Three and a half months after the body of 19-year-old Erin Corwin was found at the bottom of a mine shaft east of Twentynine Palms, a judge has released her body to her family in Tennessee. During a preliminary hearing in September for Christopher Lee—a former Marine who is charged with her murder—Judge Rodney Cortez had ordered that her body be held for additional testing; in yesterday’s brief early disposition hearing, the judge granted a request to release the body. According to the Desert Sun newspaper, authorities have not released a cause of death for Corwin, nor confirmed whether she was pregnant. Investigators believe Lee, 24, had an affair with his former neighbor, and when she found out she was pregnant, they allege he killed her and dumped her body down a 140-foot mine shaft in the Rose of Peru mining district. It took searchers seven weeks to find her body. Lee, who had been honorably discharged from the Marine Corps by then and had moved to Alaska, was arrested for her murder August 17 and returned to California. Prosecutors allege special circumstances of “lying in wait” but they have not said yet whether they will seek the death penalty. Lee’s lawyer told the Desert Sun that he may seek a change of venue for Lee’s trial, due to extensive media coverage in the Morongo Basin.
http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/crime_courts/2014/12/02/erin-corwin-christopher-lee-hearing/19786821/
