New York City police have a new murder case on their hands after the discovery on March 12 of human remains belonging to a man who may have been dismembered. However, the remains are from over 40 years ago, according to reports.
Police found the remains after a tip from a woman who called to say she knew about a murder that happened in the late 1970s. She also said she knew where the body was buried, a law enforcement source told the station.
The woman and her mother no longer live at the same house, and she did not explain why she chose to speak up now about her memory from long ago.
Experts say there are many reasons why someone might choose to speak out after such a long time.
Because the bones are so old, the medical examiner's office called in anthropologists to help try and identify the remains, reported NBC 4 New York.
"The fuller the body, the better they’re going to be able to determine age and sex and potential ethnicity," Dr. Robert Kunkle, a forensic psychologist who is a consultant for cold-case investigations, told the New York Times.
At this point, the murder is believed to have happened between 1977 and 1979, investigators said.
A neighbor, John Guido, who has lived for more than 40 years behind the two-story home where the body was found said the home had been a rental property that housed an endless stream of tenants. He told the New York Times that in the 1970s it attracted "really bad guys."
He said people back then "broke into my house." He was only able to stop the burglaries by installing a six-foot chain-link fence.
The 69-year-old said he watched as officers searched the backyard with a police dog. The German shepherd bounded around the lot, barked, and began digging. Guido said 13 officers then swarmed in and began digging with shovels. When they stopped digging in the middle of the yard, Guido said, "They found something."
The remains are believed to belong to a man between the ages of 30 and 35, although an identity has not been confirmed, police said.
Another neighbor, Bill Corsa, who has lived there since the 1980s, said the home was "a blight on the otherwise tight-knit, safe block through the 1980s," according to the New York Times.
"I wasn't happy about it," he said. "I can't imagine how somebody buried a body and nobody noticed."
Despite the bones being decades-old, it's considered a new case since the police just began looking into the case.
Investigators are currently going through old police records, which were all handwritten at the time. They are also heavily relying on missing persons reports filed in the late 1970s. For identification of the remains, police are hoping to get a DNA hit off the missing persons database, the law enforcement source told NBC 4 New York.
"You don't imagine it here," Jacob Avilia, a 22-year-old neighbor told the New York Times. "It's like you see in the movies."