Weird goings-on the sewers of the Detroit Metropolitan region have police baffled. It has the makings of a sick horror movie.
15Aug2012 Employees of Inland Waters Pollution Control are clearing debris from a pipe when they discover 10 softball-sized non-skeletal body parts about 50 feet below street level on a sewer grate at 15 Mile Road and Maple Lane in Sterling Heights. The sewer system is part of the Oakland-Macomb interceptor. The body parts are pieces of human skin with attached fatty tissue. The skin chunks appeared to have been sliced from the body. The pieces are thick and somewhat cubical having the shape of rock candy. Parts of a tattoo could be seen on six to eight of the chunks. The Sterling Heights police published photographs of the tattooed pieces in hopes that someone would recognize the design. Police do not know what the full tattoo depicts. So far police cannot match the remains to any missing persons.
20Dec2012 The same Inland Waters crew is working on the Interceptor at the Edison Corridor located under 10 Mile Road and Frazho in Warren when they discover two large pieces of human skin with attached fatty tissue. The skin was not sloughed off from a decomposing body but was neatly cut. Once again, there are no leads.
Police determined that the Sterling Heights remains belonged to a large white person. The DNA was examined by the University of North Texas Center for Human IdentificationDepartment of Forensics and Genetic Identification and found to be that of a female. The Warren skin fragments are also being examined in Texas but are still undergoing testing.
Warren police detective Sergeant Stephen Mills stated that the conditions inside the interceptor are such that there is no way the two finds located some four months apart could have entered the sewer system at the same time. The latter find would have rotted away before December were this the case. This indicates that the two sets of remains are not from the same victim.
According to Lieutenant Luke Riley of the Sterling Heights Police Department, the tattoo appears to have been inked about 15 to 20 years ago meaning the victim was well into adulthood, probably in her 40s at the time of her apparent death.
Macomb County Deputy Public Works Commissioner Gene Schabath postulated because no one has reported anyone missing that matches the skin chunks that they may have come from a mortuary or medical lab illegally disposing of body parts to save money. Lt. Riley stated that this scenario was highly unlikely and admitted that this could be the work of a serial killer as many in the Detroit area fear. If the skin chunks are determined to have come from two or more people then the serial killer hypothesis gains credence. Schabath also speculated that the second set of remains could be the work of a copycat killer. Until the tests from Texas are concluded, we can only speculate.
While the crew working in the interceptor had been at the scene the day before, nothing unusual was seen until the following day. The flesh chunks may have floated to them from the site of the earlier find which is upstream but, again, the two sets of chunks could not have been in the sewer for the same length of time. The line runs for 21 miles to the Detroit Water Treatment plant. At 8 Mile Road, all contents in the sewer lines are sliced and shredded before entering the plant.
Schabath stated that at least one of the Inland Waters employees was at both locations at the time of the discoveries. Police have not mentioned any persons of interest but if a crew worker committed the deeds, he would not be very smart to be present at both discoveries. Yet the sheer chance of two such discoveries only four months and five miles apart in a sewer system with literally thousands of miles of pipe in which the contents are always flowing at 5 to 8 mph and never coming to rest is unusual. To enter an interceptor requires that the water be drained which takes hours. Then there is only a small space in which to work. The odds of finding flesh chunks at both locations in this manner are very high. Schabath stated that for this to happen haphazardly would mean there had to be a hell of a lot more parts.
Police do not know if the finds of flesh are related to the discovery of two decapitated bodies found back in Julyone in the Detroit River and the other in a nearby canal.
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