7-16-2011 Washington:SEATTLE - A "partial body" that was found at a recycling business in the SoDo industrial area last week has been identified as a 53-year-old Seattle man.
The King County Medical Examiner said Friday that the victim has been identified as Donald S. Meyer of Seattle.
His cause of death was not immediately released.
His torso turned up July 8 at a recycling plant at 7201 East Marginal Way South.
A police spokesman said the body was mixed in with material from a construction site down the street that had been brought in for recycling, and that workers spotted it as it moved down a conveyor belt used for sorting materials.
Detectives determined that the death was not the result of an industrial accident and that the body had been brought to the plant from another location. A homicide investigation was launched immediately.
The 53-year-old victim was a registered sex offender, which may explain why his DNA profile was in the database.
Matt Bazemore says the same day police found the torso, a forensics team showed up in his Ballard neighborhood to sift through this construction zone.
"Three or four police cars showed up all at once trailing the truck back from the recycling plant," he said.
Police won't say whether that search is related to Meyer's murder.
Bazemore made the link based on the questions detectives asked of him and his neighbors.
"I knew that through talking to police that day, that it was recycling, that's where they found it... because I talked to the crew about what they were doing with their garbage and it was being sorted through."
Where or how Meyer was killed is still unclear, but it does appear possible that the killer placed his partial body in a construction debris pile to be hauled away.
Police won't confirm those details, saying only that the case remains an open murder investigation and they are running down all leads.
Meyer was convicted for indecent liberties and had prior arrests for petty theft and drugs. But that sheds little light on what made him a target for murder. ..Source.. by KOMO Staff
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Why an assailant scattered body parts is a mystery for police
4-12-2012:
Human remains found at two separate sites — at a recycling center in Georgetown and underneath the Ship Canal Bridge — have been identified through forensic testing as the body parts of Donald S. Meyer, a 53-year-old Ballard man who was reported missing last year.
Someone went to great lengths to dispose of the body of Donald S. Meyer, a 53-year-old Ballard man who was reported missing last year, police said.
Part of Meyer's body was found at a recycling center in Georgetown a month after his June disappearance. Other remains were discovered in December on a hillside beneath the Ship Canal Bridge.
Police sources said Thursday that Meyer's former roommate, who has been questioned, is considered a person of interest. However, police did not officially confirm that report and no arrests have been made.
Meyer had previous run-ins with the law. In 1991, he was convicted of drug possession and he was charged with second-degree rape the following year. He pleaded guilty to an amended charge of indecent liberties, according to court documents.
Although he was in jail for several years, according to court documents, the state Department of Corrections (DOC) said he did not spend time in prison. He was under DOC supervision for his indecent-liberties conviction, but his case file was closed in 2003, according to agency spokesman Chad Lewis.
Meyer was reported missing in June by three friends, according to court documents. Police said he reportedly sold marijuana.
Several of the people who spoke to police after his disappearance said they were also customers who had gone by his house after failing to reach him on the phone, according to a search warrant filed in King County Superior Court.
Meyer's friends also told police that they'd found his phone, which had not been used for a week.
That in itself was unusual because Meyer used his phone daily in his line of business, police said.
"They kept going to his house and his roommate kept telling them 'he's not here right now, which did not seem right,' " according to a police source.
When police first went to investigate, they found one room in Meyer's home had been stripped bare, the walls repainted and the carpet removed, police sources said.
Crime-scene investigators were called in after small drops of blood were spotted in a corner of the room and more blood that was "not visible to the naked eye" was found with the aid of special chemicals, according to the search warrant.
About a month after Meyer disappeared, a human torso was found on a conveyor belt by employees at a recycling center in Georgetown, police said. Police said the body part was tracked to a commercial recycling bin at a home that was undergoing renovation in Meyer's neighborhood.
In December, a group of people who were attempting to reach out to homeless people in the Eastlake area stumbled across a bag containing a decomposed human leg underneath the Ship Canal Bridge, according to police. More bags of body parts were found scattered across the sloped hill.
Seattle police spokesman Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said Thursday that police do not believe that there are any additional dump sites.
Not long before Meyer's death, he had asked a roommate to move out, sources said. Police records indicate that Meyers' friends said that the roommate was odd and had a "bad vibe."
The former roommate has been interviewed, according to police sources, and is considered a person of interest. Whitcomb would not confirm whether police had a person of interest in the slaying or if an arrest was imminent.
"It is very much an active and ongoing case," Whitcomb said.
He urged people with information about Meyer or his slaying to call the SPD tip line at 206-233-5000. ..Source.. by Christine Clarridge
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