Cops Find Death in 2 States; Kids Missing

May 11 -- The discovery of the decomposing corpse of a young Portland, Ore., mother in the Nevada desert — the apparent victim of a couple who ended their lives in Florida in a murder-suicide — has sparked a nationwide search for the woman's two little girls.

The two girls, 2-year-old Shaina Henson and her sister, 4-month-old Shausha, were last accounted for on April 5, when their 21-year-old mother, Kimyala Henson, checked into a hotel in Redding, Calif., with Frank Oehring and Christine Mayer.

Oehring, whose ex-wife says he was the leader of a group of Satanists in Missouri, and Mayer were found on April 20, in a car at a rest area near Naples, Fla., both shot in what the Collier County Sheriff's Office said was a murder-suicide. Literature related to Satanism reportedly was found in the car.

Henson's body was found April 29 in the Nevada desert, near a rest area 37 miles north of Wadsworth, and she was finally identified on Tuesday. She had been shot several times, Washoe County Sheriff's Deputy Michelle Youngs said, adding that it did not seem that Satanism played a part in her killing.

"There was nothing about the way the body was found to indicate ritual or any of that," Youngs said.

Searching for Bodies

Search teams have been combing the Nevada desert around where Henson's body was found ever since she was identified as the missing Portland woman on Tuesday. The searchers, including dogs and a helicopter, have covered more than 200 square miles, and no sign of the two little girls has turned up, which offers hope they are still alive.

"We're not convinced the children are dead," Youngs said. "We are going on the assumption the kids are alive."

Oehring, 28, and his girlfriend, Mayer, 24, were named as the prime suspects in the killing of Henson, and police are hoping that the two may have taken the two girls with them after killing Henson and dropped them off somewhere along the way to Florida.

The tale, spanning from Oregon to Florida, began on April 4, when Henson agreed to go with Mayer, a woman she befriended four years ago when they met at a Portland, Ore., church, and Oehring on a trip to British Columbia.