By Todd South

Staff Writer

TRENTON, Ga. — Search teams discovered the body of a white female late Thursday afternoon at the base of a cliff in Cloudland Canyon State Park.

“A body has been found. It has not been positively identified,” said Kim Hatcher, a Georgia State Parks spokeswoman.

“It would appear that she fell off of the rim trail,” she said.

Dozens of searchers on foot, by helicopter and with dogs have been looking for Judy Charlene Payne, 45, since late Monday across the rugged park’s 3,500 acres.

“The family has been notified,” Mrs. Hatcher said. “The body will have to go to the crime lab to determine whether there was any foul play or if this was an accident.”

The search began after a park ranger found Mrs. Payne’s abandoned car in the park atop Lookout Mountain just east of here about 10:30 p.m. Monday.

The body was found at the base of a cliff below the West rim trail by searchers from a Department of Natural Resources crew, Mrs. Hatcher said.

Mrs. Payne’s husband, Mark, told police he had last seen her when she left their Rock Spring, Ga., home at 7 a.m. Monday headed to work in Chattanooga, authorities said.

She never arrived at work.

An intense search began with daylight Tuesday, and investigators with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation processed Mrs. Payne’s black Mazda Miata and her husband’s vehicle searching for evidence.

Authorities had said Wednesday nothing unusual was found, and that there were no suspects in the case.

GBI spokesman John Bankhead said Thursday that was still the situation, and processing the vehicles had not revealed any evidence of foul play.

Some personal belongings had been left in Mrs. Payne’s vehicle, authorities said early on, but Mrs. Hatcher said Thursday she was not aware what items police had found in the car.

The State Parks spokeswoman did not know how long it would take to identify the body, and said she had no information about the condition of the body or the type of clothing on it.

After exhaustive searches Tuesday and Wednesday, teams had pulled back the rescue dogs Thursday and began using steep angle rappelling techniques to continue the search, Mrs. Hatcher said.

Fresh teams from Department of Natural Resources and trained teams from the Georgia State Defense Force were brought in Thursday to relieve the first wave of searchers.

The popular park, on the western edge of Lookout Mountain overlooking Interstate 59, has been closed to visitors since the search began, and planned programs through the weekend are canceled, park officials said.

Campers who chose to leave were refunded fees, and those who stayed were not allowed to use park facilities beyond their campsites.

Mrs. Hatcher said this is a busy time for the park, but she could not estimate a definite impact from the closure.

E-mail Todd South at tsouth@timesfreepress.com

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