Authorities: Elderly Woman Buried Alive In Leon County

By: Sylvia Villarreal Email

Updated: Wed 9:17 PM, Mar 28, 2012

Preliminary autopsy results have been released on how 86-year-old Bonnie Harkey of San Saba was brutally murdered.

Results indicate Mrs. Harkey was buried alive. In addition, findings released from the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences indicate the elderly woman received a blunt force injury to her head and besides asphyxiation, Harkey also had water in her lungs, a sign Leon county Justice of the Peace Doug Preston says indicates that someone may have also tried to drown her and that she was alive when buried.

Monday night Harkey's body was found in a shallow grave at a campground at Hilltop Lakes in Leon County almost 200 miles from her San Saba home, the same home where her caregiver, Karen Johnson was found murdered this past Sunday. Johnson's body was discovered by her own 12-year-old son.

Leon County Sheriff's deputies then arrested two people, Carl Wade Pressley, the grandson of the elderly woman and his common law wife, Lillian King.

Pressley led investigators to his grandmother's grave and to the R-V park where he had a trailer.

Pressley and King remain in the San Saba County jail charged with murder and could also face kidnapping and murder charges for Harkey's death.

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