Parsons, WV: Body found during search for ex-wife; man arrested

The Associated Press
PARSONS, W.Va. (AP) - A Tucker County man has been arrested after investigators found skeletal remains under a shed behind his house during a search for the body of his ex-wife, State Police said Friday.

Wesley Cale Sr., 42, is charged with concealing a body and is being held on $150,000 cash bond at the Tygart Valley Regional Jail, First Sgt. J.A. Wise said.

Cale was arrested at a makeshift camp near Lead Mine in rural Tucker County on Friday afternoon, Wise said. Cale was accompanied by his current wife and his eldest son, but Wise said neither was arrested.

Wise says it is uncertain whether Cale has an attorney.

Officers looking for the body of Cale's former wife, Bonnie, found human remains under the dirt floor of a small shed behind Cale's home Wednesday. Bonnie Woods-Cale has been missing since March 2002.

Police are waiting for the state medical examiner to identify the remains and determine the cause of death, Wise said.

"From the state of the body, it appears to us that it wasn't like that person took their own life. Plus it was buried," Wise said. "We're treating the investigation as a homicide."

Troopers have searched Wesley Cale's property near the Tucker-Preston county line before, but decided to return after reopening the case recently, Wise said. This time they returned with ground-penetrating radar to check three sites that interested them, he said.

Information on a State Police Web site for missing adults says Bonnie Woods-Cale was last seen leaving her home March 24, 2002 and had indicated she was heading to Cleveland to obtain a birth certificate for her daughter. Her vehicle was found in Webster County.

Wesley Cale was granted a divorce at some point after Woods-Cale disappeared, Wise said.