The search is underway for a second victim of the men convicted of kidnapping and murdering Alice Donovan of Conway nearly seven years ago.
Brandon Basham and Chadrick Fulks were convicted and sent to death row in 2004 for the deaths of West Virginia college student Samantha Burns and Conway's Alice Donovan.
The two men escaped from prison in 2002 and went on a crime spree which included the murders of Donovan and Burns. For years, the bodies of those two women were never found.
In late 2008, Fulks reached out and offered to help locate the victims. He sent letters and maps to Monica Caison with the CUE Center for Missing Persons in Wilmington, NC. After about a week of searching in January 2009, Caison and her team found human bones in Horry County. The remains were later positively identified as Alice Donovan.
Caison received similar maps from Fulks for Burns, and conducted a couple of searches that led them nowhere. Further communication of late with Fulks gave Caison new information, and they have been searching an area in Wayne County, W Va., throughout the weekend.
Crews have narrowed it down to a small area around some railroad tracks near the town of Lavalette. Cadaver dogs have searched the area, and volunteers are digging up ground looking for clues.
"I think we are at the best area that we believe now that Samantha Burns could possibly be," Caison told television station WCHS on Saturday.
"We will do everything we can to unearth this area, to make sure we haven't missed anything," Caison said.
As of this posting, the group had not discovered anything of interest.
Stay with NewsChannel 15 and CarolinaLive.com for more on this developing story.
