Tricia McCauley, an actress and yoga instructor, went missing on Christmas Day (Picture: Facebook)

An actress who never showed up to Christmas dinner has been found dead in her car in Washington DC.

Tricia McCauley, a 46-year-old who was a yoga teacher and a stand-in in the film Step Up, failed to turn up to her friend’s house on Christmas Day.

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After she then missed a flight she was due to take the next day, a major search was sparked.

McCauley’s brother Brian said on Tuesday that she had been found dead, which was later confirmed by police.


Her body showed signs of trauma, police said, adding that a cause of death would be announced after a postmortem.



A suspect has now been taken into custody.

A major search party was launched (Picture: Facebook)

A suspect has been taken into custody (Picture: ABC 7/ WJLA)

‘Tricia is gone,’ Brian McCauley told the Daily Mail on Tuesday. ‘No more details from police at the moment, just that they found her body.’

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On Monday, officers identified a man who appeared to have been driving McCauley’s missing car.

He was taken in as a person of interest and interrogated.

Police said it didn’t appear that the suspect and McCauley knew each other.