Pair Hunting for Nurse Find Body of Woman : Crime: Authorities conduct detailed investigation where remains were discovered in the mountains off Mulholland Highway.

The badly decomposed body of a woman believed to be missing Westlake nurse Kellie O’Sullivan was found Sunday by two civilian searchers in a brush-choked area of the Santa Monica Mountains, Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators reported.

The early morning discovery came after nearly two weeks of a massive search by hundreds of friends and law enforcement agents for the missing nurse, the mother of a 5-year-old boy last seen Sept. 14 leaving a podiatrist’s office in Westlake.

While officials at the scene said formal identification of the body will not be made until dental records can be compared, family members said they were told all indications are that the remains are those of O’Sullivan.

“Police told us it was her,” said Cliff O’Sullivan, the nurse’s ex-husband.

O’Sullivan, 34, worked at West Hills Medical Group in Canoga Park. During the search, co-workers described her as bubbly, energetic and athletic--a fitness fan who ran in marathons and often worked out at the gym with her boyfriend, Kevin White. The day she disappeared, White returned home at about 6 p.m. to learn that she had failed to pick up her son at the Calabasas school he attended.

One of the last people to see her alive was a running partner who had run 22 miles of the grueling 32.5-mile Bulldog Race, a marathon through the Santa Monica Mountains the previous weekend. The friend, Dr. Stefan Feldman, said the race went hard on her, and friends said she was limping for a few days afterward from the strain to her muscles.

The body found Sunday, clad in a nurse’s uniform, had been dumped in a remote area of the county off Mulholland Highway. The corpse was found by two searchers, part of a team of 200 volunteers who had been searching for O’Sullivan since shortly after her disappearance.

Lt. Frank Merriman, a homicide investigator for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, said the woman had been dead at least three days but that the cause or time of death could not be pinpointed. There were no obvious signs of trauma or violence to the woman’s body, he said.

O’Sullivan disappeared on the same day that Stephanie Campbell, 16, of Thousand Oaks was allegedly abducted by her boyfriend at gunpoint.

Stephanie turned up in Reno, Nev., last week after her alleged abductor, Mark Scott Thornton, was arrested at a Reno casino. Police said they found O’Sullivan’s black 1991 Ford Explorer parked outside the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino, and the kidnap suspect admitted stealing the vehicle.

Thornton, 19, of Thousand Oaks allegedly told police that he took the truck after finding it unoccupied with the keys inside in front of a Thousand Oaks pet store. He denied seeing O’Sullivan.

Ventura County detectives brought Thornton from the Washoe County Detention Center in Reno to the Ventura County jail Sunday afternoon, said Lt. Craig Husband of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department major crimes division.

Thornton was booked into Ventura County Jail at 5:27 p.m. under the name he had been using, Mark Scott Sarrazin, his stepfather’s last name. Thornton was being held in lieu of $250,000 bail on charges of kidnaping and assault with a deadly weapon, Sgt. Ron Tusi said.

Husband said prosecutors will have 48 hours from the time of Thornton’s arrival to arraign him on charges of kidnaping Stephanie.

Thornton may also be charged with assault or attempted murder for shooting at the girl’s mother before he drove away, officials said. They said Sunday it is too early to discuss possible charges in O’Sullivan’s disappearance.

Shortly after O’Sullivan disappeared, White organized a search effort with local authorities out of his Thousand Oaks residence.

Volunteers--many of whom had never met O’Sullivan--joined her family and friends and about 30 Ventura County sheriff’s personnel to comb through 170 square miles of thick brush and twisting back-country roads in the Santa Monica Mountains surrounding Thousand Oaks, Camarillo, Somis and Moorpark.

“There was a lot of hope that they would find her alive,” said Sgt. Earl Matthews, a supervisor with the sheriff’s Search and Rescue/Aviation Unit. “The intensity was incredible. People were really focused on what they were after, what they were doing.”

White and Cliff O’Sullivan rented a helicopter and handed out cellular phones. Volunteers scoured the area by dirt bike, horse and foot, tying strips of purple crepe paper to trees and telephone poles to mark searched areas.

