HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — A family that purchased a home in the Champion Forest area recently made a frightening discovery in the backyard flower bed.
What they thought was a big rock turned out to be a human skull.
“This is crazy,” homeowner Kevin Hindmond said. “I go out in my backyard to grill some meat and end up finding a human skull.”
Hindmond was scoping out the weeds he needed to pull from the flower bed in his new backyard. He bought the house about nine months before.
Bulging out of a mound of dirt he noticed something popping up that looked like a big a rock, so he reached down to dig it out.
“I did pull it up,” Hindmond said. “That’s when I realized, this isn’t part of a plant, this isn’t a rock, it looks like a human skull.”
Hindmond called 911.
“The first constable looked at it, and he said, ‘OK, well I’ve got to call my supervisor,’” Hindmond said. “And so it ends up with about six constables here; which is great when you’ve only lived in the neighborhood for about nine months.”
Earlier this month, the case of the unclaimed remains was filed with the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, which tracks discoveries of remains without identities.
In the report, it’s called a “trophy skull.”
The Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences has determined the skull is that of a white woman.
Hindmond said the man who sold him the house grew up in the home and admitted to deputies the skull was his.
The previous owner reportedly said it was given to him by a friend, at his friend’s grandmother’s house outside of Texas, when the boys were teenagers.
The former owner had forgotten about the skull for years until he cleaned out the attic for the move.
Not knowing what to do, he told deputies he buried it.
“I don’t know if it was out of fear of somebody finding it or just out of respect,” Hindmond said.
The previous homeowner moved out of state after he sold the home.
There’s no indication of how old the skull could be in the report, but Hindmond said investigators think it is from sometime after World War II based on the condition of its teeth.
Hindmond hasn’t found any other bones on his property since the skull.
“Well I haven’t dug up the other flower beds yet,” Hindmond said. “So who knows what I’ll find.”