Three months after the bodies of 32-year-old Shardee McGill and her three-year-old daughter Janae were discovered in Alabama’s Tombigbee River, a cause of death has been revealed.
According to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency’s State Bureau of Investigation, the mother and daughter died in a murder-suicide. Multiple outlets, including AL.com and WJTV, confirmed the news.
The case garnered headlines after McGill, a Jackson, Mississippi native and her daughter were reported missing by her husband, Johnathan, around 8:30 on Sept. 22, saying his wife and daughter had not returned home after leaving on Sunday, Sept. 21. McGill would later report his wife and daughter missing the following day, stating that Shardee was in a black Chevy Equinox with the child when she disappeared.
Soon, the FBI, Jackson police, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations and the Alabama Bureau of Investigations all joined in a search for the woman and her daughter, only to reach a grim discovery days later as the bodies of Shardee and Janae were found not far from one another.
“The missing person alert in the case of Janae McGill-3 has been cancelled,” Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones wrote on Facebook at the time. “Search team authorities in Alabama located a body earlier today in an area in close proximity to where Shardee McGill was discovered. The body was later identified as Janae.”
Johnathan McGill was taken in for questioning in relation to his wife and daughter’s disappearance and was later released. Investigators would ultimately determine Shardee McGill drowned her three-year-old daughter before taking her own life.
“Over the course of the investigation, the determination has been made that there are no additional suspects involved,” Alabama Law Enforcement Agency’s Sgt. Reginal King said, according to AL.com.
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