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05/06/2007Woman's body found10 weeks pregnant, Harrell was last seen in April '06 in TC
Authorities believe they found the body of Dawnette Harrell, below, missing since April 2006. Harrell’s mother, Dona Hart, above, said police told her not to discuss the case in the months after her daughter’s disappearance. 
TRAVERSE CITY — After more than a year of searching, authorities believe they've found the body of Dawnette Marie Harrell. Harrell's sister, Deanna Fredrickson, said Michigan State Police told the family on Friday they believe the remains of a body found in a shallow grave in Grand Traverse County's Whitewater Township is the missing woman, who was 10 weeks pregnant when she disappeared in early April 2006. State police said they found the remains while investigating Harrell's disappearance and are awaiting results of an autopsy to confirm the identity. "I was still hoping, but I knew she wasn't still alive,” Fredrickson said. "It's been really hard on my mother.” The mysterious disappearance of her pregnant daughter had Dona Hart constantly replaying possible scenarios of what happened the night her daughter went missing, she told the Record-Eagle. Harrell, 29, was last seen walking to her car at the Cherryland Center parking lot near Garfield Avenue and South Airport Road sometime between 1 and 3 a.m. on April 2, 2006. Hart had hoped her daughter had simply fled to escape pressures of a pregnancy and the stress of a failed five-year marriage. "I pray and hope that she was so frightened from the fighting and the stress that she just found her way out of this town and is safe hiding somewhere,” Hart told the Record Eagle in late 2006. "I just don't think that's it because it has been ... months and there's been no phone call, no letter, nothing. I just have nightmares that some hunter is going to find her in the woods.” Hart never gave up her search. She contacted the media, printed up flyers and posted the information on missing person web sites on the internet. Lamar Advertising Co. donated a billboard to publicize Harrell's disappearance. On Saturday a family member said Hart was too distraught to be interviewed. At the time of her disappearance Harrell was estranged from husband Timothy Harrell and the couple were in the process of getting divorced. She had told her friends and family she was pregnant by a co-worker, Justin Stair, 20, whose family lives in the 5400 block of Samels Road in Whitewater Township. A woman who identified herself as Stair's mother said late Saturday she was aware that a body had been discovered and that Justin Stair had spoken with police but was not in custody. She declined additional comment. Fredrickson said state police told the family the body was found near Stair's home in Williamsburg but not on their property. On the night she disappeared, Harrell worked a routine Saturday closing shift at Admiral Discount Tobacco on Munson Avenue until just after 8:30 p.m. Stair came to the store sometime around closing and the two arranged to meet at the Cherryland Center parking lot later that night, Justin Stair told the Record-Eagle. Hart said she called her daughter at work and Harrell told her she was going to talk with Stair and would probably not be home that night. After work, Harrell went to the trailer in Interlochen she once shared with her husband. She packed the last of her things to move in with her mother and said goodbye to her neighbors, who took pictures of her at the trailer around 10 p.m. Harrell met Stair at the Cherryland Center sometime after midnight, Stair said. Stair said he drove Harrell to his parents' house near Williamsburg where they talked for about 20 minutes about the baby, Stair said. He said he then drove Harrell back to the parking lot and dropped her off "sometime between one and three in the morning” on April 2. He did not watch her get in her car before he left and was unsure on the exact time he dropped her off. "I didn't think about it. I just let her out and left,” Stair said. Stair told the Record-Eagle he was at a friend's house in Elk Rapids immediately before and after meeting with Harrell. Hart filed a missing person's report at the state police post in Traverse City on April 5 and police put out a regional broadcast to law enforcement units across northern Michigan the same day, state police trooper Roger Bloom said. Tim Harrell's brother, Daniel, found Dawnette's red Toyota Tercel locked in the Cherryland Center parking lot the next day. That's when Hart said she became especially concerned and the state police listed her in the national Law Enforcement Information Network as missing. State police, however, didn't go public with the fact she was missing until almost seven months later. "That's what was so aggravating is that for seven months I was told to shut my mouth,” Hart said. "I felt totally helpless. I could do nothing to find my own daughter.” State police said they "wanted to exhaust all our investigative efforts” before going public, which they said generated a number of tips.
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