KALAMAZOO, Mich. (WOOD) — Court records provide a clue about what may have happened to the body of Heather Kelley, the mother of eight who disappeared more than a year ago in Kalamazoo County and is presumed dead.
A witness told police that the boyfriend accused in her murder admitted to killing her and disposing of her body in a dumpster.
Despite that, police have not searched any landfills and say they aren’t planning on it.
Police say there’s plenty of evidence that Kelley, 35, of Portage, was killed in December 2022 and that her obsessive boyfriend, Carlos Watts Jr., 39, is the killer.
What they don’t have is her body, despite months of searching.
“Obviously our goals were to find the person who did this and hold them accountable that process is currently ongoing — and, secondly, our main concern is trying to find her, for no other reason than to bring some closure to the family,” Portage Department of Public Safety Director Nicholas Armold said.
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According to an arrest warrant affidavit, Watts told someone that he struck Kelley in the head before dumping her body, but the affidavit doesn’t say where the dumpster was or who provided that information.
But other court records show that Watts’ brother, Jordan, admitted to police that he “burned Heather’s car at Carlos’ direction and that Carlos killed Heather with a hammer or other blunt object due to infidelity or issues within their relationship.”
Jordan Watts was charged in federal court on three counts of sexual exploitation of a child, but a judge recently dismissed those charges at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
When asked if there was a chance Kelley’s body was in a landfill, the Portage public safety director said: “Well, I think at this point, not knowing where she is at all, I think there’s a chance she could be anywhere.”
Kalamazoo County doesn’t have its own landfill. State records show that most of the 280,000-plus tons of waste produced each year in the county goes to two dumps: Republic Services’ C&C Sanitary Landfills near Marshall and Best Way Disposal’s Orchard Hill Sanitary Landfill in Berrien County.
Landfill searches aren’t often fruitful and they’re expensive. The public safety director said it would cost $1 million a day.
“Obviously, the difficulties in doing that are immense, if not impossible, depending on whether or not you have enough detailed information to not only identify what landfill but where, when,” Armold said. “And I’m not sure we have those details.”
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The government in Canada recently pledged $40 million ($30 million in U.S. dollars) to search a landfill for the bodies of two Indigenous women murdered more than two years ago by a serial killer.
In 2010, police picked through the South Kent Landfill for three days for the body of 2-year-old Jozlynn Martinez after her killer told them he had thrown her in the trash on the West Side of Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids police searched an area about half the size of a football field, going 15 feet deep, but found no sign of the girl. Her killer, Jeffrey Malmberg, now 54, is serving 30 to 90 years in prison for second-degree murder.
Forensic investigator Paul Laska oversaw the search for the body of 10-year-old kidnap victim Andrea Parsons in a Florida landfill in 1993: dozens of searchers, a month of digging, four cadaver dogs and a pretty good idea where her body should be, if it was there at all.
Landfills, he said, keep good records of where they bury their trash.
“They were able to determine that she should have been about 12 foot under the land surface,” Laska said.
The dogs found other human traces, including a bag of hair from a barber shop, but no body.
“They overlooked anything that was not human scent,” he said. “They were only interested in one thing, and that was finding a body.”
He said it would make sense to search a landfill if police have evidence a body was left in a dumpster.
“That’s what we went on, that’s what we had to go on,” he said. “In the back of our minds, we didn’t think she was there. We felt it was a necessity for us to do it; it was morally the right thing for us to do, that we could not leave any stone unturned.”
Even months later, he said, it’s not too late to search.
“The bones are still going to survive and with the bones you’re still going to have scent, so that should still work for the dogs,” he said. “So I don’t think it would be completely destroyed. I think you would have something to find.”
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In a neighborhood near East Michigan Avenue and Sprinkle Road, next to where Heather Kelley’s fire-damaged car was found, some residents remain convinced her body is not far away. Neighbors said police searched the area for about a week shortly after Kelley disappeared.
“At first we saw the helicopters and then we knew something was up. Then there were dogs, a lot of police, and we could see that they had found stuff,” neighbor Kim Burgess said. “I do think she’s either back there in the woods or she’s in that pond.”
She was referring to the pond where she watched divers search.
In the adjoining woods, police found women’s underwear, women’s jeans, boots and a durag. Tests found the jeans and durag had DNA from Kelley and Watts, court records say.
“That pond back there is mostly just mud,” neighbor Sean Nuyen said. “It doesn’t fill up with water anymore, so there’s a good possibility that she could be stuck in the mud. I feel like if they drain that muddy pond, they might find her.”
Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting refused to discuss the search or details of the case.
“I can’t even imagine what Heather’s family is going through,” Getting told Target 8. “Not having located her remains is obviously very frustrating for us, and I can’t imagine how difficult it is for them.”
Finding the body would also bolster the criminal case.
“Clearly to do a no-body homicide case is more difficult and finding her and whatever evidence may be with her could prove to be valuable,” the Portage public safety director said.
However, plenty of killers have been convicted without a body, notably Jeffrey Willis in the 2013 kidnapping and murder of Jessica Heeringa in Muskegon County.
The Portage public safety director said he’s not given up hope of finding Kelley’s body.
“I can tell you that as recent as last week we were still searching for her,” he said. “We’ve been all over the place, certainly in Kalamazoo County, outside Kalamazoo County, and we’ll continue to do that and we’ll continue to follow whatever leads we have in hopes of finding her.”
In an email to Target 8, Watts maintained his innocence.
“I want Heathers (sic) 8 children to know 1000% that I had nothing to do with thier mothers (sic) disappearance,” he wrote. “You have clearly been given half and false truth information.”
Watts recently finished up a federal sentence for escaping from a halfway house, where he was serving time on a cocaine conviction. He is expected in Kalamazoo District Court on Sept. 9 for a hearing to determine if he’ll stand trial for murder.
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