Corpse of 25-yr-old stolen from funeral home

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Miss Julie Motts, 25, had died after a long bout with cystic fibrosis and just as her relatives were getting the grief of their loss, grief struck once again at her funeral on August 15 at the Mission Park Funeral Chapels North.

The police said they are ‘cautiously optimistic’ that the body of the 25-year-old woman, possibly stolen from her casket in broad daylight, in an unprecedented theft following her funeral, will be returned to her family.

“In my 22 years in law enforcement, I’ve never seen a case like this,” San Antonio Police Department, Sgt. Javier Salazar told the PEOPLE.

Salazar says the ‘prevailing theory’ is that the body of Julie Mott was stolen from her casket sometime between 1:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. on August 15, the day of her funeral and what would have been her 26th birthday.

The ‘very brazen’ theft was discovered by employees at the Mission Parks Funeral Chapels North funeral home the next day, Salazar says.

Though Mott’s casket did show signs of forced entry, there were no signs of forced entry to the premises itself, and no alarms were tripped.

Security camera footage was not available at the time.

Right now, the case is being treated as abuse of a corpse, which is a class A misdemeanor in Texas, according to Salazar.

The investigation, led by the SAPD’s intelligence unit, who Salazar calls the ‘best of the best’, has developed persons of interest, but no solid suspects.

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The San Antonio police said it is believed that in the hours after the funeral service, someone came into the funeral home and stole her remains.

“There wasn’t any forced entry to the facility,” Sgt. Javier Salazar told CNN affiliate KSAT. “So what it’s believed is, between the hours of 1:30 p.m. when the service ended, to about 4:30 p.m. when they locked up for the evening, someone came in and stole Ms. Mott’s remains. That person remains at large.

Funeral home owner, Dick Tips told the affiliate that he believes the body may have been stolen by someone who didn’t support Mott’s cremation, which was supposed to take place August 17.

“This is an unprecedented and unthinkable event and we are doing everything in our power to cooperate with the ongoing police investigation,” Tips said in a statement, according to the New York Daily News.

Mott’s father, Tim Mott, implored the community for help.

“We just want our daughter’s remains returned so we can have some closure to our grief,” he told the affiliate.

Investigators are asking anyone with information to call San Antonio police .

Meanwhile, the funeral home is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the remains.

Mott died on August 8 from cystic fibrosis, which she had battled all her life,well beyond the prognosis that she would not live past age 3, Salazar said.

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Instead, her family encouraged her to live a full life, to go to the beach, to go to parties, while Mott developed a strong passion for horses.

“To lose somebody that was doing their best to live a full life in spite of their condition, to see this family go through that loss … and then be able to celebrate her life and then of course find the closure that many of us find with a funeral service that was robbed from them” Salazar said.

In the absence of her body’s discovery, which Salazar says is everyone’s No. 1 priority, Mott’s family is left to mourn something unexpected.