GRAPELAND, Texas — After receiving a tip, law enforcement officials in Texas have recovered a body believed to be that of a missing woman from Grapeland.

According to Houston County Sheriff Darrell Bobbitt, after a tip received by the Grapeland Police Department, officers searched a wooded area near Grapeland, north of Houston, on Tuesday. At about 7 a.m., cadaver dogs found a body in a shallow grave. The HCSO reported that a portion of the body was protruding from the ground.

The Texas Rangers were called to assist with the processing of the scene and to exhume the body, which was sent to the medical examiner’s office for positive identification and to determine the cause of death.

The body is believed to be that of Vanessa Melson, a 29-year-old mother of three who had disappeared from her home in Grapeland three weeks ago. Family members were notified by police that, pending official identification, the body was Melson’s.

Melson had recently moved back to the area from Baton Rouge, La., and was living with her father in Grapeland. The evening of her disappearance, she left her dad’s house with a man whom friends and family say she didn’t know that well.

Melson’s best friend, Melissa Adams, said that Melson was a free spirit who kept in regular contact with friends and family.

“She has never gone this long without contacting me, or her sister, or her brother,” Adams said after Melson went missing. “She was always calling one of us just to talk, or to ask us for a ride or something like that.”

Adams also said that she was worried about Melson and that “she’s always been a little too trusting. She did not know this person that she left with very well at all.”

Melson was officially entered into the National Missing Persons Database by local law enforcement on July 1.

The investigation is ongoing.

Webb writes for The Palestine (Texas) Herald