After more than a week of searching and hoping, members of a tiny central Ohio town have started grieving after learning that the bodies of three missing people had been found stuffed into garbage bags and hidden in a hollow tree.

The discovery came at a wildlife area on Thursday, four days after authorities found a 13-year-old girl who had gone missing with them bound and gagged, but alive, in a nearby home.

Knox County Sheriff David Barber says investigators were led to the bodies by an unemployed tree-trimmer accused of kidnapping the girl and keeping her for nearly four days in the basement of his home in Mount Vernon, about 40 miles northeast of Columbus.

The girl, her mother, her 11-year-old brother and a family friend were reported missing on Nov. 10.