FREEPORT – Bahamian investigators Tuesday were trying to identify and establish the cause of death of human remains believed to be those of some of the five boys who disappeared here over the last six months.
”They are being tested for several different conclusions. We have no results as yet,” Police Superintendent Hulan Hanna said.
The tests were to determine the identities of the remains as well as the cause of death and possible wounds, police officials said.
Police discovered the bones Sunday on a beach near Freeport after a 35 year-old man turned himself in to authorities. The man was still being held Tuesday but has not been charged with any crime.
The suspect was being questioned in the cases of all five missing children, Hanna said, even though four young boys already have been charged with manslaughter in the death of the first to vanish, 12 year-old Jake Grant.
Police claimed that the four boys, Grant’s playmates, had buried him in a pine stand behind an apartment building in a panic after he drowned in an apartment complex swimming pool. Police said that after two other boys told them about the accident, their search of the field turned up no remains.
The disappearances of the five boys ages 11 to 14 — all but one of whom worked packing groceries at the same supermarket and played at a nearby video arcade — has mystified Freeport, the Bahamas second largest tourist destination.
Hanna would not comment on whether the four boys jailed in Nassau, who are ages 11 to 13, would be released. But the mother of one who says her son is innocent says she hopes he will come home soon.
By Marika Lynch, The Miami Herald
