By ANDREW KRAMER : Associated Press Writer Aug 26, 2002 : 10:04 pm ET

OREGON CITY, Ore. (AP) -- A body found in a barrel behind a rental home has been identifed as Ashley Pond, authorities said Monday.

The barrel, found Sunday, was buried under a concrete slab behind the rented home of Ward Weaver, who is suspected in the girl's disappearance. Another body found behind his home in a shed has already been identified as Ashley's neighbor, 13-year-old Miranda Gaddis.

Weaver, 39, who has been in jail since Aug. 13 on an unrelated rape charge, has not yet been charged in Ashley or Miranda's deaths. However, chief deputy district attorney Greg Horner said Monday that he would present the case to a grand jury in hopes of obtaining an indictment.

Horner said it was too early to say whether he will seek the death penalty.

"We expected this," Tim Lyons, Weaver's attorney, said of the announcement. "We are going to await the return of the indictment and see what the charges are and proceed from there."

Ashley was identified through dental records, said Gordon Huiras, the Oregon City police chief. He did not take questions.

The girls went missing last winter, prompting a nationwide search that ended over the weekend just a few hundred yards from the apartment complex where they had lived.

FBI investigators returned to the property on Monday with high-tech equipment, a back-hoe, shovels and pickaxes to search for any evidence that might be hidden in the earth.

FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele said investigators didn't believe there were any more bodies on the property, but said investigators "do want to clear the property to make sure there's nothing else."

She refused to say how agents knew to look in the shed and beneath the slab for bodies.

"That's not something I'll comment on," Steele said.

Steele said investigators uncovered three more barrels but they contained only dirt. She also said investigators were nearly finished processing potential evidence inside the house.

The girls' relatives said Monday they were frustrated that the bodies were found so close to the girls' apartment complex.

"It makes a pit in your stomach. I get angry because she was right there the whole time," said Terri Duffey, Miranda's aunt.

"Detectives and police stood out here all hours with posters and they were right here all along," she said. "They came in and out of that driveway 100 times and they were right there, I mean right there and we couldn't do anything."

A chain-link fence erected by police around the property has become a makeshift memorial -- festooned with flowers, teddy bears, and notes in which people expressed their grief.

Throngs of mourners have been visiting the site, including some family members.

"We are never going to forget what happened. This is going to hurt my daughter for the rest of her life," said Wes Duffey, Miranda's grandfather.

"We know she's dead," he said. "We have an answer to that. The next question is, who done it."

Weaver weeks ago said he was a suspect in the FBI investigation, but denied any involvement.

Horner said Monday that Weaver had consented to the search that resulted in investigators finding the two bodies.

Weaver was arrested on Aug. 13 on charges of raping his 19-year-old son's girlfriend. His distraught son, Francis Weaver, told emergency dispatchers after the alleged rape that his father had killed Ashley and Miranda.

Last summer, Ashley had accused Weaver of molesting her, but he denied the allegations and was never charged. Family members and friends have said they had a close, and at times inappropriate, relationship.

Ashley's family last saw her on Jan. 9 eating breakfast with her younger sister before school. On March 8, Miranda disappeared from the same low-income apartment complex south of Portland.

-- Anonymous, August 26, 2002