More body parts found in water at Delevoe Park

By Ardy Friedberg, sun-sentinel.com, Posted January 2 2002, 12:02 PM EST

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More body parts were discovered Tuesday night and Wednesday morning in the New River at the same spot in Northwest Fort Lauderdale where the dismembered head and arms of a young woman were found last week.

Broward Sheriff’s Office deputies said a man walking across a bridge at Samuel Delevoe County Park at 2500 block of Northwest Sixth Street discovered the torso of a black woman Wednesday morning.

A day earlier, on Tuesday, a severed leg was found in the water of the North Fork of the New River, which runs through the park.

Last Friday, the Broward Medical Examiner’s Office identified the head and two arms found in the river that day as that of 22-year-old Marita White of Pompano Beach.

The torso found Wednesday in about 5 feet of water on the west bank of the river about 20 feet south of the bridge.

It is in the same area where fishermen last Friday found the head and two arms in shallow water.

BSO divers were on their way to the park to continue their search for more of White’s body Wednesday morning when the torso was discovered.

The Broward Medical Examiner’s Office was called in Wednesday again to help identify the torso and try to determine the cause and time of death. BSO still doesn’t know why White was killed.

"We do know she got arrested for delivery of cocaine once and that drug dealers can be ruthless, but we don't even know that this is drug-related," BSO spokesman Jim Leljedal said last week.

Leljedal said White was killed Thursday night or Friday morning, and her severed arms and head had been in the river for only a matter of hours when they were found.

Police were able to identify White through fingerprints, which compared to prints taken from her 1997 arrest.

White had "some other drug-related arrests when she was a juvenile," Leljedal said.

Deputies ask that anyone who saw anything suspicious at the park or who knew White and her last whereabouts should call either BSO at 954-765-4321 or Crime Stoppers, anonymously, at 954-493-TIPS. [her last whereabouts would be the river, wouldn't they?]

The 17-acre Delevoe Park is located just west of Fort Lauderdale on the New River and is named in honor of the Rev. Samuel Delevoe, one of Fort Lauderdale’s first black police officers and a community activist and businessman who was fatally shot on April 18, 1977.

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