WALL TOWNSHIP, N.J. (PIX11) -- The remains of three people were found by a work crew at a home construction site in Wall Township, New Jersey, according to witnesses who saw the evidence. They said that they suspect that the skulls and bones were from a historic burial, but investigators from the local police department and prosecutor's office declared the site a crime scene.
The discovery was made at a lot in the 1100 block of Narrumson Road. Barbara Miesegaes lives just a few steps away, right next door.
"The skull was right there where that little yellow marker is," she said in an interview from the edge of her property, as she pointed to a small yellow flag that investigators had planted on Tuesday.
Her home abuts the lot where there was a 10-foot-deep space dug out of the soil, where a home's basement had intended to be built. Contractors had started digging it out on Tuesday. A few hours into their dig, according to witnesses, the construction workers made the grim find.
"There were bones, human bones," Miesegaes said. "I think there were like two adults, and one was a child."
Peter Murcko lives right across the street from the lot where police officers and detectives, as well as investigators from the prosecutor's and medical examiner's offices, were on hand, going through the crime scene in detail.
Before they'd first arrived on Tuesday, the couple that had recently bought the empty lot in order to build their dream home, as well as the contractors, were on hand. They ended up in disbelief, according to their neighbor.
"He showed me a photo of one of the skulls," said Murcko. "The skull wasn't in good shape, but the teeth were in very good shape."
Murcko said that investigators had indicated that the teeth may be helpful in identifying the remains.
Another key part of the investigation involves a full analysis of all of the soil at the site.
On Wednesday afternoon, investigators asked the Monmouth County Public Works Department to bring in industrial equipment to dig out and haul away all of the dirt at the site.
Industrial diggers, front-end loaders, and dump trucks were on the scene late in the workday removing two-story-tall mounds of soil to another location. There, it can be sifted, examined, and tested, according to law enforcement sources.
The block on which the site is located is bound by Algonkin Trail on its west end and Lenape Trail on its east. They are among many Native American street and place names in this part of New Jersey. In keeping with that, neighbors have a widely accepted assumption that this mystery is not from foul play in recent years, and is possibly not foul play at all.
"I think Native American," Miesegaes said her theory was about the bodies. She said that when an in-ground pool was dug in her backyard next door, workers found tools in the deep soil that may have predated European settlement in this area. They also found glass medicine vials, she said, that were from generations ago.
In any case, said Murcko, the neighbor across the street, this new find appears to be very old. "Back in the old days," he said, "everybody had their family cemetery."
The owners of the lot were on scene early Wednesday afternoon, but they didn't make any public comment.
Neighbors, though, said that both they and the owners had one more message about what had been the final resting place of at least three people.
"Whoever they are," said Miesegaes, the next-door neighbor, "I hope they're at peace."
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