Platte County sheriff seeks no suspects in deaths of man and child in burned car
Yellow crime scene tape remained draped around the fence line, utility poles and mail box at a home in Platte County Monday, a day after the skeletal remains of a man and young child were found inside a burned car.
A Platte County sheriff’s deputy guarded the entrance to the driveway of the house in the 20400 block of B Highway as an investigation into the deaths continued.
Neighbors in the small rural community said the dead were a man in his 20s and his 2-year-old daughter. The man had been in a relationship with a woman who lives at the house, they said. The couple were the parents of the child.
The Platte County Sheriff’s Office has not released the names of the man and the little girl.
No arrests have been made and investigators are not looking for any suspects, said Maj. Erik Holland, a sheriff’s office spokesman.
The burned car is connected to the home where the fire was reported, Holland said. Investigators have not determined how the car was set on fire.
“We do believe that we know who the individuals are but until we have that confirmation from the M.E. (medical examiner) we don’t want to release the names,” Holland said. “We have been talking with members of the family who we believe the people are but the investigation is continuing.”
Holland declined to say whether investigators recovered any firearms from inside the vehicle or inside the home. He also did not say where the bodies were located inside the vehicle.
“We don’t have a cause of death, the vehicle was set on fire but until the medical examiner completes the autopsy, we won’t know the cause of deaths,” he said.
The sheriff’s office responded to the house about 7 a.m. Sunday after receiving a 911 call reporting that there was a car fire and that human remains could be seen in the car.
A neighbor said the woman who lived at the house raced to a home nearby and banged on a window.
The woman was frantic, looked disheveled and was incoherent as she tried to explain the burned vehicle in her driveway. The woman told neighbors that she thought her boyfriend and daughter were inside the car.
A neighbor and a relative went over and looked inside the charred vehicle.
“I looked inside and I didn’t know what I was looking at,” said the woman, who did not want to be identified because the deaths remained under investigation.
The man was in the front seat and the child was in the back seat, the neighbor said.
Neighbors said crime scene investigators worked through the night gathering evidence and speaking with potential witnesses.
Ross Frerking, who lives next door to the house, said he didn’t notice anything until later Sunday morning. Police cars and emergency vehicles lined the road outside his home.
“I was kind of surprised that there wasn’t an explosion that would have woke us up, at least the gas tank because the car was so badly burned,” Frerking said.
The people who lived at the house kept to themselves but kept unusual hours, Frerking said.
“We get up in the middle of the night and see people coming and going,” said Frerking, who has lived in the area for just over three years. “We had never actually met them.”
In recent years, this corner of the county has been rocked by several tragedies.
Two years ago at a home about three miles away, twin 3-year-olds, a boy and a girl, were found dead in a pond not far from their house in the 19000 block of South Ridgely Road.
In 2016, four people, including a 3-month-old boy, were found shot and killed outside the family’s home in Edgerton, roughly ten miles away from the car fire Sunday.
Grayden Denham was charged in the killings of his grandparents, sister and nephew. After shooting them, Denham allegedly set their bodies on fire.
Platte County Prosecutor Eric Zahnd said he planned to seek the death penalty in those homicides, which remain pending.
“It kind of makes you feel a little uncomfortable,” Frerking said. “We’re out in the country. It kind of makes you check your doors a little bit better at night to make sure that they’re locked, things that you normally didn’t worry about.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2019 at 6:36 PM.
