Searchers believe they've found missing man's body

Searchers from Texas EquuSearch believe they might have found the remains of a missing Pearland flight attendant Saturday buried at a San Antonio-area ranch. The remains, found in a shallow grave just off a roadway, were on property belonging to the grandfather of Terry Mangum, the man charged last week in connection with Cummings' death.

A series of purchases on Mangum's credit card led EquuSearch to a gas station in Schulenburg, between Houston and the grave site. There, early the morning of June 6, Mangum bought cigarettes, a lighter and a flashlight. "They got video of him being there at the store," EquuSearch's Tim Miller told the Chronicle. "Right away I knew he bought that flashlight for some reason. He was planning on doing something." A couple of hours later, Mangum bought another cigarette lighter and a drink at a San Antonio gas station about 14 miles from his grandfather's ranch, and 90 minutes after that, he bought some drinks and hydrogen peroxide at the same store. "The clerk said she remembered him coming in both times," Miller said. "He had mud on his hands, a cut on him, and he went into the bathroom and washed his hands off." The purchases established that Mangum was in the area, and EquuSearch knew he couldn't have gone very far off a paved road in his 1992 Toyota car. "It wasn't like he had a four-wheel-drive vehicle that he could just go anywhere, so that cut down our search area," Miller told KPRC.

Investigators are working to positively identify the remains; meanwhile, Cummings' father, Kenneth Sr., said it's hard to deal with the situation. "I'm not holding up real well, but I feel a little bit better than I would have if they hadn't found him," Cummings Sr. said. "There was no reason for some maniac to do something like that to him. He was unselfish and loving. He was passionate about his family, and he was a loving son who never once, ever, said anything disrespectful to me or his mother. He never missed a holiday, not a birthday or Christmas or even Grandparents Day." Mangum hasn't confessed to anything, though police say he did tell someone — presumably not a police officer — that he stabbed Cummings. Police believe the two met at Cafe Adobe on Westheimer Road on June 4, the day Cummings went missing.