Human remains found, unidentified

By Charles Bassett, NEWS 9

An unsettling search continued Tuesday evening in rural Oklahoma. The hunt for food turned into a crime scene.

Some people looking for mushrooms near Earlsboro in Pottawatomie County instead found human remains.

The first step is to try to identify the victim. Investigators don't have a lot to go on. But they believe the condition of the remains will help.

Investigators say the remains may have been there for several years.

"The remains appear to have been there for quite some time," Pottawatomie County Sheriff, Kurt Shirey said. "We don't know whether the individual may have been clothed when they reached that particular point or not. There were no clothing found."

The majority of the remains were found intact.

"We recovered a great deal of what we thought to be the upper torso," Shirey said. "We did recover part of the bones of the lower extremities as well."

They also recovered a skull. The sheriff's said the skull is in good condition and did not show any signs of trauma.

So far, they haven't found any personal items around the body that could identify the victim. The remains were turned over to the State Medical Examiner's Office for positive identification and a cause of death.

"It appeared to be, to us, to be probably a young adult due to the fact of the nature that the teeth were good," Shirey said. "We detected no cavities or anything indicating to us that the person probably was younger."

Investigators plan to go back to the scene to search for more evidence on the victim. Right now, weather is preventing that.

The sheriff's office said they're checking records throughout the county for old cases of missing persons.