Louisiana authorities are amazed by an amateur detective’s skills after she was able to identify a severed head they’d found in a marshland three years ago.
The head was found wrapped in a plastic bag by officers cleaning a stretch of a Lake Charles highway in 2018.
Police said that murderers often leave their victims’ corpses in the marshland thinking that “if they dump a body here, the alligators will eat it and they will disappear. Tragically, this is not unusual for us.”
Investigators released a composite sketch of the victim’s face afterward, but it wasn’t until recently, that a tipster called after detecting similarities with a missing woman’s flyer.
“This was just an individual that had an interest and has an interest, in trying to match missing people with these various online sites and organizations,” Cameron Parish Coroner Kevin Dupke said.
Dental records confirmed the alert tipster’s doubts: The severed head belonged to Sally Ann Hines, 58, who had vanished from her San Antonio, Texas home in 2017.
The situation was ironic for Cameron Parish Sheriff Ron Johnson: “Even though we were getting to the very detailed forensic examination, the case was basically solved by just an individual looking on the internet.”
