Police & fire
The body found in Hilltown by a roadway trash cleanup crew earlier this month has been identified as a Bucks County man reported missing in September 2025.
John Carper, 40, was positively identified through dental records, according to Bucks County Coroner Patricia Campi. Carper had lived in Bucks County and had connections to New Jersey and California.
Carper’s father had filed a missing person report in September 2025.
Campi did not release a cause of death or an estimate of when the man died.
Carper’s decapitated remains were found near the intersection of Route 313 and Webb Drive in Hilltown Township by members of the Pennridge Area Republican Club, a group performing voluntary roadside cleanup who reported to police they found human remains on April 18.
Club members discovered the remains in a culvert that morning, initially seeing a rope, which they pulled to reveal a head and neck — the latter held by the rope’s looped end — prompting the volunteers to call the police.
The crew soon found sneakers, a vaporizer pen, and a box cutter close to the bank of the nearby stream.
Further along the waterway, community members said officers located the rest of the body.
Hilltown Police told The Independence that it is examining the strong possibility that suicide caused the death.
Police Chief Chris Engelhart called the incident fairly atypical, though he said his agency has encountered somewhat comparable cases over the years, noting some wherein the deceased likely succumbed to natural causes outside on residential properties.
“We’ve had circumstances similar but maybe not quite to this extreme,” he said. “But we’ve had, unfortunately, [times] when remains have been located. But it’s not very frequent.”
