Six years after Danny Burroughs went missing from his New Jersey home, investigators say they have found his body parts in the home of his ex-wife, Loretta Burroughs.
The remains were found in two containers in Loretta's home in Ventnor, N.J., according to a source close to the investigation who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the case.
Loretta Burroughs, 61, wept quietly this afternoon as she was formally charged with Danny's murder.
Burroughs went missing on August 14, 2007, from the couple's home on Leipzig Avenue in the Mays Landing section of Hamilton Township, N.J. He was last seen on his riding lawnmower.
Loretta divorced Danny shortly after he disappeared. She then sold the couple's home.
Loretta moved, more than once, according to the Burroughs family, and was living at the home on Hampshire Drive in Ventnor where the body parts were found.
Crime scene investigators, acting on new information, went to the home this morning around 6 or 7 a.m., according to neighbors. The remains were discovered inside a closet and positively identified as Daniel Burroughs.
Investigators are not clear if they were put into containers due to decomposition, or if the body was mutilated. They do believe that the body was moved several times. And detectives say Loretta Burroughs was in the process of selling her Ventnor home and relocating to another home in Villas, Cape May County.
Loretta Burroughs was arrested this morning. Investigators say she stabbed her husband to death in 2007. Autopsy results are pending.
Danny Burroughs' family convinced investigators to re-open the case in February, after the county put together a Cold Case Unit. The family launched a Find Danny Burroughs Facebook page in 2010, and used the page to raise questions about Danny's disappearance. In the "about" section of the page, his brother wrote:
Out of nowhere his (now) x-wife told everybody he "ran off with another woman", he left without ANY of his belongings-NOTHING! I say BS to her story and MANY-MANY lies! She, never even called to tell me (my brother) Dan supposedly "up and left." I found out several days later when I called my brothers home to see how he was feeling >for me, this is when the nightmare began.
"We knew for years that she knew something and we just couldn't get the help from anybody to find him," said Robert Valiante, Jr., a family friend.
Burroughs' family kept pushing police to go past Loretta Burrough's claim that Dan had run off to Florida with another woman.
"That's why they could never question her or prosecute her because there was no body," Valiante said. "There was no remains. Well, I guess not because she had 'em! Without a body he would have been lost forever."
Photo Credit: Facebook | Find Danny Burroughs