MILWAUKEE — Newly unsealed court documents detail where investigators stand in the search for a missing Franklin woman.
Sandra Eckert has been missing since March 2021. Franklin Police have said they're investigating her disappearance as a homicide.
The unsealed search warrants obtained by TMJ4 News share what detectives have learned since the day she was reported missing from a home she shared with her husband Wes.
According to the documents, their marriage was, at times, unstable. Most recently, people talking to detectives shared that Wes was upset that Sandra had asked him to contest his recently deceased mother's will - something Wes wasn't willing to do.
Wes maintains that Sandra left following an argument, while threatening a divorce, on the night of her disappearance.
Along with dozens of items including a gun found at their residence, warrants detail interviews where investigators learned at least one neighbor heard what sounded like gunshots around the time that Sandra went missing.
Most notably, the documents detail concerns that the Eckerts' kids had about the disappearance of Sandra.
One daughter tells investigators that she witnessed Wes once telling Sandra that "he would kill Sandra, stuff her body in a water heater."
The documents go on to say that detectives learned Wes did scrap at least two water heaters in the immediate days following Sandra's disappearance. Investigators even confirmed with a local scrap yard that Wes did scrap the metal. When asked what would happen if a human body somehow was put through their shredding machine, the documents say management "stated that the shredder would obliterate a human body and that there would not be anything left of it."
The documents also detail how police attempted to search for and locate Sandra in the days following her disappearance, even checking cell phone logs, text messages, and automatic license plate readers.
Still, Franklin Police have not charged anyone in this case.
Sandra's children continue to offer a $50,000 reward for information in this case.
