2 years after disappearance of S.A. woman's body, new developments emerge in Julie Mott case

Julie Mott, 25, died on Aug. 8, 2015, and her body disappeared from the Mission Park Funeral Chapel on Aug. 15, on what would've been her 26th birthday. Court records from the civil case filed by the family against the funeral home contain details never revealed to the public. less Julie Mott, 25, died on Aug. 8, 2015, and her body disappeared from the Mission Park Funeral Chapel on Aug. 15, on what would've been her 26th birthday. Court records from the civil case filed by the family ... more Image 1 of / 44 Caption Close 2 years after disappearance of S.A. woman's body, new developments emerge in Julie Mott case 1 / 44 Back to Gallery

Two years ago today, Julie Mott's remains disappeared from the Mission Park Funeral Chapel on San Antonio's North Side. The 25-year-old's strange disappearance captured the nation's attention, but the case remains unresolved to this day.

Now, new court documents examined by mySA.com reveal a previously undisclosed relationship between Mission Park and a third-party mortuary service whose employees had "unfettered" after-hours access to the funeral home. The same company was sued just months before Mott's disappearance for mishandling a body.

The documents are part of a civil lawsuit filed by Mott's family in January 2016 against Mission Park. The case is pending and though all parties to the lawsuit are under a gag order, the records help shed a new light on the case.

The newly uncovered business relationship is just the latest development in the strange, ongoing case of Mott's missing body.

A strange disappearance

Mott died of complications from cystic fibrosis on Aug. 8, 2015. The following day Mott's father, Tim, signed a Mission Park burial contract, agreeing to pay almost $7,500 in exchange for a memorial service and the embalming and cremation of his daughter's remains, according to court records.

Mott's body was delivered to Mission Park North, at 3401 Cherry Ridge Drive, where her memorial service was held around noon on Aug. 15, the day she would have turned 26.

At roughly 1:30 p.m., everyone left the chapel, with the exception of Bill Wilburn, who was described as Mott's "obsessed" ex-boyfriend. At the time of her death, Wilburn and Mott had been separated for two years.

According to court documents, Wilburn remained in the chapel for an extra 10 to 15 minutes after everyone left and was then seen out by a Mission Park employee, who locked the door behind him.

Mott's casket was moved to a hallway to await transfer to a different Mission Park location for cremation, and around 4:30 p.m., Mission Park staff locked up the building and activated the building's ADT alarm system.

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The next morning, an employee discovered Mott's casket was empty. One of the hinges on the casket had been damaged, and the bier on which it was resting was found in an "unnatural" position by an exit door, according to expert testimony given in the civil case. According to a police report, there were no signs of forced entry, and the building's security system was never triggered.

Police launched an investigation into the disappearance of Mott's body, and Wilburn was immediately named a person of interest in the case.

Mission Park Owner Robert "Dick" Tips, who had previously employed Mott's father as a pilot for his private aircraft and at one time rented a home to the Mott family, offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the people responsible for Mott's disappearance, and multiple search parties for the remains were conducted.

None were successful.

"We just want our daughter's remains returned so we can have some closure to our grief," Tim Mott told reporters a week after the disappearance.

The location of Mott's body remains unknown today.

A newly uncovered business relationship

At the heart of the new developments is a relationship between Mission Park Funeral Chapel & Cemeteries and a third-party mortuary service company, Beyer & Beitel.

Mott family attorneys say Tips and his wife Kristin Tips, the president of MPII, Inc., the parent company of Mission Park, either didn't know or deliberately "sought to conceal" the fact that Mission Park subcontracted services from Beyer & Beitel for years.

According to court records, Beyer & Beitel employees had "unfettered" after-hours access, exterior door keys and alarm codes to Mission Park facilities, including the location on Cherry Ridge Drive from which Mott's body disappeared.

"After initially denying the use of subcontractors to transport and embalm deceased loved ones, Mission Park now admits that they have used the subcontractor for many years, without any supervision to speak of, by Mission Park," Mott family attorneys allege.

According to court documents filed by Mott family attorneys in the civil case accusing Mission Park of gross negligence, Beyer & Beitel employees were tasked with performing "the vast majority, if not all, of the transportation and embalming" of bodies entrusted to Mission Park.

Bexar County property records show that MPII, Inc., even serves as Beyer & Beitel's landlord. The company is the listed owner of a building at 211 Brooklyn Avenue, where Beyer & Beitel conducts business.

The new development has placed increased scrutiny on the Tips and Mission Park's past security protocols, according to a source with knowledge of the trial.

RELATED: Everything we know about the theft of Julie Mott's body from a San Antonio funeral home

Neither the Tips nor the Motts were available for comment as the presiding judge in the case issued a gag order to both parties on June 30, 2016, barring them from speaking with members of the press.

