Body of Missing Heather Schwab Found As Police Make Arrest

The hunt for missing woman Heather Louise Schwab ended on Sunday morning when police discovered her body inside a home they were searching.

The 35-year-old was found at the home of Chad Christopher Stevens, 42, after detectives obtained a warrant to search the property at Pearson Avenue in McKinney, Texas. He was subsequently arrested at the scene and charged with tampering with evidence, according to police.

CBS News Texas reported that Stevens was also charged with assault causing bodily injury, but a police statement released online did not reference that. Schwab had previously been reported missing, local station Fox 4 KDFW reported.

Newsweek has reached out to the McKinney Police Department by email seeking further information and comment.

The discovery of Schwab's body follows a string of similar searches for missing women in recent months and comes after another missing Texas woman was found dead in September. There is no suggestion these events are linked. The decomposed body of 22-year-old Monica Alcantar, 22, was found in a parking garage two weeks after she went missing in Houston. Police searching for missing 49-year-old Kara Taylor found human remains at a landfill site in Oregon in August and charged a suspect with murder and abuse of a corpse.

According to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs), some 600,000 people go missing in the U.S. every year.

Details about the latest incident in McKinney are sparse, and little information has been released publicly about either Schwab or Stevens. It is not clear if the pair were known to each other.

A McKinney Police Department spokesperson shared details about the discovery on X, the social media site previously known as Twitter, on Sunday.

The news release said: "McKinney Police Detectives recently received information that a body may be located in the 600 block of Pearson Ave. Detectives obtained a search warrant and located the body of 35-year-old Heather Louise Schwab at the home of 42-year-old Chad Christopher Stevens this morning.

"Stevens was arrested at the scene and is currently charged with Tampering with Evidence. The investigation is in the very early stages and is ongoing... Our hearts go out to Heather's family, friends, and neighbors during this extremely difficult time."

Detectives appealed for anyone with information about Schwab, Stevens, or the incident, to call Detective Monte Robertson on 972-547-2724.