Thought I found a body today

[City of Mills]

I was out hiking this morning, scouting out places to hide a geocache...I live near a nice wooded area, so I drove over to an old logging trail and hiked up a nice steep hill. I hadn't been in this neck of the woods for a long time, though I had driven by the area many times recently. After heading back to my car, something compelled me to look around across the road from where I was parked. The ground dipped down off the shoulder, and there was a little bit of land there alongside a wetlands area. Amongst some beer bottles and other assorted litter, I saw something odd in a spot next to the water.

There was a clear, thick plastic wrapping protruding from the ground - and as I got closer, I saw something that sent a cold chill down my back - inside the clear plastic wrapping was a blue tarp tied with some twine, and there was a bone protruding from inside the blue tarp - looked about the size of an human arm bone. This mass of plastic (and something else) was partially buried, and the depression in the ground was roughly 2' x 5'. It was clear by the weathering of the tarp that this had been out here awhile. It looked to me like some kind of wild animal had dug up the corner of this thing and partially exposed it.

I immediately drove over to the local police station to report the find. They took my information and number and asked if they could call me to direct them to the location when they had an officer available, and I agreed. I returned to the nearby area and hiked some more until I got the call. I met up with the officer by the road, and showed him the spot. He started tugging on the plastic and untied the twine. Under the blue top, there were more bones...a spinal column, and some other bones that looked like ribs. In a corner of the tarp was a dark mass of mashed up stuff, he poked at it with a stick, and it looked like...fur? The remains looked to be a dog. The cop thanked me for letting them know, and expressed relief that it wasn't human - he was on the tail end of a double shift, and would've had to work the scene for hours had it turned out to be a person.




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[LiberalFighter]

1. Lucky you too.

I found my neighbor's body across the road on the porch in the afternoon in December of 2009. I figured she was dead but poked her to make sure. She had a light dusting of snow on her. First time I ever touched a dead person. The house had been vacant for almost 18 months since she died.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. How distressing!

[femmocrat]

3. Eeeek! What a frightening experience!

What is a "geocache"?

[City of Mills]

5. Geocache

http://www.geocaching.com/
http://www.geocaching.com/guide/default.aspx


Geocaching is a high-tech version of an easter egg hunt. Essentially, it's a game played using handheld GPS receivers - a person hides a small container with a log book (and sometimes small inexpensive trinkets) somewhere out in the world, and records the GPS coordinates. They can then 'register' the object and its location on the geocaching website. Then, other people can attempt to find the object using their GPS receiver. If they find the container, they sign the log. You can search for nearby geocaches in a number of ways, including ZIP code. It's something I do while I'm out hiking.

[marzipanni]

4. That would be downright creepy to discover!

I'm glad it was not a human. The police would be figuring out if the remains were of a missing person, who (s)he was, etc.. Sometimes a murderer will feel remorse and be plagued with guilt and lead police to a body. So to them you might be a suspicious person until they figure out what happened to the victim. Now that would be really scary! :scared:

I was thinking, "am I wrong to think this happens?" and googled "person finds human remains" and the first on the results was the link to this article.-
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/05/20/state/n225501D78.DTL

[City of Mills]

6. That was one of the thoughts

Running through my mind, weird to even think about things like that, but yeah I felt nervous...after all, it's not a place people would go poking around. I'm sure it happens all the time. It's not the first time I've found a 'bag of bones' while out hiking, a couple years back I was walking along a desolate stretch of railroad track when I spotted some clear plastic sheeting just off into the woods. I tugged on the plastic and found dozens of bones wrapped up. Fortunately, some were clearly identifiable as 'not human', it looked like someone tossed out a deer carcass or something.

This time, I really didn't want to 'disturb' the scene, just in case. There are a few unsolved disappearances from this area, and just a few years ago someone found skeletal remains wrapped in a blue tarp a couple of miles away, and another wrapped body turned up less than a half mile from my 'discovery'.

[Kali]

7. around here small time cattle thieves will dump bones and hides in out of the way spots

weirdest thing I found was a garbage bag full of dead chickens, figured somebody had a skunk or coyote (or dog) attack and didn't know what else to do with the bodies.

years ago somebody dumped a human body off in a ditch at the end of our road. I didn't find it or even see it but apparently they had driven out here all the way from Indiana - in the summer - finally dumped it because of the stench. I seem to recall they got caught in a traffic stop and the car still reeked. Meth. what a great drug.


ok that is the second dead body topic for today - gonna be a strange day?

[LeftinOH]

8. The person who deposited the remains should have buried the carcass

without any plastic tarp or plastic sheeting- that's an extreme case of littering, and it interrupts the natural process of decomposition. It also (obviously) makes for a messy/scary scene for people who happen upon it.

[City of Mills]

10. Tell me about it!

I don't think it's too unusual for people to bury their pets, maybe directly in the ground or a black garbage bags or something. The thing that spooked me was the way this carcass was disposed of - I'm sorry, but plastic sheeting and a tarp? That's how you bury a corpse when you're concerned with the odor or decomposition. Now, the area already has some litter, but I'm not going back to pick up that disgusting plastic and tarp (which is now completely above ground) so the area looks even more trashed. Not to mention, I'm sure if anyone else happened by they may be alarmed by the site as well. I know the cop didn't stick around to clean it up...I'll have to swing by in a few days.

[RebelOne]

9. Many years ago, a friend and I were out horseback riding

off the Palmetto Expressway in South Florida. We took a path down an isolated section. We came across a car parked in the weeds. Upon closer inspection, we saw one side of the car was covered in blood. Well, needless to say,we hightailed it out of there. I called the police when I got home and reported it, but never heard anything afterward. Maybe the police did not believe me because I could not pinpoint the exact location.