"While the Tips would love to talk to you about Julie's case, they cannot," said Ted Eccles, a Tips family friend who said they asked him to respond to requests for comment from mySA.

A manager at Beyer & Beitel, who identified himself only as Allen, declined to comment on the company's relationship to Mission Park and Mott's disappearance.

The source said the contract between Mission Park and Beyer & Beitel was first discovered in February of this year and that the relationship was "kept from" the family and their attorneys.

According to court records, Kristin Tips testified on Feb. 28 that there was no possibility that someone other than a Mission Park employee was involved in the services provided to Julie Mott.

But her testimony appears to contradict three affidavits from former Beyer & Beitel employees who claimed they delivered bodies to Mission Park on a regular basis.

"If the delivery was after the funeral home business hours, I would use the key to enter the funeral home and the alarm code to disarm the alarm and deliver the body to the prep room," said Corina Barron Kaiser, a former Beyer & Beitel employee. "At Mission Park North (on Cherry Ridge Drive), I would enter the building after hours almost every other weekend to deliver bodies from Beyer & Beitel, I had the key and alarm code from the key ring that was in each Beyer & Beitel van and the prep room code I had memorized because I delivered there so often."

Kaiser also said that she began a job at Mission Park after she left Beyer & Beitel in May 2014. She was employed with Mission Park at the time of Mott's disappearance, and she said the following week, "Mission Park changed their policy of allowing Beyer & Beitel drivers to enter the funeral home after hours with a key and alarm code and required deliveries to be made during business hours."

Just months before Mott's disappearance, Beyer & Beitel was also sued for its role in mixing up the body of 73-year-old Beatrice Garza with that of another woman. The case was later settled.

Mission Park has had recent legal trouble as well. Online Bexar County District Court records indicate Mission Park and its parent company, MPII, Inc., have been sued for damages or breach of contract at least a dozen times since 2000.

A lawsuit filed against the company about a week after the Motts sued accuses Palm Heights Mortuary, which is owned by Mission Park, of confusing the body of Jose C. Perez with that of another man, according to mySA archives. Mission Park employees conducted a 2- to 3-hour search before Perez's body was found at another funeral home.

The police investigation

Jesse Salame, a spokesman for the San Antonio Police Department, said he couldn't confirm police have spoken with any Beyer & Beitel employees, but he said they've spoken to numerous persons of interest and witnesses, not all of whom are tied to Mission Park.

"We're following the leads as they come in," he said. "This case was handled in a way that a homicide would be investigated. We're not taking any evidence for granted, and we've been reexamining things. It's been a very comprehensive investigation."

Meanwhile, Wilburn, Mott's ex-boyfriend, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment, allegedly began harassing everyone connected to Mott's case to get information on her body's whereabouts after the disappearance. According to one police report, Wilburn called Mission Park staff over 200 times in one day, and police issued him a criminal trespass notice on Sept. 2, 2015, forbidding his entrance to Mission Park property.

The Mott family reported Wilburn to the Bexar County Sheriff's Office on Feb. 8, 2016, after he called them more than a dozen times between midnight and 4 a.m. over a two-week period to ask for information on the investigation.

He also violated Mission Park's trespass notice on June 26 and June 29, 2016, when he was spotted by employees and captured on security camera footage attempting to gain entrance to Mission Park North, according to police reports. He was later arrested on two charges of criminal trespassing and is awaiting trial.

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"In my opinion, [the security camera footage] demonstrates Wilburn's ongoing obsession with remaining at the center of his own narrative, repeatedly driving around the facility, looking in windows, shaking door handles, and staring straight into monitoring cameras," testified James D. Calder, a University of Texas-San Antonio professor specializing in crime and politics who was asked by attorneys for Mission Park to serve as an expert witness in the trial.

Wilburn's actions were "far outside the range of any normal person who would claim to police investigators that he had nothing to do with a crime, such as theft of human remains," Calder said.

A source close to the trial said Wilburn's actions, while strange and suspicious, don't have anything to do with Julie's disappearance.

"Julie having a crazy ex-boyfriend is the best thing that could have happened to [the Tips]," the source said.

The source said the Mott family began to get the feeling they were "being played" by the Tips and Mission Park shortly after Mott's disappearance. In January 2016, the Mott family, including Mott's father Tim, his wife, Sharlotte, and son, Jonathan, filed suit against Mission Park for gross negligence. The family is seeking $1 million in damages.

Salame said that if there is conclusive proof that anyone has deliberately withheld information regarding Mott's whereabouts or purposefully deceived investigators on the case, they could face criminal charges.

Both the civil and criminal cases are pending, and Salame said police are far from considering the investigation into Mott's disappearance "cold."

"A case isn't cold until you've exhausted every possible lead and explored every possibility, and I don't know that we're there yet."

cdowns@mysa.com

Twitter: @calebjdowns