Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
Two were crushed to death.
A third was strangled. A fourth was stabbed to death. A fifth burned
to death. A sixth may have suffocated. A seventh may have died as the
result of an accident. An eighth may have been beaten to death. In
some cases, the causes of death are undetermined. Some were adults.
Others were teens. Still others were newborns. Regardless of their
ages and of how they met their deaths, these 10 gruesome human
corpses found in dumps show just how cheaply some people hold human
life.
10 Two Crushed Men
William Norris
Although no evidence
suggests they knew each other, William J. Norris, 45, and Anthony D.
Todd, 43, suffered the same fate. Having fallen asleep in Dumpsters,
they were crushed to death after being loaded into garbage trucks.
Two months apart, their bodies were found in the westside Leon County
waste transfer station near Tallahassee, Florida. Although a local
shelter provides hot meals and blankets, offering a safe place to
sleep, Pastor Glenn Burns said some homeless people prefer to sleep
in the woods or elsewhere.
Myron Henry was operating
a front-end loader when he spied Norris' torso in the trash at the
waste transfer station. Norris had suffered a broken right arm and
head trauma. His alcohol level was .249 at the time of his death.
Anthony Todd
Todd's body was discovered
by Perry Kalip, who, while loading trash onto trucks with a
bulldozer, “saw legs sticking out of the trash pile.” The
corpse's upper right arm was tattooed with the name “Todd,” which
matched the name, Anthony Todd, on a credit/debit card found on his
body. According to his sister, Todd had had a history of seizures.
Police suspect he'd crawled into the Dumpster to avoid rainfall, had
fallen asleep after having a seizure, and hadn't awakened when the
garbage truck emptied the Dumpster. (LINK 1)
9 Mississippi Native
A child found the
strangled body of native Mississippian William Bryan Glenn, 43, in a
Cambodian garbage dump. The body was wrapped in a yellow duct-taped
curtain. Glenn had left home on his motorcycle the day before his
body was discovered on July 9, 2014. A graduate of the University of
Mississippi, Glenn had been teaching abroad for 12 years, most
recently in Cambodia.
Cambodian authorities said
Glenn was wanted as a “criminal” in the United States. His wife,
Nittaya, said Glenn was in a hurry to leave Cambodia for China. He'd
visited the U. S. embassy in Phnom Phen on July 7, 2014, to update
his passport, but it was confiscated. Witnesses who'd seen Glenn's
body said it showed signs of his having been beaten and bound with
shoelaces. (LINK 2)
8 College Student's Body
In April 2006, the body of
The College of New Jersey (TCNJ) student John Fiocco, Jr., age 18,
was found in the Tullytown Landfill in Tullytown, Pennsylvania. He'd
been missing for a month. Neither the cause of death nor the
circumstances related to Fiocco's disappearance have been determined,
although his parents, John and Susan, arguing that their son was
killed by an unidentified mentally ill TCNJ graduate after Fiocco
returned to his dorm room following a night spent drinking, won a
$425,000 wrongful death settlement in a lawsuit against the college
and the state. His parents claimed the college's “lax security
measures” contributed to their son's death. The state admitted to
no “wrongdoing or liability,” TCNJ spokesman Matthew Golden said,
but the settlement prevented “the continued expense of litigation.”
(LINK 3)
7 Austintown Girl's Body
On June 25, 2014, the
intact body of Gina Burger, age 16, was found in a Mercer County,
Pennsylvania, landfill. Burger went missing after she'd gone,
barefoot, to a neighbor's house in the Compass West Apartments to
borrow some tea. Police arrested Ricki Williams IV, age 18, who lived
in the same apartment complex. Burger had been held against her will
and stabbed to death, before Williams and an accomplice put “her
body in a portable playpen” and threw it “in a trash bin, which
was picked up by Tri County Industries of Grove City, Pennsylvania,
and then dumped in a waste facility there.”
Williams was charged with
two counts of kidnapping, aggravated burglary, tampering with
evidence, intimidation, and aggravated murder. Because he killed
Burger while committing another felony, Williams faces the death
penalty. Roneishia Johnson, 21, of Compass West, was charged with
obstruction of justice, a third-degree felony, for helping Williams
dispose of the victim's corpse. Police believe Williams carved the
message “Kill Fo Fun” into a stairwell in the apartment complex.
(LINK 4)
6 Teen's Body
Geanna Durham
Did Geanna Durham's
mother, Reshawnda Laney Durham, kill her daughter when Geanna was 13
or 14 years old? Oklahoma City police are investigating this grim
possibility.
According to Reshawnda,
Geanna's father took her to live with him in Florida, but he denied
her claim, saying he hasn't seen Geanna since she was 18 months old.
