The Hamilton County Coroner's Office is seeking assistance in identifying two people whose remains were recently found. Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco says foul play is not suspected in either case.
The cases are not linked, Sammarco says. The first set of remains were found Sunday in a wooded area in Delhi Township. The second body was discovered Tuesday by Sacred Heart Field, a recreational soccer area next to Mt. Storm Park on Lafayette Ave. in Clifton. Both, she says, were found by people out walking in the woods.
Delhi Township
Investigators believe the skeletal remains found in Delhi Township have likely been there for a while. They were found in dense woods on a steep hill in the 6800 block of Hillside Ave. The remains don't match the description of any missing persons in Delhi, police say.
They think the person likely died sometime in the fall. Police say there is no hiking trail or obvious reason for someone to have been in that part of the woods.
"Judging by the area where he was found and the steepness of the hillside and the likelihood of his size, we don't think he was put there. We don't think he was placed there. We do think that he probably took himself there and then died," says Sammarco.
An anthropologist brought in by the coroner's office determined the person was likely a middle-aged Black man, about six feet tall. He was wearing extra large shirts and a Port Authority jacket with size 38 waist, 32-inch length Levi Strauss jeans and size 13 Airwalk shoes.
"Some of the clothing items were kind of mismatched," says Delhi police investigator, Lt. Joe Macaluso. "Almost made me believe that it might be someone that bought their clothes at a Goodwill. And then I started thinking that maybe this was a homeless person. ... There was no sites, no campsites. We had drones in the area, and we really walked the hillside quite a bit, and we found nothing to indicate somebody was living there."
"We're hoping that the public can help us," says Sammarco. "If anybody that kind of matches that description has not checked in with family members or any groups that he's a part of... [We're] not sure if he was homeless or not, we really have very little information other than [we] don't really suspect foul play. We're just trying to identify who he is, and then go from there."
The bones were initially reported as two individuals, but Sammarco says the remains are from just one person, and are about 92% intact. There are no identifying surgical implants, such as from a knee or hip replacement, nor signs of healed or healing bone fractures, she says.
"There wasn't any evidence of bullet wounds or anything on the skeletal remains that we have. There wasn't any evidence of blunt trauma or trauma to his skull, or the bones, the long bones. We are going to go back out this weekend — Search and Rescue is going to go back out — and try and find some of the missing bones."
Delhi Police Chief Jeff Braun says the public shouldn't be worried by the announcement.
"Hopefully, if somebody recognizes the shoes, or if they haven't spoke to a loved one in a while that matches that description, that'd be fantastic. The main thing I always like to portray is no foul play [is] suspected. There's no reason for people['s] security or sense of being to be heightened in any way, shape or form," says Braun.
Mt. Storm Park
The remains found near Mt. Storm Park are more recent. The coroner's office says the second man likely died within 24 hours of being found Tuesday. He could not be identified by his fingerprints or facial recognition software.
Sammarco describes him as "white, approximately six feet tall, about 230 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, full beard, kind of longer hair, no tattoos, no scars, about 30ish age group. There were black-framed glasses, but nothing distinctive about them, black pants, black jacket and a black backpack with no identifying marks on any of those."
She says the office does have a cause of death but declined to release the manner in which he died, except to say foul play is not suspected.
"We're not looking to criminally charge anybody. We just need to identify this young man," she says.
Anyone with information or who may recognize either person should contact Delhi Police, Cincinnati Police, or the Hamilton County Coroner's Office.
