True Forensics: Investigators carefully sift earth in search of more remains. Police...:
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Investigators carefully sift earth in search of more remains. Police said the remains were under a foot of dirt, likely placed there before cement was poured.
At construction site, forensic team searches for human remains
On a construction site near Memorial Park, amid large mounds of brown dirt, dump trucks and bulldozers, stood two small, white canopy tents.
Underneath the tents and the sun’s relentless heat, a forensics crew created their own 100-square-foot excavation site Thursday afternoon, digging and sifting through every inch of dirt, looking for human bones: skeletal remains belonging to someone unknown and the first piece of the puzzle Houston police were trying to solve.
As they searched, the roar of tractors and the low, bellowing boom of a wrecking ball could be heard around them as construction on the soon-to-be apartment complex continued.
The area was once the home of the Park Memorial Condominiums - torn down earlier this year - and homicide investigators believe bones were placed there more than 30 years ago when the development was being built.
Discovered by construction workers on Wednesday, the bones appeared to have been concealed between the retaining wall and underneath the pavement in what was once the complex’s parking garage.
Houston Police Department Homicide Division Sgt. Richard Rodriguez said the remains were placed under about a foot of dirt, likely before workers building the complex poured cement over the top. Crews found the remains after knocking down the retaining wall.
“The bones were placed there either by someone dumping a body or the previous construction crew (who built the development) found them and placed them there,” Rodriguez suggested.
Forensic anthropologists from the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, who collected the remains, will now attempt to extract DNA from the bones, Rodriguez said. Their goal is to identify the person and determine a cause of death.
An old cemetery?
Condemned and vacant for nearly three years, the Park Memorial Condominiums, built in the late 1970s and early ’80s, were demolished earlier this year after being sold to developers, Rodriguez said.
Residents in the area drove by Thursday morning and afternoon, sneaking peeks as investigators continued to dig.
“Anytime anything like that happens, it’s an eerie feeling,” said Ralph Rodriguez, who has owned an alloy company across the street from the construction site for nearly 15 years.
Some residents say that the complex was built over an old cemetery. Investigator Rodriguez said he found records of many old burial grounds in and around the area, but hasn’t yet been able to find any that used to be in the construction site.
“I haven’t ruled it out yet and it’s still a possibility,” he said, adding that forensic investigators told him that the color of the bones indicated that they may even date back before the 1970s.
Meanwhile, Rodriguez said he’s also received phone calls from some people saying their family members went missing around the time construction began on the Park Memorial Condominiums. Those callers believe the remains could possibly belong to loved ones.
Why the bones were placed there is still a mystery, but the HPD investigator is fairly certain about one thing.
“Because of the placement of the bones, I don’t see it as an accident,” Rodriguez said.
A good starting point?
After spending Wednesday afternoon and nearly eight hours Thursday sifting through the dirt, forensic crews decided to call it a day about 4 p.m.
Unless construction crews discover more bones, investigators will end the search for additional remains.
Their hunt yielded pieces of a skull, a bone from what appears to be a nose, a few from a leg, a rib and other small fragments that have yet to be identified, Rodriguez said. That, he is hoping, will be a good starting point to putting a name and face to the skeletal remains and finding out how they ended up where they did.
“The most important thing,” Rodriguez stressed, “is trying to find an identification.”
(Source: chron.com)
