HOUSTON – A new homeowner in northeast Harris County found skeletal remains inside a home just days after closing on the sale, but nearly three months after the home caught fire in the middle of the night and the tenant has been missing since.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office and Fire Marshal’s Office got called to the home on Villagrove Drive in northeast Harris County on Saturday evening after the remains were discovered.
The new homeowner had been working to clean the burned place up and planned to renovate, he told KPRC 2, but found the remains just inside the front door area.
Back on Aug. 28, fire crews from the Sheldon Fire Department and the Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office responded to the home fully engulfed in flames. Officials said no one was supposed to be there at the time of the fire, possibly because it was about to be repossessed or the tenant was about to be evicted.
Investigators never found a body until they got called by the new homeowner.
“There was a lot of debris that was on top of the skeletal remains," HCSO Sgt. Ben Beall said.
Sheldon Fire Chief Sidney Webb told KPRC 2 search and rescue crews swept the house twice. The Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office also searched the home that early morning in August and again in September. Officials said a third-party investigator also looked through the home, but no one ever found the body.
“We did not have any information at that time prior to this weekend to believe that there was any person inside the home," Harris County Fire Marshal’s Deputy Chief of Investigations Mitchell Weston said.
The Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office has not yet ruled on the fire’s cause and arson hasn’t been ruled out. Investigators had been looking to speak with the tenant as a possible person of interest, Weston said.
But according to the sheriff’s office, that tenant hasn’t been seen since August.
“They were seen leaving the house about two hours before the fire started,” Sgt. Beall said.
Weston said arson investigators followed all policies and procedures and he wasn’t aware of anything that should have been done differently.
He added that arson investigators have been in touch with the tenant’s family member, who he said shared this surprising twist: “They actually provided information that would lead us to believe they were still alive and they speculated they could be responsible for lighting additional fires," Weston said.
It’s not clear if the person died in the fire or prior to and the remains have yet to be identified.
Sgt. Beall said the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, including the anthropology department, will work to determine the identity of the person.
It could take up to eight weeks before positive identification is made, the sheriff’s office said.
Investigators are asking anyone with information about what may have happened to get in touch.