For a certain type of person, a type that is very likely the core demographic of this website, the lure of a car—almost any car—with a sign that reads FREE CAR is as appealing as a bowling-ball-sized sphere of ground beef would be to nearly any dog. It’s a potent lure, and, as expected, when a car with such a sign and the keys in it showed up outside of Jackson, Mississippi, two men took that free car. Then they found that there was a dead body in the trunk.
The car was found by the two men in the city of Byram, where it was parked on the side of a road, not far from a junkyard. The car was confirmed to be at that location by a police officer, who spotted it at 9:30 AM on Saturday, and remained there, according to witnesses, until at least Saturday night.
The two men found the car on Sunday, with the FREE CAR and keys inside, and drove it to a family member’s home, where they discovered the nude body of the 34-year-old victim in the trunk.
The car seems to be the victim’s car, and the victim was last spotted alive, on a security camera, as late as 9 PM on Friday. The victim was identified via tattoos, and confirmed by his immediate family.
I suppose it’s always a good idea to approach a free car with suspicion, but I’ve never considered that searching the car for murdered people would be necessary. While the story is very strange, it’s also pretty tragic, as there’s a dead person here.
The Copiah County Sheriff’s department stated that an autopsy would be conducted to figure out just how the car’s owner died. A manager at a nearby junkyard told WLBT that he passed by the car several times and suspected something might be up with it, but not a body.
“[I] never stopped and looked or anything, but I knew it was kind of unusual,” [Dan Peacock] said. “I figured somebody was driving down here to sell it. We buy a bunch of cars. I figured somebody was driving down to sell it, and it quit on them or something. Just never dawned on me that something like that went on.”
“I wish I would have looked into it further,” Peacock said. “I might’ve been able to help them a little bit further with it, but I just never stopped and looked at it. If I had stopped and looked at it, I would’ve probably tripped. I would’ve probably flipped out if I had stopped and seen something like that.”