Skagit Sheriff Responds to Reports of Skeleton In River

Mount Vernon, Washington.   On May 6th, 2016, around 8 pm the Skagit County Sheriff’s Office responded to reports of a possible  Human body  found in the Skagit River near the 15000 block of  Penn Road and Behren’s Millet Road in  Mount Vernon.

According to a narrative provided by the Skagit County Sheriff’s Office via a public information request, a woman called 9-1-1 to report what appeared to be skeletal remains floating in an eddy in the river at the above listed location. The reporting party had also taken photos of the remains.

Two Deputies responded to the scene and checked the area of the beach and found nothing, they believed the remains had possibly washed downstream.   A Search and Rescue (SAR)  Deputy  also responded to the scene due to the possibility of a Technical Water Recovery.  The SAR Deputy noted that the beach sloped at a medium grade at the water line and if the remains were 20 feet off the shore line, as reported by the witness, they would be in anywhere between four to six feet of water or more.

Deputies took coordinates of the area and watched the waterway downstream until a boat arrived.  Deputies reviewed the photos taken by the reporting party, which showed what appeared to be a human skeleton, complete with a rib cage, skull and what appeared to be the upper portion of legs. The bones appeared to be extremely buoyant, as the apparent skeleton was floating on it’s back and the rib cage was approximately 4″ out of the water. The front of the skull appeared to be 1 – 2″ out of the water. with the apparent femurs sitting directly on the surface of the water. The bones also appeared to be grey in color in the photographs.  After viewing the photos, deputies believed the skeleton was some sort of fake skeleton display, which would explain the unnatural buoyancy of it.

Deputies continued to search the river with the boat in the areas they believed the current would have taken the skeleton but were unsuccessful in find the remains.  They also observed

Deputies recontacted the Reporting party to see if it had been possible that the bones had been drifting  along the bottom of the riverbed and may have not been floating but simply had come up at a shallow sandbar before being pushed back into deeper water downstream. The Reporting party told them they were sure the bones were about 4 feet of water and that they could see the lower legs and feet hanging down beneath the skeleton, as well as the arms.

Deputies re-walked the beach in the area and determined that the slope of the beach into the water was fairly uniform and at no place along the beach where the skeleton was observed was there a shallow sandbar that would force the skeleton up to the surface if it was not already buoyant.

The deputies concluded that they do not believe the skeleton was actual  human remains due to the manner in which the skeleton was  floating and they believe the skeleton was a fake which had most likely been put into the river at some point by an unknown person.