Bastrop, Tx–Investigators believe the woman whose body was found beside a travel trailer which burned July 2 near Bastrop was Lillian Rose Palmer, a 23-year-old mother. Positive identification of the badly burned corpse is awaiting autopsy results, according to a July 7 statement from the Bastrop County Sheriff’s Department.
The fire on Ponderosa Loop, off Texas 21 east of Bastrop, was reported shortly before 3 a.m. July 2. Firefighters at the scene said they found a travel trailer fully engulfed in flames and fire spreading into the adjoining woods. Once the fire was under control, officials found a body near the trailer, and investigators began a search for Palmer’s “young child”–who was quickly located unharmed–and a man described as her boyfriend.
Local investigators, with the aid of the Austin Police Department and a fugitive recovery team from the U.S. Marshall’s Service, arrested Donald Martin Blackmon, 29, later July 2 on a previously issued warrant charging him with probation violations. Blackmon has been held without bail in the Bastrop County Jail since July 2, according to jail records.
Blackmon has not been charged with any offense connected with the fire or the death of Palmer. He has been questioned by local investigators, however, according to a statement from the sheriff’s department.