Police Briefs

Police Confirm Remains Are Those of Missing Teen

By Mike Gribble
Evening Gazzette Staff Writer

Cedarville - The Cedarville Sheriff's Department confirmed Tuesday that the human remains found in the woods behind Cedarville High School last Saturday are those of fourteen year-old Phil Wii, a student at Cedarville High School who suffered from autism and had been missing for the last two months. The Sheriff's Department immediately ruled Wii's death a homicide - the fifth of a male teenager in Cedarville this year after a ten-year period in which the city had seen no murders and a decrease in all violent crimes.

Wii had been missing since June, when his parents contacted police and then the media in an effort to bring their son home. Community support for the Wiis was overwhelming, and a grassroots campaign to find the missing boy was undertaken, only to prove fruitless after several weeks of round-the-clock searching by hundreds of volunteers. The community was dispirited but refused to give up hope. "We thank everyone in Cedarville for their vigilance, support, charity, and prayers. Our son is home. May God bless you all," said the Wiis in a prepared statement read by family spokeswoman May Wii, the young teenager's paternal aunt.

Police say that Wii's body may never have been found if it had not been for a homeless man who decided that fateful Saturday to dig himself a makeshift latrine in the woods behind the high school, where he had migrated that morning after being asked to leave the forest around the city dump where he had been living for more than a month. While excavating mounds of earth with his bare hands, the man, Lorenzo Dundell, of no fixed address, came upon a gruesome sight: that of young Wii's dismembered corpse. Police say that Dundell is not a suspect and has been cleared of any involvement in the slaying.

Though the circumstances of the five cases are striking in their similarity - all five boys' bodies showed signs of torture and possibly rape and were missing all fingers, teeth, and eyes, as well as their genitals - the Sheriff's Department refuses to conjecture that the homicides are related or were even committed by the same person or persons. "While some things are the same, we need to have further evidence before we can objectively say that the last four murders aren't copycats of the first murder," said Stacey Lyman, spokeswoman for the Cedarville Sheriff's Department. Lyman added, "We want to assure the public that they are safe and that we have several strong leads we are pursuing."

However, officials close to the five investigations, speaking on condition of anonymity, informed the Evening Gazette that the Sheriff's Department does not, in fact, have any leads - or much evidence, for that matter. "They have nothing," said one source. "No suspects, no leads, no DNA evidence. They doubt they'll ever recover the boys' missing body parts, and I very much believe they are in over their heads and will not be able to solve any of the cases without help from the federal government." Lyman had no comment on these allegations.

Stephanie Adcock contributed to this report.