An autopsy Thursday should determine whether the body of a woman found Wednesday morning by a well driller in a cotton field near Vienna, Ga., is Gladis Russell, authorities said.

Craig Rotter of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said dental records supplied by Logan County investigators will be used.

“The body bears similar physical characteristics to those of Gladis Russell,” Bellefontaine police Chief Brad Kunze said.

Dooly County Sheriff Van Peavy said the FBI and GBI worked the scene, about two miles from an Interstate 75 exit ramp. Russell, 85, has been missing for nearly a month. She and her husband, Richard, went missing from their Logan County home on Feb. 16. His body was found Feb. 26 near Chattanooga, Tenn. He had been stabbed.

Samuel Littleton II, charged with killing Tiffany Brown, reportedly admitted killing the Russells. He has not been charged in their deaths and is in a West Virginia jail awaiting extradition to Ohio.

Possible closure for family

Kunze said he hoped Wednesday’s discovery will bring some comfort to the victims’ family.

“We hope this can be the end, or the start of, closure for the Russell family,” Kunze said.

Mike Coder, one of the Russells’ nephews, said Wednesday’s news does bring some sense of relief.

“It’s been a very difficult process,” he said.

Coder said that prior to Wednesday, family members had been trying to decide how to proceed with funeral arrangements without the discovery of Gladis.

“Now this makes it easier because we can honor their lives and bury them together,” said Coder. “They’ve done everything together. They were a team.”

Rotter said the body was found 2 miles from Interstate 75’s Exit 112. It was fully clothed and 20 yards into the field from a dirt road that traveled off from Georgia Highway 27, Rotter said. The setting of a cotton field near a sandy road was similar to what Littleton described to authorities.

Van Peavy said deputies have been searching the area in the past weeks for Gladis Russell.

“We got a call three or four weeks ago and we had all our department looking. A couple of us drove within two or three hundred yards of where she was,” but didn’t see her.

Littleton is charged in the stabbing death of Tiffany Brown, the daughter of his girlfriend. Brown’s body was found under a pile of scrap wood in Littleton’s basement. Littleton remains in a West Virginia jail awaiting extradition to Ohio.