[def]

Manager discovers victim wrapped in plastic and duct tape

By DON JACOBS, jacobs@knews.com
March 16, 2006


While clearing debris from boat slips, the manager of Volunteer Landing Marina made a gruesome discovery Wednesday - a body wrapped in plastic and duct tape and weighted down with a cinderblock.
Police sent the body to the University of Tennessee forensics laboratory for an autopsy, said Knoxville Police Department spokesman Darrell DeBusk. DeBusk said details about the victim's gender, race and possible age wouldn't be released until today.

Marina manager Joe Cornelius contacted authorities at 10:24 a.m. after determining that the wrapped object wasn't a large chunk of bothersome debris, but a body.

"We do a routine clearing of logs and trash," Cornelius, 29, of Strawberry Plains, said. At about 10 a.m., he said he saw a large object "just floating in the water" about 200 yards from the marina office near the boat slips on Fort Loudoun Lake.

"It was a bag of black plastic, and I could tell it had something in it," he said.

So Cornelius leaned over the side of his pontoon boat, secured a line to the object and towed it ashore at the marina office.

Once ashore, Cornelius noted that the black plastic also was bound with "silver duct tape" and that "there was some rope in the middle." For the first time, Cornelius saw the cinderblock that had been dangling by a rope from the body and into the water.

Cornelius used his Swiss Army pocketknife to cut a foot-long slit in the plastic. The cut revealed flesh under the two layers of black plastic and two layers of white plastic, he said.

"Once I noticed it was flesh, I didn't know it was human, so I cut another part of it and saw the heel," Cornelius said. That sight convinced him the object was human, and he called E-911.

"I couldn't tell for sure, but it seems like it was nude," Cornelius said. "There wasn't an odor until I cut into it. It was really bound up."

Mark C. Campen, education and membership director with the Tennessee Izaak Walton League, helps skim debris from the lake and collects water samples in the area. He was on the scene when police examined the body.

"We see all kinds of things come down here - horses, cows, dogs," he said. "In the five years I've worked here, I've never found a body. It was pretty shocking."

David Kiger, owner of the Volunteer Landing Marina, said Cornelius called him right after alerting authorities. Kiger said a representative of the University of Tennessee rowing team called him and said the team on Tuesday had seen the object wrapped in plastic floating in the water.

"She said it was quite a ways upstream," Kiger said.

DeBusk said authorities couldn't tell the gender of the individual from the quick review at the shoreline. He was unsure if the body was clothed.

"We did not want to open it (the plastic) here so as not to disturb evidence," DeBusk said while standing at Volunteer Landing.

This was just interesting. I had just left 15 mintues before hand to go into the field and they find this guy. The marina is situated in the first bend after the tallest bridge in downtown and on the shadier side of town. I think the body was caught on some of the many shoreline obstructions and the big rains Monday night flushed him downstream.

This is also not the frist person found under the docks and office here. A drunk cat passed out and drown a few years back on Booms Day and got tangled up in the slips. And I came within a few feet of finding a guy that committed suicide back in 03 (I pulled the work boat right over him as the water was high).

-I don't work for the marina, our comany rents the upstairs office space at the marina office/store.

 

[Mackie]

They take a stack of dead bodies out of here every month - right off the loading dock and into a big refridgerated truck.
I suppose that working at a hopsital makes this a little less creepy.

 

[stosh]

Sometimes I want to kill my boss, does that count?

 

[Tenchiro]

They take a stack of dead bodies out of here every month - right off the loading dock and into a big refridgerated truck.
I suppose that working at a hopsital makes this a little less creepy.

Heh, I work in one too. Luckily my job has nothing to do with the patients.

 

[johnbryanpeters]

When I was in the Army and quartered on a barge in Pusan harbor (ca. 1967-1968), there were always dead babies among all the debris floating in the water. We were instructed to ignore them.

 

[brungeman]

This was just interesting. I had just left 15 mintues before hand to go into the field and they find this guy. The marina is situated in the first bend after the tallest bridge in downtown and on the shadier side of town. I think the body was caught on some of the many shoreline obstructions and the big rains Monday night flushed him downstream.

