A dad and daughter are facing life in prison for murder and incest after the bodies of three newborn babies were found rotting in the basement of their house.

Depraved Piotr Gierasik, 54, and Paulina Gierasik, 20, were arrested after the babies’ remains were discovered in shallow graves and wrapped in plastic bags at the property in the village of Czerniki, in northern Poland.

The first two babies were found on Friday but further investigations revealed a third body in an ‘advanced state of decomposition’ on Saturday.

Mariusz Duszyński from the District Prosecutor’s Office in Gdańsk said: ‘The woman has been charged with two counts of murder and a charge of having an incestuous relationship with her father.

‘The man was charged with three counts of murder, a charge of incest with his 20-year-old daughter, and a charge of having incestuous relations with another daughter.’

According to prosecutors, two of the murdered children came from his relationship with the 20-year-old who they say was in a consensual relationship with her father.

The third baby was from a relationship he had with another daughter after forcing her into sex.

The prosecutors added that they suspected him of killing the third baby.

The grim discoveries came after police received a tip-off from social services.

Moving to the village around 15 years ago, Piotr was left to bring up his children after his wife died.

One local told the Super Express newspaper: ‘The father was left alone with the children.

There are a lot of them, ten or twelve, the oldest ones have already left.

‘Piotr made a good impression. The yard is neglected, but he installed new windows in the house.

‘There was no sign of him drinking. He took the kids for walks or to the forest to pick mushrooms.

‘Just ordinary people. Who would have thought that such abominations existed in their home.’

But colleagues at a cake shop where Paulina worked in the neighbouring village of Stara Kiszewa became suspicious that she was pregnant after she started to wear large, loose-fitting clothes.

She then took three weeks off work but returned a week later.

One fellow shop worker said: ‘We all guessed she was pregnant, I think she had tied belts around herself like a sort of corset.

‘When she returned early from her holiday the change was visible. She was much thinner, weaker, and constantly tired.

‘When we asked about the child, she feigned surprise and denied it.’

Another local told Fakt newspaper: ‘They lived like a couple. She called him Piotr, by his first name. They walked around hand in hand.

‘A few months ago, he shaved her head so that other boys wouldn’t look at her.

‘She looked up to him as if he were God.’

One of Paulina’s work colleagues is reported to have alerted social services after seeing a ‘disturbing’ text message the 20-year-old had sent to her father.

Prosecutors are now waiting for an autopsy to determine how the babies died.

Meanwhile, police are continuing to search the property to see if any more bodies are hidden in the house.

• The sinkhole was found by scientists in Leye Fengshan UNESCO Global Geopark
• It’s reported to be 306m in length, 150m in width and 192m in depth
• Researchers say it could be home to previously unidentified animal species

By Madison Burgess

Published: 12:24 EDT, 21 August 2023 | Updated: 12:35 EDT, 21 August 2023

Fossilised spider found in quarry in Germany is discovered to be 310million years old after being donated to museum

• The spider has been named after Tim Wolterbeek, the man who discovered it 
• It is now being described in a paper as the older of its kind found in Germany  

By Daily Mail Reporter

Published: 20:17 EDT, 9 August 2023 | Updated: 20:17 EDT, 9 August 2023

Have scientists discovered a new species of HUMAN? Ancient skull belonging to a child with no chin who lived 300,000 years ago suggests our family tree ‘needs another branch’

• A fossilised skill, jaw and leg bones were found in Hualongdong, China in 2019
• Interestingly, researchers say the unknown species ‘did not possess a true chin’ 

By Sam Tonkin

Updated: 14:22 EDT, 7 August 2023

‘Presumed human remains’ have been found in the wreckage of the Titan submersible on Wednesday, the US Coast Guard announced.

Several identifiable parts of the ship were lifted ashore on Wednesday afternoon, including the sub’s nose and a large panel which appears to be from its tail end.

Amid those recovered pieces, Coast Guard officials said they discovered human remains, which will now be transported aboard a ship to a port in the United States where they will undergo testing and analysis.

The discoveries surprised experts who suspected Titan was destroyed when it suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion‘ with five people on board during a journey to the wreckage of the Titanic.

In fact, earlier on Wednesday a coroner told DailyMail.com she believed the remains of those onboard — including British billionaire Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood — would likely never be recovered.

Officials said Wednesday the remains were ‘carefully removed within the wreckage’ that was recovered earlier in the day.

