Police searching for missing Memphis teacher and heiress Eliza Fletcher say they have found a body.

The Memphis Police Department (MPD) said on Monday that officers had found a corpse around 5:07pm local time, though it stressed that “the identity of this person and the cause of death [are] unconfirmed at this time“.

The MPD did not say whether the discovery was related to the Fletcher case, but official sources told local broadcaster WREG that it was made in an area that was part of the search.

Ms Fletcher, a 34-year-old mother of two who is the granddaughter of hardware billionaire Joseph Orgill III, was abducted while out jogging in Memphis at 4am last Friday.

Police said that CCTV footage showed a man running “aggressively” towards her and violently forcing her into an SUV, with witnesses finding her phone and some sandals on the ground early the next morning.

Authorities have charged convicted kidnapper Cleotha “Pookie” Abston, 38, with abducting Ms Fletcher and tampering with evidence, but said in a legal filing that he is refusing to cooperate with the investigation.

After a body was found on Monday, local media reported many officers from multiple government agencies descending on the scene, with a police helicopter circling the area.

According to Fox News, police blocked off an area with a radius of at least one mile as a crime scene, near an abandoned elementary school and less than a mile from where a witness told police they had seen Mr Abston cleaning blood out of an SUV that matched the one seen in surveillance footage.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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