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Bonner County Sheriff's detectives exhausted all leads trying to find Christine after she went missing March 25, 2004, after last being seen getting into a pickup in the parking lot at Mitchell's IGA, Priest River.
Her husband, Steve Lott, told police two days later that he and Christine had argued the day she vanished, and when she didn’t come home that night, he spent two days calling all their friends to try to find her before notifying police.
The morning she vanished, he told police, his wife had asked to be dropped off at the store, where she made a phone call and later got into a red 1990s model Ford pickup with Washington plates.
“We have absolutely nothing at this point in time,” a Bonner County detective told reporters later that summer. “No one has heard from her. There have been no sightings."
"The case will remain active until it’s solved,” said then Bonner County Undersheriff Elaine Savage.
A release issued today by the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office says that the 34-year-old mother of three's body was found in February, 2016, in a remote wooded area along a Forest Service Road near Coeur d'Alene, but that the discovery was kept confidential to enable detectives to locate Steve Lott, who moved to Arizona not long after Christine's disappearance, for questioning.
"This case is being investigated as a homicide in a cooperative effort with the Bonner County Sheriff’s Office and Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office," the release states. "Anyone who may have had contact with the Lott family in the 2004 time period, or who may have information regarding this incident, are strongly urged to contact Major Crimes Detective J. Northrup by leaving a message at (208) 446-2237 or emailing him at jnorthrup@kcgov.us."