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The brothers’ mother, Shanda Vander Ark, 44, of Norton Shores, was sentenced in January to life in prison without a chance of parole after a jury convicted her of murder and child abuse in the teen’s death.

Shanda Vander Ark, 44, of Norton Shores, found guilty in the July 6, 2022, death of Timothy Ferguson, was sentenced to an additional 50 to 100 years in prison for first-degree child abuse.

The safety measures “took a deeply personal turn,” Ms. Dixon’s website states, after her grandmother died in a Norton Shores nursing home that prohibited visits during the pandemic.

Now, with information from forensic genealogy testing, the authorities believe the victim to be Stacey Lyn Chahorski, a 19-year-old who was hitchhiking across the United States, making her way home to Norton Shores, Mich.

She was far from her Norton Shores, Michigan home when her mother reported her missing on Jan. 17, 1989 after last hearing from her daughter in September 1988, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.