‘I am grateful for the coordinated international and interagency support to recover and preserve this vital evidence at extreme offshore distances and depths,’ Marine Board of Investigation Capt. Jason Neubauer said in a statement.

‘The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy,’ he added.

But, Neubauer noted there is a ‘substantial amount of work’ still to be done to understand what happened to the Titan sub and to ‘help ensure a similar tragedy does not occur again.’

The MBI will continue its evidence collection and witness interviews to inform a public hearing about the incident, and Pelagic Research Services — whose remote operating vehicle discovered the debris fields — said its team is ‘still on mission’.

‘They have been working around the clock now for 10 days, through the physical and mental challenges of this operation, and are anxious to finish the mission and return to their loved ones,’ the company said in a statement. 

On Wednesday, a debris field was found on the seafloor, 1,600 feet (500 meters) from the bow of the Titanic, which sits more than two miles (nearly four kilometers) below the ocean’s surface and 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

The Canadian-flagged Polar Prince cargo vessel towed the Titan out to sea last weekend but lost contact with it about an hour and 45 minutes after the submersible launched into the ocean depths.

News of the missing ship spurred a multinational search-and-rescue operation, which ended when officials announced the sub likely imploded, killing all those onboard instantly.

As a result, Richland County Coroner Naida Rutherford told DailyMail.com it was unlikely human remains would ever be recovered in the search.

She said: ‘When you have any sort of explosion or implosion, there are remains or traces of remains.

‘There is a possibility but given the environment that this happened in it is highly unlikely that they will find remains.

‘Even on land you have animal activity, and in an expansive ocean, so many animals and creatures, and the pressure down there.

‘I think it is unlikely to find remains, certainly in whole parts. It would be very difficult to ID the remains given the conditions in which the implosion happened – and it will be difficult to ascertain who they belonged to.

‘Their bodies would have sustained extensive thermal damage and blunt force trauma from the implosion. Those are things we know as fact.’

For years prior to the implosion, experts had warned that Stockton Rush’s self-designed submersible was not capable of safely reaching the Titanic wreckage on the ocean floor.  

They said its carbon fiber hull, which housed the five crew, was its ‘Achilles heel’ because the material is not considered suitable for dives at the depths reached by the vessel. 

Titanic director James Cameron, a renowned deep sea explorer and submersibles expert, said previously that the hull was likely broken into ‘very small pieces’ in the incident.

‘If I had to put money down on what the finding [of the investigation] will be, the Achilles heel of the sub was the composite cylinder that was the main hull that the people were inside,’ he said.

‘There were two titanium end caps on each end. They are relatively intact on the sea floor. But that carbon fiber composite cylinder is now just in very small pieces. It’s all rammed into one of the hemispheres. It’s pretty clear that’s what failed.’

Carbon fiber is prone to delamination, the process whereby a material fractures into layers while put under pressure.

It is thought the craft’s titanium components better withstood the disaster, while the weaker carbon fiber parts – including the hull – are more likely to have been crushed into tiny pieces.

The parts lifted from the ocean appear to align with Cameron’s observations, including that the larger piece was the vessel’s titanium shell. Investigators will now work to confirm what each piece is.

But, despite these incessant warnings from naval experts, OceanGate had assured the public for year that its Titan submersible was safe. 

The company had boasted in promotional material about Titan’s ‘Real Time Hull Health Monitoring’, which constantly checked the integrity of the vessel throughout the dive.

The system used acoustic sensors and strain gauges to ‘analyze the effects of changing pressure on the vessel as the submersible dives deeper, and accurately assess the integrity of the structure’.

But legal filings reveal a former director of marine operations ‘expressed concern that this was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail—often milliseconds before an implosion—and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull.’

This is the moment the co-founder of OceanGate learned that debris from the Titan submersible had been discovered by rescue crews during a TV interview.

Guillermo Sohnlein, who founded OceanGate with Stockton Rush in 2009, was speaking to a BBC journalist when he was told that some pieces had been found on the ocean floor in the search for the missing submersible.

‘I’m sorry, some what has been found?’ a shocked Sohnlein quickly asked before the journalist said all he knew at this stage was that debris had been found.

Sohnlein appeared breathless and taken aback by the news, which he most likely knew meant there had been an implosion onboard the vessel. 

He told the BBC: ‘I’m not sure [what the debris is] because I’m hearing this for the first time but I know that the protocol for lost comms is for the pilot to surface the sub. From the beginning I always thought that’s probably what Stockton would have done.’ 

