A Kansas family is grieving the loss of Emily Sander, a porn star known as Zoey Zane, following the announcement by police that they've recovered a body that matches the college student's description.
The Wichita Eagle reports this morning that "a Butler County deputy and an El Dorado police officer found a body matching Sander's description at about 2:20 p.m. along U.S. 54 near the Woodson County town of Toronto, 50 miles east of El Dorado. The body was found on the fifth day of a widespread ground search."
Sander was last seen Friday leaving a bar with Israel Mireles, a 24-year-old resident alien with ties to Mexico. He is now the subject of an international manhunt.
Her family is grieving. "We loved her," grandfather Clem Sander tells the paper.
Police Chief Tom Boren says the public attention that the case has attracted because of Sander's involvement with pornography is "literally crippling our investigation."
He has said that Sander's work for the website isn't believed to have played a role in her disappearance.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram says about 30,000 people each paid $39.95 a month to look at nude photos of the teenager.
Mireles, the suspect in her disappearance, is said to have relatives in that paper's circulation area who aren't cooperating with detectives.
Anyone with information about his location is asked to call police at 1-800-572-7463.
We had to know one way or another," Sanders grandmother, Shirley Sander, said in a telephone interview with the Chicago Tribune.
Authorities said the body they found matches a preliminary description of the 18-year-old business managements student, who hasn’t been seen since leaving the Retreat Bar in El Dorado Friday night with 24-year-old Israel Mireles.
Authorities have not indicated whether it is known if Sander left with Mireles willingly or was forced to accompany him from the bar.
Photos of Zoey Zane seen on YourDailyGirls.com resembled the missing college student and Nikki Watson, a friend of Sander's, told the Associated Press that the two were indeed the same person.
"She enjoyed it. She is a young teenage girl and she wanted to be in the movies… she needed the extra money," Watson told the AP.
Despite media attention surrounding Sanders’ double life, Police Chief Tom Boren insists there is no evidence to suggest her Internet persona had anything to do with Sanders’ disappearance.
"The issue of the Internet and the spinoff of that has been literally crippling our investigation," Boren said.
Investigators are asking anyone with information about the Emily Sander case to call them at 316-321-9120 or the Kansas Bureau of Investigation at 1-800-KS-CRIME.
