Sheriff: Wife confessed to hiding husband’s body in 1994

A cadaver dog today has hit on a spot in the rear of the house at 17701 W. Pridesville Road in Amelia County, the former home of a Louisa County woman whose husband has been missing since 1994.

Investigators say they expect to find at the Amelia home the remains of Clent Chavers, who went missing when he was 69.

His wife, Ulisa Marie Chavers, 60, already is being held without bond in Louisa County after authorities last month found the body of her boyfriend, Reginal Cody Bowles, at the bottom of a 33-foot-deep, unused well in the 100 block of Garretts Mill Road in Mineral.

Police believe Bowles’ body could have been there a year. He would have turned 55 in December.

Ulisa Chavers had been cashing her missing husband’s social security checks from the spring of 1994 until her arrest last month. She also had been cashing Bowles’ checks for a year, authorities said.

Louisa Sheriff Ashland Fortune said today that Ulisa Chavers recently broke down in tears and told them that in 1994, she took her husband’s dead body, put it in a wheelchair and wheeled it into a hole she had dug. Then she buried his body, authorities say. They did not say how Clent Chavers had died.

Ulisa and Clent Chavers have a daughter together, who told authorities that her mother had told her years ago that Clent Chavers was dead, and that she shipped his body to relatives out of state. Meanwhile, authorities say, she told his relatives that he had been cremated.

Authorities have no record of his death.

Chavers is charged in Louisa with concealing Bowles’ dead body, credit-card fraud, identity theft and possession of a sawed-off rifle, which carry a maximum penalty of 25 years in prison.

Last November, Bowles’ son who lives in Florida contacted authorities and expressed concern that he had not heard from his father in several months, said Maj. Donnie Lowe of the Louisa County Sheriff’s Office.

Detectives visited his home in Louisa, where they were told by Ulisa Chavers that he was traveling in the Midwest on a motorcycle, Lowe said. They later found his body.

Check back with timesdispatch.com for updates throughout the day, and see tomorrow’s Times-Dispatch for complete details.

—Reed Williams