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PARK CITY — The Summit County Sheriff's Office was trying Wednesday to confirm the identify of a man whose body was found in the backyard of a Spring Creek subdivision home.
On April 28, Don Armstrong's dog came into his Park City house carrying a shoe that Armstrong did not recognize, said sheriff's detective Ron Bridge. Upon further investigation, Armstrong — who lives on an acre of property, part of which drops off into an undeveloped rugged area with a creek and hiking trails — found the remains of badly decomposed body.
"I couldn't really recognize what it was until I was about 10 feet away," Armstrong said. "It's just about as strange as you can imagine."
Armstrong found a portion of a human body. Sheriff's investigators called to the scene located the rest of it. "It had advanced decomposition, and parts had also been consumed by wild animals," Bridge said.
The death appeared to be recent, within the past few weeks or months, he said. Parts of the remains were skeletal.
One of the victim's hands was intact, however, and officials hoped to identify the body through fingerprints. Bridge said it was currently impossible to tell the age, sex or race of the victim. Later Wednesday, however, he said investigators have "reason to believe that the remains are" those of 27-year-old Magdeleno Godinez.
In December, family members of Godinez reported him missing from the same area where the body was found, Bridge said. Searchers and family members looked for him, but snow made the searches difficult.
"We have no idea what might have happened," Shelly Juarez, 19, a niece of Godinez, said Wednesday. "It's very hard. We didn't expect it like that."
Bridge said there was no indication that the death was suspicious "as the body did not show signs of injury or trauma before death."
"We want them to investigate everything. We want to know what happened, what caused his death," Juarez said.
Juarez said her uncle lived with her family, but was very quiet. He typically went to work, then went to his room when he came home.
"It was rare when he would go out. He was a quiet person," she said.
Godinez's case is the only unsolved missing person case in Summit County. Bridge says police searched extensively on land and from the air for Godinez in December, but snow covered the ground until recently and that hampered further search efforts.
While the family waits for critical answers from the investigators, they are trying to raise money to send Godinez's body back to his parents in Mexico.
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Story written by Pat Reavy with contributions from Jed Boal.
