A Montana man has allegedly confessed to strangling a woman, stuffing her body in a suitcase and disposing of it in a dumpster, officials said this week.
William Glenn Olson, 29, was charged Wednesday with deliberate homicide and tampering with evidence in connection to the disappearance of 46-year-old Alicia Lindsey Wood, who was first reported missing on Nov. 30 and is now presumed dead, according to court records reviewed by HuffPost. Police said Olson and Wood knew each other prior to the incident.
As of Friday, Wood’s body had yet to be located, according to a press release from the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office.
On Nov. 30, a concerned neighbor called Conrad City Police to request a welfare check at Wood’s home, according to an arrest affidavit shared by local news station ABC FOX Montana. The neighbor told police that Wood hadn’t been seen in days and was not responding to calls or text messages. Wood’s car was also missing from her parking spot.
When police peeked through the window of the home that night, they noticed her home was “out of order,” with couch cushions on the floor and other items strewn about, according to the affidavit.
Later that evening, police entered Wood’s home. They found no sign of the missing woman, and her pets were running out of food and water, according to the affidavit. Inside, one officer saw what appeared to be either red paint or blood spattered on the floors. Wood was officially declared to be a missing person that night.
A tipster told officers investigating the case that her car had been located on a highway outside of Conrad on Nov. 27, according to the affidavit. Soemone had crashed Wood’s car and then fled the scene.
An inspection of the vehicle revealed blood spatter on the interior and exterior of the car, according to the affidavit. Police noted handprints inside the vehicle “that appeared as if someone had dragged their hand across the car locking mechanism,” as well as a .22 caliber bullet casing on the floor.
Police made a break in Wood’s case on Dec. 1, when her iPhone’s Find My Phone app pinged from a home in Conrad, according to the affidavit. A woman inside the home led the officers to Olson, who she said had wrecked Wood’s car.
On Dec. 3, the Cascade County Sheriff’s Office took Olson into custody on outstanding warrants and interviewed him about Wood’s disappearance. Court records show he was facing an unrelated domestic violence charge that was open at the time of his arrest.
Olson told officers that he and Wood had been arguing at her home when the dispute escalated and he killed her by strangling her in a headlock, according to the affidavit. He then allegedly placed Wood’s body inside a hard-sided suitcase he found in her closet and put it in the trunk of her car.
Olson allegedly told police he left the suitcase in a dumpster in Great Falls, near a local elementary school. According to the affidavit, sanitation trucks collected the trash from the dumpster on Nov. 27, and Wood’s body would have been offloaded at the landfill the following day.
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The Cascade County Sheriff Office and several other agencies and volunteers have been searching the landfill, but no one has found Wood yet.