The girl has been missing since at least February 2, 2015. A witness
said he found a body inside a chest while cleaning out a locker in a
storage facility owned by Reshawnda's landlord, Ray Pelfrey. The
trunk's owner told Pelfrey to throw the trunk away. Discarded, the
chest was collected from a Dumpster and taken to the landfill. When
he complied with the owner's instructions, Pelfrey didn't know the
chest contained a body, he said. Police cleared Pelfrey of helping to
conceal the victim's body. (LINK 5)
After the remains were
identified as Geanna's, further charges were expected in the case.
(LINK 6)
5 Burnt Body
In September, 2016, an
unidentified middle-age man's burnt body was found among cotton
wastes inside a corporation's slaughterhouse in Vellalore, India. The
corpse exhibited no external injuries other than the burns that
covered 80 percent of the body. According to “unconfirmed reports,”
the legs were “tied.” In an attempt to identify the remains,
police consulted closed-circuit television footage “recorded at
nearby places.” For now, authorities registered the man's death as
“unnatural” and said they'd change the designation should it be
determined that the man was murdered. (LINK 7)
4 Irwindale Remains
Dirt dumped by a truck
driver included human remains. The body, that of a man in his 20s or
30s, was likely that of a “transient who climbed into the empty
dump truck” while it was parked in Los Angeles. Sheriff's homicide
detective Lt. John Corina suggested the man was buried in the truck
when dirt was dumped into the vehicle's trailer. “Once you're in
the bottom of that trailer, no one will hear you,” Corina said. The
driver dumped the load into the Manning Pike site's quarry in
Irwindale, California, on August 27, 2016. The transient climbed into
the trailer on August 25 or 26. The dirt, which originated at “a
Metro rail project site at 1st and Alameda streets . . . was picked
up around 7:45 a.m.” Police suspect the death was accidental,
rather than homicidal, in nature. (LINK 8)
3 Newborns' Bodies
On December 18, 2016,
Isaiah, who gave only his first name, was on his way home from
church, he said, when a gathering of onlookers attracted his
attention. In a rubbish dump, a newborn's body was being devoured by
a dog. Some present claimed the baby had been abandoned alive. The
dump is located near Gwallameji, a suburb of Bauchi, the Bauchi State
capital. Bystanders dug a shallow grave at the site and buried the
baby's body. Reporters' calls to the local police were “fruitless”
in obtaining further details. (LINK 9)
In a similar incident, attracted by flies and an unpleasant odor coming from a dump, residents of Gwallameji, Nigeria, were shocked and outraged to find the body of a newborn male and a placenta “wrapped in a soiled cloth.” Hassan Ibrahim, a community leader, contacted the police. Ibrahim believes the woman who perpetrated the crime came from “a far place” and called upon locals to “be more vigilant” concerning pregnant women whose babies mysteriously disappear. He said that, five years earlier, a woman who'd given birth elsewhere abandoned her baby in the same dump. She was later arrested. (LINK 10)
In yet a third incident,
in August 2016, a week-old baby's body was found in a garbage dump
under the Anto Bridge in Keffi Town, Nasarawa State. No further
details were provided, other than the statement that “dumping of
unwanted children is quickly becoming a norm, with some going as far
as to kill these children in the most brutal ways.” (LINK 11)
2 Girl Missing for 49
Years
In 1967, when she was four
years old, Teala Patricia Thompson disappeared after leaving her
Homewood neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her parents
reported her missing, but police were unable to locate the girl. Now,
49 years after her disappearance, her body has been found in an
unmarked grave in a potter's field next to the Westmoreland County
Prison in Greensburg. Pennsylvania State Trooper Brian Gross,
assigned the case in October 2014, followed a lead that suggested
Thompson's body might have been dumped in a landfill in Salem
Township, Pennsylvania. A court had ordered the body interred in the
potter's field. Police obtained DNA samples from the body and from
Thompson's relatives, and lab tests proved the girl's remains were
those of Thompson. Although Thompson's killer has not been
identified, it's believed he may have worked at a cleaners in the
victim's neighborhood. (LINK 12)
1 Missing Concertgoer
The body of Cory Bannon,
22, of Fremont, Ohio, was found in a dump truck in the Lorain County
Landfill on July 22, 2014. He'd been missing since going to a country
music concert on July 18, 2014. The driver had returned from a
Cleveland route, and, as the truck's trash was dumped, a worker saw
Barron's body and notified police. His identity was confirmed by
identification and a concert ticket found on the body. Police
detected no “obvious signs of injury,” but did not examine the
entire body. (LINK 13)
LINK 9:
https://ireporteronline.com/42070_shocking-dog-found-eating-newborn-baby-left-at-dump-site-in-bauchi
LINK 13:
http://www.chroniclet.com/news/2014/07/22/UPDATED-Body-found-in-landfill-is-missing-22-year-old.html
