Tuesday, May 22, 2018

10 Gruesome Corpses Found in Dumps

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)

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