New York: The Indian-American woman who was found charred to death near the North Carolina-Virginia border had a money dispute with her estranged husband, who is not a suspect but is under police watch.
Vanlata Patel, 57, had left Cary, North Carolina, where she lived with her husband before they separated, to board a plane Jan 16 to Canada to be with her son, but she never boarded the flight.
Patel's charred remains, found the same day by fire fighters battling a brush fire in Mecklenburg County in Virginia, were identified Tuesday by DNA analysis as those of Vanlata.
Though the cause of her death has not been released, officials were treating it as a homicide and exploring the possibility that she was abducted from Cary.
They have not named her estranged husband, Harish Patel, 59, as a suspect yet, but have searched his apartment and car.
Vanlata separated from Harish in September last after six and a half years of marriage. Living since with her son in Alberta, Canada, she had moved court to bar her husband from withdrawing money from their Swiss bank accounts, estimated to be around $400,000.
The Patels earned about $2,400 a month from interest on the accounts, but neither has had access to the money since Oct 7, when the court froze the accounts.
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