New Haven officials suspect a human torso likely belongs to severed legs of a vagrant which a passerby discovered last month rotting in bushes near a train station.
Following tips from the homeless community, police used cadaver dogs to search an abandoned Salvation Army store where the slain man was said to frequent, and discovered the human trunk hidden there.
The badly decomposed body part is now being tested to see if it belongs to the same victim whose severed legs have already been positively IDd as those of 54-year-old Ray Roberson.
As well, severed arms found at the earlier site are also awaiting confirmation. These were each missing hands, investigators reported last week.
The gruesome crime is thought to have been retaliatory in nature, as opposed to part of a serial killer spree. However, detectives indicated it was too soon in the investigation to rule out other possibilities.
Roberson was a petty criminal and primarily a nuisance in the neighborhoods he loitered in, so a motive for his killing -- and the scattering of his dismembered remains -- is somewhat of a mystery.
The homeless man’s decapitated head and other appendages are reportedly still missing.