HOUSTON – Dive teams responded to Buffalo Bayou after a new body was confirmed to be found in the water.
The situation was reported by Houston Police Department Wednesday afternoon.
Context: This makes it 34 bodies found in Houston area Bayous this year
— Jaewon Jung (@jaewonnews) December 24, 2025
Last year there were 35.
A total of 12 found in the Buffalo Bayou this year, which is a record high in the last decade.@KPRC2 https://t.co/ir7sR9ZNik
The situation marks the latest incident related to bodies turning up in Houston-area bayous.
READ MORE: Families left with questions after two more bodies found in Houston bayous
This incident marks the 34th body recovered from bayous across Houston in 2025, nearly reaching last year’s total of 35. There have been three bodies recovered in bayous just this week.
Jesse Bellow lives nearby and heard the helicopter flying over his neighborhood.
He didn’t expect a body to be recovered at the Bayou on Christmas Eve.
“It’s incredibly sad,” said Bellow. “There’s the sensationalized side of a serial killer which people purport as a possibility, but it could also be the incompetence of our leaders in taking care of the lowest members of our society who are still human and deserve respect."
KPRC 2 has looked at data from the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office and saw that there have been nearly 200 bodies found in the Bayou since 2017.
Nearly 40 percent of the bodies have undetermined causes of death.
Earlier this week, we spoke to forensic criminologist Dr. Elizabeth Gilmore of the University of Houston, who explained an undetermined ruling does not mean investigators failed to do their jobs. Instead, it reflects the limits of the evidence available.
“What that means is that the pathologist has done as thorough as an examination as they possibly can,” Dr. Gilmore said. “And what they have decided is that they cannot attribute what the manner of death would be… there’s just not enough information for the doctor to say this is what happened.”
But for families, it means unanswered questions.
“I don’t think anybody ever prepares you to lose somebody that’s that close to you,” said Lauren Freeman, whose cousin Kenneth Cutting Jr. was discovered at the Buffalo Bayou last year. “I’ve lost a lot of people in my lifetime, and losing a mother who has cancer is way different than losing a 22-year-old kid that disappeared and nobody knows what happened to him."
There have been 12 bodies recovered from Buffalo Bayou in 2025.
MORE FROM THIS WEEK: Two bodies found near Houston bayous within hours