Has Jack Culolias been found?

BREAKING NEWS

UPDATE December 28, 2012: Body of Jack Culolias has officially been identified this week. Police claim the young man "accidentally" drowned in the area of the nearby river that had already been thoroughly searched when he first went missing. They also say there is "no signs of foul play" in either his disappearance from the Cadillac Ranch in Tempe Arizona or in his subsequent death. Use the search box to find all posts concerning Culolias. [NOTE: I'd like to interview parties involved in this case for the VOICES OF THE DEAD feature. Please make contact via the comment section below or here if interested.]

UPDATE December 16, 2012: A dead body was spotted in the water this morning in the vicinity of where Jack Culolias first disappeared from Tempe Marketplace in Arizona on November 30th. Police are currently on the scene and attempting to retrieve the corpse, but have not confirmed if it is that of the missing ASU student.

However, Sgt. Mike Pooley issued this statement to the media: "We believe there's a good chance this is Jack Culolias," he said. "Right now, there are no signs of foul play."

That remains to be seen though, since the area in question was thoroughly searched before, not only by large search parties but with tactical dive teams equipped with sophisticated sonar, and Culolias wasn't there.

Asked about that Sgt. Pooley quickly answered, "What we're thinking is because of all the rain we've been getting, the water level has significantly risen just in the past couple of days...So, we're thinking if this is indeed Jack and if this body was down there it was obviously lodged in between something and the water level has brought it up quite a bit."

Of course, that's not exactly how it works--a submerged body "refloats" to the surface once putrefaction begins to set in, the gases in the gut literally lifting it up like a helium ballon. How quickly this happens depends on the water temperatures. Read more drown forensics here. 

This is the second corpse discovered in water in this area in as many weeks. Earlier last week, body parts and skeletal remains were found in a Phoenix storm drain located less than 10 miles from the Cadillac Ranch, the bar and grill where Culolias was reported to have been ejected by bouncers before vanishing. Last heard, medical examiners were trying to identify those remains too, but there has been no word on whether they've achieved this as yet.  (Updates, if any, will be added here again.)
 

ORIGINAL STORY:

Arizona State University student Jack Culolias, 19, is still officially listed as missing ever since the evening of November 30th when he vanished after being ejected by bouncers from the Cadilla Ranch bar-and-grill in downtown Tempe.

 

And, despite intense searches for him in and around the waters of the Salt River and the Tempe Town Lake where his sneaker was found, there have been no substantial clues as to his sudden disappearance and fate.

 

However, authorities have just found human remains in a Phoenix storm drain situated very near the Tempe water basin and less than 10 miles from the Cadillac Ranch where Culolias was booted from two weeks ago.

Maintenance workers spotted the body (and bones) at the bottom of an access shaft early Wednesday, and Maricopa County sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Brandon Jones said police had to wait a few hours while crews determined if it was safe before homicide detectives could climb down 30 feet to the bottom of it.

Jones said detectives did not recover an entire corpse as yet and planned to re-explore the shaft again shortly. Investigators think it's not very likely the victim accidentally fell in there and may have been dumped at 43rd Avenue and Broadway Road.

If it is Culolias and perps relocated him to this site from the area a helicopter pilot had reported seeing a body floating in the water last week, then this is exactly why police are NOT supposed to publicize a crime tip BEFORE they actually investigate it themselves. (As the Tempe police seem to have done before thoroughly searching that remote locale in the Salt River basin.)

*This story is developing; more updates, if any, will be posted below.


Update #1 - December 13, 2012: Sources say body from storm drain is not intact and is that of an adult.  (NOTE: this does not necessarily imply that the deceased was dismembered--corpses submerged in water decompose rapidly, and when such a waterlogged body is additionally exposed to air it will begin to deteriorate at an accelerated rate.  See Drowning Forensics for complete analysis.