Mary Starkey / Murdered - (2009) - Amador County CA

Investigators from several agencies around Northern California are
investigating the discovery of a badly decomposed body along the
Mokelumne River.

According to Jim Wegner with the Amador County
Sheriff's Department, on Sunday around 2 p.m. someone called to report
seeing what looked like a human leg in the water west of the Salt
Springs Reservoir.

Wegner said authorities went to the location and did
indeed find a human leg that was badly decomposed. Not far from the leg
investigators located the rest of the body.

Deputies spent Sunday night investigating the area. Monday
morning, they returned with officers from the Calaveras County
Sheriff's and Stockton Police Departments.

The coroner is still working to identify the body and determine a cause of death.

The bones found last week in Amador County are the bones of murder victim Mary Starkey. News of the identification came on the same day the Stockton man accused of killing Starkey plead guilty.

Roy Gerald Smith entered a guilty plea in the murder of Starkey Monday. This on the same day Starkey’s remains were positively identified through dental records.

and

Investigators say the very same day Roy Smith told them where the body was, they formed a search party to comb the rural area in Amador County. They say it wasn’t the tip that found the remains. The DA’s office says a fire crew battling a blaze started by lightning, stumbled upon a human skeleton wrapped in a blanket. Around the same time, the search party was just a few miles away.

Investigators believe Smith murdered Starkey the day she went missing, June 15, 2005, then dumped her body the following day.

Murder Suspect's Wife Says She Saw Body

Roy Smith Appears In San Joaquin County Court Tuesday

POSTED: 4:03 pm PST November 29, 2005
UPDATED: 7:33 am PST November 30, 2005

STOCKTON, Calif. -- Prosecutors said that the wife of murder defendant Roy Smith told police she saw the body of a woman in their bathtub the day that a Ripon woman disappeared.

http://www.kcra.com/news/5430040/detail.html
Read more: http://www.kcra.com/news/5430040/detail.html#ixzz1XTyR32Rg

....Smith's wife told a detective that she saw a woman's body in the bathtub at their home, but she is now invoking her right not to testify against her husband.

The prosecution may now view the wife as an accessory.

"We now look back at the wife and see whether the conduct of taking the children out of the home, (allowing) the defendant to clean up the dead body, is, in fact, an accessory after the fact (and) makes her an accessory to murder," Himelblau said.

http://www.kcra.com/news/5438548/detail.html?subid=22100408&qs=1;bp=t

Maybe its just me, but finding a dead woman in my bathtub might make me inclined to call 911 on the way out of the house with my children. Ya, think? Heck, it might even take me the time to drive a mile down the road to calm down enough to speak to a 911 operator, but why didn't this woman think to MAYBE mention it to LE? Was one dead body not enough? Was she waiting for him to get to 3 strikes before he was out? Seriously, what was it going to take for this woman to call LE?

America's Most Wanted

...Two years later, Smith pleaded guilty to Starkey's murder in exchange for a life sentence without parole and also led authorities to the area where he dumped her body....

http://www.amw.com/missing_persons/brief.cfm?id=32727