Human remains found at Oakleigh South industrial estate
HUMAN remains found in a bin at an Oakleigh South storage business have been identified as those of a male, after a post-mortem revealed more clues about the grisly discovery.
Law & Order
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HUMAN remains found in a bin at an Oakleigh South storage business have been identified as those of a male.
Missing Persons Squad detectives on Sunday revealed the results of a post mortem examination on the badly decomposed body had resulted in the identification.
They said they were working with that person’s next of kin as part of their probe.
The identification was made within two days. It is not known whether this was due to examiners being quickly able to make a DNA or dental records match or because there was something else indicating whose body it was.
Victoria Police today confirmed the matter was being treated as suspicious and have appealed for public help.
COULD GRISLY FIND HELP SOLVE DECADES-OLD MURDER MYSTERY?
LAST week, detectives were tracing a man who rented an Oakleigh South storage unit in which a body stuffed inside a wheelie bin has lain hidden for nearly two decades.
It is not yet clear whether they have been able to contact that man.
Friday’s discovery of decaying human remains, and a shoe described as a woman’s boot, may be the breakthrough police needed to solve a decades-old cold case.
Homicide squad investigators said the remains had been there for at least 15 years.
Investigators were also to trawl through missing persons cases in search of any links to the storage warehouse.
Demolition workers made the gruesome find about 11am.
The workers had noticed a boot toppling out of a wheelie bin during a clean-out of the Milgate St unit, which had been “abandoned” by a man who stopped paying the rent on it 15 years ago.
“Jokingly, someone said it’d be freaky if there was a body in there. And we came across this, what looked like a boot, and someone said ‘There’s a boot’,” Anton Hillemancher said.
“I noticed what looked like a foot to me, in a sock, and I just thought, ‘Oh, shit’.
“The clippings were looking pretty old and mouldy, so it was pretty old stuff in there. It looked like a woman’s sock to me.”
Business records, if available, will be important in working out who had access to the unit.
Forensic examiners will also be looking for any indications, such as markings, to show where the bin came from.
The type of soil and grass clippings surrounding the body will also be tested.
Officers were on Friday doorknocking the industrial estate looking for CCTV.
Detective Senior Sergeant Pixie Fuhrmeister, of the homicide squad, said police would continue to search the crime scene for days to come and would examine missing persons and cold cases.
The bones had been covered in soil in a bin, she said.
“We believe they’ve been there for a considerable amount of time, based on decomposition,” she said.
She said police were probing business records dating back at least 15 years.
“The owners have records and they’re being very co-operative. It (the unit) was being paid for initially but hasn’t been paid for a number of years. It’s just been sitting there abandoned as such.”
Police are urging anyone with information to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
COPS PROBE BOOT RIDDLE
— Andrea Hamblin
A STRAY boot tumbling from a wheelie bin has exposed a sinister secret that had remained buried deep within a storage warehouse for at least 15 years.
The brittle contents of the boot are now clues to a murder, and detectives are beginning the painstaking task of determining who the footwear belongs to.
Leg bones protruding from the boot suggest its owner died nearly two decades ago.
Already police will be poring over old missing persons records and speaking to traders near the storage unit in Milgate St, Oakleigh South.
But there was little hope anyone in the area would now recall someone entering the innocuous brown brick building that long ago, never to return.
Lloyd, who works in the street said he was “shocked” to see the usually quiet street — part of an industrial area made up of warehouses, steel fabricators, a gym, mechanics workshops, a cabinet-maker and a takeaway shop popular with local tradies — taped off.
“I’ve been working here for years, and to think a body has been there is crazy,” he said.
“(The) people cleaning it out today made the discovery … they saw two legs sticking out.”
Those who found the remains thought the shoe might be from a women’s range.
A post-mortem was under way Friday night, and investigators would be crossing their fingers that dental records, or DNA from police files, could be matched to the remains.
Once victims are identified, the mystery usually begins to unravel.
Police track their last steps, knock on the doors where they lived and worked, and on the doors of who they dated and who they hated.
In the meantime, police are poring over documents looking for the rental records of the family-run storage business, to find out who last set foot in the “abandoned” unit.
Total Self Storage and Removals has been run by the Cornehls family for 30 years.
A man was renting the storage unit in the early 2000s but inexplicably stopped paying the bill, leaving piles of junk behind.
The Cornehls put off leasing it again for years. But a business sale on the horizon spurred a clean-up.
And on Friday a team of tradies in hi-vis vests entered.
About 11am they sprang open a wheelie bin lid being held down by occy straps. Amid mouldy lawn clippings and soil, a smelly old shoe didn’t initially seem much more important than the rest of the junk in the pile.
Now, it’s a significant clue to helping police find a family the answers they’ve been waiting almost two decades to hear.