After more than a week of fruitless searching, the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Thursday called in FBI agents with specialized thermal-imaging equipment to scan parts of Thousand Oaks by helicopter.

Civilian searchers found the body just 40 feet north of a section of Mulholland Highway that the FBI had planned to scan by air today, Matthews said.

The searchers, who said they were family friends but declined to be identified, said that they were combing areas where vehicles could park after turning off the twisting road.

“We’re just friends of Kevin’s,” the man said. “It was a hunch this is what we’d find, and we found it.”

The couple declined to say anything further.

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Benita Hinojos said that at about 8:15 a.m., the pair noticed a foul odor coming from a heavily wooded area.

Hinojos said they went close enough to determine that the smell was coming from a body, that of a white female. They turned and walked to a nearby house and called police.

As word spread Sunday that a body had been found, searchers gathered in the kitchen of White’s gray-shingled home, talking in quiet resignation about their presumption that the woman found was Kellie O’Sullivan.

“I think Kellie’s life, and her death, probably has impacted more hearts and souls than most people who pass this way,” O’Sullivan’s mother, Sharlene Cunningham, said. “She always put others before herself.”

When Cunningham was recently found to have breast cancer, her daughter arranged for surgery and paid the medical bills, Cunningham said.

Cunningham said she had feared her daughter was dead long before the body was found.

“I could feel in my heart she wasn’t here,” Cunningham said. “While we had this intense, massive search going on because we didn’t know for sure, all of us have had time to do some grieving.”

“I’m actually quite relieved,” said Cliff O’Sullivan, who is now caring for the couple’s son. “At least we can put a period at the end of the sentence.”

O’Sullivan described his ex-wife as “an avid athlete with a lot of stick-to-itiveness. She did one thing perfect and that was be a mom.”

White said he and O’Sullivan had been making plans for their future.

“We were talking about getting married,” White said. “We were making plans for having a baby.”

White’s house bustled with activity as visitors came to express their sorrow and comfort relatives. Telephones rang throughout the afternoon while relatives and family members coped with their loss.

At the scene where the body was found, under a large oak tree surrounded by heavy brush and poison oak, Ventura and Los Angeles County investigators armed with video and still cameras photographed footprints and tire tracks.

At about 5:10 p.m., after taking photographs and collecting evidence for about four hours, investigators emerged from the gully wheeling a gurney bearing the white-wrapped body.

Merriman said detectives would have to determine whether O’Sullivan died in Los Angeles County or Ventura County before deciding which agency should prosecute the case.

“At this point, you’ve got the decedent found in L. A. County, and you’ve got records showing she was apparently taken forcibly from Ventura County,” Merriman said.

Ventura County detectives, however, have developed most of the leads in the case since O’Sullivan’s disappearance, and would be in a better position to carry it to court, Merriman said.

“There’s a good likelihood that Ventura County will assume control of this investigation,” he said.

Although Ventura County now has custody of Thornton, Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald D. Coleman said because the body believed to be O’Sullivan’s was found in Los Angeles County, authorities in both counties probably will have jurisdiction over the case.

The decision on which agency will handle the case will be made jointly by the investigators, Coleman said.

Coleman said he did not believe the O’Sullivan investigation would be affected by recent disputes over jurisdiction in the case of Donald Scott, the Ventura County millionaire fatally shot by a Los Angeles County narcotics detective.

“Everyone’s professional,” he said. “It would appear that a very serious crime has been committed. The goal of professional law enforcement everywhere is to apprehend the person responsible and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.”

O’Sullivan said a fund has been set up by Kellie O’Sullivan’s family to help pay for the gas, food, telephones, aviation fuel and other expenses from the search. Donations can be sent to Great Western Bank, c/o Kellie O’Sullivan, 23703 Calabasas Road, Calabasas 91302.

A memorial service for O’Sullivan is scheduled for 10:30 a.m., Saturday at St. Jude’s Catholic Church, 320302 Lindero Canyon Road, Westlake.

Times correspondents Jeff McDonald and Julie Fields contributed to this story.