St. Louis residents dig up remains after failed police search; department apologizes
Residents took excavation into their own hands after police unsuccessfully combed the area twice. On Wednesday, police apologized for residents' frustrations.
- Dana Rieck
- Oct 20, 2022
- 0
St. Louis police officers and staff from the city medical examiner's office sift dirt near a home in the 3200 block of North 19th Street on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022 after human remains were found there. After police reported not finding anything over the weekend, neighbors called Alderman Brandon Bosley for help.
St. Louis police officers and staff from the city medical examiner's office sift dirt near a home in the 3200 block of North 19th Street on Tuesday after human remains were dug up by residents, including the neighborhood's alderman, on Monday. Police were called to the abandoned home over the weekend but said they did not find remains, so neighbors called Alderman Brandon Bosley for help instead. Residents on Tuesday said they were frustrated by what they saw as a lack of effort by police to find the remains.
ST. LOUIS — Less than an hour before attending a community meeting Monday evening, St. Louis Alderman Brandon Bosley was digging a hole deep in the dirt of a vacant north city lot in search of a body.
After shoveling with residents for more than an hour, he said he left the lot on North 19th Street finding nothing more than a few nails and pieces of plastic. But as he walked around the corner to his home for a change of clothes to attend a 6 p.m. traffic-calming town hall, his phone rang.
“They said they had found a rib cage and it looked to be human,” he said, telling the Post-Dispatch he went back and could clearly see a ribcage and hip bone in the 4-foot-deep hole.
Residents took the excavation into their own hands after police unsuccessfully combed the area twice. On Wednesday, St. Louis Maj. Ryan Cousins confirmed authorities found complete remains of what they believe is a human body, and the homicide division is now investigating. He also apologized for residents’ frustrations over what they called an insufficient police effort during the initial searches.
“What’s important is the perception of those individuals, and if the perception is that we’re falling short of those obligations, then I sincerely apologize,” said Cousins, commander of the Bureau of Investigative Services.
Bosley, the 3rd ward alderman, received a call from two neighborhood residents asking for help on Monday. He recruited a private security guard, who brought shovels, and a St. Louis Fire Department handler, who brought along a cadaver dog.
He said residents told him they suspected a man had been killed and buried in the vacant lot, but that police had stopped helping them search for the remains in the city’s Old North St. Louis neighborhood.
Janet Sanders has lived for about 15 years next to the lot, which is one of many abandoned structures throughout the neighborhood that’s overgrown with brush and trees.
Sanders said someone told her on Friday that a man who had been squatting next door had been killed and buried there sometime in the last month. She would not identify the person who told her about the homicide, citing fears of retribution. Cousins said on Wednesday the suspected body had been “there for an extended period of time,” but did not provide a more specific timeline.
Sanders called the CrimeStoppers hotline on Saturday, and she said detectives showed up with a police dog on Sunday.
But in her opinion, they didn’t do enough to search the area.
“It’s just that we didn’t get the information the first time to proceed to the next level that we needed,” Cousins said Wednesday. “If the dog had (told us) that there was a body underneath the surface at that time, they would have called the medical examiner and started an excavation process.”
When detectives left on Sunday, the two women went to the lot with a friend and started clearing a pile of brush, something they said detectives did not do. That’s when they found a depression in the dirt, about 3 feet wide, that appeared to have been recently disturbed.
They called police again Sunday night with the new information, but Sanders said they couldn’t get through to anyone at the department except for 911 dispatch.
Sanders said she eventually received a call from an officer who told her detectives had already searched the area and asked if she had found a body since then. Sanders said the officer hung up on her when she said she wouldn’t go digging for it herself.
“On behalf of the agency and the police department, I do apologize,” Cousins said Wednesday. “If the perception is that we didn’t act accordingly or we didn’t treat the situation as expected, that is definitely not the case, especially with a homicide. You know, this is a victim, and we’re trying to bring closure to every family.”
Sanders said even after that abrupt phone conversation, a homicide commander did come to the area again on Monday morning. As requested, she marked the suspected area with spray paint.
“They dug down 6 inches, right on top of where the bones were found,” Sanders said. “I begged them to dig more, and they suggested I do it.”
By 1 p.m. Monday police left, saying there was no indication that human remains had been buried there.
“We just don’t have a lot of faith in the professionalism of the police in north city due to our lived experiences,” said another longtime resident, Barbara Manzara.
So neighbors called Bosley, and he showed up a few hours later and began digging.
The alderman said he knew the residents worked regularly to make the neighborhood a better place and he wanted to do what he could to help them feel safe.
He also credited a sergeant in the ward’s precinct for helping connect him with the fire department’s canine handler.
“So this is still 100% something that without the police department there wouldn’t have been anything effective happening,” he said. “We all could have dug a little deeper.”
Cousins said investigators are working to determine the circumstances around the person’s death and thanked both women for the “tremendous effort” in finding the remains.
The city listed the owner of the property as Northside Regeneration, a company led by St. Charles County developer Paul McKee that has bought up hundreds of acres across north St. Louis.
McKee told the Post-Dispatch on Tuesday afternoon he had not yet been contacted by police but confirmed his company owned the lot. While he said his company does try to board up uninhabited structures, people “just peel them off within a week of putting them up.” The developer said the company has a long-range plan to demolish most of the structures on the properties it has purchased.
Cousins said officers would contact McKee as the investigation develops.
“You know, we’re not a perfect organization,” Cousins said. “We’re trying to get there. One of our goals is to make sure everyone is treated fairly. So, sometimes even just as a regular citizen, you may go somewhere and not get the service you deserve. But we ask that you hold us accountable and give us the opportunity again to make sure that we correct whatever mistakes we have made.”
The major also highlighted the department’s effort to solve open homicide cases and asked anyone with information to visit the department’s website to submit a tip to police.
Austin Huguelet contributed to this report.
muthafukka what?!? After all the shyt they've been doing these past recent years you knee jerk reaction is to defend them????
