True crime fans and citizen sleuths were sent into a frenzy last week after Connecticut police began investigating the circumstances surrounding the body of an unidentified young woman discovered by the highway near New Haven, but anyone who got interested in the shocking case has some potentially disappointing news coming their way today: Police have confirmed that the woman found dead along the side of I-95 was actually just a very beautiful raccoon.
Whoops! Guess we can consider this unsolved murder case closed.
Early last week, Connecticut police held a press conference pleading for tips from the public regarding the untimely death of “a young woman, aged 19-25, possibly a model or some sort of pageant queen,” whose body was found lying beside a guardrail at the edge of I-95 near the Long Island Sound. In the intervening days, online followers seized on the sparse details police released, which included speculation that the victim was killed by a jealous incel who resented her beauty, and that her body may have been staged near the highway as an example to other women. But soon after the description of the woman’s “slender build, feminine fingers, and dark charcoal eye makeup” resulted in a lead connecting the case to a missing New York City actress, the police disconfirmed this theory, and further admitted that the corpse had turned out to be that of an “unusually gorgeous adult raccoon.”
“While we hoped that the discovery of the remains of the I-95 Jane Doe would lead to the resolution of any number of cold cases involving missing women from the Eastern Seaboard, we have unfortunately confirmed that the remains belonged to a raccoon of two to three years of age, which likely died either of disease or due to having been struck by a vehicle,” Chief of Police Samuel McDermott explained. “As beautiful as the raccoon may have been, we do not believe that there was foul play involved in its death. We found ourselves so moved by its supple curves, piercing eyes, and radiant hair that we were blind to its true form, and we regret any pain we caused to those who put tireless effort into determining the identity of the woman whose death we thought we had on our hands.”
What a shame. What seemed like a juicy true crime case was nothing but a dead raccoon, albeit a physically beautiful one. If you’re looking for a murder case to follow, you’ll have to find something different. Too bad!
