Cartel-Style Beheading Stumps Wyoming Cops

Belt buckle on bullet-riddled body is only clue
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 30, 2014 12:05 AM CST
Updated Jan 30, 2014 7:50 AM CST
Cartel-Style Beheading Stumps Wyoming Cops
This photo released by the Park County Sheriff's Office in Cody, Wyoming, shows a belt buckle found on a decapitated man who was riddled with bullets and found in remote northwestern Wyoming.    (AP Photo/Park County Sheriff)

A gruesome find on a dirt road has police in Wyoming fearing that Mexican drug cartel-style violence has found its way to one of the least populated parts of America. Duck hunters found the decapitated body of an unidentified man in his 30s on a dead-end road in Park County, just east of Yellowstone National Park, earlier this month. He had been shot multiple times before he was decapitated and his arm had also been cut off, the AP reports. The head has yet to be recovered.

One of the only clues is a belt buckle worn by the victim, a white or light-skinned Hispanic man, KGWN reports. The brown leather belt has a distinctive braided design featuring a horse head, which investigators say is similar to craftmanship found in villages in Mexico and Guatemala. A spokesman for the sheriff's office says the county has reached out to the FBI and Interpol for assistance. There's no reason to believe residents are in imminent danger, but "we encourage them to be vigilant," he says. "We definitely encourage them to continue to look out for their neighbors, to report strange activity." (More Wyoming stories.)

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