Crime & Safety

DeGrace's Body Found, Autopsy Results Pending

The body of a 40-year-old Shelby Township woman who was reported missing early Friday morning was found today.

The body of a 40-year-old Shelby Township woman who had been missing for nearly two days was found Saturday afternoon in a wooded area in Washington Township.

The Macomb County Sheriff’s Department, with the help of a volunteer search team, found Michelle Kristen DeGrace’s body just before 1 p.m. behind a home in Quail Ridge Subdivision on 31 Mile and Campground roads.

The body was found close to where DeGrace’s blood-stained vehicle was found around 6:30 a.m. Friday. When police called the registered owner of the vehicle, DeGrace’s husband, he had already reported his wife and the vehicle missing.

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Macomb County Medical Examiner's Office will be doing an autopsy on the body to determine how she died. However, Macomb County Sheriff Anthony Wickersham told Patch.com that he does not suspect that foul play had a role in DeGrace’s death.

A passerby reported DeGrace’s abandoned 1999 Dodge Concord on the side of the road early Friday. When sheriff deputies arrived and found blood inside the vehicle, a search party was launched.

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After nearly 12 hours of searching Friday by land and air, the Macomb County Sheriff’s Department returned Saturday morning with about 150 reserve deputies, DeGrace’s family and friends and community members to search between 31 Mile Road and Mound and Campground roads.

The search party mobilized at 9 a.m. Saturday at Romeo High School and was divided up into groups led by Sheriff’s Deputies.

Mary Cratsenburg, a Romeo resident who did not know DeGrace, said she joined in the search effort because she said she would hope the community would do the same if a member of her family was missing.

DeGrace leaves behind two young girls and a husband.

Her friends said the stay-at-home mother would never have intentionally harmed herself or abandoned her family.

“She wouldn’t just up and leave her kids and her friends. She was very close to her friends,” said DeGrace’s friend Tami Bliss.

Another family friend, Ann Bowan, told Patch that DeGrace had gone to bed with her husband Thursday night around 10 p.m. Her vehicle was found abandoned about seven miles north of her home just eight hours later.

“We don’t know what happened in that time,” said Bowan.

Wickersham said autopsy results could be released as early as Sunday.

Stay with Patch.com for further updates.


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