The body recovered from Lake Charles in Porter on Sunday has been positively
identified as that of a Kalamazoo, Mich., woman missing since Dec. 5.
Teleka Cassandra Patrick, 30, was identified by means of a
fingerprint, Porter County Coroner Chuck Harris reported this morning.
Although both the cause and manner of Patrick’s death remain undetermined,
pending further investigation, Harris said that no trauma was found on her
body and that the results of an autopsy conducted on Tuesday in Lake County
“to this point are consistent with a drowning death.”
Investigators initially were unable to lift a usable print from Patrick’s
remains and some reconditioning work had to be done, Harris told the
Chesterton Tribune this morning. Finally a good print of her right index
finger was obtained and it proved to be “an exact match for records of
Teleka.”
Confirming the identification of Patrick were her driver’s license, found in
her abandoned car, as well as a set of keys to that car and Patrick’s pager,
recovered from the clothing on the body, Harris said.
Patrick. a resident psychiatrist, was last seen in the parking lot of a
medical center in Kalamazoo on Thursday, Dec. 5, the same night her 1997
Lexus ES300 was found abandoned 35 feet off westbound I-94, at a location
directly south of Lake Charles.
On the night of Dec. 5, Lake Charles had frozen over, Harris said, and it’s
possible that Patrick was trying to walk northbound across the lake--in the
direction of the Travel Center of America truck stop on U.S. Highway
20--when she broke through the ice.
“The Porter County Coroner’s Office extends its condolences to the family of
Teleka and hope this information helps bring them some closure,” Harris
said.
The body was recovered on Sunday by the Porter Fire Department’s Dive/Rescue
Team, after it had been sighted early in the morning by a fisherman on Lake
Charles’ southeast corner. As it happens, the Indiana State Police, in
conjunction with Michigan law enforcement, searched Lake Charles on Jan. 23,
using a sonar probe placed into the lake through 55 separate holes drilled
into the ice. Nothing of evidentiary value was found, however, and Porter
Fire Chief Lewis Craig told the Tribune that the PFD had not been
invited to participate in that search.