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Police dig up 13th hole of golf course for body

By The Associated Press
Posted 11:10AM on Wednesday 2nd March 2005 ( 19 years ago )
<p>With the help of cadaver dogs and a University of Georgia archaeologist, authorities continued Wednesday to excavate the 13th hole of a Braselton golf course in the search for the body of a Winterville woman missing since July 2002.</p><p>Oglethorpe County Sheriff Mike Smith said that his investigators and Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents have been searching for the body of 19-year-old Kayla Marie Wills in a 30- to 40-foot portion of Traditions of Braselton since Tuesday, when they received a tip from a man who lived with her at the time of her disappearance.</p><p>Investigators have not yet recovered Wills' body and do not know the cause of her death.</p><p>Authorities have been carefully excavating the area using sonar machinery for Wills' body, believed to have been placed in a bag or sleeping bag before she was buried.</p><p>"We've got an idea of where it's at. We have to excavate the land make sure if it is located, we don't disturb it any more," Smith said. "We're not going to leave the Traditions golf course until her body is located."</p><p>Authorities received the tip from Robert Eugene Hill, 47, of Pendergrass, who has been charged with concealing a death and abandoning a body in Wills' disappearance, Smith said.</p><p>Hill has not been charged with killing Wills. The two were living together in Oglethorpe County when she disappeared, Smith said.</p><p>Hill, who remains in jail without opportunity for bond, went to the GBI's Athens office Tuesday after he learned authorities were investigating the woman's disappearance.</p><p>"Supposedly, the man did not kill her," said Oglethorpe County Coroner James Mathews. "He woke up and she was dead. ... He got scared he would be accused of killing her, so he buried her."</p><p>At the time Wills disappeared, Hill worked with heavy equipment, including bulldozers, at the golf course, which was under construction, Mathews said.</p><p>Smith reopened the case of Wills' disappearance after he took office in January. Authorities previously closed the case when it remained unsolved.</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x2866798)</p>

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