The human remains found in a suitcase off Interstate 80 near Saltair in April belong to a missing Las Vegas woman, according to Unified Police.
UPD Lt. Lex Bell said the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department received the results of DNA testing that positively identifies the body as Susana Villalvazo-Jiminez, 46, who has been missing since last November.
“We know 100 percent that’s who she is,” Bell said.
The identification of the body will close the case for UPD and Las Vegas Metro Police, Bell said. The only suspect in the case was Villalvazo-Jiminez’s stepfather, Samuel Teran, who died after shooting himself in a drive-thru at a North Las Vegas Burger King last November.
Bell said Las Vegas police treated Villalvazo-Jiminez’s disappearance as a missing person case until the remains matching her description were found in April.
An autopsy on the body May 1 described the victim as being middle-aged with long, dark hair, a tattoo on the left wrist of a pink breast cancer ribbon and a right breast mastectomy, which matched Villalvazo-Jiminez’s description.
The autopsy also determined the victim died as the result of a shooting, which police next ruled a homicide. Medical examiners determined the body had been left in the large suitcase on the side of the road for several weeks to several months.
The suitcase containing the remains was first discovered by a Utah Department of Transportation employee in tall reeds over the bank near mile marker 102 on I-80 on April 30. When a UHP officer responded to the scene, the body was discovered which opened the investigation.
Medical examiners arrived around 7:30 p.m. and the suitcase and victim’s body were transported to the medical examiner’s office that evening.
While police conducted their investigation, traffic was reduced to a single westbound lane on I-80. Traffic was backed up for more than a mile and slowed to a crawl from the SR-201 overpass to beyond the Saltair exit for several hours that evening.