Coroner Confirms Body Found Sunday is Missing Vet

Update: (5 p.m.) County Coroner Walter I. Hofman has confirmed to The Times Herald that the body retrieved from the Schuykill River on Sunday afternoon is that of Janice Rubendall. Rubendall's body was reportedly identified by its tattoos.

Update: On Monday morning, March 5, West Norriton Police Chief Robert Adams told Patch that he could not officially confirm the identity of the body found yesterday in the Schuylkill River. According to Chief Adams, First Assistant District Attorney Kevin Steele will release the information following an autopsy by the coroner.

More information is expected later today.

Original story below.

---

A body found along the bank of the Schuylkill River on Sunday afternoon has been tentatively identified as Janice Rubendall, the former U.S Marine in early January.

Robert Rubendall, Janice's father, said Sunday evening that Lower Providence Township Police had visited him at his home to tell him of the discovery.

A resident of the Port Indian neighborhood in West Norriton discovered the body "wedged between a boat dock and the shoreline," Rubendall said. "They're pretty sure it's her."

The location is about three-quarters of a mile downstream from the Betzwood Bridge that carries Route 422 over the Schuylkill River. Janice Rubendall was known to frequent the area underneath the bridge.

"Searchers never would have found her" in the place where the body was recovered, Rubendall said.

The body was taken to the Montgomery County Coroner's Office, which Rubendall said is expected to confirm the identification on Monday.

Rubendall expressed his thanks for the assistance of the Lower Providence Police Department and the Valley Forge National Park Rangers, both of whom he said "went above and beyond" in their efforts to help locate his daughter.

"I kept hoping, but the thing that kept sticking in my mind was her car," Rubendall said. "She never would have left her car there."