Police: Homeless man kept human head in campsite bucket

Jason Pohl | The Arizona Republic

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PHOENIX — A homeless man is in custody after police say he stashed a missing South Dakota man's head in a bucket — for six months — at his remote desert campsite, according to court records.

A searcher on Jan. 13 called the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office from a campground near Harquahala Mountain west of Phoenix, close to Aguila. The caller had been looking for signs of his missing friend, 73-year-old Daniel Lucas, of Baltic, S.D.

Lucas was known to camp in his truck, but his whereabouts had been unknown since early 2017. Though he wasn't reported missing to the Sheriff’s Office, Lucas was entered into a national missing persons database in September, records show.

The searcher said he found his friend's truck, but Lucas was nowhere to be seen.

He also encountered 51-year-old Matthew David Hall, who reported finding the missing man dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot several months earlier.

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Deputies arrived, opened the camper's door and "discovered an odor associated with decomposition," according to court records. "The floor of the vehicle was covered in a liquid which deputies associated with the decomposition of human remains."

Hall told them he found the remains in the desert more than six months earlier after his knock on the trailer door went unanswered. That's when he said he broke a window and found Lucas dead on the floor, holding a handgun.

The medical examiner has since ruled his cause of death a suicide.

Hall said he pried the handgun from Lucas' hands and grabbed a rifle from the truck.

He then moved the man's remains outside of the truck, where they continued decomposing in the summertime heat. A couple of days later, he placed a portion of the man's head in a container "in order for it to be preserved," he told investigators.

But he couldn't explain why he didn't alert authorities to the discovery sooner.

Deputies on Jan. 13 located the man's head at his campsite and arrested Hall on suspicion of first-degree burglary and abandoning and concealing body parts — both felony charges.

Aside from a DUI, Hall doesn't appear to have much of a criminal history, according to court records. The case remains under investigation, and deputies have characterized him as "mentally disturbed."

Bond has been set at $5,000, and Hall is next due in court Jan. 29.

Follow Jason Pohl on Twitter: @pohl_jason