CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Corpus Christi Police Department said Thursday that even though it has been confirmed that the remains found in a wastewater station on Lexington Road were Caleb Harris', that the investigation into his disappearance remains open.
"We don't know beyond any doubt of. . . . what actually happened to him," said CCPD Asst. Chief Todd Green. "We haven't been able to find any evidence that clearly suggests that he was met with foul play. That there was a homicide involved."
"The investigation's not over, but at this point we don't have any clear evidence of exactly how he ended up in that lift station," he said.
Harris' remains were found June 24, when CCPD Deputy Chief William "Billy" Breedlove said a city wastewater employee was called out to the Perry Place lift station to clear a jam.
"It was pretty much just, skeletal remains, for the most part," he said. "And so with a little bit of tissue and so, yeah, there's a lot lacking to be able to make a determination."
Green told 3NEWS on Thursday afternoon that police believe it is unlikely that Harris was intentionally put into the wastewater station based on the level of security that surrounds it.
"We can say that it's a very secure facility there," he said. "There's chain-link fence around the facility. It's locked with a padlock to get into that facility. You have to pass through that gate. Once you get inside the gate, there's another lock on the building, and the actual wet well where the remains were found is covered with a steel grate, which also had a padlock on it."
Police searched the Ennis Joslin/Lexington/Holly Road area around Harris’ apartment complex and near the lift station in the first few days after Harris was reported missing, Green said.
“We searched that entire area around the apartment complex,” he said. “All those open fields, all around in the brush, all the way out the Oso preserve.”
During those searches, he said no manhole covers were found out of place.
“Our investigators actually opened all the drainage manhole covers all the way from SPID on Ennis Joslin all the way from SPID back to Holly,” he said.
But there are several types of manholes that run under the city’s streets.
“They did not open the sewage manholes,” he said.
A tip more than a month after the disappearance of a missing manhole cover in the field across from the apartment complex gave police another lead.
“Our investigators went out there the following day, on April 18, and they did find that there was a open manhole cover,” he said. “It wasn't just the cover, it actually -- the entire top of the manhole had been knocked off. They looked into the manhole, which is about 18 feet deep.”
The city’s wastewater department was called out to help lower the water level in the manhole for a more thorough look, but nothing was found.
“They also went to the lift station itself and looked in that wet well to see if they could see anything and they didn’t observe anything at that time,” he said.
He said it’s possible, however, that rain from Tropical Storm Alberto, which drenched the area the week before, contributed to Harris' remains being found.
“We don’t know for a fact, we don’t know for certain, but that is something they said could be a possibility,” Green said. “Even though it’s wastewater, this is the sewage system. When we have really, really heavy rains, rainwater will infiltrate into the system. . . . and increase the flow above and beyond what the normal flow will be. So that is a possibility that because of those rains. . . . the body was found.”
He said that because of the degraded state of the remains, it has been difficult to determine exactly how Harris died.
“There's no gunshots, there's no obvious knife wounds or hatchet wounds or anything like that that would tell us, ‘Yes, he was murdered’ at the same time,” Green said. “There's nothing, because there wasn't enough of the remains there. We can't say beyond a doubt that he wasn't murdered."
The Nueces County Medical Examiner’s Office has yet to make a final ruling on Harris’ manner and cause of death, Green said.