‘In which case it becomes very difficult to find the sub because the surface ship wouldn’t have known it was coming up and wouldn’t have known where to look. My biggest fear through this whole thing watching the operations unfold is that they’re floating around on the surface and they’re just very difficult to find.’

But it later emerged that the debris that was found by a remotely operated vehicle deployed by the Canadian vessel Horizon Arctic were parts of the Titan submersible. 

Rear Admiral John Mauger, who led the search, said the parts that were found in the debris field pointed to the submersible suffering a ‘catastrophic implosion’ 1,600 ft from the bow of the Titanic, killing all five onboard. 

The somber announcement ended a multinational search-and-rescue operation that captivated the world since the tiny tourist craft went missing in the North Atlantic on Sunday. 

Mauger said parts of the Titan’s tail cone and landing frame were found first. 

Authorities said they later learned that the pieces discovered also included the front and back ends of its pressure hull as well as the porthole window one of the doomed passengers would have been looking out of when the vessel imploded.

All five onboard – including British explorer Hamish Harding, British businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman – would have died instantly without ever knowing there was a problem, naval experts say.

It comes as former Royal Navy commander Ryan Ramsey, who served in the submarine service for 23 years, said the debris will allow experts to analyse the break structure and potentially ‘piece together what actually happened in those last moments’.

Comparing the current investigation to one involving a crashed plane, Ramsey told the BBC: ‘There is no black box, so you are not going to be able to track the last movements of the vessel itself.

‘But as many pieces of the vessel as they can do, to get those back up to the surface, and from them they should be able to analyse the break structure, any fractures that have happened and maybe piece together what actually happened in those last moments.’

The debris will be examined under a microscope and experts will try to find any breaks in the carbon fibre structure, which could help them locate the exact spot the rupture took place.

Professor Roderick Smith, from Imperial College London, said the sheer strength of the ‘catastrophic implosion’ means it could be difficult to create a timeline of what happened.

‘Hence the need for retrieval and painstaking examination if possible,’ he said.

Bobby Chacon, a retired FBI special agent and a former leader of the FBI dive team, told CNN it would be impossible to know what happened ‘unless you recover the majority of the vessel’. He said that a remotely operated vehicle could be able to bring up more parts of the submersible. 

‘The sooner they do that, the better, because the ocean changes things all the time. The tides and currents and ocean pressures moves things around,’ he said.

Search and rescue officials say the five men are likely to have died on Sunday before military planes using sonar buoys detected what they thought could have been SOS ‘banging’ sounds in the water. 

‘The implosion would have generated a significant, broadband sound that the sonar buoys would have picked up,’ explained Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard at a press conference yesterday. 

It would have been an instant death for the men, some of whom had paid £195,000 ($250,000) each to see the famous shipwreck. 

Aileen Marty, a former naval officer and professor at Florida International University, said the implosion would have happened at 1,500 miles per hour. 

‘It takes more than that – it takes about 0.25 more than that – for the human brain to even realise it’s happening. So the entire thing would have collapsed before the individuals inside would even realise there was a problem,’ Mr Marty told CNN.

‘They died in a way that they didn’t even realise that they were about to die. Ultimately, among the many ways in which we pass, that’s painless.’

Sohnlein, who left OceanGate 10 years ago, said he would not have acted differently than Rush. 

He said: ‘If anything, I think we need to go back and learn from what’s happening, find out what’s happened, take those lessons and carry them forward.’

Sohnlein today said the regulations surrounding visits to the Titanic wreckage are ‘tricky to navigate’ after the deep-sea vessel imploded while attempting to visit the site.

Sohnlein said there are regulations in place surrounding submersibles but they are ‘sparse’ and ‘antiquated’ as he defended the firm from critics including Titanic film director James Cameron. 

It comes after the submersible lost contact with the tour operator an hour and 45 minutes into the two-hour descent to the wreckage, with the vessel only reported missing eight hours after communication was lost.

Cameron, also a submersible expert who has visited the world’s most famous seawreck 30 times, said the tragedy this week has parallels with the the 1912 disaster, where the captain repeatedly ignored warnings about an incoming iceberg but carried on at top speed.   

He told the BBC: ‘We now have another wreck that is based on, unfortunately, the same principles of not heeding warnings.’ 

But Sohnlein defended the safety of the submersible, saying he and his co-founder Stockton Rush, who was onboard Titan, were committed to safety during expeditions.

