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They found it in the woods of Chickenfoot Park alongside of Trenton Rd. between Oxford Valley Rd. and Woodbourne Rd.
They quickly extinguished what they thought was a brush fire. On examination, what they found warranted a call to the police.
It wasn't a brush fire at all. It was two bodies that were burning.
Identification of the bodies would be difficult. They were mutilated and dismembered. Plus, the fire had burned and destroyed many of the identifiable features.
The bodies were neatly placed in plastic trash bags. "They packaged the bodies like putting a parcel post together. It was a well-planned, sadistic act. You're talking about a cold, calculating act" said the police chief.
Both bodies were male, yet one was dressed in women's clothing. There was evidence that both men were sexually tortured shortly before death.
It was suggested they may have been transvestite prostitutes.
It would take the police days to identify them.
Police set up roadblocks in the area to question if anyone had seen anything suspicious that night. One motorist reported a "light-colored van".
At the corner gas station, the attendant reported someone buying a can of gasoline just before the bodies were found. The person then walked down the road in that direction.
They also suspected there was more than one person involved.
An autopsy revealed the two seemed to be killed four to seven days before being dumped in the woods. Both men were beaten shortly before death. Then they were killed; one was shot in the head, while the other was suffocated.
The autopsy also detected traces of cocaine in each of the bodies.
But they could raise only one print from the badly-burned hands.
This was not good enough, so Middletown Police Chief Michael Chitwood called in a friend he described as one of the "best fingerprint men in the country", Montgomery County Detective John Durante.
It took dogged determination and two full days of intensive work for Durante to raise fingerprints from the corpses. But in the end, he had 20 good prints.
It would then take days searching through a database to find a match, provided the prints were on file.
On Sun, July 20th - a match! After 17 long days, one body was identified!
The investigation would now shift to a strip in center-city Phila. where Faustino (aka "Tina") hung out.
One of those questioned recalled two guys in a big car came down the street looking for someone to "party with". They looked like they had a lot of money, so "all the girls were trying to get in with them".
"'Tina' and 'Tanya' were the two that got in".
From the descriptions given, police drew up sketches of two suspects.
He was well-known by the police in Phila. and New York. He had previous convictions for robbery and was wanted for weapons offenses in New York.
He also resembled one of the sketches police were circulating of the suspects.
DJ was pulled in for questioning.
They had to release him.
Seeing the police coming, he bolted to his car and drove away, almost running down a detective in the process. Police fired shots at the car in an attempt to stop him, but he got away.
A little later, the car was found a few blocks away, but DJ was nowhere to be found. He had escaped arrest.
However, his freedom wouldn't last long. The next morning he was arrested in New York City by the U.S. Marshals.
I do not know whether DJ or anyone else has ever been convicted for the "Transvestite Murders".
I chose not to include them on this page because they do not add any interest to the story.
If you are at all squeamish or otherwise uninterested in the gory details, do not click on the following link.
The Transvestite Murders - The Details