The ex-boyfriend of missing Florida mother Cassie Carli sent chilling text messages to her father before she was found buried in a “shallow grave” in Alabama, it has been revealed.

Ms Carli, 37, went missing on 27 March after meeting her former boyfriend Marcus Spanevelo for a visitation with their four-year-old daughter Saylor near Navarre Beach in Florida.

A major search operation lasting almost a week ended on Sunday with the police finding her body in a barn in Alabama, with identification confirmed through a distinctive tattoo, the Santa Rosa County sheriff’s office announced at a news conference.

Mr Spanevelo, who has ties to the property where the body was found, was arrested in the case on Saturday.

Text messages cited by The Sun showed Mr Spanevelo had contacted Ms Carli’s father the day after she vanished and said she had asked him to drop her off “in the middle of nowhere” in the Florida city of Destin to stay with a friend named Stacey.

Ms Carli’s father was immediately suspicious, writing back: “Stacey moved to Alabama a while ago. Cassie would never have you drop her off anywhere. Is her car at your house?”

Mr Spanevelo replied to say that Ms Carli’s car was still in Navarre Beach and he had left with Saylor, The Sun reported.

The texts also showed that Ms Carli’s father received messages from her phone on 27 March saying she was having car trouble and was spending the night at Mr Spanevelo’s house.

Mr Spanevelo was arrested in Lebanon, Tennessee, by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and state troopers the day before Ms Carli’s body was found.

He has been charged with tampering and destruction of evidence after he “got rid of” Carli’s phone, Santa Rosa County Sheriff Bob Johnson said at a news conference. He is also facing charges for giving false information to the police as he refused to cooperate with the investigation.

“He was totally uncooperative, he never cooperated at all with us,” Mr Johnson said. “It’s your baby’s mother and she’s missing and you’re not going to cooperate with authorities -- that’s kind of tell-tale.”

Of the body discovery, the sheriff said: “It’s not the ending that we wanted obviously, but we’re hoping to provide a little closure to the family.”

Mr Johnson told reporters that the Major Crimes Unit had traveled over 1,500 miles (over 2,400 kilometres) looking for Carli and found her body “while executing a search warrant in Alabama”.

The police did not reveal how they found the spot and whether it was directly owned by Mr Spanevelo but said it was linked to him “in a roundabout way”.

The four-year-old daughter had been found earlier on Tuesday and remains safe, Mr Johnson said, while Carli’s body is scheduled for an autopsy on Monday to investigate the cause of her death.