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BISBEE - A family is in mourning after the body of their loved one was discovered in a bathtub.

The Bisbee police department found the body of Melinda Carley on August 1 inside her apartment.

Police think 56-year-old Paul Lawrence Rosas moved the body with plans to either hide or abandon it. Rosas may have also forged a check that was issued for Carley. There's a warrant out for Rosas.

Family and friends gathered to remember Melinda Hope Carley, someone they say was so kind and gentle and deserved so much more.

About a month before Carley went missing, her sister received a strange call from Carley's live-in boyfriend Rosas.

"I'm calling to see who she's been talking to, and a red flag went off in the back of my mind," said Venice Gomez.

When weeks went by and no one had heard from Carley, "I thought she was dead. I had a very bad feeling," said Gomez.

Gomez and her husband Max made the trip from Tucson to Bisbee to look for her with the help of police.

"Walked into the bathroom saw this five foot high pile of stuff in the bathroom," said Gomez."I started before I went out of the bathroom to reach down and look, and I heard a voice tell me, no do not look."

But police did, and then asked the couple and a neighbor to leave as they took pictures of what they found.

"And I knew after five minutes that they weren't just taking pictures of the house or the apartment, but that she was there, and they came down and they told us that she was there," said Gomez.

But her boyfriend had left a day or two before they got there.

"The information we got from neighbors that up until a matter of days before the family and officers located the body that he was in and out of that apartment," said Sgt. Taron Maddux with Bisbee police.

Not only that, but Carley's belongings had been sold during that time, a check cashed in her name and a neighbor's van went missing.

Anyone with information about Rosas' whereabouts is urged to call police.