How (Not) to Get Rid of a Body

The case was a true whodunit mystery.

We had remains but no identification.

It was just very cold, very calculated.

Whoever did this, they had a plan.

They were methodical.

Who would go through these lengths to get rid of a body?

Investigators had an impossible case to solve.

This is the Super Bowl, the crime of all crimes.

We have to identify this victim in order to catch the killer.

I was wondering, did we meet our match?

On Friday, July 12, 2002, the Pennsylvania State

Police received a call about a potential body

that was found in Jackson Township, Monroe County.

Our team responded to process the scene.

It was a pull-off site along a very rural road.

The body was located in two 55-gallon burn barrels.

Because of the level of decomposition, and the burning,

the smell was absolutely putrid.

So our team had to get

respirators from a local fire company.

It was obvious that there was no way this was an accident.

It was brutal homicide.

I've worked hundreds of homicides, but this is one of

the most gruesome cases I ever experienced.

I knew that this was gonna be a difficult case to solve.

investigators then spoke with the discoverer of the body,

George Newhart.

George Newhart said he was operating a septic business

and so when his truck was full up, he would pull into

the location and pump it out into this tanker.

When he got there, he got out of the truck and now, this is a man

who deals in human waste, and he was overwhelmed by

the -- the stench.

And he found two barrels that were somewhat smoldering and as

he started sifting through some things a little bit, he realized

this was human remains.

The first person that investigators started looking

at was George.

They checked his whereabouts, they checked his work logs,

it actually checked out.

So George was not a person of interest.

So investigators got to put the body together, they've got

to identify this person.

It was very late when investigators initially got

there, so the investigation really got going on

the following day, on July 13th.

In one barrel was the victim's torso,

in the other barrel was the victim's

head and extremities.

Also in the barrel, were maggots, some of which were

burnt, which tells us that

the victim has been dead for -- for some time.

So investigators know that at this point from that call

and the time that George, the person who found the body,

was at the properties there's a 10-hour window from when this

body could have been dumped.

Our team processed the scene to remove

the victim from both barrels.

And they sort of had to figure out, OK, what body parts do

we have? What don't we have here?

And they put down a sheet on the ground and started

putting this human back together again.

At that point, we couldn't determine if it was

a man or a woman.

Due to the fact that they were dismembered,

decomposing, and burnt.

And given the condition of the victim,

DNA testing was gonna take a while.

It was definitely clear to me that this person or persons

who killed this individual went through great lengths to try

and dispose of the body and make sure that

he or she were never identified.

When removing the victim from the burn barrel,

we discovered a piece of blue plastic or vinyl,

and we recovered duct tape.

We recovered a rope, remnants of clothing,

cigarette butts, all these things that we thought may

or may not be related to our crime.

But how big is your scene?

Was the victim killed and dismembered here

or somewhere else? You don't know.

You're talking about a remote area of the Poconos.

So it already set the case

into a difficult status because they are looking at so much

ground to cover.

We had cadaver dogs go through the woods looking for evidence.

But there's no indication or evidence that this crime had

occurred here.

This person was killed and dismembered somewhere else.

Fortunately, the property did have a cable going across it,

a 40-foot cable, and it was low.

There was a lock on it, and it would have taken two

people to get their vehicle underneath that cable, one to

hold it up, one to drive the vehicle up to the barrels.

So we believe there's two offenders,

and we know that a vehicle had to enter this property because

there was no evidence of dragging from the road.

Then the speculation part started, you know.

Who could have done anything like this?

It's scary to think of the type of person who would go to these

lengths to try and get away with this murder.

So we are trying to think like the offender.

Was it someone that got off the interstate and decided to

dispose of this individual in these burn barrels?

Or that someone had more of an intimate knowledge of this

property, being that they knew that the burned barrels

would be there?

When the investigation started, there's a lot of people working

on it, multiple agencies.

You have this two-pronged approach.

On one hand, you've got the investigators looking on

the ground, looking for witnesses, looking for anyone

with any information about this crime.

Then on the other hand, you've got the forensic team

in the lab trying to work on identifying the body.

As we begin this process, we know

DNA is gonna take a while.

But right out of the gate at the autopsy,

we're looking at the victim's head and extremities.

And there's one thing we know -- the victim is male.

He was stabbed multiple times. His right orbital was crushed.

His nose was fractured. His tibia was broken.

Not only was this person dismembered, they went through

a lot of trauma.

Seeing what happened to this individual makes me sick.

He's cut up into pieces, torched, and thrown out

like garbage.

And we consider that a challenge to find the truth

and bring those responsible to justice.

We know that the body was wrapped in a blue plastic.

And our forensic units looked at a logo

and did some research.

We discovered the logo on it, and it's a popular brand.

They make air mattresses.

We don't know where or when the mattress was purchased.

We don't know how it's related to this crime,

or where it fits in.

It's just another piece to the puzzle.

We know that there's a killer out there.

So it's very crucial to identify that victim.

The quickest way of identifying the victim would be

through fingerprints.

But the hands were severely dehydrated.

They were leathery, very hard. They're shriveled up.

Being exposed to the extreme heat, they're very small,

almost like that of a child's.

That makes dealing with that piece of human

fingertip difficult.

The left thumb was the best fingerprint that we had

to work with, but it was small, so it was a slow process.

The killers had a plan to cover all their tracks.

You don't put pieces of a body into two separate barrels

and set them on fire unless you don't want to be found.

It was so disgusting -- you don't get

that smell out of your head.

Who would go through these lengths to get rid of a body?

We knew that we were dealing with something

very evil at this point.

We have an unidentified individual that was

murdered horribly,

dismembered and burned in a couple burn barrels.

We want to identify this person at all costs, because ultimately

we want a family to know what happened to

their loved one, number one.

Number two, we have to identify that person in order to

catch the killer.

So weeks, they turn into months,

and we were thinking outside the box and doing everything

we could to identify the victim.

It's very frustrating with an unidentified person when

you can't make that connection to who they are.

It feels like the investigation stalls.

So my partner reached out to a forensic artist,

and he recreates with clay and his artistry and gives us

a face of this victim.

We were hoping to get some type of face out there.

We're working with the media to get this information out there

because we have to identify this victim.

We were doing everything we could.

However, the victim's identity still wasn't known.

There's a family connected to this person.

The investigators were frustrated.

Can you imagine trying to solve a crime

where the evidence is

basically burned in pieces?

So at this point, we're doing everything we can.

We're looking at new avenues, anything we can do to think

outside the box and move forward with this investigation.

You have the human emotion

and the professional emotion,

but we were never gonna give up.

We weren't going to stop fighting for that victim.

And so we continued and continued and continued

to investigate.

We believe there's two offenders based on the cable.

Whoever did this, they had a plan.

They were methodical.

So you have to think, did the person or people

responsible for this really get away with murder?

Then we get about a year outside of the investigation,