He told Times Radio: ‘He was extremely committed to safety. He was also extremely diligent about managing risks, and was very keenly aware of the dangers of operating in a deep ocean environment.

‘So that’s one of the main reasons I agreed to go into business with him in 2009.’

Sohnlein, who no longer works for the company, continued: ‘I know from first-hand experience that we were extremely committed to safety and safety and risk mitigation was a key part of the company culture.’

Explaining the regulations surrounding visiting the Titanic wreckage, he said: ‘The regulations are pretty sparse. And many of them are antiquated, or they’re designed for specific instances.

‘So it’s kind of tricky to navigate those regulatory schemes.’

Mr Sohnlein added on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Anyone who operates in that depth of the ocean, whether it is human-rated submersibles or robotic submersibles, knows the risks of operating under such pressure and that at any given moment, on any mission, with any vessel, you run the risk of this kind of implosion.’

When asked about the safety of the Titan submersible, Ramsey said lessons need to be learned and questions need to be answered.

He said: ‘That’s the question that needs to be answered. Most submersibles and all submarines go through a stringent safety process.

‘Every time they come back in and every time before they go to sea they do safety checks, check the safety of the hull, state of the hull openings, everything.

‘What’s apparent here is they didn’t have to follow the same regulation, and therefore didn’t follow the same regulation. I think that will be where a big focus is.

‘That doesn’t mean blame, that’s not what we should be doing, what we should be doing is what’s called adjust culture, where we work out lessons learned and implement them going forward.’

In the days that followed the report that Titan had gone missing, the US coastguard said the vessel had a depleting oxygen supply that was expected to run out on Thursday.

Sonar buoys dropped into the ocean picked up underwater noises that led to the search being concentrated on one area but it was not until after the supposed deadline had passed that an ROV found debris from the submersible close to the site of the Titanic wreckage.

And it later emerged in a report from The Wall Street Journal that the US navy had detected a sound in the search area for the submersible on Sunday that was consistent with an implosion.

A senior military official said the US navy passed on the information to the coastguard, which continued its search because the data was not considered by the navy to be definitive.

Undersea expert Paul Hankin said five major pieces of debris helped to identify it as from the Titan submersible – including the vessel’s nose cone and the front end bell of the pressure hull.

The tiny vessel carrying the crew was protected by a pressure chamber, a sealed pod that holds internal pressure significantly higher than ambient pressure, a gas system to control the internal pressure, and a supply of breathing gas for the occupants. 

Dr. Dale Molé, the former director of undersea medicine and radiation health for the US Navy, said: ‘The pressure hull is the chamber where the occupants reside. It sounds as though they had reached the bottom when the pressure vessel imploded, and usually, when it gives way, it gives way all at once. 

‘It sounds like it was the carbon fiber cylinder that gave way and resulted in the implosion.’

How the pressure chamber was breached remains unclear. But such an implosion could be due to a leak, power failure, or small fire from an electrical short circuit. 

What would have resulted would have been a violent and instantaneous implosion as the high pressure water outside flooded in, wrenching away the rear cover, landing frame, and ripping apart the sub’s hull, crushing those inside.

Dr Molé said: ‘They would have been ripped to shreds. 

‘An implosion is when the wave of pressure is inward, whereas an explosion is when the pressure wave or the shock wave goes out from whatever the source of that is.’

He explained it like blowing up a balloon too much – the balloon will eventually pop when there is too much pressure.

In an implosion, the opposite occurs, when there is more outward pressure than the container can understand, then the insides collapse. 

Dr Molé said: ‘When somebody stands on an empty soda can, it would support your weight, but then if you press on the sides, the can would collapse immediately.’ 

He added: ‘It’s simply where the debris and fragments and everything else goes inward because of a strong external force. In this case, it was the ocean.

‘At least at the depth of the Titanic, which is 12,500 feet, the external pressure would be 6,000lb per square inch. It’s that pressure that, if there were a weakness in the hull, would cause the hull to collapse and suddenly creates a shockwave. An implosion can certainly be every bit of destructive as an explosion.’

OceanGate, which has been chronicling the Titanic’s decay and the underwater ecosystem around it via annual voyages since 2021, released a statement calling all five men killed ‘true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans’.

It comes as the heartbroken family of 19-year-old Suleman and his father Shahzada Dawood today paid tribute to the beloved pair who ‘cherished a shared passion for adventure’.

