creator, a healer, and a connector” who lived in a “small, sunlit home on the edge of the forest, where her walls bore the hues of her soul.” A candlelight vigil is scheduled to happen for her on Monday night.
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