Human Remains Found in Luggage in Florida Waterway, on Texas Ranch

Investigators on Florida’s Atlantic coast and near San Antonio in Texas are looking at separate incidents of human remains found in suitcases over the past week

The Delray Beach Police Department said a person called on Friday and “reported seeing something strange in the intracoastal waterway.” Detectives found a suitcase in the water with human remains and shortly thereafter found two more suitcases nearby, also containing human remains.

The medical examiner determined that the victim was a white or Hispanic middle-aged woman with brown hair, about 5 feet 4 inches tall. She may have had tattooed eyebrows, the department said, and was wearing a floral tank top, black undershirt, and black, mid-thigh shorts.

A day earlier and more than 1,300 miles away, Bexar County deputies in Texas got a suspicious package call about “a piece of luggage” with what appeared to be human remains inside on a ranch in the county, Sheriff Javier Salazar said.

“The first inclination, of course, is to assume that it’s a homicide scene,” Salazar said. “At this point, all we really know is that we’ve got partial human remains out here.”

The medical examiner is investigating but had so far not determined cause or manner of death, age, or a gender.

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Salazar said the remains were discovered by people who had come out to feed animals and found “a piece of luggage out in the middle of the property.” The property owners were out of town, he said, but were cooperating.

“There wasn’t really a whole lot of effort to hide the body other than it was inside of a suitcase,” he said.

Salazar also said investigators had found some spots where burning had taken place and the fire marshal’s office was assisting to determine if those spots were involved. He noted that it was fairly common to burn trash in the area, however.

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[Featured image: left, Florida crime scene and center, victim’s floral print tank top/Delray Beach Police Department. right, Texas crime scene/Bexar County Sheriff’s Office]