On Oct. 14, a welfare check in Johnson County, Texas turned into a crime scene. Police found the body of 26‑year‑old Jonathan Kinman, an autistic man, buried in a shallow grave on his parents’ backyard.
In the days before the check, December Marie Mitchell and her husband, Jonathan James Mitchell, told officers that Kinman had died in a local hospital. They didn’t give a date or cause for his death and said the body had been cremated. The sheriff’s office tried to locate hospital records, but nothing turned up at either the hospital or the Tarrant County medical examiner’s office.
Police arrived at the Mitchell home and, in the presence of the Texas Rangers, uncovered Kinman’s body wrapped in a camouflage blanket. The last‑minute call from the couple’s daughter, who had reported seeing no one in the house, prompted the search.
During the search, December panicked, saying the police dog “went into my son’s…”. She had even told a neighbor that the son was buried in the yard; the neighbor threatened to call 911, so the stepfather – who had posted a vague memorial on Facebook a few days earlier – called police himself.
Both parents were booked into Johnson County Jail the same night on charges of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence to conceal a human corpse. The Mitchells face $250,000 bonds each.
The state medical examiner’s office received the body, but a cause of death has yet to be released. The case has sparked shock among neighbors, some of whom said they had never known Kinman existed and had only heard of the parents’ daughter and grandchild.
Source: New York Post
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