Family’s grisly find in Brockton slaying
Missing limbs of a Brockton man allegedly stabbed more than 30 times by his girlfriend were found by his grieving family yesterday as they went to collect his belongings, authorities and a cousin said.
Jacinda Shaw said she and her family didn’t know that her uncle, Joseph Shaw, had been mutilated until his girlfriend, Kathryn Podgurski, was arraigned on a murder charge yesterday in Brockton District Court.
The revelation left the family so stunned that most of them bolted from the courthouse, sobbing, midway through the arraignment.
They soon went to the victim’s Green Street studio apartment to collect his belongings when they noticed a backpack with blood on the zipper by a bureau, Jacinda Shaw told the Herald.
“It was heavy, and when I opened it, his foot popped up,” said the 35-year-old woman. “We dumped it out on the bed, and there was another bag that we assume was his arm. ... We couldn’t figure out why the police didn’t find it. It was in plain sight.”
Brockton police referred questions to the state police assigned to Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz’s Office. A state police spokesman referred questions to Cruz’s spokeswoman, Beth Stone, who confirmed that a Shaw family member had found a backpack “with what appears to be the missing limb portions.” The remains were sent to the medical examiner’s office for further study. Stone said the investigation is ongoing.
At Podgurski’s arraignment yesterday, Assistant District Attorney Richard Linehan said Joseph Shaw, 44, was last seen at a family party on July 15 or 16. The victim, according to a police report, had been upset Podgurski had told him she was pregnant.
Podgurski claimed two men broke into the apartment, trying to rob Shaw and her for drugs or money, and that Shaw had gotten “loud” during the confrontation, and that one of the men had stabbed him with her knife and told her not to call the police, the police report said.
The defendant told investigators his body was in the closet, next to the refrigerator, for six days, the report said.
Police found Shaw’s decomposing body — its right arm severed below the elbow and left leg severed below the knee — beneath plastic bags and a wet comforter, Linehan said. The floor of the closet was covered in kitty litter, which apparently had been used to absorb the blood, he said.
Although the medical examiner found more than 30 stab wounds on Shaw’s body, none of them was immediately fatal; instead he “bled out.”
Podgurski had been arrested before on assault charges, records show, and was still on probation in that case.