READING, Pa. – The Berks County Coroner\u2019s Office has identified the human remains that were found at a vacant property in Reading and is investigating the man\u2019s death as a homicide.<\/p>\n
The coroner\u2019s office said it identified the remains as Jose Rodriguez-Figueroa, Jr. 47, of Reading.<\/p>\n
The remains were discovered Oct. 2 inside a vacant home on the 500 block of South 6th Street, the coroner\u2019s office said in a news release.<\/p>\n
The remains found at the property had previously been unoccupied for years, according to multiple neighbors.<\/p>\n
Authorities said the incident began as a security check at the house. Police said the owner of the recently purchased property was on scene and discovered what appeared to be human remains in the home.<\/p>\n
The coroner\u2019s office said the forensic investigation involved multiple forensic disciplines.<\/p>\n
That includes an autopsy performed by a forensic pathologist, examination by a forensic odontologist, forensic entomology analysis, and assistance from two teams of forensic anthropologists from the University of South Florida in Tampa, the coroner\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n
Several families contacted the coroner\u2019s office with descriptions of missing loved ones, according to the news release.<\/p>\n
The coroner\u2019s office said the information the families provided helped investigators narrow the possibilities and focus their efforts on establishing the person\u2019s identity.<\/p>\n
The University of South Florida\u2019s forensic anthropology team compared the available information with medical records and confirmed the man\u2019s identity as Jose Rodriguez-Figueroa, Jr., the coroner\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n
The coroner\u2019s office said the investigation remains ongoing and additional information will be released when appropriate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. – The Berks County Coroner\u2019s Office has identified the human remains that were found at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,17147,457,6552,736,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-306488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-coroner","tag-homicide","tag-human-remains","tag-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}