Torso Is Found in Bay; 3 Men Are Questioned

Houston police are questioning three men about the dismembered body of a man in a suitcase found floating in Galveston Bay on Sunday.

The torso of Ranferi Arizaga, 30, was spotted by a fisherman who saw a large object bobbing in the water and steered his boat closer to investigate. Another fisherman two miles away found the head, which was wrapped in sheets of white plastic.

Police spokesman John Leggio said that Arizaga’s family in Houston reported him missing last week. Charges have not been filed against any of the men in custody. “This is an ongoing homicide investigation,” he said.

The grisly discovery stunned this beach town, which had just endured the lurid murder and dismemberment trial of New York real estate heir Robert Durst. A Galveston jury found Durst not guilty last month in the death of Morris Black, a neighbor he admitted cutting into pieces and tossing into the sea two years ago.

Durst testified that after Black was accidentally shot during an argument, he panicked and stuffed Black’s remains into garbage bags and suitcases he bought at a local Wal-Mart. Black’s head has never been found, but his torso and limbs floated ashore and were found by a man fishing the Gulf of Mexico with his young son.

The suitcase holding Arizaga’s torso was discovered about a mile from the spot where Black’s remains were found. After the fisherman who spotted the suitcase realized that it contained a torso, he attempted to tow it inland. The fisherman was able to get the torso ashore but the suitcase fell away and either sank or drifted out to sea, said Major Ray Tuttoilmondo of the Galveston County Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff’s divers have not found the suitcase.

That two dismembered corpses would be found near sleepy Galveston, southeast of Houston, is “bizarre and unusual but completely unrelated,” said Tuttoilmondo. Still, when the call came in about another torso in the bay, “pretty much the thought was, ‘Here we go again,’ ” he said.

Durst is being held in a Galveston County jail on $2-billion bond for jumping bail after police arrested him in the death of Black.