WALNUT RIDGE - State Crime Laboratory examiners have identified a body found in the Black River near Pocahontas on Saturday as that of a 14-year-old girl missing since March 10, Walnut Ridge Police Chief Richey Thacker said Monday.
Medical examiners identified the remains of Sidney Nicole Randall on Monday morning by using dental records.
A fisherman and his family found her body tangled in a fallen tree along a boat launch on the Black River near the Old Davidsonville Historic State Park on Saturday evening, said Lawrence County Sheriff Jody Dotson. Divers with the Lawrence County dive team, along with Randolph County officials, recovered the body.
Sidney’s identification was devastating to law-enforcement officials who had combed the county for weeks in search of the girl, Thacker said.
“We had one goal,” Thacker said. “And that was to find Sidney.
“It hurts. It’s tough on the officers,” he said. “It’s bad that something like that happened to her.”
Thacker said medical examiners did not determine the cause of death Monday. He said it may be days before he discovers how the girl died.
Sidney’s mother, Denise Cornell, reported her daughter missing on the evening of March 10 after she couldn’t find the girl in her home. Police said Cornell asked her husband, John Cornell, to call police that night. He left and did not return home.
Deputies found his body near his red pickup off Lawrence County Road 438 on March 11. Thacker said John Cornell, 35, shot himself.
Since then, more than 1,000 people assisted deputies in looking for the girl over the next 10 weeks. Search coordinator Buddy Williams organized several searches - many times in inclement weather - by breaking the county into grids and leading search teams by foot and all-terrain vehicles.
He also scoured the Black River several times and had searched the same area before where she was subsequently found.
“It was frustrating,” Williams said Monday. “We searched everywhere.”
Denise Cornell did not attend a news conference at the Walnut Ridge Police Department on Monday, when Thacker announced the identification. However, she sent a note with the police chief to read.
In it, she thanked law officers and volunteers who helped search for her daughter.
“We cannot express how much it means to us,” Cornell wrote.
She said she could not attend the news conference because it “was a time for grieving.”
Dotson said during the investigation, he fielded calls from people across the country who claimed to have seen Sidney alive.
“We looked at video footage from stores all over after people said they saw her somewhere,” he said. “We checked everywhere anyone said they saw anything.”
The case also drew myriad psychics who called the Police Department with tips of Sidney’s whereabouts.
Police speculate that John Cornell killed his stepdaughter, dropping her in the Black River just north of where the Spring River merges with it before driving about 3 miles to where he fatally shot himself, Thacker said.
Recent rains had flooded the Black River. The stronger current may have washed Sidney’s body from brush and carried it downstream, Dotson said.
“We spent a lot of time on this,” Dotson said. “Most of us have kids. If our kids were out there, we wouldn’t want [searchers] to give up.
“We expected this, but still it’s a tragedy.”
Walnut Ridge Mayor Don House said news of Sidney’s identification was devastating to the town of 4,800.
“It’s a crime against our young people. Finding her does bring some closure to the family, the community and our law enforcement. But it also brings a new grief and a new remorse to her family.
“We knew in reality that she was probably not alive, but we held out a flicker of hope that she was still alive,” he said. “Unfortunately, this weekend, that flicker was dashed.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 11 on 05/21/2013