It was just a little before 8 a.m. Wednesday when friends and colleagues searching for Mark Radcliffe, 31, of Burke, believe they stumbled across his body in a wooded area between Bonnie Brae Elementary School and train tracks, Fairfax County police said.
Police have not confirmed the identity of the body found on the edge of a marsh about 50 yards from Sideburn Road, but officers on the scene said it was likely Radcliffe’s. Soon after, they pulled a missing person sign down from a telephone pole at the head of the trail that led to his body.
Radcliffe was last seen at his home, where he lived alone, on the 5500 block of Glasgow Woods Court — about a mile from where the body was found — around noon July 6. County police informed the public he was missing on Monday, although neighbors said police and the FBI had been blanketing the quiet neighborhood for days, even sending out search parties to nearby woods.
On the evening of July 6, Radcliffe was expected to make his weekly trip to Chicago, where he was working for London-based Bovis Lend Lease on the construction of Donald Trump’s 92-story tower, but he never caught his plane, police said.
When his home was searched after he disappeared, police said they discovered his luggage packed and his wallet on a counter. His forest green Oldsmobile Bravada sport utility vehicle was still sitting outside his house Wednesday morning, marked by several Purdue University stickers, his alma mater, neighbors said.
In the Monday news release, police said, “Detectives determined that Radcliffe had been distraught recently.”
But neighbors said they knew nothing about that.
Radcliffe was rarely home, said Diane Miller, who lives two doors down. She added that most people keep to themselves, anyway. When they do meet, it’s for brief moments, and Miller said she’d often joke with Radcliffe about his well-kept lawn.
“I know he was looking forward to coming back [from Chicago] for good,” she said. “It’s just shocking and sad.”
Mary Costello, a spokeswoman for Bovis, declined to comment, but said, “Our hearts go out to his family.”
Police pulled the body from the woods around 11 a.m. and took it to the medical examiner, who will conduct an autopsy. Until the autopsy results come back, it’ll likely remain unclear how and when he died, a police spokeswoman said. No foul play is suspected.
“Everyone always says, ‘That couldn’t happen around here.’ Well it happens somewhere, and it doesn’t always happen to someone else,” neighbor Robert Trimmer said.
