The boyfriend of the mother of missing 15-year-old Riley Crossman has been arrested and charged with Riley’s murder, police said on May 16.
Riley went missing on May 8 from her family’s home in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
Andy McCauley Jr., 41, was charged with murdering Riley, Morgan County Sheriff K.C. Bohrer said in a statement on Thursday.
He said Riley’s body was found on Thursday morning in Berkeley County. The body was left over an embankment in a rural mountain road section near the mountain top.
Breaking: Police in WV believe they have found the decomposed body of Riley Crossman, a 15 y/o girl missing out of Berkeley, WV for about a week. They’ve arrested the boyfriend of Riley’s mother, Andy McCauley Jr., and charged him with murder.
— Connor Spielmaker (@connaspiel) May 16, 2019
Positive identification of the body has not been made but investigators believe it is the body of Riley. An autopsy was scheduled for Friday.
Bohrer said at a press conference that McCauley was “a suspect since day one,” reported WHSV. He confirmed that McCauley was the boyfriend of Riley’s mother.
Law enforcement officers were surveilling McCauley at his job in Berkeley County. He was asked to go to a West Virginia State Police office and when he arrived, he was placed under arrest.
No pictures of McCauley have been released as of Thursday evening.
Disappearance
Riley’s mother Chantel Oakley told NBC that she was feeling under the weather on May 7. She took a nap before working that night.
“When she got home, she woke me up. She said, ‘It’s 3:30, time to wake up,’ and I said ‘Thanks, babe,’” Oakley said. “Riley said, ‘No problem.’ She was acting normal. She went toward her room and I got ready for work.”
Riley’s grandmother was at the house when Oakley left for work and Riley stayed home all evening.
“I got home from work around 10:00 p.m. Her door was shut, so by all accounts she was in her room, but I didn’t actually see her,” Oakley said.
Riley’s boyfriend later told Riley’s family that he was talking with her until around 10:30 p.m. while a friend said they were texting with her until around midnight. Phone records showed the phone wasn’t used until around 5:40 a.m. She tried to call her boyfriend at that time but he didn’t answer. Oakley woke up about 90 minutes later and found that Riley wasn’t in her room.
Riley Crossman, 15, was last seen in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia on May 8, 2019. Nobody has heard from her since, and her family is desperately searching for her. Can you, or someone you know, help find Riley? #Dateline https://t.co/ZWeUesO0BI pic.twitter.com/bcGgN2eWBF
— Dateline NBC (@DatelineNBC) May 13, 2019
Oakley began sensing something was wrong when Riley didn’t get home from school when she usually did and tried contacting her. She got in touch with her daughter’s boyfriend, who hadn’t spoken to her all day.
Crossman told the Panhandle News Network on May 9 that he was hoping she was at a friend’s house.
“If she is with someone at someone’s house, maybe they feel like this has gotten out of hand and so they’re just afraid to surface,” he said. “No one is going to be upset…everyone is just very, very worried. So we just want her to come home and everything will be fine.”
Oakley told NBC that Lance Crossman, Riley’s father, lives about 25 miles away.
The family began searching for her and putting out calls for help, but she had vanished and wasn’t seen again until her body was found on May 16.
