New Orleans Mystery: Human Skull Padlocked to Dumbbell Is Pulled Out of Water by Fisherman

NEW ORLEANS—A human skull padlocked to an exercise dumbbell has been fished out of a New Orleans waterway, leaving police with a mystery on their hands. The skull was found earlier this month by a man using a red rope and a magnet the size of a hockey puck on a bridge to pull things out of the water below, police said in a report. The report was recently released and obtained by The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. The fisherman also found a handgun and a gun barrel in the water on May 18, police said. The 15-pound (6.8 kilogram) dumbbell was padlocked around the skull, which was “fully decomposed, lacking a jaw or the top row of teeth,” according to the report....