The remains were found in Ward 8, an area of the District that has been struggling with crime. Of the 42 homicides this year, 21 have occurred there, helping push the number of killings across the city up 17 percent over last year.
Without facts from police, residents speculated Sunday on whom the remains might belong to.
Some mentioned the possibility of finally finding Relisha Rudd, who was 8 years old when she went missing in 2014 from the homeless shelter at the former D.C. General Hospital, where she had been living with her family.
Mary J. Cuthbert, who chairs the Advisory Neighborhood Commission for the neighborhood where the remains were found, mentioned the notorious and still-at-large serial killer called the
Freeway Phantom. Police say he killed six girls and young women ages 10 through 18 over 16 months starting in 1971. The victims were raped and strangled, their bodies left along or near busy roads and highways in the District and Maryland.
“We had a lot of homicides and a lot of young ladies missing,” Cuthbert said.
But James Trainum, a retired D.C. homicide detective who reinvestigated the Freeway Phantom case in the mid-2000s, said Sunday that the killer nearly 50 years ago “was pretty much dumping the victims out in the open, in places where they were bound to be discovered.” These latest remains were all hidden.