A mother who was last seen on her way to the Veterans Affairs hospital with her son has been found dead, police said Saturday.
The body of Joan Viau, 52, was found in a wooded area in Washington Heights near 187th Street and Chittenden Avenue, the NYPD said.
The medical examiner was determining her cause of death, police said. No one has been arrested.
Viau was reported missing by her boyfriend after she was last seen in front of her home on Carlisle Place in Olinville around 1 p.m. Monday, police said.
She was headed to the VA hospital with her son when she vanished. It's not clear why they were headed there.
"I think something happened, terrible. I think something happened. But I don't know what happened," Nelson Moreno, Viau's boyfriend of 15 years, said Friday.
Viau's son was being questioned by police on a charge unrelated to her disappearance.
"We have spoken to her son Josef Garcia, we have arrested him for grand larceny for using her credit card at a location," NYPD Chief Robert Boyce said.
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Police wouldn't elaborate on why Garcia was using his mother's credit card.
Viau's car was found in the Bronx Wednesday with blood on a back seat, police say. That prompted crime scene detectives to search her home Thursday, and they were seen walking out with bags of evidence.
Viau's boyfriend and Garcia each has a long history of arrests, but no one has been named a suspect in her disappearance.
