Slain insurance investigator's funeral set for Sunday

Raleigh, N.C. — A funeral service will be held Sunday at 3 p.m. for the slain state insurance investigator whose body was found in South Carolina earlier this week.

A visitation for Sallie Rohrbach will be Saturday from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Thomas Funeral Home, 401 N. Ennis St., Fuquay-Varina. The funeral will also be held there Sunday.

Rohrbach's body was found Tuesday in a wooded area in Fort Mill, S.C., 25 miles from a Charlotte insurance agency that was the subject of a state insurance audit she was conducting.

The agency's owner, Michael Howell, 40, is charged with first-degree murder in the 44-year-old's death.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police have said her death is connected to her duties as an auditor and that evidence in her car and Howell's vehicle connected him to the homicide.

They have not released further details about the case, including a cause of death.

Sources inside the police department told CBS affiliate WBTV in Charlotte, however, that she died from blunt force trauma and that the killing took place inside Howell's office at the Dilworth Agency.

Rorhbach's husband, Tim Rohrbach, said she was filling in for another insurance investigator and was expected to return home last Friday.

They had last communicated over e-mail on May 13, he said, mostly about resurfacing their driveway. He said he was not worried when he did not hear from her the next few days, because he knew she was busy with work and had plans to visit with friends.

"This has been a very difficult time for our family; we have lost someone we all loved very much," Tim Rohrbach said in a statement Wednesday. "Sallie had a wonderful spirit and loved life to its fullest. It has been very hard for us to accept her senseless death."