Body Discovered In River Worker Finds Decomposed Body Near Carrousel In Riverfront Park

A Riverfront Park maintenance worker looking for a lost picnic table made a gruesome discovery Monday: a decomposed body submerged in the Spokane River near the Carrousel.

The worker, who thought someone might have thrown the table into the river, spotted the body about 9 a.m., said Lt. Jim Culp of the Spokane Police Department’s major crimes unit.

It was trapped beneath a floating catwalk just west of the Howard Street bridge, in an arm of the river that feeds into an intake for the Post Street dam.

Three divers from the city-county Water Rescue Team recovered the body about 10:45 a.m. as children from a YMCA day-care center played on swings and slides less than 50 yards away.

The divers bagged the corpse while it was still in the water, so a group of onlookers couldn’t see it.

Officials from the coroner’s office loaded the body onto a gurney on the north bank and rolled it south across the bridge, past mothers pushing strollers and teenagers on in-line skates, to a waiting car.

It was then driven to the morgue at Holy Family Hospital. An autopsy has been scheduled for today.

Authorities said they know little about the body, including the cause of death or whether it belongs to a man or a woman.

“We don’t know who it is or how long it’s been there,” Culp said. “There’s not much left to it, just a little flesh here and there.”

No one from Spokane’s serial killer task force responded to the scene. Culp said the group likely won’t get involved in the case “until we know a little more.”

The task force is investigating the unsolved murders of 20 women since 1984.

Detectives believe at least seven of the victims died at the hands of a serial killer, most of them shot to death and dumped in out-of-the-way locations.

Task force investigators are still looking for a missing woman who fits the profile of the serial killer victims. Melody Murfin, 43, hasn’t been seen since May 20.