A friend's uneasy feeling about a parked pickup truck along Salmon River Road set off a search that would end, days later, in the discovery of a Welches shopkeeper's body in the woods off Highway 26. Susan “Phoenix” Lane, 61, vanished on November 22, 2024, and a Clackamas County jury has since convicted her husband, Michel Fournier, of murdering her. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.
Lane's friend Cari Gesch found her white 1992 Ford F-250 the day after she disappeared, parked beside Salmon River Road near the Old Salmon River Trail, according to The News Tribune. The truck's discovery drew search teams into Mount Hood National Forest, where crews combed the woods for Lane and her two dogs, Elros and Elrond. CBS News reports that the forest itself covers more than one million acres.
Lane's disappearance was initially treated as a missing-hiker case, with crews spending four days scouring the forest before the operation was called off, according to KOIN. Search crews ultimately logged more than 800 hours in the field, and the search was called off after four days.
A Community Search Becomes a Crime Scene
Lane was last known to have messaged a friend, Christen Prudence, at 10:28 a.m. on November 22, mentioning a planned Sunday sound bath, according to CBS News. She was expected to open the Hoodland Bazaar in Welches at 11 a.m. that day but never showed. A Clackamas County sheriff's deputy who patrolled the Mount Hood region, Aaron Clark, recommended that her boss request a welfare check, and two deputies visited her home that night, finding it lit with the door unlocked but Lane and her dogs gone.
Fournier told deputies he had last seen Lane on November 22 and had hitchhiked to Portland for a vehicle part. He did not call the sheriff's office about her disappearance until that Sunday, two days after she went missing. He later allowed investigators to swab him for DNA and take his cell phone, and detectives began collecting cell phone records on November 25.
Surveillance footage told a different story. Lane's truck appeared on camera with both dogs aboard at 12:26 p.m. on November 22, then her truck and phone moved west toward the Portland airport around 1 p.m. The truck turned up at Halsey Auto Parts at 1:38 p.m. with the dogs still inside, and Fournier was seen inside the store at that same moment. Detectives concluded Fournier had driven her truck there himself. About two hours later, the truck was captured heading back toward the mountain — without the dogs.
A Phone in the River, a Body Off Highway 26
Lane's cell phone was later found destroyed and submerged in the Columbia River; a man named Jim White retrieved it from the water. Her dogs, Elros and Elrond, were found dead beside the river with zip ties fastened tightly around their necks.
On November 29, a community member, identified as James Evans, found Lane's body under a tarp near a heap of trash in the woods off Highway 26, according to the Clackamas County account. Investigators approached Fournier outside his home with guns drawn within hours of the discovery. He was not under arrest when he agreed to be interviewed at a nearby police station, but he was ultimately arrested for murder after detectives confronted him with evidence, per Clackamas County.
During questioning, Fournier claimed Lane had poisoned him by giving him Gatorade mixed with poison, but the Oregon State Police forensics laboratory later tested the bottle and found it negative for known poisons and heavy metals, CBS News reports. Investigators also found .22-caliber ammunition in the house and a shell casing in the driveway, along with Lane's DNA inside Fournier's Volkswagen.
Divorce Papers and a Timeline of Violence
Prosecutors said Fournier shot Lane three times in the head, neck, and chest with a .22-caliber weapon — described in court as a .22 long rifle, according to The Oregonian. Lane served Fournier with divorce documents on November 20, and she was murdered on November 22. Their shared home was in Lane's name. Lane had married Fournier in 2012 and moved with her family to the Mount Hood area after buying a fixer-upper off Highway 26; she began working at the Hoodland Bazaar in 2023.
Prosecutors said Lane planned to leave Fournier. Sarah Caswell described the Hoodland Bazaar as a community hub.
Fournier faced a second-degree murder charge. Fournier said he strangled Elros and Elrond with a leash. He later asked detectives for temporary release to arrange his personal property. Detectives James White and Herman Monarch shut down the request.
Trial and Verdict
Fournier's trial for Lane's murder was underway by March 4, 2026. The trial lasted eight days. The defense criticized the questioning, while Fournier had chosen to speak with investigators without his lawyers. The defense called no witnesses. The jury found Fournier guilty of second-degree murder, per CBS News.
A Clackamas County jury found Fournier guilty of murdering his wife and of unlawful use of a weapon, and he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years, according to Clackamas County. He still faced a separate charge of first-degree aggravated animal abuse related to killing the dogs; CBS News reports he had earlier pleaded not guilty to the charge.
Caswell called the plaza a community hub, and Clark, the Clackamas County deputy who first urged a welfare check, described the Mount Hood community as tight-knit.
