Authorities confirmed on Friday that body parts discovered in a freezer earlier this year belong to 16-year-old Amanda Leariel Overstreet, who was the daughter of the previous homeowner, as reported by NBC.
The body parts were discovered in January after the house near Grand Junction was sold to its new owner. The new residents found the freezer after the previous owner left it behind and practically gave it for free.
Inside that freezer deputies found a head and a forearm with hands attached.After this discovery, the police were notified on January 12.
Following this discovery, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office is treating her death case as a homicide.
A neighbour told WesternSlopeNow back in January, “On top of it, I guess there was a bunch of just animal meat as they were cleaning it out to pack it up, and there was a black bag, and they opened the bag and a human head fell out.”
Amanda Overstreet was last seen or heard from in April 2005, but the sheriff’s office highlighted that there was no record of her being reported missing. “The circumstances surrounding her disappearance remain under investigation, as well as ongoing forensic testing of evidence,” the sheriff’s office said.
On Friday, the Mesa County coroner’s office confirmed the identification of the remains through DNA analysis.
While the manner of death is being treated as a homicide, the cause of death has not yet been disclosed, and the rest of her body has not been located.
Amanda had lived in both the Grand Junction area and Harris County, Texas. The sheriff’s office said that the current homeowner is completely unrelated to the previous case, stating, “The house was purchased, fully remodelled, and sold to the current owner.”
The investigation remains active, and authorities are continuing their efforts to uncover further details surrounding Amanda Overstreet’s case.