Body Found in Yard of Missing Woman’s Home : Investigation: Police have long voiced suspicions about Leonard Eddington, husband of Vickie Valerie Eddington, who disappeared in 1987.

Sheriff’s homicide investigators, serving a search warrant Saturday at the home of a Jamul woman who disappeared in 1987, unearthed the remains of a human body buried in the back yard and arrested the woman’s husband on suspicion of murder, officials said.

At 7:15 a.m. Saturday, investigators and lab personnel arrived at the single-story stucco house on Beaver Hollow Road where Vickie Valerie Eddington had lived with her three young children before she vanished on July 30, 1987.

Eddington’s ex-husband, Leonard, who obtained a divorce two years after her disappearance, was present at the home, where he lived with the children.

Sheriff’s investigators used a backhoe to dig into the yard and, when they got about eight feet below the surface, they discovered what they had expected to find.

“We have excavated a grave site,” said Sgt. Glenn Revell. “We have found human remains on the Eddington property.”

Though an autopsy had not yet been conducted on the body, sheriff’s deputies arrested Leonard Eddington for the murder of his wife. He was being held without bail in the county jail.

Investigators had said they were seeking evidence related to the woman’s disappearance “including but not limited to the body of Vickie Eddington.”

When the body was discovered, officials called in a medical examiner investigator to determine a cause of death and to further analyze the remains, which may be identified today.

Lt. Cmdr. Leonard Eddington II, a maintenance officer at the North Island Naval Station, had reported his wife missing on the morning of July 31, 1987. He told investigators he had last seen her at 10:30 the previous evening when she left for work at Grossmont Hospital, where she worked as a nurse’s aide.

Leonard Eddington told authorities that although he and his wife had been separated for several months, he still lived on the property in a mobile home. The night Vickie Eddington disappeared, he said, he stayed in the house to take care of the children.

Shortly after 7:30 a.m. on July 31, he said, he was driving his children to a swimming lesson in La Mesa when he saw his wife’s station wagon pulled over on Highway 94 about four miles from home. After dropping off the children, he said he returned to the vehicle and found the doors locked and the right front tire flat.

Vickie Eddington, who was 29 when she disappeared, has never been seen again.

No criminal charges had ever been filed against Leonard Eddington, although neighbors and some investigators have long been vocal about their suspicions.

Not long after Vickie Eddington’s disappearance, Leonard Eddington sued the county for the return of her station wagon, which had been impounded as possible evidence. In declarations opposing Leonard Eddington’s suit, sheriff’s investigators repeatedly declared him a suspect.

In a court document filed in connection with the suit, the lead investigator on the case wrote, “Much evidence points to plaintiff as the perpetrator of what appears to be premeditated murder.”

But until Saturday, authorities never executed a search warrant at the Eddington’s property.