It’s been a busy spring for deaths and investigations along the Nebraska-Iowa border. The latest case began over the weekend as Mills County Sheriff Mack Taylor says his office got a call from residents near Glenwood on the Iowa side of the Missouri River.
Saturday morning some people who live about a mile west of Glenwood say a pet brought home what they thought might be human remains. They went down by the road and found remains, and called the sheriff’s office. His deputies confirmed there was a body in a roadside ditch near there, and a team came from Des Moines to do a crime-scene search and gathered up the remains to have an autopsy done.
Sheriff Taylor says his deputies often find themselves working cases that came to Mills County from somewhere else. Though his jurisdiction’s in western Iowa, the sheriff says it’s “a suburb of the Omaha – Council Bluffs area” and he’s searched his missing-persons file and hasn’t found anybody who matches up. But it’s also barely three miles from Interstate-29 and the sheriff says the search for the identity of the human remains could go on for some time and some distance.
He’s not sure, and so is not saying what might be the age, sex or even race of the dead person. “We are not sure and we don’t want to give out any misinformation.” Not knowing makes the sheriff careful to watch for clues and preserve information, he says.
Both Interstate-29 and I-80 go past nearby, he says, so it could be a case of foul play, or someone jogging down the road or someone who came out of a late-night party, fell into the ditch and died. “Right now, everything’s on the table.” Sheriff Taylor praised the Division of Criminal Investigation for its help and for putting his office in touch with a national missing-persons clearing-house.
This is the fourth body that has been discovered by police in the area within the last two months, including those of Tracy Tribble of Council Bluffs, Amber Harris of Omaha, and Dawna Massie of Atlantic.