The mutilated body of a woman was found surrounded by crosses inside a North Carolina apartment on Easter Sunday, leading authorities to arrest a man in connection with the death, WBTV reports.
Details of the scene of the crime are gruesome: The victim, 35-year-old Laura Miller, was beaten so severely that her head and face were “unrecognizable,” a prosecutor said in court, according to the television station.
Miller’s ankles were found tied together, wires were around her nick, her inner thighs appeared to have been burned and there was a deep cut between her navel and neck.
The woman’s tongue was cut out and left on a dining room table.
Three makeshift crosses were placed by the body that appeared to have been made from a table. A trail of salt also encircled Miller’s body and was found elsewhere in the apartment.
Human tissue was located throughout the residence, while blood had seeped out of the woman’s front door and seeped through to the floor below.
Police subsequently arrested 36-year-old Miguel Gonzales Rosales, who faces charges of first-degree murder, theft of a motor vehicle, and destruction of remains/concealing a death, according to WCCB-TV.
Rosales’ brother is the person who called 911 to report Miller’s death. Officers with the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department later located and arrested him during a traffic stop. He was driving Miller’s vehicle at the time of the arrest.
Miller and Rosales were reportedly neighbors and were known to argue with each other, according to WSOC-TV. One neighbor told the television station that Rosales confronted Miller three days before the slaying with a baseball bat. “He was asking Laura to open the door or else he was going to kill her,” the neighbor told WSOC-TV.
Miller’s loved ones remembered her as a kind and caring person who brightened the lives of those around her.
“She was a sweet little girl, the sweetest,” Miller’s uncle to WSOC-TV. “Very caring of animals, loved animals very much.”
Rosales was in court on Tuesday where a judge denied bond. He is scheduled to appear again in court on April 19 for a bond hearing.
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[Feature Photo: Miguel Gonzalez Rosales/Mecklenburg County Detention Center]
