A power cord connected to a school bus parked on a New Orleans man’s property led authorities to a gruesome discovery Tuesday: a deep freezer with a headless woman’s torso inside. Also hidden in a nearby ice chest was a power saw with “bits of flesh and fluid on the blade surface,” investigators wrote in a subsequent report. The property owner, 34-year-old Benjamin Beale, was taken in for questioning. After refusing to answer investigators’ questions, Beale was arrested and charged with obstruction of justice in a death investigation. Authorities later tacked on weapons and drugs charges, looking into an alleged methamphetamine lab being run out of Beale’s home. The body hadn’t thawed enough to make a positive identification by Tuesday evening, but law enforcement sources told The Times-Picayune that officers believe the body belonged to Julia Dardar, a woman whose disappearance police were investigating when they searched Beale’s home. Dardar, who was reported missing in December, had allegedly been living with Beale at the time of her disappearance.
Read it at The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
