Missing Lacey Township woman’s body found in creek

The body of a Forked River woman, reported to police as missing Thursday night after two futile hours of search by her family, is found in a creek in the same section of Lacey Township the following morning.

Police removed Kuo Chun-Mei Tsai, 72, at about 6:24 AM, from the south branch of Stouts Creek, behind the house of the Winthrop Drive resident who reported it, police said. She was reported missing at 10:26 PM Thursday.

According to Lacey authorities, she arrived in the United States last October, and had recently relocated to Lacey from Weehawken.

Family members said that she could understand only Chinese, was unfamiliar with the area, and suffered significant mobility impairments.

Neighbors told police that they had seen her walking, assisted by a cane, on Constitution Drive, but canvassing of houses and shops in the vicinity were fruitless.

Police said that "hundreds of residents" apparently saw her walking between 4:15 and 8:00 PM, and she was last seen on Nautilus Boulevard, near Cabot Street.

Lacey police pressed the search, enlisting a New Jersey State Police helicopter search team and K-9 units from the Ocean County Sheriff's Office.

It was at the end of Cabot, on a dock fronting the South Branch of Stouts Creek, that her cane was spotted.

Lacey PD Detective Kymberly Gudgeion is in charge of the investigation, aided by the Ocean County Sheriff's Criminal Investigations Unit (CIU), Ocean County Prosecutor's Office and the county Medical Examiner's Office.