Lisa Geise Missing 2/26/89 GA
Evidence but no body found in Greer well Investigators had gotten tip in case By Eric Connor • STAFF WRITER • November 8, 2008 The excavation of a Greer water well for clues into the disappearance of a Georgia woman nearly 20 years ago ended Friday with the discovery of evidence but no remains of a body that authorities had suspected might be located on the property. Two weeks ago, Gwinnett County police cold-case investigators descended on a property on Becky Gibson Road of State 14 in Greer to look for human remains connected to the missing person case of Lisa Geise, who disappeared from Gwinnett County in 1989. Investigators believed human remains might be located in a well area on the property, Gwinnett spokeswoman Ilana Spellman said. Gwinnett investigators and the Greenville County Sheriff's Office and public works agencies excavated and searched the area over the past two weeks. "A thorough search was conducted and no human remains were located," Spellman said. "However, several evidentiary items were found in the search." Spellman declined to release the nature of the evidence found and what led investigators to the property. Investigators have said they don't believe the current owner of the property had any involvement in the case. No suspects have been identified, Spellman said. The excavation was completed early Friday morning, Greenville County sheriff's spokesman Michael Hildebrand said. "It will take several more days to put the soil back into the hole properly," Hildebrand said. http://www.greenvilleonline.com/article/20081108/NEWS01/811080322/1004/NEWS01

Gwinnett police take cold case investigation to South Carolina By ANDRIA SIMMONS The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Friday, October 24, 2008 Gwinnett police detectives traveled to South Carolina this week in hopes of cracking a decades-old case involving a missing Lilburn woman. Gwinnett police spokeswoman Cpl. Illana Spellman said Friday that detectives are investigating the case of Lisa Geise, a 26-year-old computer programmer who disappeared Feb. 26, 1989. Spellman would not provide specifics about what investigators were doing or what led them there. Master Deputy Michael Hildebrand of the Greenville County Sheriff’s Office said that Gwinnett detectives arrived Thursday and began searching a rural property near Greer, S.C., for clues related to a missing person. The focus is on a well and several other areas where detectives were tipped off that a body may have been dumped, Hildebrand said. The search was suspended Friday due to rain but will resume Monday, he said. Hildebrand said the property owners have been cooperative, and they are not suspected of any wrongdoing. “We have not found anything yet,” Hildebrand said. “I don’t know how much longer we’re going to continue to search.” Geise was working late at the picture frame company in Norcross when she vanished. Officers found a pool of blood near her work station. More blood was smeared on a 10-pound metal doorstop that police believe was the murder weapon. The body has never been found and no one has been arrested. Geise’s mother, Jean Wallace, said she has not been contacted by detectives when reached at her office on Thursday afternoon. She had no knowledge of any new developments in the case, although she said “it would be nice.” “I don’t have any information that I could share with you,” said Wallace, who lives with her husband in Pensacola, Fla., but stays in touch with Gwinnett police. “Sometimes if I don’t know the right questions to ask, I don’t know what’s going on.” Detectives pulled out all the stops in years past to solve the Geise case, including hiring a psychic and several dowsers, people who say they have the power to find where a body is buried by running a stick over a map. Authorities also dug through six wells in a heavily wooded lot in Southwest Georgia, where one of Geise’s former co-workers once owned land. They did so because the man’s ex-wife had told police she remembered walking through the property with him one day. As they passed several deep wells, she recalled him saying “these wells would be a good place to hide a body,” Maj. Tom Savage of the Gwinnett County Police Department told the AJC in 2006. The coworker who was the prime suspect in Geise’s disappearance now lives in Taylors, S.C., about four miles away from the site where police are digging. http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/gwinnett/stories/2008/10/24/cold_case_gwinnett.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13