CLEVELAND – The mother of two children whose bodies were found last week visited the shallow grave where they were buried and retrieved their remains Wednesday to take them back home to New Hampshire.
After visiting the site in Hudson, about 25 miles southeast of Cleveland, Teri Knight went to a city office where she met the discoverers of the burial site, Stephanie Dietrich and Dietrich’s dog, Ricco.
The bodies of Sarah Gehring, 14, and her brother Philip, 11, were discovered Friday in a remote wooded location with a muddy access road.
Their father, Manuel Gehring, 44, told authorities he killed the children in New Hampshire on July 4, 2003, and drove for hours with their bodies in his van before burying them somewhere along 700 miles of Interstate 80. He gave police several clues but said he couldn’t remember the location, then committed suicide in jail before trial.
Knight had made a public plea for help finding her children.
Knight, 44, and her husband, Jim, asked that their visit to Ohio be private, said Jody Roberts, spokeswoman for Hudson, a town of about 23,000. She said the Knights, Dietrich and Ricco, a 100-pound part-boxer, met for about 45 minutes.
“Stephanie is a very lovely, lovely person,” Knight said Wednesday evening upon her return to Hillsboro, N.H. “It was warm, friendly and comfortable. We made her feel comfortable and she made us feel comfortable,” she said.
The Knights retrieved the cremated remains from Mark Busch, owner of Busch Funeral and Crematory Services in Parma, a Cleveland suburb.
Busch said the bodies were received Monday from the Summit County medical examiner and cremated Tuesday, according to Teri Knight’s instructions.
“It is a whole new journey now that they have been found. Visiting this place gives us comfort,” Knight said earlier in a brief statement released by Busch.
Private services for the children will be held Sunday at Smith Memorial Congregational Church in Hillsboro, N.H., Knight said Wednesday night.
Dietrich, a grocery cashier in nearby Akron, declined to comment. “This is awkward,” she said when asked by phone about meeting Knight. “I’m not supposed to say anything out of respect for her privacy.”
Knight’s visit was planned carefully. The FBI assisted her to protect her privacy, said Jeff Strelzin, senior assistant attorney general in New Hampshire.
and chief of the office’s homicide unit.
“She wanted to go to the grave site and meet with Stephanie and Ricco, then pick up her children’s remains and fly home,” Strelzin said. “She very much wanted this part to be private, so we helped her do that.”
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