This is also not the frist person found under the docks and office here. A drunk cat passed out and drown a few years back on Booms Day and got tangled up in the slips. And I came within a few feet of finding a guy that committed suicide back in 03 (I pulled the work boat right over him as the water was high).

-I don't work for the marina, our comany rents the upstairs office space at the marina office/store.

sounds like they needed more cinder blocks

 

[binary visions]

Frankly, I don't think there are anywhere near enough dead bodies in my office

 

[dhbuilder]

yeah doug,
i saw that on the news this morning.

with the shady criminal past that windrock has, and the fact that we operate in the first hollow up from the main lot.
i'm surprised that in six years of working up here, that i haven't unearthed an old skeleton or two.
this used to be a major dumping ground for that kind of stuff.

(how cool would one of those be, leaning up against a tree at the beginning of the southernrocks trail ?)

 

[macko]

We had a memo sent out a few weeks ago asking everyone in our office to please not store any dead animals, blood, fish, etc. in our breakroom freezer. I guess one of the secretaries was grossed out, which can happen easily when you're surrounding by biologists.

If they only knew what we kept in the back...

 

[cannondalejunky]

sounds like they needed more cinder blocks

actually when a human body decomposes the entire body gets filled with some kind of gas that causes the body to float up and actually takes a ton of weight to hold it down under the water

 

[dhbuilder]

actually when a human body decomposes the entire body gets filled with some kind of gas that causes the body to float up and actually takes a ton of weight to hold it down under the water

i've also heard that these fools that buy(or get suckered into buying.) these seal caskets are wasting their $$$

seems that when that gas builds up in a sealed environment, that sometimes they need to be deeper than six feet under.

 

[Angus]

While clearing debris from boat slips, the manager of Volunteer Landing Marina made a gruesome discovery Wednesday - a body wrapped in plastic and duct tape and weighted down with a cinderblock.
Police sent the body to the University of Tennessee forensics laboratory for an autopsy, said Knoxville Police Department spokesman Darrell DeBusk. DeBusk said details about the victim's gender, race and possible age wouldn't be released until today.

Is BS a Suspect ?

 

[profro]

I think the gas is methane?????? Maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Ciaran]

Heh, I work in one too. Luckily my job has nothing to do with the patients.

Ahhh... I work in a hospital too. Never had to goto the morgue but I have seen them bringing people to the morgue. I do get to poke around pathology from time to time though. Weird stuff in there.

 

[brungeman]

actually when a human body decomposes the entire body gets filled with some kind of gas that causes the body to float up and actually takes a ton of weight to hold it down under the water

yep I watch law and order, and CSI also... thought my shortness in not saying and they needed to poke holes in the plastic and make sure they penetrated the body to make sure that all areas of the body that can hold gasses such as the stomach etc should be punctured so as to let the gasses out... lent itself to the lack of levity in the original post...

 

[cannondalejunky]

yep I watch law and order, and CSI also... thought my shortness in not saying and they needed to poke holes in the plastic and make sure they penetrated the body to make sure that all areas of the body that can hold gasses such as the stomach etc should be punctured so as to let the gasses out... lent itself to the lack of levity in the original post...

actually my college chem prof told us that

 

[Mackie]

Heh, I work in one too. Luckily my job has nothing to do with the patients.

Same here.

 

[partsbara]

i work(ed) with a couple of dead people...

 

[dhbuilder]

i work(ed) with a couple of dead people...

did you quit or did they get fired ?

 

[partsbara]

did you quit or did they get fired ?

quit mate... leaving the country...

 

[dhbuilder]

quit mate... leaving the country...

before they can track you down and serve the warrant ?

 

[partsbara]

before they can track you down and serve the warrant ?

honest, i didn t do it...

 

[def]

yeah doug,
i saw that on the news this morning.

with the shady criminal past that windrock has, and the fact that we operate in the first hollow up from the main lot.
i'm surprised that in six years of working up here, that i haven't unearthed an old skeleton or two.
this used to be a major dumping ground for that kind of stuff.

(how cool would one of those be, leaning up against a tree at the beginning of the southernrocks trail ?)

