Human remains found in Seattle on Friday probably belong to a woman whose dismembered body parts were discovered nearby last week, authorities said.
Sanitation workers found the new remains in a waste container just blocks away from where authorities recovered a head, arm, leg and foot from a recycling bin last Saturday. Those body parts were formally identified this week as belonging to Ingrid Lyne, a 40-year-old mother and nurse, who had been reported missing.
“We’re confident that it is connected to last week’s homicide investigation, which was only three blocks away from where we are standing now,” Seattle Police Department Detective Mark Jamieson said on Friday, according to the Associated Press. The King County Medical Examiner’s Office will make the official determination, the Seattle Times reported.
Officers wearing rubber gloves sifted through recycling and trash bins along the curb where a trash collector found the remains just before 10 a.m. Friday, the Seattle Times reported.
Prosecutors filed first-degree murder charges against John R. Charlton, 37, on Wednesday in connection to Lyne’s death.
The pair attended a Seattle Mariners baseball game the night before Lyne’s body parts were discovered last Saturday, but Charlton could not provide authorities much detail on what happened next.
“Charlton claimed that he had been so intoxicated on Friday night that he could not recall how he and Lyne returned to her residence after the Mariners game, or what transpired when they got there,” the charging documents state. “He said he believed they had sex, and said Lyne was acting ‘weird,’ but could not or would not provide any further details.”
On searching Lyne’s home, investigators collected swabs of “suspected blood” and trash bags matching those in which the body parts were found, according to court documents. In the bathroom, they discovered a 15-inch pruning saw, according to the probable cause statement from the Seattle Police Department.
The investigation into Lyne’s disappearance was launched after her ex-husband arrived at her home with their three daughters and could not find her.
A woman identifying herself as a friend of the family set up a page on GoFundMe, the crowdfunding website, to raise money for Lyne’s daughters. It has raised roughly $200,000 of its $300,000 goal.
