An autopsy has confirmed an Ellijay man who died at the Gilmer County Jail Friday night died of hanging.
Charles Michael “Mike” Patrick, age 72, was being held in an isolation cell for the murder of his ex-wife Drusilla, whose body had been unearthed the day before in the couple’s backyard.
The two had divorced in 1970 but still lived together.
Maurine Sneed has lived next door to the couple in the upscale Ridgemont Subdivision for five years and was told by Patrick that Drusilla was out of town caring for their cancer-stricken daughter.
Patrick was a registered sex offender. When he suddenly remarried, his probation officer raised questions over the whereabouts of Drusilla who had not been seen since around December 2016. Discrepancies in his stories prompted further investigation by the GBI and the Gilmer County Sheriff’s Department.
“I would ask, ‘how is your daughter’. And he would say, ‘oh, she’s not well. And I tried to get Dru to come home, but she wouldn’t come’,” Sneed tells WSB’s Sandra Parrish.
She had no idea that her neighbor was buried in the backyard the couples share until she saw agents and sheriff’s deputies began digging it up last week.
Sneed says Patrick would often plant trees, but one particular day last year seemed unusual.
“When he dug that hole, my grandson was here and he said, ‘he’s digging an awful deep hole to plant a tree’,” says Sneed.
GBI spokeperson Nelly Miles was unable to release what prompted investigators to search the backyard.
Patrick was arrested Thursday after the body was found and charged with Drusilla’s murder.
The GBI, which was asked by the sheriff’s department to conduct an investigation, is not releasing information on what he used to hang himself.