PEVELY, Mo. (KTVI) – For the second time in one week, a mushroom hunter in Missouri discovered human remains. In Pevely, the remains are believed to be evidence of the city’s first murder since the ’90s.
The woman’s body was found by Jill Rodgers, who was out in the woods looking for morel mushrooms Sunday.
“I was walking up the hill, and I was coming near this long tree that was laid over,” said Rodgers. “There was something huge laying down on the ground. There was a moving blanket, so I pulled that back. I took a big tree limb and lifted it up, and it clearly looked like a foot, a human foot.”
Pevely police and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office are awaiting autopsy results from the medical examiner to find out the age and name of the woman, who is currently unidentified.
The circumstances of her death are suspicious, police said.
“When you’re in a community that is a close-knit community, it’s a shock,” said Chief Mark Glenn of the Pevely Police Department. “That emotional part hit me because whoever it is—somebody’s family member—is someone’s friend.”
“I walk this every single year, and to find something like this, you don’t if you’re safe in your neighborhood,” Rodgers said. “You don’t know who did it.”
Coincidentally, this marks the second time a Missouri mushroom hunter has found remains in just the past week. The other discovery was in Daviess County in northern Missouri.
Highway patrol said a local mushroom hunter found the remains Friday night on private property in a rural part of the county. The remains in that case are also unidentified.
