Affidavit: Guns found in Virginia couple's home

Leads are scarce in girl's disappearance, parents' deaths

Jennifer Renee Short, center, with her parents, Michael and Mary Short, in an undated family photo

COLLINSVILLE, Virginia (CNN) -- Investigators removed guns, ammunition and documents from the home of a slain southwest Virginia couple and their missing daughter, according to a search warrant affidavit filed Monday.

The inventory from the search Thursday -- when Michael Wayne Short, 50, and Mary Hall Short, 36, were found shot to death in their Bassett home -- included a pair of .22-caliber shell casings, each taken from near one of the bodies.

Also removed were a 12-gauge Winchester shotgun, a .22-caliber rifle, a partial box of .22-caliber ammunition and a box of 12-gauge shotgun shells. Other evidence taken included a business checkbook, a computer disk and unidentified documents in a briefcase.

Henry County Sheriff H.F. Cassell declined to comment on the search affidavit, except to say that all necessary tests would be performed on any evidence collected.

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Authorities said they have been baffled by the killings and disappearance of the Shorts' 9-year-old daughter, Jennifer Renee Short, and the lack of evidence.

On Monday morning, Cassell called the case "unusual" and "bizarre." The house showed no signs of struggle, he said, leading investigators to believe that the elder Shorts were killed in their sleep.

Cassell said that phone lines were cut, indicating "that someone intended to commit a crime." A two-hour search Monday of a small pond near the Short home turned up nothing, according to a Virginia State Police representative.

Police had no indication that any clues would be found in the pond, Cassell said, but investigators initiated the search -- conducted by dredging with the use of an underwater camera -- because "it's the only sizable body of water around here."

The sheriff also said police had reports of a vehicle that may have been seen leaving the Short house not long before the bodies were discovered.

"There is the possibility of a red or dark colored van or truck or pickup ... sometime prior to 9 [a.m.]," Cassell said Monday. "But it's been so vague it hasn't been any great use so far. We're hoping to develop that."

On Sunday, bloodhounds picked up the little girl's scent in areas she frequented, the sheriff said, adding "that really doesn't tell us anything."

Cassell said phone calls had come in and out of the house Wednesday before the slayings but said he wasn't certain what time the last phone activity was noted. He said investigators had pieced together a timeline in which the Shorts and their daughter went to bed "sometime after midnight."

An employee of the Shorts' moving business, Christopher Thompson, found the bodies about 9 a.m. Thursday. Both of the Shorts died of single gunshot wounds to the head.

A spent shell casing was discovered on Mary Short's bed, where her body was found, and the other was found near Michael Short's body in the garage, according to the affidavit.

A bloodhound searches Sunday around the Short house in southwest Virginia.

Investigators also lifted a latent impression of the words "I'm glad to see" from the garage door window, but there was no indication that the message was related to the slayings and Jennifer's disappearance.

Cassell said his intuition had led him to "believe the perpetrator of this crime was from this general area and had knowledge of these victims."

He said Thompson had "cooperated fully" with the investigation.

State and federal authorities are helping with the investigation.