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Julie Mott Mystery: Police Say Ex-Boyfriend Remains Person of Interest in Missing Body Case

By Cia Young
Published on: 17:55 PST, Apr 28, 2016

Julie Mott’s body mysteriously vanished from a San Antonio, Texas funeral home eight months ago and has not yet been recovered. According to KENS 5 Eyewitness News, Police say Julie’s ex-boyfriend is still a person of interest in the case.

KENS 5 reports that Julie’s ex-beau told the news team “he was no longer a person of interest” in the matter. Just days later, the San Antonio Police Department confirmed they were still seeking to question him.

Sergeant Jesse Salame told KENS 5 regarding Julie’s former boyfriend:

“He’s still a person of interest. There’s some things, there’s a little bit more information we’d like from him. We’d love for him to cooperate a little bit more… It’s kind of struck a chord with a lot of people.”

Julie’s funeral was held at the Mission Park Funeral Chapel North Facility following her death from cystic fibrosis on August 8, 2015. According to San Antonio Express-News, after the funeral service held on August 15, workers at the facility placed the casket that held her body into a rear hallway. When they returned to retrieve it the next day, Julie’s body had disappeared.

According to News AU, Julie’s body went missing on the her 26th birthday.

By the end of August, police were hopeful that Julie’s body would be returned to her grieving family, according to People. Sergeant Javier Salazar called the theft of the young woman “very brazen” and said that, in his 22 years on the police force, he had “never seen a case like this.”

Sgt. Salazar further noted that Julie’s casket showed “signs of forced entry,” but the perpetrator did not set off any alarms, and there was no indication of forced entry into the building.

At the time Julie’s body went missing, the owner of the funeral home, Robert Tips, said an exhaustive search was being made in conjunction with a police investigation. According to Express-News Tips said,

“We feel pretty comfortable that we know who it might be … It’s a process. It’s like a puzzle. You have to fill in the blanks and make sure you eliminate everybody.”

In January 2016, Julie’s family filed suit against the funeral home, where her body was to be cremated, seeking approximately $1 million in damages, News AU reports.

According to Inside Edition, the lawsuit claims that gross negligence was involved in Julie’s disappearance and notes that following the memorial service “… but before the body was transferred to the crematorium,” the funeral home “lost possession” of Julie’s body “and to this day has been unable to explain how they lost the body.”

In early 2016, police told Inside Edition that, at the time, they had not identified a suspect, but they believed Julie was taken by an individual who was obsessed with her or did not want her body to be cremated.

According to News AU, Julie dated her ex-boyfriend for six years, but she had not been seeing him for about two years. Nevertheless, he reportedly attended her funeral services and staff at the facility told police he was the last to leave the funeral home, according to News AU.

A police incident report later revealed that police had identified someone as a person of interest who had “reportedly been texting and calling Julie ‘obsessively’ before her death,” News AU reports.

KENS 5 indicates that authorities have examined Julie’s ex-boyfriend’s social media accounts after finding he made a statement on Facebook a few months ago indicating he would take a polygraph test at KENS 5. The news media outlet reports it had not arranged a polygraph with him and when confronted on the matter, the ex-boyfriend said he confused KENS 5 with a different network.

Although human remains were found at San Antonio’s McAllister Park in late August of 2015, the body remains unidentified, and police say it is not likely that of Julie, according to KENS 5.

[Photo by Gabe Smith/Shutterstock Image]

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