SHINNSTON, W.Va. — Harrison County Sheriff Robert Matheny has confirmed humans remains were found Wednesday during a joint operation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

On WAJR’s “Talk of the Town,” Matheny said they applied for and were granted a warrant to search the property in the Owings area near Shinnston after receiving a tip from the public.

“Detectives from the Harrison County Sheriff’s Office with the assistance of the FBI located human remains,” Sheriff Matheny said. “Because it’s an ongoing investigation, we can’t give details of how we ended up out there to protect the integrity of the case.”

The presence of the FBI would typically signal the possibility of a federal investigation. Matheny said the FBI in this case was able to provide evidence collection teams and expertise that will enable them to effectively preserve all the evidence collected.

“In our line of work we rely on external resources, sometimes from local fire departments and, in this case, the FBI, because they have access to resources we don’t have,” Matheny said.

Detectives and FBI personnel were on the scene most of the afternoon excavating the property and sifting through potential pieces of evidence. The scope of this operation would have been extremely difficult to conduct solely with officers and detectives from Harrison County only.

“I’d like to recognize the personnel with the FBI. It would be very difficult to pull deputies off of patrol to do the things the FBI was doing Wednesday,” Matheny said.

At this point, Matheny said there are many moving parts to the investigation and thanked the staff at the Harrison County Prosecutor’s office, the patrol and detective divisions, along with the FBI evidence collection team.

“There are so many processes involved in an incident like this so we can preserve evidence and get a conviction down the road,” Matheny said. “So, the next step is we will send the remains to the office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Charleston, West Virginia.”

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