Nov

7

Body Discovered Under Concrete Floor During Renovations

November 7, 2007 | Tags: Crime & Punishment | Comments Off

Body discovered under concrete floor in Puerto Viejo
OIJ Agents remove the remains
Photo by Martin Caraval, courtesy La Nacion

Construction workers on Monday renovating a house in the Playa Negra area of Puerto Viejo made a gruesome discovery: a body in a green plastic bag which was buried underneath a concrete slab.

Witnesses said that the body had a very bad smell and still had a lot of hair. Characteristics which make investigators believe the body has not been there for a very long time.  At this time investigators from the Judicial Investigating Organization (OIJ) have been unable to identify the body, saying only that it appears to be a man.

The remains were taken to the forensic lab in San Joaquín de Flores, Heredia for analysis to determine the date and cause of death. Meanwhile the OIJ is reviewing their missing persons files to see if the victim matches any of those listed as missing.

“I bought this house because it was the house of my dreams. I always wanted to have a beachfront house, but instead I feel very bad, very frustrated by all of this…”, said Joe Lawrence, the American owner of the property along with his wife.

Speaking at a news conference in San Jose, Jorge Rojas, director of the OIJ, said that the U.S. couple has owned the house for two years, but that does not mean that the body has been under the concrete that long. At least eight other persons have access to the house, and the U.S. pair are not in the community all the time.

They were planning to build a kitchen with a view of the sea in the area where the remains were discovered.

The body was located by coincidence by 2 workers, one of those, Cecilio Brown, who said he had “a huge shock because he would never have expected something like this”.

“When I saw the bag, I thougth the I had found a treasure, but when we opened it, a foul odor emerged and we saw some bones and a lot of hair”, he related.

The OIJ was also analyzing the case of a private security guard who disappeared 2 years ago in Puerto Viejo, very close to the house of the discovery.

With reporting from: