Missing Md. Teens' Car Found With 2 Bodies

The bodies of two girls were discovered yesterday in Loudoun County in a car that belongs to the family of one of two Montgomery County teenagers missing for two weeks, law enforcement authorities said. Some officials said the victims apparently committed suicide.

Loudoun sheriff's deputies found the girls dead in the front seat of the car on an access road off Route 9 near the West Virginia border yesterday afternoon. There were no signs of trauma on their bodies, and the cause of death was not known, deputies said.

Rachel Samantha Smith, 16, of Potomac and Rachel Lacy Crites, 18, of Gaithersburg have been missing since Jan. 19, when they told their parents they would be attending a movie in Georgetown. Police and family members had said they were concerned about the mental state of both teenagers based on statements they had made in the past.

Early indications are that the bodies are those of the missing girls, said a law enforcement official who asked not to be named because the identities had not been officially confirmed.

"We're trying to determine if in fact it is the two girls," said Lt. Eric Burnett, a spokesman for Montgomery police.

The bodies have been taken to the Fairfax County medical examiner's office for autopsies. "It's still a good likelihood that it's a suicide," Loudoun Sheriff Stephen O. Simpson said.

The case has drawn wide attention in the Washington area and beyond. Photographs showing the teenagers have been broadcast on television and posted in public places, and e-mails were passed along by neighborhood groups, synagogues and worried friends. Descriptions of the Crites family's car, a dark blue 1997 Subaru Outback station wagon with a dark cargo carrier on top, also were widely distributed.

Montgomery police notified law enforcement agencies along the Atlantic seaboard, from Maine to Florida, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children joined in the search. Relatives have gone on television pleading for the teenagers' return and the public's help.

The girls, close friends for more than a year, spent the night at Crites's home in Gaithersburg on Jan. 18 with the permission of their parents. Smith's parents expected her home the next evening, and when she did not return, they called police.

Police immediately suspected that they had gone to the area around Charlestown, W.Va., based on a tracked cellphone call one of them made about the time they went missing. The bodies were found a few miles from Charlestown.

The Subaru was found about 2:15 p.m. yesterday by two people in an off-road vehicle on the access road, about half a mile from the West Virginia border, according to the Loudoun sheriff's office. They called it in to authorities as a suspicious vehicle.

Montgomery police were informed of the discovery by Loudoun authorities shortly before 4 p.m., and the families of both girls were notified by police late yesterday afternoon about the discovery.