Police declare death of mother and son in national park a murder-suicide after they determine she 'strangled them both/Police said Charlotte Schilling, 41, and her son Owen, 10, were not attacked/Went missing May 10 and their bodies found ten days later.

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER and ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: 17:06 EST, 4 June 2012 | UPDATED: 21:49 EST, 4 June 2012

Police say a Nebraska mom who disappeared last month with her son strangled the 10-year-old boy before strangling herself in the woods of an Iowa state park.

Council Bluffs police said Monday that Charlotte Schilling, 41, of Plattsmouth and her son, Owen, both died after being strangled with plastic cords in a murder-suicide.

The Schillings were missing from May 10 until their bodies were found May 20 in Lake Manawa State Park, south of Council Bluffs in western Iowa, about 20 miles north of Plattsmouth.
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Gone: Charlotte Schilling, 41, checked her son Owen, 10, out of his elementary school on May 10 to go camping and had not been heard from since

Council Bluffs police say Charlotte Schilling tried to commit suicide with a plastic cord in November, but a family member intervened then.

Police believe she strangled her son first and then herself with the cord. Not rocket science.

Council Bluffs Police Sargeant Chad Meyers said Schilling actually lost consciousness during her previous suicide attempt, and a family member heard her fall.
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Unusual: The night before she disappeared Charlotte told a neighbor she didn't feel well and had fallen and bumped her head. But her husband said nothing was out of the ordinary

That time, however, someone was able to cut the cord off Schilling's neck quickly enough for her to recover.

Investigators said friends described behavior in the days before Schilling disappeared with her son as consistent with someone contemplating suicide.

For instance, Mr Meyers said Schilling gave away some of her personal belongings.

'Individually, each one of these people probably wouldn't have known anything was different,' he said.

'When you put it all together and look at it, it paints a pretty clear picture of someone who is contemplating suicide.'

The night before the woman and boy went missing, another neighbor, Athena Meneses, said she spoke to Schilling at a local Cub Scout meeting, where Meneses had taken her own son and Owen. Owen had wanted to join the group, Meneses said.

'I didn't really know her very well, but she seemed upset. She had a bump on her head," Meneses said of Schilling. "She didn't seem like she was really happy that night. She said she wasn't feeling well and that she'd like to go home. She told me that she had fallen down earlier that day.'

Relatives have said it wasn't unusual for Schilling to surprise her children with short road trips to parks, zoos and other nearby attractions. But the woman always called home and past excursions never lasted long.

Her family grew worried when neither she nor Owen returned home, and Schilling's cellphone went unanswered.

Happy: Carl schilling, left, with his wife Charlotte Schilling, centre, and their son Owen, right, in a family photo posted on Facebook in 2010
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Charlotte's daughter, Lindsay Schilling, 20, said that is when she became concerned. 'I called until her phone died - every minute,' she told KETV.com. 'The fact that she didn't pick up mine - that's when it hit me: there's something wrong right now.'

Investigators believe the bodies of Charlotte and Owen Schilling had likely been lying in the woods near Lake Manawa since May 10 when Schilling checked Owen out of Wade Robin Elementary School in Bellevue, Neb. But police cannot determine the exact date of their death.

Police found Schilling's vehicle at the park where the mother and son's bodies were later found. Schilling's cellphone and wallet were in her car, about a half-mile from where the bodies were found.

Authorities had to rely on autopsy results to confirm the identities because of decomposition.

Sunday night a passerby saw two decomposed bodies found at Lake Manawa State Park . After an autopsy officials confirmed on Tuesday that they were the mother and son

Schilling and her son were last seen in surveillance video from a convenience store near the park.

The video showed Owen hugging his mom, and Schilling kissing her son on the head, and the clerk said nothing seemed unusual in the store.
Cody Johnson, a clerk at the Lake Manawa convenience store where surveillance video captured Schilling and her son shortly after she checked him out of school, was one of the last people to see them alive.

Schilling bought a pack of cigarettes for herself, and apple juice and snacks for Owen.

'The kid came in all hyper, like a normal kid would be, and went around looking at stuff,' Johnson said. 'Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. They were just like any other mom and son. There was nothing that showed me anything bad was going to happen.'
Meyers said some of the items that were purchased at the convenience store were found partially consumed near the bodies in the woods.

There was no sign of a struggle.

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Charlotte Schilling Strangled Son Owen And Herself With Plastic Zip Ties, Investigators Say

By JOSH FUNK 06/04/12 04:12 PM ET

OMAHA, Neb. -- Police say a Nebraska mom who disappeared last month with her son strangled the 10-year-old boy before strangling herself in the woods of an Iowa state park.

