Body found near Dundee treated as homicide
7/26/2006DUNDEE - Monroe County sheriff's detectives are investigating as a homicide the decomposed body of Christopher Kidd, 39, found Monday along West Dunbar Road.
Kidd, a black man last known to live in Detroit, had a criminal history, according to Detective Sgt. Enrico Galimberti, who is in charge of the investigation. He would not elaborate.
A cause of death has not been determined. Autopsy results won't be available for up to 12 weeks, pending toxicology results, Investigator Lorita Prentice of the Wayne County Morgue in Detroit said.
The Michigan State Police Crime Lab in Northville was called in to help examine the crime scene Monday night. Officials made plaster casts of footprints and tire impressions, and took fingerprints from the body, officials said.
Petersburg resident Ronald Smock, 64, found the body in Dundee Township while bicycling at about 3 p.m. Monday along West Dunbar Road. It was lying about 10 feet from the north side of Dunbar Road and about 50 feet east of U.S. 23 at the border of Dundee and Summerfield townships, he said.
"When I went by, I smelled the decaying smell, but out here you don't think that much about that because you have lots of road kill - raccoons, deer, and possums and God only knows what," he said. "I thought it was the strangest-looking deer I'd ever seen."
He said when he approached it, he could tell there was a human skull.
Then he spotted some clothes in a patch of weeds.
The body could have been there for at least three weeks, Detective Galimberti said.
Mr. Smock said when he realized he was looking at a crime scene, he quickly backed away and called 911 on his cell phone. Police arrived shortly, he said, to the remote and overgrown area sometimes referred to by locals as the "Petersburg dumping ground."
"In any secluded area, people dump junk and debris, like burned-out cars," Detective Galimberti said.
Anyone with any information about the case is asked to call the Monroe County sheriff's detective bureau at 734-240-7530.