April 14, 2022
By: Dwayne Page
The identity of a body found floating in Center Hill Lake last Wednesday has now been released.
In a statement released Wednesday evening, Sheriff Patrick Ray said “As per the autopsy, the body in the lake has been identified as 37-year-old William Houghtaling Jr of Baxter. He was reported missing out of Cookeville City by the Cookeville Police Department in March 2022. The evening when the body was found, I contacted the District Attorney General’s Office and requested the assistance of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation due to a possible multi-county case. (Putnam and DeKalb) District Attorney General Bryant Dunaway requested the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to assist the DeKalb County Sheriff’s Department with the case. No other information is available,” said Sheriff Ray.
The body was found floating face down in the lake Wednesday afternoon (April 6) at the Johnson’s Chapel Recreation area only a few feet from the boat ramp in about 3-4 feet of water.
According to Sheriff Ray the body was nude except for the pair of socks he was wearing, and identification was found tucked in one of the socks which matched that of Houghtaling.
The discovery was made by a fisherman
“A man came to the area to check the lake to see if it (lake level) was up because he was going to go fishing when he noticed something near the boat ramp. At first, he thought it was an animal but as he got a closer look, he found it to be a human body. Because of the poor phone service in that area, the man went to the top of the hill to call 911 which did a transfer to White County and then the White County 911 center transferred it to DeKalb County,” added Sheriff Ray.