Body Parts Found in Detroit Sewer

Cops hope tattoo can identify victim
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 16, 2012 3:28 AM CDT
Body Parts Found in Detroit Sewer
Police hope this tattoo will help to identify the body.   (Sterling Heights Police)

A Detroit-area sewer crew's find has left police with a gruesome murder mystery. The workers found what cops describe as "a dozen softball-sized pieces of a body," ABC reports. Police say the body parts are Caucasian but it's not clear whether they are from a man or a woman. They are trying to identify the body from a tattoo found on some of the parts. "We can't tell what it's a tattoo of, but there are two pieces that match up—it's like a puzzle and we don't have all the pieces to it," a police spokesman says.

The 21-mile-long sewer line where the parts were found serves close to a million people in different communities. The workers who made the grisly find "were very professional about it," the police spokesman says. "They didn't, you know, lose it or anything like that." After the find, he says, "these workers actually went back down and accompanied the fire department personnel to process the scene." Two decapitated bodies were found last month in waterways around Detroit, where abandoned areas have become a dumping ground for corpses. (More Detroit stories.)

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