The murdered body of a missing California woman was found hidden behind a “secret wall” in a hoarder-style home that cops had searched just days earlier.
Renia Lewis, who was last seen on Friday, was discovered behind a “concealed entry into the attic” of a Vallejo home on Tuesday, according to the Vallejo Police Department.
Investigators first went to the house on Sunday because there “were indications” she had been there before she vanished, the department said. But “a cursory search of all rooms, closets, and places a person could hide … found no signs of the missing woman.”
Detectives got a search warrant to return on Tuesday, where they found Lewis dead in the attic.
“You would miss it because my baby girl was hidden behind a wall,” a cousin, Latoya Lewis, told KTVU of the property the family said looked like a hoarder’s home. “A secret wall they placed her behind.”
Douglas Irwin Shaw, 41, was arrested at his work later that day, cops said, without elaborating on how he was tied to the crime or how Lewis was killed.
Shaw “provided a statement to detectives where he admitted being responsible for this heinous crime,” the department said.
Lewis’ mother, Teri Lewis, collapsed when told her daughter’s body had been found.
“On our way [there] I was praying,” she said. “I just prayed, ‘God please don’t let it be her, please don’t let it be.’ And he didn’t answer my prayer.”
The mom and other relatives had also been searching the area on their own, finding her phone on the roof of a nearby school.
“We all came to search for her, not knowing she was here in the wall — gone,” her mother said.
Shaw was charged with murder on Tuesday and booked at the Solano County Jail, cops said.
The relationship between Lewis, of Berkeley, and Shaw was not immediately clear.
“He needs to sit there and suffer for my daughter because she didn’t deserve this,” Lewis’ mother said about her daughter’s killer.
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