I love the idea of my son wandering off in nature, exploring forests with adventurous friends. Honestly, some of my happiest memories were doing the same. However, they aren’t always the most secure places to play. Though I’d say the woods are truly lovely, dark and deep, they have a lot of mystery that makes them an unsettling place at times. Historically, the woods are a place in both literature and real life where dark things are done covertly, which has been going on for centuries.
Though I only have happy memories of walking alongside creeks and climbing on rocks, other children are not as lucky. In 1998, a group of kids playing in the woods in a rural part of Dover Township, Ohio, about 85 miles south of Cleveland, found a lot more in nature than they ever bargained for.
On April 25, 2026, the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office announced authorities made a breakthrough in a 28-year-old case.
On February 1, 1998, some kids were playing in the woods when they stumbled upon an abandoned suitcase full of human remains, the sheriff’s office explained via Facebook, according to Law & Crime. Roughly a week later, a second suitcase was found containing more dismembered body parts. Though police were able to determine that the two suitcases’ contents belonged to the same person, the person’s identity remained a mystery, until authorities reopened the case a few years ago.
In 2023, the case was reopened and reexamined with newer DNA testing methods, and it paid off.
Authorities were able to trace the remains to 81-year-old Larry Drotleff. The sheriff’s office revealed that in 2024, Drotleff told authorities that he had found his father’s dead body when he got home.
“Larry stated that he was residing with his father and had left for work one day,” the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office stated, per Law & Crime. “When he came home, [he] located his father deceased. Larry indicated that he then cut up his father’s body with a manual hand saw (not a power saw) and disposed of some body parts in the suitcases and others by just putting them in bags in a dumpster near his work place.”
Drotleff provided authorities with a DNA sample, and they confirmed that the DNA of the remains confirmed he was the victim’s biological son.
Fox News reported that Drotleff’s crime of abuse of a corpse had exceeded the statute of limitations, which the sheriff’s office confirmed in the April 2026 statement.
Authorities, however, were able to hit him with felony charges after determining Drotleff had allegedly stolen his father’s Social Security.
The sheriff’s department called in the FBI, and together, they were able to determine appropriate charges. Between continuing to collect his dad’s Social Security benefits and his pension fund, Drotleff reportedly stole roughly $250,000 over the two decades and has been charged with two federal counts.
“While the case did not prove to be a murder, it should be noted that the inhumane treatment of the corpse was conduct so inexcusable that this case remained a priority for the Tuscarawas County Sheriff’s Office,” the statement read. “It remains difficult to comprehend that the greed of theft could cause someone to treat their father’s body in this manner.”
