Urbana landlord found dismembered body in bathtub

BARBARA RODRIGUEZ

Asso­ci­ated Press

URBANA — A land­lord who found a woman’s dis­mem­bered remains in her bath­tub said he felt com­pelled to break into the locked bath­room after her mother came look­ing for her.

Gary Zerkle told The Asso­ci­ated Press that 21-year-old Jes­sica Sacco’s mother arrived at the younger woman’s Urbana home Thurs­day night, find­ing noth­ing amiss, but a locked bath­room door.

The fol­low­ing morn­ing, Zerkle, who lives next door to the duplex Sacco rented, decided to check it out him­self, largely because Sacco’s mother had looked so concerned.

“I didn’t think that was right,” he said of the locked bath­room door. “Some­times you get a gut feeling.”

He removed the door­knob and pried open the door. Once in, he looked behind the shower curtain.

“I pulled it back, and that was it,” he said. “And I zoomed out the front door. … I was try­ing to gasp for air.”

Shud­der­ing, he said he can’t describe what he found.

“All I could think about was the sad­ness for her mother,” he said.

Sacco, who police say moved to the area from Cal­i­for­nia about a year ago, paid $360 per month to stay in the duplex, Zerkle said. Her on-again, off-again boyfriend had joined her in the apart­ment in the fall. Shortly there­after, Andrew and Kan­dis For­ney, of Fen­ton, Mich., began stay­ing with them.

The boyfriend, Matthew Puc­cio, has been charged with mur­der and other counts in Sacco’s slay­ing and dis­mem­ber­ment. The For­neys and another cou­ple, Christo­pher Wright and Sharon Cook, of Urbana, are also charged. Police say the cou­ples watched as Puc­cio stabbed Sacco, then placed a bag over her head and suf­fo­cated her. One of the men is accused of help­ing with the dismemberment.

Some of the body parts were found miles away in Kentucky.

Puc­cio was arraigned Tues­day and is being held on $100,000 bond. The other four defen­dants also have been arraigned and are being held on bonds of $50,000 each. Tele­phone mes­sages seek­ing com­ment were left for their attor­neys on Tuesday.

Urbana police Chief Matt Lin­grell has said that Puc­cio and Sacco had recently met the For­neys online and that the mem­bers of the group were “loose friends.” Inves­ti­ga­tors haven’t com­mented on a motive for the killing, believed to have hap­pened around March 22.

Sacco’s mother went to her home after fail­ing to reach her via cell­phone for about a week, Zerkle said.

He was hav­ing the house emp­tied and the bath­room gut­ted on Tues­day by a crew that wore white pro­tec­tive gear and face­masks and placed items in a large refuse container.

“I can’t go in there think­ing about what hap­pened,” he said.

Crews were dis­pos­ing of almost every­thing but sal­vaged Sac­cos’ birth cer­tifi­cate and a baby book. Zerkle plans to return them to her mother.

Posted by AP News on Apr 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.