Honouring the legacy of Shahzada and Suleman, the family spoke of how the pair were each other’s ‘greatest supporters’ with an ‘unwavering curiosity’ which built the foundation for their close friendship and inspired those around them. 

‘In this unfathomable tragedy, we try to find solace in the enduring legacy of humility and humanity that they have left behind and find comfort in the belief that they passed on to the next leg of their spiritual journey hand-in-hand, father and son,’ the tribute says. 

It adds: ‘Shahzada’s and Suleman’s absence will be felt deeply by all those who had the privilege of knowing this pair. It is difficult to articulate the grief of the immediate Dawood family.’

The tribute spoke of their unbreakable family values, their passion for learning about the world around them and philanthropy. 

It told about the excitement Suleman had felt to join his father’s business and how he ‘was keenly aware of the past efforts of his family that enabled him to have the experiences he did, and he never took them for granted; he remained grounded and humble and emotionally wise beyond his years.’

Suleman was described as a ‘sociable companion, admired by his friends at university and loved dearly by his sister and young cousins, who often looked up to ‘Suleman bhai’ for friendship, advice, and laughter.’

The tribute came after Suleman’s heartbroken aunt said he was ‘terrified’ about the trip and only joined the crew to please his dad for Father’s Day.

His heartbroken aunt, Azmeh Dawood, told NBC News that Suleman informed a relative he ‘wasn’t very up for it’ but felt compelled to please his father, who was very passionate about the 1912 shipwreck.

The older sister of Shahzada Dawood, who was the vice-chairman of Engro Corporation, reportedly said through tears: ‘I feel disbelief. It’s an unreal situation.’

Azmeh, who like the other anxious relatives was hoping for a miracle, continued: ‘I feel like I’ve been caught in a really bad film, with a countdown, but you didn’t know what you’re counting down to.’ 

She said she ‘personally found it kind of difficult to breathe thinking of them’, adding: ‘It’s been unlike any experience I’ve ever had’.

The Dawood family are among the richest in Pakistan, but have strong links to the UK and Shahzada lived in a six-bedroom £3.3million house in Surbiton, Surrey, with wife Christine, who works as a life coach, son Sulaiman and daughter Alina.

Shahzada is the Vice Chairman of Engro Corporation, which makes fertilisers, food and energy, as well as the Dawood Hercules Corporation, which makes chemicals. Shahzada’s father Hussain, 79, is chairman of both companies.

Shahzada is also a member of the Global Advisory Board for King Charles’ Charity, Prince’s Trust. He is also in the Founder’s Circle of the British Asian Trust.

The father-of-two is also on the board of trustees for the California-based SETI Institute that searches for extraterrestrial intelligence. 

He was born in Pakistan but moved to the UK to study law at the University of Buckingham. He went on to study for Master’s in textile marketing in 2000 at Philadelphia University.

Shahzada had decided to take his son Sulaiman on the ‘Titan’ – the name of the Titanic submersible – for the five-day trip with three others when disaster struck and they lost contact with the surface after appearing to close in on their destination.

Suleman was a student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. The university confirmed on Thursday that the teenager was a business school student who had just completed his first year.

Professor Sir Jim McDonald, principal & vice-chancellor of the University said: ‘We are shocked and profoundly saddened by the death of Suleman Dawood and his father in this tragic incident.

‘The entire Strathclyde community offers our deepest condolences to the Dawood family and all those affected by this terrible accident.

‘Our student wellbeing team remains on hand to offer appropriate support to Suleman’s classmates and the wider Strathclyde community at this difficult time.’

An ancient Mayan city has been discovered deep in the jungles of Mexico. 

Buildings, stone columns and 50-foot high pyramids make up the settlement, which was thought to have been a major hub at points between 250 and 1000 AD and is located in a largely unexplored stretch of jungle larger the size of Arizona.

The city – named Ocomtún or ‘stone column’ – covers around a fifth of a square mile and is located in the Campeche region of the Yucatan Peninsula, which splits the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.

It was discovered in May by Slovenian archaeologist Ivan Šprajc, who led a team of into the thick jungle and spent a month uncovering the city’s remains, Mexico’s National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH) announced on Tuesday.

According to Šprajc, the columns would have served as entrances to the upper floors of the buildings. The city is built around three main plazas, also features courts on which the Mayan inhabitants would have played an ancient ball game.

