A body found in San Diego County has been identified as that of a woman who disappeared from an upscale Newport Beach community last week, according to the Orange County District Attorney's Office.
Newport Beach police had traveled to San Diego Friday to investigate whether the body, found in a dumpster, was that of the wife of a man facing murder charges in connection with her death.
The San Diego County coroner on Friday afternoon identified the body as that Quee "Q.C." Chadwick, pictured below. Her husband, Peter Chadwick, has been charged with her murder.
The cause of death is still to be determined, the DA's office said.
Few details were being released about the case on Friday. The Newport Beach Police Department put a hold on the release of information with the San Diego County Medical Examiner's Office.
The woman's body was discovered Thursday in a dumpster in the 12000 block of Wildcat Canyon Road (map), in a semirural area near a county park inland from and northeast of San Diego.
Peter Chadwick has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with special circumstances for financial gain, prosecutors said. He's accused of killing his wife in their Orange County home and then disposing her body in an unknown location, officials had said.
The investigation began after the couple's three sons were not picked up from school, police said.
Detectives found blood and signs of a struggle at the couple's home on Almanzora in Newport Coast, an exclusive gated development. They had been called out to the home on a welfare check by a relative who couldn't locate the Chadwicks.
Authorities said Chadwick had driven to San Diego near the border of Mexico and then contacted the San Diego Police Department.
He was arrested in San Diego on Oct. 11.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Peter Chadwick claimed another man killed his wife and forced him to put the body in a truck before driving his car to the border.
