Skull, bones linked to Gwinnett torso found in 2009
Human remains found last week near Buford belong to a dismembered torso found in the area in 2009, Gwinnett County police said Wednesday.
Investigators believe the remains are those of a Hispanic man between 20 and 40 years of age, and that he was a homicide victim. But they aren't sure who the remains belong to, Cpl. Edwin Ritter with Gwinnett police said.
On Jan. 4, a person walking in a wooded area off Brown Road between Sunny Hill and Morgan roads found a human skull and scattered skeletal remains, police said. The following day, police searched the area for additional remains.
Carol Terry, Gwinnett County's chief medical examiner, compared the remains found last week with the torso found in July 2009, finding that both sets of remains belonged to the same person, the medical examiner's office said late Wednesday.
That torso was discovered off Woodward Mill Road near Satellite Boulevard, less than 5 miles from where the remains were found last week.
A cause of death has been determined, but investigators are not yet releasing the information, a spokesman for the medical examiner's office said.
Investigators have not publicly announced how the remains ended up separated from each other by several miles, but believe the man was killed in early July 2009.
The medical examiner's office has determined, based on a dental comparison, that the remains are not those of Justin Gaines, a college student who disappeared more than four years ago after leaving a nightclub near Duluth.
Samples from both sets of remains will be compared using DNA analysis, and the results will be placed on a national missing person’s registry, police said. A GBI artist will create a facial reconstruction from the remains.
Anyone with information about the case is urged to contact the Gwinnett police homicide unit at 770-513-5300 or 770-513-5700.
