The husband of a missing elementary school teacher said his “heart was crushed” Friday as investigators found a body in a wooded area behind the couple’s home in Maine, authorities said.
“My heart was crushed today,” Jay Westra wrote in a Facebook post with a picture of himself and his wife, Kristin.
Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Craig Smith would not indicate whether investigators believe the body is that of Kristin Westra, 47, although the search for the missing teacher had been suspended after the find to focus on the discovery, the Portland Press Herald reports.
Authorities later said the body was female. The grim discovery was made on the fifth day of searching for Westra, who disappeared from her North Yarmouth home overnight Sunday after telling her husband earlier that day that she was experiencing anxiety after several sleepless nights, he told NBC News.
Jay Westra, a pediatric oncology nurse, said he then contacted a licensed clinical nurse practitioner, who saw his wife later that afternoon. He later noticed her missing from their bed at about 3:30 a.m. Monday, but assumed she had left to sleep in another room.
After showering, Westra said, he started to “really worry” after noticing his wife had vanished from their home, leaving her keys, purse, phone and car behind.
Investigators said Thursday that Westra was cooperating with authorities. No one answered the door at the family’s home Friday, the newspaper reports.
The state medical examiner’s office is working to identify the body. Crime scene tape was placed around a home early Friday on Gray Road, but authorities declined to indicate what role, if any, the home played in the investigation.



