Courtesy of Paulina and Orlin Mejia
See Spot solve a murder!
Cops in Alabama are investigating the murder of an unknown man after a pair of mutts were found playing with a human skull with a single bullet hole.
“It was kind of gross, because it still had pieces of hair on it,” new mom Paulina Mejia, 21, told The Post about the skull her mixed-breed pups Chicharrón and Chichareen dragged home on Aug. 20 — a week after she’d given birth to her daughter, Meilani.
“There were also some teeth still. Just a few on top in the front row,” Mejia added. “This [man was killed] recently, I’d say. Within the last year, because the skull still had a strong scent to it.”
And the crime solving canines were not done.
On Dec. 12, “the same dog was found in the possession of a long bone in the front yard of the same residence,” said Jefferson County Coroner Bill Yates.
“I could see [Chicharrón] playing with something but I wasn’t sure what it was,” Mejia said. “A lady driving by saw him playing with the bone close to the street, and pulled over. She called 911, and before I know it, there are police everywhere.”
The dogs found what was ultimately determined to be a left tibia, or shinbone.
Mejia said the bone was “relatively clean” in comparison to the skull they found in August.
Police canvassed nearby vacant properties and reviewed doorbell camera footage, but found few clues about where the dogs had roamed.
“There has to be a body in the bushes here,” Mejia said, noting the neighborhood is surrounded by woods. There’s also an abandoned school not far from their home, she said.
Yates’ office developed a DNA profile from the skull, but there were zero matches in CODIS, a national database that compares DNA samples collected from crime scenes and taken from convicted offenders.
They are trying now to determine if the tibia is from the same victim, a test that won’t come back until March.
It may be up to the two dogs, named after the Portuguese pork rind dish, to help detectives solve the case.
The coroner said they’re working with the Mejias and other neighborhood residents to better understand where the dogs wander and figure out where the bones came from.
Last week, a tracker was placed on Chichareen, so officials could “obtain data on what areas the dogs are frequenting,” Yates told The Post via email. That will ensure “future searches with cadaver dogs are fruitful.”
A third bone hadn’t been found by the dogs by Friday.
Mejia said she is proud of her pooches.
“They might help solve a crime,” she said. “There haven’t been many people reported missing from this area, so I hope they can help the police resolve this thing.”