I spent more than six hours at this scene, watching as Springfield police, beginning with shovels and then moving to heavy equipment, dug up an entire lot on Wirt Avenue, after a public works crew reported smelling a foul odor upon demolishing a structure. A local woman who went missing in April 2008 last was seen near this neighborhood, and a man who had lived in the house previously had an extensive criminal record. Police wanted to exhaust all avenues to ensure there were no human remains on the property. None were found. It was a fascinating exercise to watch.

Police find nothing in excavated cistern

Nov. 10, 2010

Springfield police detectives and a city public works crew on Wednesday found nothing after excavating an old cistern at 1846 S. Wirt Ave. to try to pinpoint the source of a foul odor.

Police and work crews reached the bottom of the cistern shortly before 10 p.m. Officials said the hole would be filled Friday.

Springfield Deputy Police Chief Cliff Buscher said a squad car would be assigned outside the home to guard the large hole today.

“We’ll have a city crew come by and fill it on Friday,” he said.

Buscher previously had stopped short of calling the probe a death investigation, although detectives and crime scene technicians participated in the excavation.

Public works employees originally went to the property Monday to tear down the red single-story house, which neighbors said had been mostly vacant since a tornado damaged it a few years ago. The crew dislodged the cap on a basement cistern, and workers reported a foul stench coming from inside. Crews notified police and backfilled the basement hole.

Detectives interviewed workers and neighbors afterwards and on Tuesday. They returned to the site Wednesday with a public works backhoe, two dump trucks and about a dozen detectives and crime scene technicians.

Dump trucks hauled away load after load of dirt as crews dug a hole almost as wide as the lot to make it easier for police to get to the cistern.

Detectives entered the hole a little after 5 p.m. Wednesday and started hand digging. They called off the search about five hours later, including a period when they had to take a break to allow water to be pumped out of the hole.

Buscher said he felt police had to check out the odor.

“I’d rather spend the time and the effort checking it out instead of second-guessing it and later find out there was something down there that we didn’t look for,” he said.

The house was one of 41 boarded-up properties the city purchased in August. Most had been cited for weed, grass and solid waste violations over the years.

A man who lived in the house previously has an extensive criminal record, including arrests for domestic battery and unlawful restraint in 2001, battery, driving under the influence, marijuana possession, unlawful use of a weapon, violating orders of protection and animal cruelty. Police did not say he was a suspect in anything associated with the stench at the house.