Local Jogger Getting Pretty Good at Guessing Time and Manner of Death
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A local woman has become something of an amateur detective, Dumb Runner has learned, thanks to her years of finding dead bodies while jogging.
Mya Stark, 27, said she’s found seven corpses since she began jogging around age 18—and every time she does, she said, she gets “better and better” at guessing the time and manner of death.
“At this point,” she said, laughing, “I can spot blunt-force trauma from 20 feet away.”
The self-taught expert said she stumbled across her first dead body during a three-mile jog in 2016—a grim discovery that made a lasting impression.
“That one was a white female, in her 50s or early 60s, with no discernible injuries,” Stark recalled. “She was fully dressed, lying behind some bushes.”
Other decedents followed over the years, she said, found in various parks, alleys, and wooded areas—victims of everything from heart attacks to strangulation. Some had been dead for days; others, just hours.
Stark developed a habit of staying with the bodies until first responders arrived, and then hanging around afterward to watch them work.
“I find it all very interesting,” she said. “Ligature marks, decomposition, drag marks, all of that stuff.”
“And I guess I’ve been taking mental notes the whole time, because now I’m pretty good at guessing how they died, and when.”
Stark’s talents were on full display last weekend, when she found a body just minutes into a lunchtime jog on a waterfront trail.
“This one appeared to be a young Latino male, 25 to 30 years old, fully clothed, dead for less than 24 hours,” Stark said. “Looked like a subdural hematoma to me.”
Medics arrived within minutes, she said, and soon confirmed her hunch.
“I never set out to become an expert in this stuff,” she said. “But it’s kind of cool, I guess.”
