Police exhume body in ’13 killing

Victim was found buried in Bridgeport garage crawl space

A day after making two arrests in an 8-year-old unsolved murder, Bridgeport police have exhumed the body of the person they believe is the victim.

Police hope a Friday autopsy will prove the remains belong to Aryndel Castro, who disappeared in 2013. They said they found the body Thursday afternoon, buried under five feet of dirt in a crawl space under a city garage.

Police said they have “strong evidence” the body belongs to Castro. They arrested two suspects Wednesday — one of whom acknowledged his involvement and agreed to help detectives recover the remains.

That suspect, Shawn Gibson, 45, of Lakeview Avenue in Hamden, made the admission in a post-arrest interview, police said. He was arrested Wednesday afternoon and his alleged accomplice, Terrance Boyd, 55, of Columbia, S.C., was arrested Wednesday morning in South Carolina.

Gibson was charged with murder and is in custody on $250,000 bail, police said. Boyd also will be charged with murder after he is extradited to Connecticut.

Police said they believe Gibson, with help from Boyd, beat and choked Castro to death on Sept. 22, 2013 in a rooming house at 941 Noble Ave. They found the remains under the detached garage of a nearby single-family house at 1803 Noble Ave.

“The evidence also suggests that the two men then engaged in an elaborate clean-up effort, purchasing cleaning supplies on multiple occasions at The Home Depot and renting vans twice, once from The Home Depot, and the other from U-haul,” police said.

Investigators suspect the men used the vans to move Castro’s body more than once in the days after the homicide, police said.