The body of an inmate vivisected during a prison riot this past May is still missing its internal organs, say investigators trying to solve the murder mystery.
The gruesome killing of 24-year-old Nicholas Rodriguez happened at California’s medium-security penitentiary, Solano, presumably while the mayhem was underway.
Solano’s prison guards, however, reportedly hadn’t noticed the victim was missing from his cell, and didn’t discover the crime until several hours after the riot had been quelled.
Curiously, none of the security cameras at the facility caught the attack either.
Rodriguez's mutilated corpse was found in a garbage bin, cut nearly in two and “folded” to fit into the small trash receptacle, according to his autopsy.
It’s not known what his psychotic murderer or murderers did with his vital organs though, or where a knife sharp enough to eviscerate a human being with could have come from -- or where it is right now.
Police investigating the brutal vivisection say those issues are all “part of the investigation” they’re still conducting, but suspect that the victim’s cellmate, a 46-year-old lifer, is the most likely culprit and/or mastermind.
In fact, they’re wondering whether the riot itself was staged as a diversion for the attack on Rodriguez, then deliberately escalated by key players in order give the killer an opportunity to stash the body someplace and clean up the crime scene.
The motive for his slaying is also unknown, although the coroner found Rodriguez had been drinking alcohol shortly before death, and had in fact already died from repeated blunt force trauma to the skull when his guts were ripped from his body cavity.
Prison murders aren’t rare, unfortunately, but this is one of the worst by far.
