HARTFORD TOWNSHIP, MI (WKZO) -- State police forensic crews are expected to excavate a wooded area on a farm in Hartford Township where a skull turned up yesterday. A lumbering crew removing trees that were blown over in last week’s storms, discovered a skull tangled in the roots of one of the trees.
It’s not clear yet if it’s a crime scene or an archeological dig, but they plan on treating it as if they have a homicide, until they know better.
The owners of the property say they don’t know of any burials on their land in the last 40-years. If it was someplace where someone dumped a body, it was long enough ago for a tree to grow on that site. There are unmarked Indian burial grounds in the area as well.
Whether they have a mystery, or just history, whether it’s sacred or sinister could depend on what they dig up today.
It would not be the first time a skeleton has been unearthed near Hartford.
The alleged accomplice in a murder near Hartford in Van Buren County has testified how he helped Austin Bradley Austin dispose of the body of Penny Miller in 2007. Greg Ruple admitted at the Austin’s preliminary hearing that he never actually saw the body, because it was zipped into a sleeping bag. Investigators had testified earlier that they found the body in that sleeping bag when they excavated the site this spring. They also said it was Ruple who led them to the shallow grave.
Testimony in the preliminary hearing will continue next Wednesday. Austin is charged with murder. Ruple is charged with being an accessory.
