Last week, human remains were found in luggage in two separate incidents spanning from south Texas to south Florida.
On Thursday, officials with the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office in Texas reported that they found human remains in a duffel bag that had been left on a local resident’s property.
The next day, Delray Beach police found a suitcase floating in a Florida waterway containing dismembered human remains.
They later found two other suitcases nearby containing other body parts believed to belong to the same victim.
Authorities in both states are now working to identify the victims and their killers.
Officials in Bexar County, Texas, found a duffel bag full of human remains that had been left on a property Thursday morning
In Delray Beach, Fla., police found a suitcase containing dismembered human remains floating in a coastal waterway
South Florida police later found two other suitcases containing human remains nearby
Florida police believe all of the remains belong to a single middle-aged female victim
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office said it received a call about a suspicious package just before 11 a.m. Thursday when people feeding animals on a property while their owners were out of town noticed luggage on the lawn.
When officers arrived, they discovered human remains in the holdall, Sheriff Javier Salazar said at a news conference.
“There wasn’t really much effort to hide the body other than it was in a suitcase,” he said.
An investigation into the find is still ongoing. Salazar said it was unclear how long the holdall had been on the property before it was found.
The sex and identity of the victim also remain unclear.
“The first bias, of course, is to assume it’s a murder site,” Salazar said. “At this point, all we know is that we have partial human remains out there.”
He pointed out that investigators also observed what appeared to be attempts to set something on fire near the property, but Salazar warned that neighbors may have just been burning trash.
“It’s just too early to tell if the person here was a murderer or if they were brought here in this piece of luggage and then dumped here,” he said.
Salazar added that the property’s owners are cooperating with the investigation.
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar told a news conference that an investigation was ongoing
He said the remains were not well hidden and were simply left in the holdall at the property
The property owners were out of town at the time and were cooperating with the investigation
Just hours after this gruesome discovery, police in Delray Beach, Fla., reported finding dismembered human remains in a suitcase floating in the offshore waterway.
Investigators would then discover two more suitcases along the waterway, which also contained body parts.
“At this early stage of the investigation, the remains appear to belong to an unidentified adult female,” officials wrote in their incident report.
Police have officially ruled the death a homicide and announced Sunday that the remains are that of an unidentified adult female, either white or Hispanic, middle-aged with brown hair, and approximately 5 feet 7 inches tall.
She may have had tattooed eyebrows and wore a floral tank top with a black undershirt and mid-thigh black shorts.
The Delray Police Department is asking anyone with information about the crime to contact Det. Mike Liberta at (561) 243-7874.