Teen Thieves Snorted Cremated Remains

1/20 UPDATE: Police divers recover purloined ashes that had been dumped in lake.

JANUARY 19--Mistaking the cremated remains of a man and two dogs for powdered drugs, a quintet of teenage burglars snorted the ashes after a break-in last month at a Florida residence, according to police.

That startling disclosure is contained in a Marion County Sheriff’s Office report, a copy of which you’ll find here. The January 18 report memorializes information received from a source--who appears to be one of the arrestees--who told deputies that the ashes “had been taken because the suspects mistook it for either cocaine or heroin.”

Investigators learned from the source, whose name was redacted from the report, that the teen suspects “had snorted the ashes believing they were snorting cocaine.” At some point, however, the alleged burglars determined that the powdered substances were not drugs, but that they had stolen “the remains from the dogs and the victims father.”

This realization apparently came after news reports about the December 15 burglary of Holli Tencza’s home mentioned that intruders took her father’s ashes from a closet, while the remains of her two Great Danes were removed from a shelf in her bedroom. A sheriff’s report on the burglary listed electronics and jewelry taken during the theft, and noted that, “Also taken from her bedroom were her father’s ashes and those of her two dogs.”

The sheriff’s source reported that there was a “possibility” that the purloined ashes were in the attic of Waldo Soroa, 19, one of the suspects charged with the burglary. The source added that the thieves “wanted to return them to the owner but were discouraged” by a man “because of fingerprints.” A sheriff's spokesman said today that detectives are still searching for the ashes.

Along with Soroa (who is pictured in the above mug shot), cops arrested Jose Diaz Marrero, 19; Matrix Andaluz, 18; and two 17-year-olds on an assortment of criminal charges. (2 pages)