Yeah, I've heard some of those old windrock's stories. Apparantly it used to be quite infamous. Didn't you guys find something else up there a few years back, or was that just a rumor too??:devil:

I've had to pull a few cows and other animals out of the river, one just the other month. Its a crappy job. The gasses inside of any dead animal (or person) is a lot, most of the body floats out of the water. I'm sure we've all seen a dead coon or possum on the road completly bloated. I once saw a black bear outside of Cherokee Natl Forest so bloated his legs were sticking up and at a 60 degree angle. Its also funny hearing horor stories of water skiers hitting one of those cows in the river and the thing just exploding!

 

[JRB]

I was shoeing horses at a place once and there was a pile of hair and a bandana around it. Turns out - there was a kid that killed himself a few days earlier and he was a few yards away. I'm glad I didn't see it.

 

[BuddhaRoadkill]

Its also funny hearing horor stories of water skiers hitting one of those cows in the river and the thing just exploding!

Ah sh1t, I'm in tears. That is hysterical!!

 

[dhbuilder]

heard this evening on the local news that they said she'd been floating around for about two months or so.

would that make her flotsum or jetsum?

either way that would be one helluva surprise for some hapless waterskier.

 

[dhbuilder]

doug.

last year as we were determining the route of the southernrocks trail, we were running a leafblower down by the last rockpile where the double stepdown rocks are.

as i was crawling about, i uncovered a skull of some kind. i immediatly jumped back until i saw that it was a horse.

believe me, that's always on my mind as we go into a new unexplored area.

i've heard way too many stories from the old locals.

 

[OGRipper]

My office is full of pasty overweight brain-dead people who have never exercised, does that count?

:nonono:

 

[Austin Bike]

In my 18 years since getting out of college I have:

Worked with one knife murderer who also rode in my car a few times
Worked with a guy who murdered a co-worker with a knife in the company parking lot
Worked with a woman that was stabbed to death in her house (they just convicted the murderer)
Had a boss who killed a man by driving through a restaurant and running over him.

I feel special.

 

[Slugman]

Part of my job is running cadaver labs, so dead people and work go hand and hand... unless we only get the torso.

 

[maxyedor]

In my 18 years since getting out of college I have:

Worked with one knife murderer who also rode in my car a few times
Worked with a guy who murdered a co-worker with a knife in the company parking lot

Was that the same guy or two different guys of the same knife murderer.

 

[DH Diva]

No dead bodies, but they did find a bomb next to my building at work two weeks ago.

 

[def]

heard this evening on the local news that they said she'd been floating around for about two months or so.

would that make her flotsum or jetsum?

either way that would be one helluva surprise for some hapless waterskier.

Oh cool, I hadn't heard any new news. I didn't figure it to be a chick. I guess w/ the body farm just on the other side of the river, they know all the stages of decomposition. Hell, if she'd been in there for 2 months, the body could have been dumped up past the forks somewhere. Of course when the guy jumped w/ his little baby a few years back, he only made it about a mile or two and was found by the cement plant off of UT....and that took over 4 months to find.

doug.

last year as we were determining the route of the southernrocks trail, we were running a leafblower down by the last rockpile where the double stepdown rocks are.

as i was crawling about, i uncovered a skull of some kind. i immediatly jumped back until i saw that it was a horse.

believe me, that's always on my mind as we go into a new unexplored area.

i've heard way too many stories from the old locals.

Whenever I was scavaging for my bike after it decided to go for a walk w/o me, I was always on the look out for timber rattlers and copperheads. But snakes and I don't dance too well.

I would have thought the easiest places to dump a body up there would be where the doubles were in wonderland. Just follow that skidder trail and 'plop'. But I can see that whole hollar your building in being a nice depot for inbred murderers.

 

[dhbuilder]

inbred murderer.

hmmmm.
that's going on file as a possible trail name for one of next years new projects.

 

[BurlyShirley]

man, you guys are making me want to move to knoxville so bad for grad schoo. Windrock and dead bodies...mmmm

 

[dhbuilder]

i'm sure we could make room in one of the shuttle trucks for ya.

we open to the public next weekend.

 

[def]

man, you guys are making me want to move to knoxville so bad for grad schoo. Windrock and dead bodies...mmmm

and this time of year.......skirts!