Cole County Sheriff Greg White's office reported Tuesday deputies found the decomposed body of a woman who'd been missing almost a week, and that four people have been taken into custody as part of the investigation.
Chief Deputy John Wheeler said, in a news release, that Samantha Rhein's body was sent to Columbia for an autopsy.
Rhein's mother asked the sheriff's department at 12:30 p.m. Monday to check on Samantha's well-being, reporting she got a text message from her daughter on Aug. 4, asking her mother to come get her.
But the mother had not heard anything, since.
The sheriff's department started an investigation Monday afternoon and began running down leads.
That investigation led the department to recover Rhein's body "off of Route AA, southeast of Russellville," the news release reported.
The four people taken into custody were not named since formal charges had not been filed against them as of Tuesday afternoon.
However, Wheeler said, the four are each facing a possible felony charge of abandonment of a corpse, which is a Class D felony.