Woman's Body Found In Suitcase On SF Waterfront

Posted: 11:24 am PDT May 18, 2010
Updated: 10:38 pm PDT May 18, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO -- A tourist walking along San Francisco’s scenic waterfront with his niece Tuesday made a shocking discovery on the rocks – a suitcase containing a young woman's body.

Lt. Mike Stasko, head of the San Francisco Police Department's homicide division, confirmed the discovery was being treated as a homicide or a questionable death.

“We have a body in a suitcase,” he told KTVU. “Right now, what we are doing is the body is being transported back to the medical examiner’s office....You never get used to something like this. Someone went ahead and … put the body in a suitcase and hoped that it was going to go down in the Bay.”

Stasko said the body had been on the rocks for at least an hour.

The gruesome discovery around 9 a.m. was made by Margarito Real, who found the suitcase floating in the water near the Embarcadero.

“There was a suitcase floating in the water; my niece saw it first,” Real told KTVU. “We looked at it for a few minutes and then started walking…We told one of the people who was working at the pier that there was a suitcase floating in the water… It just looked suspicious to me.”

Real then ran to a nearby waterfront fire station and alerted authorities. Firefighters quickly responded to the scene and climbed down to the rocks to examine the suitcase.

“He (a firefighter) tried to pull it, but it was heavy,” Real said. “He opened it and I think I saw a leg. It made my skin crawl. They told me to take my niece away. It was a horrible feeling. Fortunately, my niece did not see anything.”

"Someone went ahead and put the body in a suitcase thinking it was going to go down to the bottom of the bay," said Lt. Mike Stasko, SF Police Head of Homicide. "Let fish take care of it. Right now, we're going to take care of body and make sure it gets a decent burial."

The remains were left in the suitcase and taken away to the medical examiner’s office. Police said the woman may have been a light-skinned Latina and appeared to be in her 30s.

From: http://www.ktvu.com/news/23595753/detail.html