CARY - More than $400,000 stowed away in Swiss bank accounts were at the center of a dispute between a Cary man and his wife, who was found dead Sunday in a wooded area of Mecklenburg County, Va.

The charred remains of Vanlata Patel, 57, were found Jan. 16 in a brush fire just off Interstate 85 near South Hill.

Now Cary police are working jointly with the Mecklenburg County Sheriff's Office to find her killer.

Cary Police Capt. Dave Wulff said Patel had been living with her son, Ashesh Patel, in Alberta, Canada. She and her husband, Harish P. Patel, 59, of 1128 Woodway Bluff Circle separated Sept. 14. Since then, Vanlata Patel had asked a court to bar her husband from withdrawing money from the bank accounts.

Vanlata Patel arrived in Cary on Jan. 10 or 11 to visit friends at 112 Singer Way and was scheduled to fly back to Canada Jan. 16 on an afternoon Northwest Airlines flight, Wulff said.

The friends she was visiting told police they last saw her about 9 a.m. Jan. 16 before they left for work, Wulff said.

Hours later, at 2:30 p.m., the South Hill Volunteer Fire Department responded to a report of a brush fire near I-85's mile marker 19. Once the fire was extinguished, firefighters found the remains of a then-unknown woman.

When Vanlata Patel's friends got home that day, Patel's suitcases were still at the residence but there was no sign of her. Wulff said the woman's friends could not contact her because she did not have a cell phone.

Her son contacted Cary police to report Vanlata missing at 2:18 p.m. Jan. 18, police reported. That was the same day the Virginia Medical Examiner's Office identified the badly burned human remains found in the brush fire as Vanlata Patel's.

Cary investigators think the woman never made it to Raleigh-Durham International Airport for her flight back to Canada.

Possible abduction

"We are exploring the possibility that she was abducted from the Singer Way address," Wulff said Wednesday.

Cary police have not named Vanlata Patel's estranged husband as a suspect. They described him as "distraught" after hearing of his wife's death.

Wulff said early Wednesday that he did not know the whereabouts of Harish Patel.

"We have no reason to believe he's not here," Wulff said.

But Wednesday afternoon police had taped off the parking lot at the Marquis at Silverton apartments in northwest Cary where Harish Patel lives, and detectives could be seen going in and out of the apartment.

Investigators were also scrutinizing Harish Patel's car.

Wulff said police were looking for evidence, but he declined to offer specifics.

The Patels had been married 6 1/2 years when they separated. On Nov. 5, Morrisville lawyer Corrie Seagroves filed a complaint on behalf of Vanlata Patel in Wake County District Court, seeking a larger share of the couple's financial assets, including money deposited with Millennium Bank, United Trust of Switzerland. Vanlata Patel maintains that $100,000 of the money was hers before the couple were married.

The Patels earn about $2,400 a month from interest on the accounts, but neither has had access to the money since Oct. 7, when a court placed an injunction on the accounts, records show.

Vanlata Patel's complaint also contended that the couple had joint accounts worth more than $335,000 with other banks that were listed in Harish Patel's name.

In a counterclaim filed by Harish Patel's attorney, Shelley Blake of Cary, he contended that the property the couple obtained while married should be equally divided under state law. He also denied that the couple had joint accounts in banks other than Millennium Bank, United Trust of Switzerland.

Harish Patel also stated in the counterclaim that his wife had refused to communicate with him since leaving their home and that he has been unable to support himself since the courts froze their accounts.

Neither attorney could be reached for comment Wednesday.

(News researchers Denise Jones, Lamara Williams and Becky Ogburn contributed to this report.)

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