Council Bluffs police said Monday that Charlotte Schilling, 41, of Plattsmouth, Neb. and her son, Owen, both died with plastic zip ties around their necks in a murder-suicide.

The Schillings were missing from May 10 until their bodies were found May 20 in Lake Manawa State Park, south of Council Bluffs in western Iowa, about 20 miles north of Plattsmouth.

Council Bluffs police say Charlotte Schilling tried to commit suicide with a plastic zip tie in November, but a family member intervened then. Once a zip tie is tightened, the only way to loosen it is to cut it off, so police said after Schilling tightened one around her own neck enough to restrict breathing it would have been difficult for her to remove it.

Council Bluffs Police Sgt. Chad Meyers said Schilling actually lost consciousness during her previous suicide attempt, and a family member heard her fall. Someone was able to cut the zip tie off Schilling's neck quickly enough for her to recover.

Investigators said friends described behavior in the days before Schilling disappeared with her son that's consistent with someone contemplating suicide. For instance, Meyers said Schilling gave away some of her personal belongings.

"Individually, each one of these people probably wouldn't have known anything was different," he said. "When you put it all together and look at it, it paints a pretty clear picture of someone who is contemplating suicide."

Relatives have said it wasn't unusual for Schilling to surprise her children with short road trips to parks, zoos and other nearby attractions. But the woman always called home and past excursions never lasted long.

Her family grew worried when neither she nor Owen returned home, and Schilling's cellphone went unanswered.

Investigators believe the bodies of Charlotte and Owen Schilling had likely been lying in the woods near Lake Manawa since May 10 when Schilling checked Owen out of Wade Robin Elementary School in Bellevue, Neb. But police cannot determine the exact date of their death.

Police found Schilling's vehicle at the park where the mother and son's bodies were later found. Schilling's cellphone and wallet were in her car, about a half-mile from where the bodies were found. Authorities had to rely on autopsy results to confirm the identities because of decomposition.

Schilling and her son were last seen in surveillance video from a convenience store near the park. The video showed Owen hugging his mom, and Schilling kissing her son on the head, and the clerk said nothing seemed unusual in the store.

Meyers said some of the items that were purchased at the convenience store were found partially consumed near the bodies in the woods. There was no sign of a struggle.

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PLATTSMOUTH -- Residents of Plattsmouth on Monday didn’t need official word from the FBI in reflecting on the lives of Charlotte and Owen Schilling.

“She was a great mom,” neighbor Michelle Andrews said, “always real active with her kids.”

A passer-by on Sunday night stumbled across two bodies -- an adult and a child -- at Lake Manawa State Park in Iowa, but they were too badly decomposed for immediate identification, so investigators could not confirm whether they were the 41-year-old Plattsmouth woman and her 10-year-old son, said spokeswoman Sandy Breault in the FBI’s Omaha office.

Authorities were waiting for autopsy results before releasing the names of the victims.

Andrews said she had prayed for the safe return of the Schillings, last seen May 10, but came home from a weekend camping trip to learn officials had found the two bodies at Lake Manawa, the place where authorities found Schilling’s car, and it all seemed to fit.

Still, she prayed for the woman she said was talkative, friendly and loved her kids.

Schilling enjoyed making a home for her husband, Carl, and their three kids: Tyler, Lindsay and Owen, Andrews said.

Schilling loved her dogs, pugs George and Gigi, and fawned over Jillibean, the Andrewses' Weimaraner. The two families took care of each other's dogs when one family was out of town.

“We bonded over dogs,” Andrews said.

Being neighborly didn’t stop there. The families helped each other out, with a cup of sugar here and a few tools there, and wouldn’t hesitate to lend a hand with the plumbing or air conditioning.

“Just helping when somebody needed something. We weren’t afraid to call each other to see if you had it or could help out.”

Christian Meneses’ relationship with Owen Schilling wasn’t so much about help as it was about roughhousing. The two boys hung out every day, said Christian, 8, who lives down the street. They used to wrestle on the trampoline.

“My mom calls me scrappy,” Christian said. “I guess he could be called scrappy, too.”

Christian said he was happy and sad that his friend was “on the other side.”

“We’ll miss him, won’t we?” asked Athena, Christian’s mom. “I really liked him. He was a good boy.”

Athena Meneses met Charlotte Schilling at Cub Scouts the night before she and Owen disappeared.

“She seemed really troubled.”

So is Plattsmouth, said Arlene Felix, who moved from Southern California to a house about a block down from the Schillings.

Felix works at Tobacco Plus on U.S. 75 and deals with a lot of customers every day. During the past week and a half, many have talked about the Schillings and what may have happened to them.

“They’re just shocked,” Felix said.

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