Two black girls found stuffed inside suitcases and buried in shallow graves on Cleveland’s east side were related, the local medical examiner’s office revealed Wednesday.
A preliminary DNA test determined that the girls, believed to be between 8 and 14 years old, were half-sisters.
“At this time, none of the deceased have been positively identified,” Christopher Harris, spokesman for the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner’s Office, said in a statement.
The medical examiner’s office also has not released the cause of death.
But Cleveland Police Chief Dorothy Todd said Tuesday that none of the bodies appeared to have been dismembered.
The girls were found Monday night by a dog walker who came across the first body in the vicinity of East 162nd Street and Midland Avenue, near an all-boys public school called Ginn Academy School, and called police.
While searching the area, Cleveland homicide detectives found a second shallow grave with a suitcase containing another body.
While police have not yet determined how long the girls were buried there, the man whose dog sniffed them told the local ABC News affiliate that the mound of dirt under which one of the bodies was found had been there for at least a week.
“It was like a pile of dirt, and she stopped to sniff… and it was taking too long,” Phillip Donaldson told News 5. “So I went back and looked, and it was a suitcase that was half buried and I picked it up and looked inside, and there was a head. Someone’s head in it.”
Todd said the girls were found in an area where there isn’t much foot traffic. He said they have not been linked to any active missing persons cases in the area.
But police have no leads or suspects and asked anyone with information to call the Cleveland Police Department’s homicide unit at 216-623-5464, or Crime Stoppers at 216-252-7463.
