A gruesome history of Florida’s gator-infested Everglades

The Everglades may be a major Florida tourist attraction, but they can also be a dumping ground for things unwanted – including human bodies.

“It’s a convenient place to dump people because there are gators out there to eat them,” said Davie Police Captain Dale Engle.

In what has become the latest mystery involving the Everglades, authorities on Tuesday were working to identify a man found a day earlier by fishermen who spotted two alligators eating human remains in a canal west of US 27 in Southwest Ranches.

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“We are treating this as a homicide until we find out otherwise,” Engle said.

The body “appeared to have been in the canal for some time,” and the reptiles are not suspected of killing the person, Engle said. But the alligators had consumed the body’s midsection, making a quick determination of the person’s gender impossible, he added.

The Broward County Medical Examiner on Tuesday said the body was that of a man, but had not determined the cause of death, Engle said.

If the man was the victim of a homicide, it would not be the first time the Everglades was used as a disposal site.