Chicago Heights police are asking the public to help identify a distinctive Nickelodeon jacket after skeletal remains were found in a garbage can near Chicago Road and Elmwood Drive. Officers responded around 11:50 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 8, after a report of suspicious circumstances and later sent the remains to the Cook County Medical Examiner's Office.
Police said the remains belong to an unidentified person, and the medical examiner examined them on Monday, Nov. 9. The office's results are still pending, leaving investigators without basic descriptors such as age, race or gender.
Chicago Road and Elmwood Drive
The jacket police want identified is a Members Only, size XXL, unisex Nickelodeon down-style jacket. Investigators said the photographs they released are not of the actual jacket recovered as evidence, but they believe the item could be recognizable to the public and useful in tracing who wore it or owned it.
Police also collected several pieces of evidence during the early stages of the investigation and spent Monday going door to door in the neighborhood speaking with residents who may have seen or heard something. That kind of canvassing often follows a field discovery when physical evidence exists, but the identity of the person tied to it has not been established.
Laurie Lien on Friday
Laurie Lien said she walked her dog in the grass near where the garbage can was found on Friday afternoon and did not see it there. “It's scary because nothing ever happens here on the north side of Chicago. It's the first time. And I actually walked my dog here on the highway in the grass where the garbage can was found and I was there Friday afternoon and it was not there Friday afternoon so I had to be dumped between Friday night and whenever they found it,” she said.
The case now depends on two tracks moving at once: identifying the jacket owner and waiting for the medical examiner's findings to narrow who the person was. For anyone who saw the jacket or the area near Chicago Road and Elmwood Drive, that detail may be the lead that moves the investigation forward.
