What some residents of a southern Ohio city thought was a spooky Halloween decoration turned out to be a dead woman hanging from a fence.
The woman’s sleeve was caught on the fence and her body was dangling in front of it. The woman was later identified as 31-year-old Rebecca Cade, a longtime resident of the area.
Construction workers in Chillicothe, Ohio, called police Tuesday morning to report the body, according to WKRC.
“I thought somebody was playing a prank on the construction workers and I told my daughter it was a dummy,” a neighbor told the Columbus Dispatch. “It was so awful that I thought the prank went too far.”
Police arrested 27-year-old Donnie Cochenour Jr. and charged him with one count of murder, police said in a statement.
In a news conference Wednesday, Police Chief Keith Washburn said Cade died of blunt-force trauma to the head and neck. Police said she had obvious injuries, but denied the woman’s body had been mutilated. Next to the body, police officers found a bloody rock, the size of a grapefruit, believed to be the murder weapon.
