Pennsylvania officials are still trying to figure out how a severed head (below) ended up in the woods last year, and who the decapitated woman is.
Before dumping the body part, someone replaced the eyeballs with two small red orbs, police disclosed, causing them to suspect that the rest of her missing body has found its way -- in pieces -- to the black market.
Her desecrated corpse had been embalmed before the head was chopped off and discarded, so it was in fairly good condition when a child trekking through the woods on December 12, 2014 made their gruesome discovery.
Since then, dozens of tips about the middle-aged Jane Doe have led detectives nowhere, and today she remains as much a mystery as the day her severed head was first found.
Toxicology tests on the woman’s tooth enamel, bone and hair reveal that, while alive, she spent a substantial amount of time in the northeastern U.S., possibly at several different locations.
But the removal of her eyes, and other garish abuses of her corpse, isn’t a customary funerary practice in any of the 50 states, a law enforcement spokesman emphasized at yesterday’s press conference.
As to an embalmed head being in a wooded area so far from a rural road, he said that makes it amply clear it didn’t just accidentally “roll off” the back of hearse somehow.
He also noted that, because of embalming fluids, it’s impossible to pinpoint the victim’s precise time of death, although she probably died from natural causes since trace amounts of heart medications were also detected at autopsy.
The above sketches of what the disembodied Jane Doe may have looked like were provided by a police artist. If you think you recognize this crime victim please contact Pennsylvania authorities immediately!
Eponymous Rox
Cold Case, Abuse of Corpse
