Are bones missing ex-con?

Jersey Journal
June 29

Hudson County homicide detectives have gotten their first lead - though they acknowledge it's a long-shot - on the possible identity of the person whose bones were found in a Liberty State Park sewer earlier this month, officials said today.

An woman from Orange walked into the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office last week saying she thought the bones could be those of her brother, who went missing in 1978 after getting out of federal prison, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said.

She said her brother was last seen in a car with other people in Orange, but that she later heard on the street that he’d been shot in the back of the head, DeFazio said.

Homicide investigators recovered numerous bones in the sewer under Audrey Zapp Drive, off Phillip Street, including a portion of a skull that appears to have a bullet hole in it. The prosecutor did not release the names of the Orange siblings.

Investigators took a DNA sample from the woman and will compare it to the DNA of the bones if it is possible to extract a sample, DeFazio said. In 1978, Liberty State Park was already open but the Central Railroad Terminal of New Jersey, at the end of Zapp Drive, was still being restored, said Jersey City historian John Gomez, who writes the "Legends and Landmarks" column for The Jersey Journal.

The preliminary investigation suggests they are from an adult male but investigators have not yet determined when he died or how long the bones were at the location.

“I don’t’ want to overstate this,” DeFazio said. “Clearly, if anyone else has information that they think might be pertinent to this case, we’d appreciate if would call the Hudson County Prosecutor’s Office’s Homicide Squad at (201) 915-1345."

Michaelangelo Conte

"You won't be seeing Paulie anymore." Pete Clemenza, caporegimes in the Corleone Family/The Godfather: Part One.

Whose skull is it?

More and more bones found in storm drain; gunshot hole arouses suspicions

Ricardo Kaulessar and Tricia Tirella
Jersey Reporter -- 06/15/2007

WHAT LURKED BENEATH – Under this catch basin at the corner of Audrey Zapp Drive and Philips Street in Jersey City is a storm drainpipe where human bones were found, including a skull with a bullet hole.

Human bones that came out of a storm drainpipe last week under Liberty State Park in Jersey City are at the center of a homicide investigation.

Hudson County Prosecutor Edward J. DeFazio said the finding "looks like a homicide." A gunshot hole was discovered by the state's Regional Medical Examiner Office at the back of a skull that was with the bones.

The bones which were found by state park workers on June 6 amongst debris being transferred from a garbage container into a dump truck.

According to DeFazio, last week several more bones were recovered from the pipe after a portion of the pipe was drained into a nearby field.

That makes at least 30 bones recovered since the initial discovery. The human adult skeleton is comprised of 206 bones.

DeFazio said the investigation is continuing, with no set timetable for a report from the Regional Medical Examiner's Office of how and when the homicide occurred.

"We really need the opinion of the experts," DeFazio said.

But DeFazio said that a preliminary investigation revealed some of the bones' origins.

"We believe he's a man, middle-aged, although more forensic testing will be needed to ascertain more specific information," DeFazio said.

"These bones also are a number of years old," added DeFazio, without stating specifically how old they were.

DeFazio said investigators are also checking the possibility that a thighbone found at the scene was broken while the person to which it belonged was still alive.

How did the bones get there?

The mystery remains as to how the bones ended up in the sewer line and how long ago they were dumped there.

Dana Loschiavo, a spokesperson for the state's Department of Environmental Protection, said last week that the storm drain line was cleaned on an "as needed" basis.

"It's not like we do this every year or have a set schedule on when we do the cleaning," Loschiavo said. "We had to do some maintenance cleaning since the road is prone to flooding."

The sewer line runs under Audrey Zapp Drive, a cobblestone road that serves as one of the entrances into the park. It spans a tenth of a mile, with six manhole covers and two gated street drains.

A spokesperson for the medical examiner's office said the process for concluding the age of the bones includes careful testing to determine race, sex, and ancestry.

The office will also conduct research to find out if blunt force trauma was applied to the body.

Ricardo Kaulessar can be reached at rkaulessar@hudsonreporter.com

Quote: Roll Credits..........

I hope they bring Ralph in for questioning.






Hey, this is shaping up to be more interesting than the Sopranos' finale.

Quote:


And there you have it!

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The victim has been identified by the Medical Examiners office. I just got this info from a friend who works there. His name was Edward Norton. He lived in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn NY. His wife Trixie Norton reported him missing in 1962.

It's Jimmy Hoffa, it's Jimmy Hoffa!.

Could this have been the cause for the sewer / flood problems people have been experiencing downtown - maybe this pipe clearing process should happen annually will all our sewer pipes.

I'm cringing with the thought of the sewer backflow / overflow in basements, and the 'stuff' that was floating in some of them while this body was decomposing - gross!

MURDER, NO BONES ABOUT IT
Skull found in Jersey City sewer has bullet hole

Saturday, June 09, 2007
By MICHAELANGELO CONTE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

The bones found in a Liberty State Park sewer are beginning to tell their story - and it's a story of murder, according to forensic experts.

"It looks like a homicide," Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said of the more than 25 separate bones, including a large portion of a skull, found Wednesday and Thursday in a sewer on Audrey Zapp Drive.

The prosecutor said it appears the skull section found Thursday has a bullet hole in it. He also said the nearly complete femur bone found Wednesday was fractured. Investigators are working on the premise that the thigh bone was broken while the person was still alive, DeFazio said.

Investigators at the state Regional Medical Examiner's Office have not yet determined exactly how long the bones of the roughly 50-year-old man had been in the sewer, but DeFazio said it is at least "years and years."

Workers first discovered human remains Wednesday morning at a Jersey City-run sewage treatment facility near Liberty Science Center among debris trucked there from the section of sewer pipe where the other bones were found. The femur was found early Wednesday and additional pieces of various bones were found throughout that day, DeFazio said. The skull section and additional bones were found Thursday.

The skeleton is being reconstructed at the Medical Examiner's office in Newark.

The area where the bones were found is prone to flooding and there is a project underway to clean out the sewers there in order to alleviate the problem. Debris from the sewers was trucked to the treatment plant.

State Police forensic and major case investigators have joined the investigation.

The sewer in question, and the cobblestone road above it, were built in the 1870s and are in an area which was once under water. The area, located near Phillip Street, was once the shoreline of a Dutch settlement dating back to the 17th century, said John Gomez, a local historian who writes the "Landmarks and Legends" column for The Jersey Journal.

The area was created using landfill as part of the project to build the Central Railroad of New Jersey Train Terminal on the Hudson River at the end of Audrey Zapp Drive, Gomez said.