Finding Foot In A Bucket Aids in 6 Year Old Case For Louisiana Police

St. Tammany Parish Sheriff detectives have been stumped for the past six years, but a recent gruesome discovery has finally help them positively identify a murder victim.

Get our free mobile app

According to an article from kiro7.com, on July 29,  2016, along a stretch of U.S. 90 near its junction with the Old Spanish Trail, a landowner called to report finding a badly decomposed, dismembered, body which was missing its arms and a leg that had been severed just below the knee.

Detectives Really Couldn't Tell Much About The Body Due To Decomposition

Sheriff's Department officials added that, "Due to the level of decomposition, age and race were unable to be determined."  However, they did know that the body belonged to a male and that "The only distinguishable mark was a scar on the victim’s chest from a prior open heart bypass surgery."

Now, thanks to persistence from the St. Tammy Parish Sheriff's Office and a strange encounter, the victim has been identified as 72-year-old Kleanthis Konstantinidis, who is said to have died from blunt force trauma to the head.

The Strange Encounter That Led Police To The Positive Identification

In 2019, after the passing of Phillip Pointer, of Biloxi, the primary suspect in the case, police investigating Pointer's mobile home discovered a severed foot inside a bucket under the home.

Three years later, after extreme DNA testing, the creation of a clay bust and composite drawings of the unidentified man, and scores of interviews, detectives were finally able to make the positive identification.  They were quick to point out that the discovery of the severed foot was key in setting the wheels in motion for the identification of the victim.

Next on the list for St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's cold case detectives as they continue the investigation into the murder, is to find where Konstantinidis died, and to ultimately prove who killed him.