With Halloween only weeks away, the site of the gruesome murder of an Ohio woman was mistaken for a holiday decoration and went unnoticed for an extended period of time, police report.
The body of 31-year-old Rebecca Cade was found hanging by her shirtsleeve on a tall chain-link fence in Chillicothe, Ohio, but for some time, people passed right by the scene without even realizing it was the body of a real woman. Many seemingly assumed that the whole thing was a Halloween display.
It wasn’t until 8:30AM that construction workers realized just what was going on and called police.
Police reported that the woman’s face was so badly beaten that it was unrecognizable.
Local resident Tammy Dixon was shocked by the murder and told the media, “Just put my hands over my face and said, ‘This can’t be happening here, it’s not real, and I just didn’t see what I thought I saw.'”
Police arrested 27-year-old Donnie Cochenour Jr. and charged him with one count of murder. He is being held on a $2 million bond. The accused said he and the victim had a fight on Tuesday evening.
At a press conference, Chillicothe Police Chief Keith Washburn said that the victim died from blunt-force trauma of the head and neck but that there is evidence that she fought back. The chief also said that they may have discovered the murder weapon. A bloody rock the size of a grapefruit was discovered at the scene.
This isn’t the first time that a real death scene was mistaken for a Halloween decoration.
Just last year when a man killed his mother on October 29, police reported that neighbors initially thought the bloody scene was “a Halloween prank.”
In another case, in 2005, a woman in Delaware committed suicide by hanging herself from a tree, but her death went unnoticed for hours as passersby thought her body was just another holiday decoration.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston, or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
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