The search for a missing Kansas wife and mother who vanished nearly two weeks ago while en route to Alabama expanded today to the Mississippi River.
A sonar boat and volunteers deployed at 6:30 a.m. Thursday in the ongoing disappearance of 36-year-old Marilane Carter. The graduate of Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School and the wife of an Overland Park pastor, was last seen about 8:15 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 1, when she left home headed toward Birmingham, according to the Overland Park Police Department.
“We’re just combing the river to try to rule that out,’' said Carter’s brother-in-law Brady McLaughlin. “We’re getting leads from across the country – from Louisiana to Canada – but nothing is panning out. It’s frustrating to be so empty-handed.”
Family said Carter was coming to Birmingham to seek mental health help and that they believe she had reached out to Grandview Medical Center and/or UAB to set that up. The last known telephone contact with family put her in Memphis near Interstate 55 about 8 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 2.
Carter is married to the Rev. Adam Carter who is the lead pastor of Leawood Baptist Church in Kansas. The couple has two young sons and a daughter. The children are being cared for by family members while Carter’s husband is helping in the search for her. She also has family members in Fairhope. “He’s just trying to stay positive,’' McLaughlin said.
On Friday, Aug. 8, video was released of Carter checking into the Quality Inn in West Plains, Missouri alone at 3:37 a.m. Sunday. She was wearing what appears to be a plain olive-green t-shirt, black leggings, black tennis shoes and dark-colored ball cap bearing a white logo. Other video footage confirmed her checking out of the hotel alone at 6:08 a.m. and driving off in her 2011 dark gray GMC Acadia with Kansas license plate 194 LFY.
The last pinged GPS location of her cell phone was at 8:02 p.m. later that day near the Arkansas weigh station on Interstate 55 entering Memphis. A law enforcement air unit in Memphis flew for 1 ½ hours on a grid pattern covering a four-mile radius where her cell phone last pinged. Forensic cellular experts are working with the Overland Park Police Department to determine more about her last calls to family and her last location.
Yesterday, organizers in the search released video showing Carter at a Shell Station in west Memphis, also on Sunday, Aug. 2, where she fueled up and went inside with her cup to get some ice water.
Though multiple law enforcement agencies – including the FBI and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation – are working on the case, searchers are relying on volunteers to check the waterways “to hopefully rule out any possibility that Marilane and/or her vehicle are there,” according to the Facebook page dedicated to the search - Find Marilane.
Additionally, volunteers are posting flyers throughout the region, including truckers who are distributing them nationwide.
McLaughlin said family has also sent flyers to more than 100 hospitals accompanied with power of attorney documents to try to find out if Carter is, or had been, hospitalized any time since her disappearance.
McLaughlin said the family has repeatedly been asked if perhaps Carter doesn’t want to be found. “We don’t think that at all,’' he said, adding that her last phone calls were to the Birmingham hospitals. “We just want to make sure she’s safe.”
Anyone with information is asked to immediately call 911.