Prosecutors said fear of losing the couple’s home drove the fatal shooting of Susan Lane-Fournier.

OREGON CITY, Ore. — An Oregon man was sentenced to life in prison after prosecutors said he shot his estranged wife days after she had him served with divorce papers, hid her body under a tarp near their Brightwood home and tried to make her death look like a disappearance in the woods.

Michel Fournier, 72, was convicted of second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon in the November 2024 killing of 61-year-old Susan Lane-Fournier. The case drew unusual public attention in the Mount Hood corridor because Lane-Fournier was first treated as a missing hiker after her pickup was found near a trailhead. Prosecutors said the truth was far closer to home: she had been killed at the house she shared with Fournier after deciding to end their 12-year marriage. The immediate stakes at trial were whether jurors would accept the state’s account of a planned domestic killing tied to divorce, property and control.

Lane-Fournier filed for divorce on Oct. 31, 2024, citing irreconcilable differences. Court records showed an unsuccessful attempt to serve Fournier on Nov. 8, and prosecutors later told jurors he was served on Nov. 20. According to the state’s case, Lane-Fournier was last seen alive on Nov. 21. She did not show up for work the next day, Nov. 22, and concern spread quickly among friends, relatives and neighbors in the Brightwood and Welches area. Searchers and deputies soon focused on Mount Hood National Forest after her truck turned up abandoned near a trailhead, raising fears that she had gone missing while out with her two Malinois-mix dogs. In opening statements, Deputy District Attorney John Millar said Lane-Fournier had been ready to begin a new part of her life. Instead, he said, “She ended up, instead of starting that new chapter, wrapped in a tarp and dumped in the woods.”

Authorities spent days pursuing the missing-hiker theory, and the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office later said volunteers, drone teams and K9 crews logged more than 800 search hours before operations were suspended. But family members said almost from the start that the story did not fit. Her son, Dakota Lane, told local television during the search that his mother had prior search-and-rescue experience in California and knew how to move safely in remote terrain. A friend, James Evans, publicly said he did not believe she had simply vanished on a hike. On Nov. 29, Evans was part of the group that found her body in the Welches area near East Highway 26 and East Miller Road. He later recalled lifting a tarp and seeing boots underneath. The state medical examiner ruled the death a homicide. Prosecutors said Fournier shot Lane-Fournier in the head, neck and chest with a .22-caliber rifle.

The state said its evidence did not stop with the body’s discovery. Investigators obtained surveillance video that prosecutors said showed Fournier driving Lane-Fournier’s truck after her disappearance, with her dogs inside. The truck was also seen on Northeast Marine Drive near the Columbia River, where investigators later found Lane-Fournier’s cellphone destroyed and submerged in the water. Prosecutors said that helped show an effort to stage the case as a disappearance rather than a killing. During trial, the state also pointed to Fournier’s own words. In jailhouse calls to Lane-Fournier’s adult son, prosecutors said, Fournier admitted, “I lost it,” and added that he would be paying for it for a long time. In another interview played in court, he admitted killing the dogs, saying they trusted him. County officials later said the dogs were strangled and their bodies were dumped in Multnomah County to deepen the appearance that Lane-Fournier had gone missing with them.

Friends and relatives described Lane-Fournier, who also went by “Phoenix,” as a well-known creative figure in the community. A memorial page called her an artist, healer and connector. Her brother, Michael Lane, spoke publicly during the legal proceedings and said the motive was not mysterious to the family. He said Fournier’s name was not on the lease and accused him of trying to stop the divorce so he could hold on to the home. Prosecutors made the same theme central to their case, saying Fournier feared losing property in the split and specifically worried about losing the shared house, which county officials later said was in Susan Lane’s name. That detail gave jurors a concrete motive in a case that otherwise began with a confusing outdoor search and few public answers. It also helped explain why the prosecution framed the killing as deliberate, not impulsive.

The legal path moved quickly once the homicide case overtook the missing-person investigation. Fournier was arrested shortly after Lane-Fournier’s body was found and was charged with second-degree murder. He later pleaded not guilty and chose to go to trial instead of resolving the case at a February 2026 plea setting. The trial opened Feb. 24 in Clackamas County and lasted eight days. On March 5, a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder and unlawful use of a weapon. The next day, March 6, he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. County officials said he still faces separate first-degree aggravated animal abuse charges tied to the deaths of the two dogs. Those allegations were not resolved by the murder verdict and remain an additional legal front in the case.

Even after the conviction, the case carried the emotional force of the search that came before it. For several days, neighbors and volunteers combed wet woods and roadside areas believing they might rescue a missing woman and her dogs. Instead, they uncovered the end of a marriage that prosecutors said had turned deadly as Lane-Fournier tried to leave. The contrast shaped much of the public reaction: a woman described by friends as experienced outdoors had been treated at first as a lost hiker, while people closest to her said they feared from the start that something far darker had happened at home. The jury’s verdict and the sentence closed the murder case’s main chapter, but the record left behind a blunt narrative of control, fear and a divorce that never reached court in the ordinary way.

Michel Fournier is now serving a life sentence, and the remaining animal abuse case is the next major milestone still ahead in court.

Author note: Last updated March 23, 2026.