Before disappearance, family had been worried for Plano woman found dead near Lake Lewisville

Nearly one week after a Plano husband reported his wife missing, police have arrested him. Karlton Dudley is charged with abuse of a corpse after his wife's body was found near Lake Lewisville.

As they wait to bring her body home to Louisiana, Sarah Dudley’s family said news of her death was a worst-case scenario they have feared for years.  

Patrick Dowd and Amy Pattison said Sarah, their middle sister, was a kind and caring soul.

“People were drawn to her. You know, she was always the kind of person that you would spend just a little bit of time with her, and you’re friends with her,” said Patrick Dowd.

In recent years, the siblings said they’d grown worried about the 32-year-old’s relationship with her husband Karlton.

“Over the years, we've all noticed that he just kind of just had this controlling nature,” said Dowd.

Dowd said it wasn’t always that way. But 11 years into his sister’s marriage, the family had noticed a shift. And when they got a call Saturday that Sarah never made it to work, which was a short walk from the couple’s Plano home, they wondered if she’d chosen to leave.

“We were all hoping that maybe she ran away to get out of the situation and she had a plan and somebody helped her,” said Dowd.

“We were going to call the bus stations hoping that maybe she was going to come to one of our houses,” said Amy Pattison.

Dowd, his wife Stephanie, and Pattison traveled from Louisiana to Plano to help search.

But then Wednesday, police confirmed the body of a woman found near Lake Lewisville belonged to Sarah and that Karlton was behind bars, for now, charged with abuse of a corpse.

Investigators said the ankle monitor Karlton was wearing for a previous crime, aggravated assault of a minor, showed him in the water around the time Sarah was presumed missing.

“You know, we were worried. It was in the back of our minds, and you try to prepare yourself for it. And when you actually hear it and try to make sense of it, you just lose sense of reality,” said Dowd.

For now, Sarah’s family said all they have are assumptions about what happened and who is responsible for their sister’s death.

Whoever it is, they said they’re hoping for a maximum sentence.

“I think it'll give us a little bit of closure to know that whoever the person was that did what they did to our sisters is getting what they deserve,” said Dowd.

As of Friday night, the medical examiner had not released Dudley’s cause of death.