‘NO FIRST-HAND KNOWLEDGE’

Man Who Claimed Nature Trail Victim’s Face Was ‘Smashed’ Open Is Lying: Sheriff

Michael Gabriszeski has claimed to multiple news outlets that he found Rachel Morin’s remains, but the sheriff’s office says he was never “within eyesight of the crime scene.”

A man who claimed to multiple media outlets on Thursday that he helped find Rachel Morin, the Maryland hiker now believed to have been the victim of “a violent homicide,” in a gruesome state was never even “within eyesight of the crime scene,” according to authorities. A spokesperson for the Harford County Sheriff’s Office told The Independent that Michael Gabriszeski, who said that he and his stepdaughter had been the first to locate Morin’s remains on Sunday, “did not find Rachel’s body,” and that he did not “view her body.” The spokesperson added that Gabriszeski had been in the area to aid with the search, but that “he has no first-hand knowledge of the crime scene.” In an interview with the Daily Mail published earlier on Thursday, Gabriszeski claimed that he had seen Morin “fully naked” and that it had “looked like her head had been smashed in with a rock.” There was also a “15-to-20-foot blood trail” in the area, he said. To local station WBFF, he added: “There’s not going to be an open casket. I can guarantee you that.”