Ocomtún was discovered using LiDAR scanners, described by the National Geographic as one of archaeology’s most exciting modern tools, which use laser imaging captured from an aircraft to identify objects and structures hidden below.

The method has become especially popular among archaeologists searching dense regions of forest and jungle. 

The Maya civilization, known for its advanced mathematical calendars, spanned southeast Mexico and parts of Central America. They are also renowned for their pyramid temples and stone buildings.

Although they are thought to have been around for millennia, from around 1800 BC through to around 1000 AD, archeologists believe the Ocomtún fell late during the civilization between 800 to 1000 AD.

Political collapse led to its decline centuries before the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, whose military campaigns saw the last stronghold fall in the late 17th century.

The Ocomtún site has a core area, located on high ground surrounded by extensive wetlands, Šprajc said in a statement.

Ball games were popular throughout the Maya region and consisted of passing a rubber ball across a court without the use of hands and getting it through a small stone hoop.

The ball game is thought by experts to have been played throughout the  Mesoamerican region and is probably the oldest game in the history of sports. It is played on a stone-floored court about 160 feet in length.

Šprajc said his team had also found central altars in an area closer to the La Riguena river, which may have been designed for community rituals, though more research is needed to understand the cultures that once lived there. 

He has uncovered a number of Mayan cities during his career, which has been dedicated to the Yucatan Peninsula, and is the author of Lost Maya Cities: Archaeological Quests in the Mexican Jungle.

He suggested in his latest announcement that collapse of the city was likely a reflection of ‘ideological and population changes’ that led to the broader collapse of Maya societies in that region by around the 10th century.

Earlier this year a similar LiDAR approach was used to identify another Mayan civilization in Guatemala.

‘Extremely rare’ 3,000-year-old sword discovered in Germany is so well preserved it SHINES, archaeologists say

• The ancient weapon was dug up in the small German town of Nördlingen
• Experts were shocked to find how shiny it was despite laying in a burial site
• They are unsure where the sword was made or who the people are at this grave

By Lauren Haughey

Updated: 09:22 EDT, 16 June 2023

Grave containing 450 ‘VAMPIRES’ is discovered during roadworks in Poland: Burial site is filled with decapitated skeletons with skulls placed between their legs

• The grim discovery was made in the village of Luzino in the northeast of Poland 
• Coins had been placed in mouths of victims in common regional C19th practice 

By Ed Wight

Published: 04:19 EDT, 10 June 2023 | Updated: 14:48 EDT, 10 June 2023

At least 45 bags with human remains have been found in a ravine in the western Mexican state of Jalisco during a search for eight people reported missing last week, local authorities said Thursday.

‘Forty-five bags with human remains have been extracted that belong to both male and female people,’ the state prosecutor’s office said in a statement.

The gruesome discovery was made on Tuesday at the bottom of a 120ft (40m) ravine in the municipality of Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara, a large industrial hub.

The authorities had launched a search for two women and six men, all aged around 30 years, who had been reported missing since around May 20.

The missing person reports for each one had been made separately on different days, but investigators found that they all worked at the same call center.

The call center was in the same area where the human remains were discovered.

Forensic experts have yet to determine the number of victims or their identities.

Initial inquiries suggested the call center could have been involved in illegal activities, and local media reported that the authorities had found marijuana, a cloth and a cleaning rag with apparent blood stains as well as documents on possible commercial activities.

But relatives of the missing accused the authorities of seeking to portray the victims as criminals.

In recent years, human remains have been found in bags or unmarked graves in different areas of Jalisco.

In 2021, in the municipality of Tonala, in Jalisco, about 70 bags with the remains of 11 people were found.

And in 2019, the bodies of 29 people were found in 119 bags in an unpopulated area of Zapopan.

Another case that sparked numerous protests in Jalisco was the disappearance in March 2018 of three film students, whose remains were dissolved in acid.

Also in 2018, media reported that three Italians disappeared, allegedly handed over by police to the Jalisco New Generation cartel, to whom they had allegedly sold faulty machinery.

The Italians have not been found despite massive searches by state and federal law enforcement.

According to local media, in the first two months of this year alone, the remains of 33 people were found in five makeshift graves in the Guadalajara area.

The Jalisco New Generation cartel operates in the state and is one of the most powerful organized crime groups in Mexico, and is embroiled in disputes with other drug syndicates.

Mexico has recorded more than 340,000 murders and some 100,000 disappearances, the majority attributed to criminal organizations, since the launch of a controversial military anti-drug offensive in December 2006.