Woman arrested after police find human remains in her oven

MOUNT OLIVET, Kentucky (AP):

Authorities arrested a Kentucky woman after someone found a dismembered body in her mother’s backyard and officers later found human remains in a pot in the home’s oven that “was still warm”.

A man who was hired to work on the property in Mount Olivet, about 50 miles (80 kilometres) southeast of Cincinnati, called authorities Wednesday after finding the body in the backyard, the Kentucky State Police said. Officers saw the dismembered corpse in the grass, a bloody mattress nearby, and blood stains on the back porch and the back door’s threshold, according to an arrest citation.

Police obtained a search warrant for the home and called in a special response team, but a woman inside the house, 32-year-old Torilena May Fields, refused to come out. Police deployed gas inside the house and conversed with Fields using a robot, and she exited without further incident late that night, state police said. She had blood on her face, hands and clothing, according to the citation.

Fields is charged with abusing a corpse, evidence tampering, and obstructing government operations, and she could face further charges, state police said in a news release. It wasn’t immediately clear Friday if she had a lawyer yet who might speak on her behalf. Court records don’t list one for her. She’s due to be arraigned next week.

While searching the home, officers found a steel pot in the oven containing human remains, and the pot “was still warm to the touch,” the citation said.

The man who called police said he saw Fields and her mother Trudy Fields, who owns the home, when he visited Tuesday evening. He said no one else was there. The man told police that, before he left the home that night, Torilena Fields was “casting spells on them and being confrontational”, according to the arrest citation, which notes that she may have been using drugs.

The man said that, when he found the body, he believed it to be Trudy Fields’ because he found a “pile of her hair”, the arrest citation said. Police wrote in the citation the victim was Torilena Fields’ mother.