He Was Cutting the Grass. Then, a Body Under a Mattress

A worker cutting grass in an industrial area made a grisly discovery this week—the body of a missing mom of three who vanished after reportedly leaving her home in Midfield, Ala., in February. Sergeant Michael Jeffries of the Midfield Police Department says the worker found the decomposing body of Tiffany Smitherman Osborne, who would've turned 31 on March 17, on Wednesday in Bessemer, NBC News reports. Bessemer police officials say Osborne's body was wrapped up and underneath an old mattress, at the end of an unfinished road in a section where garbage is usually dumped, per WVTM. The Jefferson County Coroner's Office IDed the body as Osbourne's on Thursday; cops are looking into her death as a homicide.

Police say the boyfriend of Osborne told them she'd left her house around 11pm on Feb. 17 to walk to a store a block or so away to get cigarettes, leaving her boyfriend in the house with their 3-month-old son; she never returned, he said. "She would never just walk out on her children," her mother, Cathy Smitherman, told Dateline last month, per NBC. "And she would never not let anyone know where she's going. That's just not her." Osbourne also had two older children, ages 7 and 12, who were with Smitherman when she disappeared. Her mother has custody of all three children. WVTM notes this is the second body found by workers in Bessemer in 2020. The remains of a woman who'd gone missing in December 2018 were found in a city manhole in February. That death has been ruled a homicide, though no arrests have been announced. (More missing mom stories.)