A woman who went missing in April was found dead in a Hillsboro storage unit last weekend, police say.

Linda Minery, 53, was renting the unit where she was found Saturday at Hillsboro Mini Storage, Hillsboro police Lt. Derek Brown said.

Police do not believe there was any suspicious activity tied to her death, Brown said.

The owner of Hillsboro Mini Storage found the body on Saturday when he opened up the unit and called police about 3 p.m. Brown said it was a large and “well-packed” pull-through storage unit with garage-style roll-down doors on either end.

Both doors were locked when Minery was found. One door had been locked at some point after Minery went into the unit, but police said her death was not a result of being locked in.

Police declined to report Minery’s cause of death but said there is no danger to the public.

“In any investigation with a missing person, you hope to find ... for the family’s sake, that the person is alive and just decided they wanted to get a break from things for a while,” Brown said. “Our deepest sympathies go out to the family. This is not the way you’d like to close a missing person case.”

Minery left her Hillsboro home, which she shared with her mother, in the early hours of April 7. Police said she left “without saying where she was going or what she was going,” according to an April 8 post on the department’s Facebook page.

Minery’s family told police that she likely had undiagnosed mental health issues and had been “displaying extreme paranoid behavior,” police said in describing the family’s concern. The family told police that Minery had recently stopped speaking and was communicating using only written notes.

The Facebook post announcing Minery’s disappearance was spread throughout the 6,000-resident community and beyond – it was shared about 3,800 times.

Minery grew up in Loudon and graduated from Merrimack Valley High School in 1983, according to her obituary published in the Monitor. She lived in Concord for many years and worked at Davis & Towle Insurance Group as a personal lines account manager. Her family said she loved the outdoors.

“Whether it be hiking, biking or baking, a day spent with Linnie was always fun,” they wrote.

Hillsboro police were assisted by State Police and the State Medical Examiner’s office responding the call Saturday.

 

(Nick Stoico can be reached at 369-3321, nstoico@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @NickStoico.)]]>